Its five months in, so it's time to add a bit of glitz & glamour to this trip!
We are now in America’s playground, fabulous Las Vegas!! That’s right, the home of sin, bright lights, high rollers, big hair & loads of cleavage! The promised land where you can turn $100 into a million, or lose it all!
Its also home to some pretty fantastic climbing at a place called Red Rocks, which is really why we are here.
But that means that we’ve had to say good bye to Yosemite Valley earlier than expected. How sad! Yosemite has easily been my most favourite place on the trip so far. But with the weather starting to close in, it was difficult to keep climbing there. So we’ve headed south to warmer temps, although you wouldn’t know it from the last few days. The sad truth is that winter is on the way :(. We did get some snow & colder weather in Yosemite a few weeks ago, but it only lasted a day or two.
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| A dusting of snow on Half Dome |
The colder weather gave us our first taste of what winter will be like living in the van - its gonna be COLD! Luckily we have a furnace in the van....I hope it works!
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| Wintery conditions caused traffic jams in Yosemite with everyone trying to get out at the same time. |
On the climbing front – Yosemite has been nothing short of spectacular! The rock is beautiful, the features are amazing and the climbing is incredibly demanding. We climbed a huge range of grades & styles and its been great learning a whole new set of climbing skills - struggling!! After a while, we just put the grades aside and had fun on some really great lines. Unfortunately, i don't have pics of most of them because I'm usually belaying.
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| Mars leading the first pitch of Salathe/Freerider/Freeblast (10c), with The Nose above. |
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| Mars leading a crack/chimney/off-width thingy (10b??) at Chapel Wall. He's way up there in the little cave... |
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| HUGE Sequoia trees at Mariposa Grove... |
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| More Sequoia trees at Mariposa Grove... |
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| View looking back down Yosemite Valley at dusk. |
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| Not what you'd normally see in the campground - a full-on tee-pee! Complete with a buffalo skull inside. |
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| Almost there! Sort of....Graham leading one of pitches on West Face. |
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| Mars on Thanksgiving Ledge - still a few pitches to go and the clouds are rolling in...the rain managed to hold off until the next day. Good timing. |
While the boys were living it up on the west face, Graham’s partner, Jacqui, & I spent a couple of fun days together doing a 14 mile hike up in Tuolumne Meadows to a place called Clouds Rest (9,900 feet) - no pics avail, and climbing mega classics at Swan Slabs.
So, as you might know, I’ve been keeping various tally’s on this trip so far. Rattlesnake & bear sightings are two that I’ve been posting on FB. We've added quite significantly to the number of bear sightings whilst in Yosemite...i think its now at eight.
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| This was taken from quite a long way away, so its hard to see just how big this guy was - he was a monster! Taken at George Lake, Mammoth. |
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| This was taken the next day at the same lake, this time its mum & her two cubs scouting out the shore for fish. The cubs were having a blast playfully running around and climbing up & down the tree's with fish in their mouths. It was quite a sight to see them in their natural habitat. |
But there is another tally that I am even more disturbed to be keeping. Men exposing themselves – full frontal. That tally is now at two (definitely no images available). I get that in the outdoors a toilet isn’t always at the ready and guys can just pee anywhere they want, whatever. But am I so vertically challenged that they just can’t see that I’m there??? I’ve gone from a rather polite “hey, I’m sitting right here, do-you-mind” kind of exclamation to a full on “you f***ing freak – put it away!” kind of exclamation. This second man was standing about 20m away from me (facing me, not behind a tree or anything), with "everything" out there, and his hands on his hips. I’m not even sure he was relieving himself. I think it was the hands on the hips that sent me over the edge. I truly hope that this tally will not continue.
In my last update, I mentioned my dismay at missing out on curries at Curry Village. Well, I'm very pleased to report that I’ve had one kind promise for a curry when we get back home. I’m hanging out for that one when I get back and I'm open to more offers.....
So, tomorrow we leave the comfort of the Red Rock Casino (a visit which has now paid for itself, thanks to the Black Jack tables) and head back out into the cold & wonderful outdoors.
Much love to all of our family & friends xxx
