Miscelaneous Adventures

We had been camping many nights next to Mono lake outside of the Yosemite park boundary and multiple times I made comments on how surprised I was that there had never been a single boat, kayak, or person on this huge beautiful lake. Turns out that this lake is not so average. Its a soda-saline lake that has the salt content of more than DOUBLE the ocean and was formed 760,000 years ago. It's home to millions of migratory birds that come eat the billions of tiny see through shrimp like creatures that inhabit the waters. Most impressively is the Tufas...These rock statues are formed by freshwater seeping up through the bottom of the lake and collecting into calcium deposits.

After we finished up in the Tuolomne area we headed down into the Valley to give things a look. We weren't entirely sure if we were going to climb anything here, mostly because it's all hard....and croweded with people, but wanted to see it anyways. Upon arriving we were greeted with the massive and gorgeous El Cap followed by Half Dome. The lighting was perfect for pictures as the sun was just setting. We quickly decided to we were not going to climb as we were greeted by thousands and thousands of people. It was like Disney Land for the outdoor enthusiasts. We thought we'd check out the campgrounds to see if there may happen to be any spots left and found what looked like third world encampments spread throughout the forest. We happily took our pictures and quickly left :)

We next ventured off to a town called Modesto to see one of my childhood friends who I havent seen in somewhere around 7 years! Incredible that we just happened to be passing through and we could stop to see her. We spent 2 days here and while we wandered downtown found a Turkish restraunt and filled up on Chicken Schwarma. OMG best thing that has entered our lips this entire trip! I think that we could solely live on this stuff. Best of all, we treated ourselves to hotel!! yes, we surprised even ourselves but some relaxation, showering, pizza ordering, and cake vodka drinking was in order and we enjoyed every single second!

 

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Matthes Crest

We are still in the high country of Yosemite in the Tuolomne Meadows and have grand ambitions of doing about 4 more peaks before we leave the area. As we start making plans for each peak we soon realize that some will be unattainable due to the fact that we can't leave the van overnight because of the bears. This limits us to about 2 of the 4 peaks that we can still do.

The first one we head towards is Mount Conness. Planning accordingly we get started hiking at about 6AM so we can make it back to the van before dark. Pretty much right as we got on the trail we encountered a massive amount of snow still covering the trail. We had chose to not bring boots with us as most the peaks we have been to thus far have been relatively snow free. Slogging through the snow in approach shoes made for really slow going. Continuing to hike, we finally realized at about 11AM that we were moving too slow and the approach to the route we wanted to get on was going to begin with a snow couliour and clearly had not came prepared enough. We made the logical decision to head back down. The scenary was once again spectacular so we took about an hours nap on the exposed rock slab. Sam thought it would be a good idea to get some Vitamin D on his fish belly white stomach so he slept with his shirt off. Needles to say, he was no longer fish belly white, but bright lobster red when we finally aroused and hiked out.

Next up is the Matthes Crest. This is something hard to describe but absolutely incredible to climb. It's not a peak, not a mountain range, but also contains two peaks in the middle for summit opportunites. Crest is definately the right word to sum it up. It is a knife egde band of rock that runs nearly a mile long north and south in the middle of a valley. It was going to be another full day with a 6 mile hike to get started, the climb and then the descent out so we got started early.

The majority of the ridge was a mix of 4th class scrambling up to about 5.5 so we simul climbed the majority of the route. If we were to have pitched it out it works to be around 18 pitches and surely a bivy would have been in order to complete this. This climb has ended up being one of my favorites thus far. We were 2000ft up on a skinny ridge and floated flawlessly for a mile above the valley floor. Some parts of the ridge were only about a foot wide and others widened up to about 5 feet across. By simul-climbing we were able to protect the steeper and skinnier parts with ease.

 

 

The last pitch was certainly the most technical of the entire climb and was one of the 4 pitches we actually fully roped up and pitched out. The picture looks steep and intimidating but it's actually a pretty reasonable and moderate final pitch.

Took a quick moment to sign the summit register before making our way back to the van!

 

 

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Cathedral Peak and Eichorn's Pinacohle

We have finally made it to Yosemite and it is just as beautiful and spectacular as I'd ever imagined. We are still in the outskirts of the park in an area called Tuolomne Meadows. It's about 50 miles or so from the valley (which is what most people picture when thinking of Yosemite). This is still high mountain country with grand peaks and perfect granite to be climbed.

We chose one of the classic routes here in this area called Cathedral Peak. This entire trip we have been expecting all the routes we've been on to be over populated and zoo-like with tons of other people climbing the same thing as us, fortunately we have practically been the only party climbing most the routes we've been on. We had a suspicion that Cathedral Peak would be different, with this in mind we got an early start to avoid the crowds. It was a fairly short hike in, probably less than 3 miles and we ended up being the second group at the base of the climb.

Not only is this a popular route but it's one of the tallest points in the area that serves as a perfect "lightning rod". There were predicted thunder and lightning storms for the afternoon so this gave us an incentive to not be on top when they rolled in. As we began climbing more and more and more people began showing up. Including ourselves, there were about 7 people climbing all together at the same time trying to be mindful not to get ropes tangled and interfere with eachother. It was rather funny watching a few of them get into mis-communication messes. There was a party who agreed to solo the route, then some of them decided they wanted a rope after they were already a good distance apart from eachother. Watching this scenario work itself out gave me a laugh and also made us feel pretty competent as an apline rock team that we have our stuff pretty dialed. The day ended up being perfect and we summited after about 5 pitches of incredible rock.

We downclimbed off the summit and found a nice ledge to have lunch on where we got to see many marmots scrounging and climbing around.

In just a short scramble we headed over to Eichorn's Pinachole which is beautiful striking tower next to Cathedral Peak.

 

Sam snapped a few pic's of me which nicely highlites how incredible crooked my head is. Every climb I put my helmet on the exact same way and after Sam starts giving me a hard time for what a dork I look like I adjust it, but straightening it up just feels awkard and naturally it goes back to a crazy-wonky-crooked style.

Eichorn's Pinachole was 2 pitches at 5.4 with spectacular views from the summit.

 

As we were on our descent we looked back up and counted atleast 7 other parties only half way up the route with big black ominous clouds breaching them. We didn't wait around to see if they made it and booked it out to the car. (Which thankfully still had not been eaten by bears!)

 

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Bear Creek Spire

We have realized a common and re-occuring problem here in the Sierra's. Bears truly do eat cars. As said before, this creates a huge problem for us. We feel that leaving the van at the trailhead during the day with a hundred other people milling around will probably keep the bears at bay. Night proposes a completely different situation. When all have gone home and the van sits there alone, luring in the big monster-like creatures, it seems all to natural for it to be mauled. If this situation were to come to a reality, our trip in the snap of a finger would take a drastic turn. As for now, the only way we can avoid this outcome is by doing climbs in a day. For some routes this is reasonable, and others it would be far too committing and exhausting to do this. Fortunately, this time Bear Creek Spire is an attainable peak for a day climb.

We park at the trailhead so when our early morning alarms go off we are as close as possible. All packed up (with insanely heavy packs for just a day..maybe it's the 3 pairs of shoes that we each needed:boots, approach shoes, and rock shoes), we hit the hay to get some quick shut eye before the alarms go off at 3 AM. It's way too early but we manage to pry ourselves out of the warm sleeping bags to make coffee and eat some peanutbutter bagels before we head off on our pre-dawn hike in. We end up having a nice leisurely start and don't actually get hiking until right before 5. It's a really chilly start, 10,200 ft in the dark doesn't play nice with us. Hustling down the trail, we get to see the sun rise on the peak granting us some cool photo opportunities.

The first 3.5 miles are on a really nice trail and then the last 2.5 miles took us cross country over lots of snow and boulder fields. We timed it just perfectly as the sun had just hit the snow, slightly warming it for good footing (different story on the way out!)

 

 

We got to the base of the route around 9 with the sun up in full force. We couldn't have picked a better day, no wind, hot hot sun, and no clouds. The Sierra's are known for their stable weather conditions and we are quite happy with it. The route is a ridge that goes up the Northeast side, we did the lower half un-roped as it was mostly a 3rd/4th class scramble. As we neared the top we harnessed up and pitched out the steeper sections.

This will be the earliest we have summited on any peak yet this trip. 12:15 and we were proudly taking pictures at the top! ( only about 5 hours earlier than most of our summit times. yahoo!..we must be getting faster ;) We also got smart with food and ate like kings with peanutbutter/nutella roll-ups, and PIZZA. yes, we carried pizza to the top and enjoyed every single bite!

Time to descend but first we stopped to make some more water from the snow fields.

 

The descent was not nearly as forgiving as the approach was. With the sun beating down on the snow all day it was an ugly post-holing nightmare for 2.5 miles. Next to the couliour that we came down from was the aftermath of a big avalanche. Very cool to see but also a little intimidating walking right next to it.

 

 

 

We made it back to the van right around 5pm and were both very thankful that it did not get eaten by bears and we could continue our trip for another day :)

 

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