Pictures!

So the Yo-sem-ite. Here's some pictures:
It snowed:

There was a snowy, steaming lake of sweetness ( this was very close to Toulomne Meadows and Lukens Lake, yep. Lukens lake. Didn't get a picture, sorry):

We found Toby there, like I said before. I also forgot to mention that we saw Noah and Siemay! And Keita (who teaches you how to fall correctly on how to slackline, if you've seen it). But this is a picture of Toby:


I make weird faces while climbing. These are at the Awhanee boulders. That's by the Awhanee Hotel. Stop 3 on the bus route:


Micah almost sent the most famous boulder problem in the world: Midnight Lightning. It's a V8, but the hardest V8 ever?? The crux in mantling the top way up there. Here's basically how it goes:

A beautiful 5.8 handcrack near Yosemite Falls (stop 6):

Matticus did a V5!:

Bishop is stiff. I finally decided that. When Chris Sharma sent The Mandala, he said it was the hardest problem he'd ever done. He said that if he were going to rate it, he'd call it V16. But he said he wasn't going to rate it. Now, it has been rated at V12. Granted, Dave Graham found a hidden microcrimp that Chris missed, and then he sent it twice in a row, but the guide book says that if you do it the original way Chris Sharma did it, it's hard. About a V13.

... which means that I didn't send anything over a V1. In my defense, I wanted to send something hard, so I really only tried V4 and harder, like:

Iron Man Traverse V4


Action Figure V6

Matt and Micah had no problems doing highballs in Bishop. Here's some pictures of the crazy boys:

It freaking snowed in Bishop too! 200 days of sunshine, 90 of partly cloudy and it snowed AND rained on us while we were here!


Matt projected a sweet V4 called Weekender and a V5 called Serengeti. By the time we left he was SO close to sending both of them.

Micah was happy and sad in the Happies (one of the areas in Bishop. There's also the Sads):

We tried this hard V3 called Solarium that was pretty cool, but we left it unsent:

We are way into rock stacking now. I think these are both's works of Matticus:

Speaking of Matticus, this is what happens when he gets ahold of the camera:

We went to Convict Lake. It was way cool. I built a sand castle on the beach, the aspens were yellow, or white, or white and regular tree - mixed.


Owen's River Gorge:

Next it was on to Salt Lake City. We climbed at Little Cottonwood Canyon and stayed with Matt's Aunt, Uncle, and cousins. We took his cousin Conner climbing one day. They had lots of pets: 2 dogs, 2 cats, 5 chickens, a goose, a turtle, and a full on 80lb tortoise!

It was really cool there, but freezing as soon as the sun went behind the mountains.

Lizards!

The sad part about Salt Lake City is that Matticus left us. Here is a sweet Matticus tribute video that I made! You'll love it.
(click for video)
So now we've moved on to Joe's Valley. It's further south in Utah, so hopefully it will be warmer. Okay, I love you all and I hope you're all doing well!
-Stella

parting shot:

no pictures!

The internet here in Bishop, CA sucks. We can't upload pictures and it took me an hour just to sign into the blog and start writing. A lot has happened since the last post, of course. We moved on from Flagstaff to Yosemite. We were there for just over a week. We came in from the east, which meant we drove through the Sierras. It was beautiful. I will make another post of photos sometime later. Yosemite was cool too. We bouldered and climbed cracks. The bouldering was slippery and I wasn't super motivated by it. The cracks were awesome. We only did 5.8 cracks (with one exception - a 5.9). I led one, but I didn't bring the right size gear (everything's trad) for the top, so I had to finish it 15 ft. from the top. Oh well. It was an amazingly fun climb. Micah and I tried to do a multipitch climb while we were there (because Yosemite is all about climbs over 1 pitch - some up to 30 pitches). We left camp at about 10am. We waited in line at the bottom of the crag until at least noon. We finished the first 3 pitches by 4pm. I couldn't believe how long it took! The first pitch was 5.9 and the rest of the limb was 5.8. Micah had to say "watch me!" while he was climbing twice, which leads me to believe that the climb was harder than 5.8. The top of the 3rd pitch had no ledge - which means Micah built an anchor and we hung from it in our harnesses, leaning against the rock. It's very uncomfortable. When we got there, there was another climbing party below us who decided they'd pass us. So we hung there as the first guy climbed passed us and set up his own hanging belay right above us. Then we hung there while his partner climbed up past us. Then we had to sit there until both guys climbed the next pitch too (or else we'd cross ropes and get tangled and have to share the next belay station anchor). Then Micah finally got to start climbing (I hung there still, belaying him). Micah got to the top, and the other guys were still there! They both tried the next pitch, but thought it was too hard. At this point it was at least 6:30pm. I was still hanging in my harness. I was only wearing a tanktop. The days are hot, but the nights are cold. It was getting dark and cold. After waiting for awhile, Micah and the other two guys decided to bail off the climb. After they fixed their anchor above me, they finally starting rappelling down one by one to the station was still hanging at. After all 3 of them came down, and Micah went down the next rappell, I FINALLY was able to rappell down to the ledge below. At that point I think it was 7pm. After 3 long rappells, we were able to hike out back to the cars and drive back to camp. It was pitch black by that time, and freezing! I don't think I will try a multipitch climb again for a long time.

On the upside, we met Toby in Yosemite! For those of you who dn't know Toby, he's Micah's brother. He went home after Yosemite, but he may fly back out and roadtrip with us later on in the trip.

Now we are in Bishop. It is just east and a little south of Yosemite. On the other side of the Sierras (which we had to cross over again). We've been here for a while (I have no idea how long - I can't keep track of the days anymore). The climbing here is world class bouldering and it's awesome! There's 2 different kinds of rocks - round, tall, granite boulders, and shorter, more featured Tuff (volcanic rock - like Queen Creek in Phoenix) boulders. Also, in this internet cafe 2 days ago, we were just sitting at a table and I looked up and I saw this guy putting sugar (or something) in his coffee. I looked at his face before he turned away, and I recognized him! It was none other than Chris Sharma. I freaked out a little bit to Micah and Matt. So far we haven't had any other sightings of, arguably, the best rock climber in the world. Wow. Also, in Yosemite, we watched this new movie called King Lines. It's all about Chris Sharma and it's one of the best climbing movies I've seen. I'd highly recommend buying and/or watching it.

Okay, I've got to go now. We've wasted a lot of this beautiful day and we'd like to get some climbing in. We're making lots of short videos. I can't wait to share them!

-Stella!