4/15- I went down to Orange for a few days to take care of my sisters dog while she was in Seattle. I know it was hard for her being there with her fiances family grieving hard over the passing of their son/brother, so it was the least I could do to take care of her house while she was away.
I did get to spend some quality time with my sister dog, Molly...
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| Molly decided to stop here...in this position, until people started to ask if something was wrong with my dog... |
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| Molly goes to the climbing gym |
I also got to spend a couple nights drinking alone in the dive bar walking distance from my sisters house. Stay classy City of Orange!
4/19-The wedding! I didn't get to take any decent pictures sadly, but it was great to see my parents and extended family again after so long. The wedding was the day after I got into town, after the ceremony, which lasted roughly 2 minutes, drinking and food began. As the night wore on and drinks were downed, my uncle and I took a little vengeance on my Dad for some past transgressions. All in all a good night. Some of us were a bit more tired afterwards than others...
4/20-I picked Ester up from the Airport and we made our way to Calaveras dome, roughly 3 hours from Oakland for some rock scaling. If you aren't familiar with Cala dome, it's tall, the grades are fairly old school and the pitches are LOOOONG. Every one is a rope stretching 60 meters, and the routes are all 10 to 12 pitches long. Lots and lots of climbing. If you want the full guide for this area give me a heads up and I'll email it to you. I didn't have it when I went and I really really wish I had had it. It's really well done and WAY more accurate than the hand drawn topos you'll find online.
4/21-Esther and I geared up for Wall of the Worlds(5.10, 12 pitches). We had a hell of a time finding the start of the route, I was about to give up when I decided to go on a random hike up to see some more of the wall and found it. With no guide book and only topos routes were hard to find...and our topos weren't accurate either. We managed to get 9 pitches in before dark, the climbing was excellent....aside from one pitch in which I battle ants most of the way...mean angry little bastards.
4/22-Esther and I got bouted on the start of a 5.10a called Sands of Time. 2 parties beat us to the start and were going SLLLLLOOOOW. After waiting for 2 hours they hadn't cleared the first pitch yet, so we decided to rest and come back the next day and fire it.
4/23-We got up early, got on route ASAP and got high on the route, then disaster. Our topo was totally jangous. I free solo'd about 40 feet of 5.9 and couldn't find where the route went, time was running out, so I made the call to top out a 5.7 dirt chimney variation and see if we could find the rap line. We got to the top of the dome in totally blackness....couldn't find the rap line. We had 3 options, rappel of some tat we found, stay the night or try and find the walk off I remember being described as "heinous, death slabs, and poison oak abound". Esther wanted down, so we hiked 2.5 hours through some brutal bush whacking to get down. We got to the car at about 1:30 am, tired and busted up from shwahking in climbing shoes for so long. Suffice to say, we rested the next day, hoping to get one more chance to do Wall of the Worlds via a different start.
4/25-Esther and I woke up early to do Wall of the Worlds. Sadly, someone dropped the good topo to Wall of the Worlds days before, so we had to use the crappy one to start up the variation, it was vague at best. Esther went for the first 5.9 pitch, slipped off and sprained her ankle. She wanted to keep going so I put up the next pitch, it started drizzling off and on the whole time. We were debating bailing, Esther wanted to keep going, I thought it was a bad idea. After a bit, I started up pitch 3 and was confronted quite quickly by a tree FULL of the most aggressive ants I've ever seen. I tried slinging this tree for about 2 minutes, but after hanging on to it for more than 5 seconds my hand would go tingly then firey from the ants biting and stingy me...I was not happy, the pitch was dirty as hell, fully filled moss crack and wet. Esther, bless her heart, bailed me out, was finally ready to see reason and head down. We hit deck in a nice down pour, good call Esther! The whole wall was soaked in minutes. As soon as she started walking on her ankle she was in a lot of pain. The hike down was not pleasant for her. Our victory beer quickly turned to pity beer. We drove the rest of the day back to Roy so I could move out of my place. We arrived sometime around 1am. The next day she started taking care of her ankle and I started cleaning like a fiend.
4/26-4/30 We started packing up my apartment into Big Ronda and went for a quick gym session. Esther was supppper psyched to do some clearning!
Esther found out that she thrashed through some poison oak and started itching furiously every day for the next week. I started feeling sick afterwards. Next day, fully sick. The next 4 days, really rough. After I finished climbing my apartment, we got back on the road in Big Ronda and headed to the City of Rocks Idaho. After checking out my tonsils. I gave in an went to the doctor...they were about the size of golf balls and had awesome amounts of puss oozing out of them. Gross.I started feeling better the next two days in the City, but then it came back...=(
5/10-5/25-We headed to Sinks and then to Ten Sleep for 2 weeks of climbing. Esther just keeps getting stronger. She sent her first 11a, and then sent, onsight, an 11a/b! Congrats!!! I spent 2 more weeks with tonsillitis progressively feeling weaker and weaker sadly. Upon returning to Ogden I saw another doctor and got some more serious antibiotics. We also met Jared and Kelsey in Sinks and climbed with them through Ten Sleep as well. They were great to hang with, I love meeting people on the road! I snapped a few awesome pictures of them on a 12b called Center Shinto, simply beautiful limestone, the climbers look okay too...
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| Kelsey flashing Centre Shinto 12b |
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| Jared redpointing Centre Shinto 12b |
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| Jared redpointing Centre Shinto 12b |
Round 2 of the road trip starts!
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