Alpine Gypsies: Temple Crag

We took a few much needed rest days in the town of Bishop, Ca after coming out of Mt. Whitney. Turns out Bishop was going into their annual Mule Days. What is mule days you ask? A strange and interesting event where over 700 mules compete in 181 different athletic events. Since we are on a fairly tight budget we didn't get to witness any of these showings but managed to get into the fairgrounds and wander around the stalls where they were housed. They are magestic creatures indeed, some of them were even practicing their dance routines. I mostly think they were prancing around because they were welcoming Sam closer to the age of 30 as it happened to be his 26th birthday. Happy Birthday ancient old man!

Our legs were now ready for some more mountain action and we chose to head up to Temple Crag. The hike in to this peak was thankfully much more forgiving and on a well graded trail. We got a late start hiking in, somewhere around 2, but made quick time over the 5.5 miles which only gained about 3,000ft. Most excitingly, this trip marks the retirement of my beloved tennis shoes that have carried me hundreds of miles over the past few years. I have purchased countless numbers of replacements, none which have satisfied me, until now. :)

Happy with new shoes!

Happy with new Shoes!

Happy with new shoes!

We learned from our mistakes on the past trip and we brought THREE sleeping bags for the two of us to share. Each of us would have our own and then un-zip the third and lay it over the top of us. We also made sure to bring enough food to feed our two man army. Feeling much more satisfied with our situation, we set up camp and made dinner. We have also discovered a way to prepare our own version of freeze dried meals. Saves us about $5 each day for dinner. Score!

The route we chose to do is called the Venutian Blind (5.7) and goes up the left side of the formation. Once again, we got an early start (not quite 4 AM as I couldn't pull myself from the warmth of my sleeping bag) but finally got moving around 6 AM. The approach was fairly quick but super cold! To get to the base of the route we had to put on crampons and traverse across a snowfield. To save weight in our packs we opted to not bring boots and just vole strap crampons onto our approach shoes. For the short distance we had to go it worked out just fine but would not suggest this for longer more serious routes.

We climbed the first 3rd class pitch unroped before gearing up at the base of the route. The quality of the rock was once again was pretty phenomenal and for a short while we were cruising up the arete.

The topo's in the guidebook that we are using dont seem to be particularily straight forward, or we are insanely bad at interpreting what the author is inteding for us to do. With this being said, we got off route. Getting off route on a long multi-pitch face can make it difficult to work your way back to where you inted to be. This not only can be sometimes scary but also very time consuming, which is frustrating when you are already pinched for hours of daylight left. We meandered up, and up, and up, this horrible loose disgusting "death" gully for far too long. Sam climbed and then downclimbed over and over again to try and put us back to where we needed to go. After much lost time, we finally pushed back up on the arete and sighed a breath of relief as we could now continue as planned.

Finishing 13 pitches of technical climbing always is a rush of excitement. The route popped us out on top of a plateau where we had about 20 minutes of 3rd class scrambling up to the summit.