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: