Yosemite NP, CA

We arrived in Yosemite on Friday, once again struggling uphill over the Tioga Pass, passing signs that read “Steep Grade: Trucks with trailers will have difficulty”. We heard that.

We finally pulled into Yosemite Valley, peering over the dash at the looming granite towers like so many of the other “nature paparazzi“. It’s difficult to describe the enormity of these walls, even in pictures. After a stern lecture from the rangers about proper storage of food at the campsite, pointing to a sign that indicated 120 bear-related incidents since January 1, we stowed our stuff and hit the sack.

The next morning we got on a climb at Manure Pile/Ranger Rock (apparently named for the dump there that used to be used by the park). Another guy whose climbing partner was a no-show joined us for the climb. It was good fun and had a great view of Cathedral Spires and faint views of El Capitan and Half Dome.

Coming back to our campsite, we picked up a couple, who had just completed a really long hike, but missed the shuttle, and gave them a ride back to their campsite. We got a thumbs up from an older gentleman while dropping off the couple on the other side of the campground, apparently a fan of our ride. Back at our site, the same man showed up, apparently following us back to our camp (he later explained that he heard the unmistakable early-80’s Volkswagen diesel coming from a mile away and simply followed the sound back to our camp, a good ways down the road). He was a German climber in his late 60’s who, with his friend, was trekking (over a series of years) from Argentina up to Alaska in his own German VW Transporter. The four of us exchanged stories over some warm Natural Light (theirs, not ours) of the nervous travels in our vans. It turns out that they were unsuccessful in their attempt to get up the road to the Whitney Portal  a few days before us (Go Goose!). We also exchanged stories of climbing and life in general - they had climbed Mt McKinley, Annapurna and many other mountains in their day, and were quite experienced. They wanted to stay a couple of more nights at Yosemite but did not have a reservation and the campground was full, so we agreed to share our site with them for the next 2 nights. Turns out they planned to do the same climbs as us, so that worked out pretty well.

The next day we returned to Ranger Rock to climb Nutcracker with our new friends, Georg and Falke. The climb is a nice polished crack that goes all the way up the face for 5 or 6 pitches. Our new friends followed us, but ran out of gear midway through the third pitch -- they only had a set of nuts and 5 cams, so they could not protect the route. They ended up breaking away to the left to belay from a tree with slings, which was an unfortunate decision, because it took them a while to navigate back to protectable rock again. It was a sustained route that took a greater part of the day, and we retired to Degnan’s Loft for some pizza afterwards.

Our friends Anne and Tom climbed in that area a couple of weeks before us and said that they saw a bear at the bottom. Fortunately, we did not have good Internet access before Yosemite and did not read their trip report until afterwards. Else we might have been a little more hesitant to climb there - or we would have been a little quicker setting up the first pitch!

Finally, on the third day, we set out to climb the Snake Dike route on the southwest side of Half Dome. It was a good decision that we left this for the last day, because after the long approach and hike back,we certainly needed a rest day afterwards.

We started on the trail right behind our campsite at 5am with Georg and Falke. It should have taken us about 4 hours to hike to the 3.5 miles, 3100' feet elevation gain to the base of the climb, but it took us 6 hours, for several reasons. For starters, we took the wrong trail (which got us to the same point, but was longer), and then we kept waiting for Georg and Falke who were a little slower than us. Once we got to the climbers turn off from the main trail, they told us to go ahead and just wait for them on the base of the climb, instead of stopping and waiting every half our or so. So we took our time on the climber's trail and made some additional cairns to help guide our friends (and others) as the trail was not well marked, and we did not want them to get lost. After about an hour and a half, a couple of guys passed us on the trail and commented on how well marked it was, so I guess the extra cairns were beneficial. They said that our friends were not far behind them, so we continued up, taking longer and longer breaks figuring there was no point to hurry up to the top and wait. Plus, from where we were on the trail, we could see a couple of groups on the climb already and they were moving VERY slowly. We finally got to the base of the climb at 10:45am. We waited a little while for Georg and Falke to arrive behind us, but they never showed up. The hike was taking a toll on them after the long, dehydrating day on Ranger Rock, so they made the smart decision to turn back. We assumed they must have turned around and started up the climb at around 12:30p when the last group before us were onto the second pitch. They were a group of 3 and we were a group of 2, so we caught up to them, but they were pretty quick, so we usually only had to wait about 5 minutes at each pitch. The route was good fun, following a prominent mound all the way up the wall, kind of like riding on a dinosaur’s back. Emily and I switched leads, sharing the average 150’ pitches that typically had only one or two bolts and no natural protection. After a while, you get used to running up 85’ without any gear between you and your belayer. We finished the roped climbing at around 4:00pm, took a little break, packed up our gear, and headed up the 800’ or so of 3^rd class slab and reached the summit before 5pm. 

After a good break at the top, we reluctantly and slowly backed down the Cables Route on the northeast side. This is one of those crazy National Park Service routes that allow hikers to get to the summit. There is nothing supporting you from sliding off the side of the wall except your hands on the cables on this nearly vertical rock. It takes the life of a hiker almost at an average of once per year. We both thought it much more dangerous than anything we do. At the top we had seen a lot of people with harnesses and Emily asked Pete why they had them since they didn't climb, but then Emily saw a marmot and forgot to pay attention to the answer. So she did not hear Pete say that they use them to clip into the cables, so that if they fell, they would only fall a little bit. It was about one-third the way down, right when it got steep, that Emily realized what the harnesses were for and was cussing that hers was still in her pack. At least some others we had spoken with at the campsite recommended bringing leather gloves, so that helped a little. We are even more impressed with our friends Tom and Anne who did this a few weeks ago when the cables were "down" - which is a bit of a misnomer because the cables are there, but the poles and boards, which allow you to rest along the way down, are gone and the cables are just hanging flat against the rock. 

We wanted to make it down before dark, so we really booked it, and made it down the the cables and the 8mi, 4800’ trail in 3 hours and 15 minutes with another 10 minute walk on the road back to our camp where Georg and Falke had wine, cheese and bread waiting for us. They are such great guys. We talked a while about the climb with them and immediately hit the sack - food all over the car and the window still down, as if to invite the bears in for a midnight snack. Even after all that, even if by accident, we still never saw a bear. 

Stiff and sore the next morning, we left for Sonoma to meet Pete’s parents and Aunt and Uncle to visit some wineries and generally chill out. It will be a welcome break after some intense days before our attack on Mt Shasta on Independence Day. 

Mt Whitney, CA

Contemplating the different sections of the route up Mt Whitney – the steep approach, route-finding through broken snow fields, the final gully – we never thought that the crux of the climb would simply be getting to the trailhead. The road from Lone Pine is a 13 mile stretch that gains almost 5000 feet of elevation mostly in the last 5 miles or so. Bouts of dropping into first gear and creeping along at around 5 mph and overheating made Emily (and almost myself) doubt the Goose’s ability to get us up there. We powered through it, however, and 80 minutes later we were at the trailhead, packing up our gear and camping in the parking lot for the next day’s hike.

Talking with some of the other climbers the next day, we heard some spotty reports of snow still being on the east face approaches (rock climbing routes we were initially considering), so we confirmed the Mountaineer’s Route, the gully approach avoiding roped climbing. As an added benefit, our packs would be about 50% lighter without all the climbing gear. Score.

We made pretty good time up the well-beaten trail, surprised how well maintained it was considering they only let 10 hikers enter the trail per day. Props to the Inyo Nat’l Forest. We climbed the 3000 or so feet in around 4 hours, jumping over (at the time) small creeks and dodging waterfalls, and found ourselves at our campsite at around 11am. Crap. No shade, no wind, full sun; even at 11,200 feet it was agonizingly hot. So we baked, initiating our sunburned faces, made some dinner and hit the sack at around 5pm - there was pretty much nothing else to do. 

We were up and on the trail by 5:45am the next morning – not really an alpine start, but as we were the first on the trail to the summit, I guess it was early enough. We struggled to initially get into a groove, as the snow fields were too steep and iced over to go without crampons yet they were interspersed between rocky scree fields. I should mention at this point that Emily had never used crampons or an ice ax before (why not learn on the tallest mountain in the lower 48?), so the constant taking off and putting on of the gear was good practice. We got to the last shelf before the Mountaineer’s gully, Iceberg Lake, around 8:15am. A couple of Aussies we ran into on the trail up camped here the night before and froze all night, so I guess we made the right decision to stay lower out of the wind.

We donned our crampons for the final time and headed up the 1200ft gully at a snail’s pace. The altitude and step-kicking in the uneven snow made for a tiring 3 hour session. We got to the final 3^rd (or 4^th) class gully above the snow around 11:45a and made the summit around 12:15. There was quite a party up there of people who summited via the traditional Mt Whitney Trail, an 11 mile wrap around the south ridge, staying free of the technical snow fields and steep sections. There was even a dog up there.

After a 45 minute break at the top, we climbed back down the gully and prepared for the long, precipitous glissade back to Iceberg Lake. We had a sick feeling as we secured our gear and sat at the top of the glissade chute. I’m not sure what the incline of that chute was, but the fact that you couldn’t see it 40 feet in front of you as it went over the edge made me feel like a kid on his first ride down the “big  kids” waterslide (except that this slide ended in a pile of rocks). A quick speed test on the slide and a subsequent, dramatic self-arrest advocated a slower plunge step down to easier terrain. The last 400 feet was much more fun glissading.

We got back to our camp, broke it down and continued down the remaining 3000 feet to the van and anticipated beer and burger at the Portal Store. The hike out was not without incident, as it being late in the day, the snowmelt had turned those little creeks we passed on the way up into dramatic rivers. A few slips and dunks in the icy water made the thought of food all the more welcome. But in true Geisen planning, we arrived at the store 5 minutes after the kitchen had closed.

We went back to Lone Pine for a shower and bite at the local pizza joint and camped again in the Alabama Hills. As a going-away present from the great mountain, we were treated with a spectacular display at sunrise below an approaching storm. Emily was less than pleased being awaken that early, but I think she enjoyed it.

Surprisingly, the sore muscles the next day were not our legs, but our arms from the ax work, so at least we’re getting used to the hikes. It will come in handy for climbing Half Dome in Yosemite, a couple of days away.

Tahquitz, CA

Ok, so maybe we've only driven about 3,900 miles of the 200,000 on this trip, but the Goose is holding up great with only a couple of hiccups. By the way, that is a pretty average MPH for the trip. The wind really puts the brakes on this thing.

In a game time decision on Saturday morning, we went south to the San Jacinto mountains from Barstow instead of north to the Sierras. There is a rock of historical climbing importance there called Tahquitz that we would be missing out on if we skipped it. Some of the first technical climbing routes were set there from the 30's to the 60's, including, ironically, the birth of the current Yosemite Decimal System of rating route difficulty. The downside of this is that it is also ground zero for "old school" ratings, where for historical reasons the original ratings are kept even though they are horribly inaccurate. Nonetheless, we got to the town of Idyllwild just below the climbs on Saturday. It was a great little mountain town/tourist trap, and we listened to a cover band while we had a beer and some BBQ (they ran out of pork, which I think would be illegal in NC). We had a little more time to kill before bedtime (e.g. dark), so we found ourselves at a wine tasting for the afternoon, which was good practice for Sonoma where we will be in a couple of weeks. We got a bottle of wine to go, and drove up the mountain to the parking lot where we camped for the next 2 nights. While we did have a bottle opener, we did not have any glasses, so we poured the wine into our Nalgenes to sip on it.

We headed up to the base and got on a route called Northeast Face West. It was one of the earlier moderate routes put up on the mountain during the 50's. Like the others, it is grossly under rated by a couple of grades, following a deep but empty corner system up for 1200'. The climb was great fun, but a long one. After a couple of pitches, we notice that search and rescue pulled up in the parking lot below (which was visible from the wall), followed by a CHP helicopter which circled the rock and basically followed us up the route for about 4 hours. By the time we got back down around 7pm, they were gone. We read the next day on the county website that a hiker was injured and had to be airlifted out to the hospital. Strange that we never saw the helicopter actually carry anyone out. We just wanted to point out that it keeps being the hikers (and not the rock climbers) who need to get rescued.

We had breakfast at a fancy-pants little cafe in Idyllwild the next morning before heading to Lone Pine. We arrived in Lone Pine last night and camped in another rather historic place, the Alabama Hills just west of town in plain view of Mt Whitney. Lone Pine is known for both climbing and the setting of many western films. It was kind of cool to go to the local restaurant with tons of screenshots from the old westerns and see the exact same rock we parked next to on a poster for Jack Palance's "The Lonely Man".

There is still a significant amount of snow on the trail up to Mt Whitney, and it is unknown how much ice still remains on our original line up the east buttress, so we opted to drop the rock climbing and climb via the mountaineer's route, a snowy couloir which is still completely covered in snow (it is the little gully leading up to the right side of the higher peak in the middle of the shot below). Should be a good time, and the packs are a ton lighter than usual without the climbing gear, so that will be nice. 

So we're off to Whitney Portal, the trailhead for the climb. The plan is to hike about 2/3 of the way up to the snow line tomorrow, then summit and come back on Thursday. Wish us luck!

Red Rock Canyon, NV

We made it to Las Vegas last night, just in time for 5pm creeping traffic in Sin City's searing heat. We jumped around different air conditioned stores running errands, and finally found ourselves at another Walmart for the night. We got up early to hit Red Rock Canyon before the sun really came back. We are a little out of season here, as the canyon faces east and is relatively low in elevation, so it is primarily a winter climbing destination that gets a lot of sun. We picked one of the few shaded routes in the canyon, Dark Shadows, that goes halfway up the pinnacle in the center of this shot:

We alternated leads, and Emily somehow got the tricky pitch that was still in the sun (not sure how that happened). There were some really cool features even on this one classic climb, so we'll definitely have to come back and hit the canyon again during the real climbing season. Rappelling seems to be getting more complicated as we go, and this climb was no exception. Descending directly below would dip you right into a flowing creek, so even after some delicate traversing, pulling the ropes put them right in the water. Couldn't complain though, as the cool water draining from the ropes down our backs were nice on the hike out.

After the climb, we decided to leave Vegas head straight for the Sierras to do some higher elevation climbing in preparation for Mt Whitney. Driving through the Mojave Desert in the middle of day during the summer with no AC is a little...uncomfortable, so we splurged for a hotel tonight here in Barstow to recharge and refresh. We were excited to see the largest thermometer in the world in Baker, but it was broken. Maybe it was too hot.

We are essentially winging it right now, as we are a few days ahead of schedule, planning to climb in the Needles for a couple of days near Isabella Lake in the south Sierras, then head back to Lone Pine for Whitney. It will be nice to get the sand out of our shoes and back on more familiar granite walls...

Grand Canyon, AZ

We got to the Grand Canyon on Monday night and camped in the Kaibab National Forest. On Tuesday, we went mountain biking on the Rainbow Rim Trail. The bike trail follows the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, offering some very nice views along the way. It was a beautiful day and we biked about 12 miles of the trail.

It was pretty exhausting considering we are not avid bikers and the elevation was close to 9,000 feet. When we were done, we relaxed at our campsite at the edge of the North Rim.

The next day, we got up at 5:30 am to hike/climb Mt. Hayden. It is a pretty obscure route, but one of the "easiest" to get to in the Grand Canyon. The climb starts at the highest point in the park, and descends into the canyon to meet a ridge at the end of which stands Mt Hayden.

The route description emphasizes the importance of leather gloves and even leather chaps to battle the thorn bushes on the descent. Of course we went in with neither. After an hour and a half of bushwhacking (there is no discernible trail) and a 100ft static hand line, we pulled the thorns out of our skin and quickly made our way across the Martian-esque ridgeline.

We got to the base of the climb around 10am, and started up the 3 pitches, fighting off wicked prickly bushes and 40mph sustained winds. The summit proved totally worth it, as we got 360 degree views of the canyon.

We spent 20 minutes or so at the top (about all we could stand with the wind), and spent 90 minutes rappelling as Pete almost lost his mind getting the ropes out of those tangly bushes that would not bend, break or give in any way. The wind was blowing so hard at this point, that every time we would throw the ropes down 30ft or so at a time, they would take off and wrap around every bush on the way down. On the hike out, we could feel the canyon reforming around us, as the wind was blowing chunks off the wall all the while.

We crossed the ridge and made our way back up the thorny crap, reluctantly. Surprisingly, it took the same amount of time to ascend as to descend, as there is no quick way through the Devil's twine, GD briar patches,  whatever you want to call it. We came up with a lot more names, not appropriate for publication.

We made it to the top just in time to see the sunset drop around the canyon, a proper ending to a long 11 hour day.

We are now back in Utah, headed for Red Rocks outside of Las Vegas. I don't think a night at the Bellagio is in our hotel budget, unfortunately. Their dinner buffet can't hold a candle to our staple noodle mix and canned chicken anyway.