Saturday 24 September 2011

From Squamish to Yosemite - Sept 2011

We’ve made it to Yosemite Valley!  This blog comes to you live from deep within The Valley at Curry Village.  Unfortunately, the name has nothing to do with food (I was excited to be camping in such close proximity to a place called Curry Village – but no curries to be found!). 

As i write this, squirrels have made it into the Curry Village lounge where i am and are preparing to smack down over some bagel scraps.  Ahh, the serenity.

Since my last blog update we’ve travelled many miles (well over 6,000 miles on the trip so far).  We made a 3 day journey down from Squamish in Canada to San Francisco, California and finally took some time out to see some of the sights along the way.  We checked out Mt St Helens, which was pretty cool.  I especially liked the local sense of humour – the sign farewelling visitors said “Thanks for visiting Mt St Helens – we hope you had a blast”.  Comic gold.  We also took a whole 20 mins to check out the amazing Redwoods in California.  I was truly blown away (not literally, but one could imagine a scenario whereby that could happen in these forests!) by the size & scale of these trees that grow to be over 2,000 years old.  We also had a sneaky stop at Petaluma just outside of the Napa Valley.

Made it to San Fran where we picked up Chris & Alyssa.  It’s great to be sharing this journey with them - I'm often in fits of crying laughter around them.  We spent a couple of nights camping just outside of SF in the most idyllic gum tree forest.  Felt just like home! 

Once C+A got their van sorted (so quick!), we headed back out to Lovers Leap.   It didn’t take long before we were in the thick of it!  Well, actually, I took particular offence to an anonymous note that was posted on the campground noticeboard accusing us of reserving campsite spots for people that weren’t there, which of course we did not.  Feeling quite enraged by this gross injustice, I confronted the one tosser who had made similar comments to us a few days earlier.  I think I managed to get the message across that maybe he should have just asked us first, rather than make wildly inaccurate and very public accusations!  OK, I’m off the soap box now.

We didn’t spend too much time in Lovers Leap.  The weather was forecast to close in with thunderstorms everyday, so we spent a rather nomadic two weeks filling in time before Yosemite.  We ended up spending most our time in Mammoth Lakes, Bishop and higher up in the Sierras.  Between hail, thunderstorms and being set upon by wasps, we didn’t get a whole lot of climbing done there either.  We did get back out to Owens River Gorge and ticked some more of the obvious classics.  The real highlights were trout fishing at Lake Sabrina and getting to enjoy the fruits of Mars’ fishing prowess on the barbie!  Such simple pleasures!  It was beautiful (& cold) up at these alpine lakes and some funny local characters made our day there super fun. 
We then headed back down for some bouldering at The Buttermilks.  We rocked up quite late one night, well after dark, & took advantage of the free camping.  We parked our vans off the main dirt road leading to bouldering area.  The bright moonlight revealed a wide plateau surrounded by enormous peaks and no other signs of life. We were all super stoked at finding the free camping.  But my sleep was light & a little tortured – I couldn’t help think about scenes from the movie Wolf Creek – would we be abducted by the local crazy just waiting in the bushes for tourists like us? The shriek of a pack of coyotes in the distance did nothing to soothe these thoughts.  Luckily we made it through the night to enjoy some fantastic bouldering over the next few days. 
With the weather clearing up, we headed back up into the ether to Tuolumne Meadows at 9,000ft.  This place has a bit of a reputation for scary & run out climbing, so I was a little nervous going there.  We avoided anything scary and enjoyed what is probably (along with the Valley) one of the most beautiful places we’ve been to yet.  The granite domes at Tuolumne are just amazing – they are such intriguing formations and make for some great climbing.  Hopefully we make it back there to spend some more time exploring.
That brings us to the present day.  We’ve been climbing in the Valley for about a week now (our plan is to stay here for 8 weeks, pending good weather) and managed to tick a few classics routes as we get used to the rock and wait for the weather to cool down a little.  I have to admit that I was totally sh*t scared of coming here.  This is the home of the climbing hard man & woman, so I had no place being here.  But that feeling pretty much disappeared when we arrived in The Valley.  I almost cried (truly!) when Mars & I completed our first climb of over 680ft – I enjoyed it that much.  The climbing is mostly cracks & slabs – perfect for those of us who are vertically challenged!  Now we are setting our eyes on some bigger objectives (still lower grades) to make the most of what this beautiful valley has to offer.  We took some time one evening to watch climbers bivvy overnight on the big walls – until then, I didn’t have any desire to spend a night on a small ledge secured by a few locking carabiners.  But maybe I could be convinced....
Hoping all our friends & family are well.  Given that we’re settled here for a while, it shouldn’t be too long between updates this time.  Hope you enjoy the pics xx