that’s whacked

I had pancake makeup for brunch!

Monday, Sep 30. 2002  –  Category: Musings

back from our road trip! we went to big rock, joshua tree, camped one night at pt. mugu on the beach, then headed to yosemite, and then lastly to tuolomne. i’ll gloss over some of the fun parts here:

dan led a tough 5.8 at big rock, and craig had his first lead on his brand new shiny rope and draws.

then dan and i headed to j-tree where we had an awesome time. the campgrounds were pretty much deserted, so we picked an awesome site, pitched camp, and smoked cigars and drank beers. we did some fun midnight bouldering and scrambling around by the light of the moon and our headlamps. the next day we climbed ’sphincter quits’ a tough 5.9 vertical crack climb. we set our first anchor using passive pro! we had a hexcentric as one of our anchor points, and i set a #9 BD stopper nut to provide directional for the climbing end. we climbed that a few times, then retired to camp to drink more beers and unwind.

the next day we headed to pt. mugu and beach-camped for the night. it was pretty windy and cold, but fun nonetheless. jesse met us up here, and we camped with jaime, zac, and jesse’s sister kyra. dan and i got there hella early, setup camp for everybody, got dinner cooked for everyone, and even had time to experiment with some long-exposure photography air writing with my LED headlamp.

the next morning, jesse, dan, and i loaded up the explorer and headed on out for a long-ass drive up to yosemite. we pitched camp in the valley and relaxed for the night. the next day we did a 13 mile hike starting from the valley floor up the four-mile trail (actually 4.8 miles long) to glacier point. from there we took the panorama trail (8.5 miles) around the valley back down by nevada and vernal falls, and then back on down to the valley floor.

after that, we headed on up to tuolomne to meet up with don. it was freezing-ass cold, but we got camp pitched and then headed to the lembert dome for some scrambling to the summit. we watched a somewhat cloudy sunset, i took a shitload of black and white photos, and then we proceeded to alternately scramble/ass-slide our way down back to the car. we got back to camp and met up with don. after a night of sipping smooooth black busch whiskey and scarfing down chili, we retired for the night. we woke up the next morning with snow everywhere! we got caught in one of the first snowstorms of the year. this kind of ruined our plans to climb cathedral peak (which i was really looking forward to, but oh well…maybe next year). so we headed down to mammoth lakes. we stopped by a snowboard shop, and i got awesome deals on a helluva lot of gear so i was appeased. we then headed on into bishop where i dropped off my equinox’s to be resoled (yes, i wore them down already in 5 months of climbing), and then we stopped by the galen rowell gallery. after that, dan, jesse, and i headed home!

i’ll update this entry in a few days with links to the photos… dan and i took a bunch of photos that i need to organise, sort, and then put online.