thought i'd share a TR climbing at yosemite w. bgnight-
I met my friend in the north east area of Yosemite, in an area called 'lee vining'. He has been climbing for almost 20 years now and had all of his gear with him. I'm (obviously) not nearly as experienced and was able to just follow/clean for him. I essentially had to drive through the entire park (which was hell, given how narrow the roads are) to meet him. It was a scenic drive all the way through though.
So yeah, I met up with my friend and we ghetto camped that night.
We drove a bit closer into the park the next morning and did Cathedral Peak, a 6 pitch 5.6 classic. Some pictures:
One of the anchors for one of the pitches:
So for those who don't climb- we put in pieces (also called protection or cams and a billion other names) when doing trad(itional) climbing. Stupid example (this was not going to fit, just wanted to show you a piece up close)-
The top:
The next day we climbed inside the valley. We did Bishops Terrace (I think it was a classic 5.9) along with several others. I'm awful at crack climbing but still had a fantastic time. I don't have many pictures from that day, but...
The last day we went to an off-the-beaten-path climbing area called 'Shuteye Ridge'. It was super hell to get to (the ground was super ****ty, pretty much just driving through huge roots/forest the entire time...not the brightest idea when you don't have a spare). That said, it was really great- super isolated, beautiful scenery, cool rock, easy walk off at the top. The only problem is that we didn't really have a guidebook for it. We saw some bolts leading up a crack and met two other climbers who had a guide book. We deduced that it was a 5.8 3 pitches.
This was probably my favorite climb of the weekend. It was all stemming (where you shift your weight back and forth using footing and balance...think climbing up a chimney, back and forth) and layback moves (where you can hold both hands in a hold and lay back on it, working your feet and hands up). reminded me alot of gym climbing in a way and it was incredibly fun.
Some pictures of the area (none of the climb, unfortunately)-
Cool bouldering area before the actual climbing spot-
The view from the area-
very cool. I'd like to go again.
So that was my first 3 days of the trip. Unfortunately, my friend had the beginnings of strep throat and had to check out early. I decided that I wanted to do the Half Dome hike, a 15 mile round trip hike that had a very large amount of elevation change (I can't recall what the total was, something like 5-6,000 feet if I recall). I'll post that TR next.