During our last week in Bishop we decided it was time to make the move to a new place and started making plans for finishing up any unfinished business in the gorge before moving on. With only two climbing days left, we had to be really picky about the routes we wanted to get on. On Tuesday, we decided we would check out the routes at a place called The Great Wall of China. Our friend Matt had recommended a route called From Chocolate to Morphine 11d, and we saw it was on the way so I convinced Marie we should stop and do it on the way. We warmed up on some 10's near the route and Marie stepped up for the onsight attempt. Out of my 11+ years of climbing, I have to say this is the most perfect 11d I've ever climbed. It's a very long route that starts off nice and easy, and progressively gets harder as you go all the way to the anchors. Every foot of this route is filled with movements that flow perfectly into one another, starting low in a dihedral (think: open book) and ending up over a small roof to gently overhanging terrain at the anchors. Marie nearly completed the route first go, falling at the crux only a couple of bolts before reaching the anchor. With the quickdraws up, I grabbed the onsight with a grin that practically wrapped around my head twice. Marie gave it one more go with a fall in the exact same place after which we decided to move on to The Great Wall.
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| Marie's first attempt on From Chocolate to Morphine |
We stopped along the way to take pictures of the Owens River and crossed one of its many bridges over the east side to finish up our day of climbing. As we approached the wall we noticed a couple of fixed lines on opposite ends of the wall and atop one of them was a local bolter by the name of Patrick who was drilling the last few bolts in place on an extension to an already existing route. Also climbing that day were Aaron and Jessica and their very protective puppy Zora, who we found out had just made a permanent move to Bishop from Portland. Happy to converse with people from back home, we got to know one another between belays on really long routes. I onsighted a tricky and wander-y route called Mandarin Orange 11b. Marie and I both went on to onsight an equally wander-y route called Peking Duck 10d and watched Jessica run multiple laps on Tsing Tao 10b. After Patrick had come down from bolting his extension, I finished up the day with an onsight of a monster link-up (climbing two routes stacked on top of each other as one) of Kung Pao 11b and Wrath of Kahn 11c.
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| Marie x 3 crossing the Owens River |
Thursday it was do-or-die day. Last chance on this trip to finish up projects. For Marie, the choice was easy. She was determined to finish From Chocolate To Morphine. For me, there was only one thorn in my side and it was called Darshan (aka Ripoff), the little 12a project I had written about in our first post from Owens. We stopped by the Negress Wall near the base of the trail to warm up and who do we run into? My new friend Colleen, whom I'd met in Red Rocks weeks earlier climbing with her husband Scott at Sunny & Steep. And who was Colleen climbing with? Eric Perlman, who is responsible for filming all the Masters of Stone videos among other classics. We got a chance to talk about climbing, and of course about the late Dan Osman (who is a big influence and personal hero of mine). He shared some great beta with Marie about her route and suggested some great link-ups for us to do at the Negress Wall like Fear of a Black Planet 10b to James Brown 11b. Through catching up with Colleen, while Marie was getting beta from Eric, I found out that my little 12a project had been upgraded to 12b which made me feel a little better about the tough time it had given me earlier last week. When we were done chatting Marie warmed up by onsighting Fear of a Black Planet, and I onsighted the 11c linkup. From there it was time to get down to the real business. We moved on to the Faulty Tower, where Marie's project was located, and just as I was heading up to the base of the route with Marie, I heard someone call out my name. It was my friend Cyd and his climbing partner Debbie, both from Portland! It was great to catch up on our different travels and after a few minutes again we were down to business. Well, first try, putting the quickdraws up, Marie completed the route in perfect style making it her 3rd route at that grade so far this trip. And to think that just about a year ago Marie's goal was to get completely comfortable leading mid-hard tens?
With her project completed, Marie set in motion what climbers like to call "The Send Train" (to "send" a route is to complete it bottom up with no falls) and it was my turn to hop aboard. We backtracked and crossed the river to The Social Platform. Before doing my route, Marie tied in to onsight Skeletons 11b/c and after tricky foot work and tense body positioning, Marie crushed the route first try. Next, I flaked the rope, racked my harness with enough quickdraws, and left the ground. I was off to a good start right away, making light work of the nickel-width holds at the start of the route. I cruised through the flat holds that comprise the middle section of the route and after taking advantage of the rest along the way, I was soon ready to tackle the overhanging belly that guarded the anchors at the top. After 3 more clips of sustained climbing on less than mini-jug holds, I pulled over the bulge and clipped the chains with forearms so pumped they looked like Louisville Sluggers. Once my feet were on solid ground again, we packed our gear up and made that terrible hike up the half-scree-half-trail for the last time, projects a-la-finished.
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| The Hike of Death (makes Smith's hike out look like an access ramp). |
On our way out of the gorge, Marie and I treated ourselves to some delicious blizzard-like ice creams from a local ice cream parlor/coffee shop/movie rental/antique store called Mountain High Video, (yeah, that's right) then we got in the van and made our way to St. George by way of Las Vegas.
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| Ice cream at the multi-purpose store. |
Back to Bishop for a minute - I would like to give a shout-out to the people of Bishop, California for being pretty darn awesome. Juan & I had the pleasure to meet and talk to the nicest folk in town on our rest days. From the girl working at the thrift store where we bought curtains, to the lady who snapped our picture at the ice cream shop, to Annie the librarian who eagerly helped me print out pages and pages of info on local bouldering and even waived the printing fee, to the folks at the visitors' center who gave Juan lots of info and tips on the area. Even the older guy who "kicked us out" of town (he told us camping in city limits was illegal, after we'd camped a few nights outside his RV park) gave us a bag of hot popcorn for the road! So thanks to the people of Bishop who put up with the dirty vagrant climbers lurking among them, and do it with a smile on their face. Your hospitality was greatly appreciated.
Speaking of people, we were so lucky in Bishop - after the initial shock of running into Mike & Scott on the street and Dan at the grocery store, the friends kept coming! As Juan mentioned, we ran into his friend Colleen and Eric Perlman at the crag, and at the next wall over, we found his friend Cyd and Debbie. Lastly, in town, we met the one and only Kevin Jorgenson (for the non-climbers out there, he is a giant in the climbing world at the young age of 25) and his friend Amelia at the AMPM! They had been bouldering for a while and were on their way out of town. We were star-struck and spoke with Kevin about his project on El Cap with climber Tommy Caldwell and about local climbing. He happily agreed to take a picture with us too! Really cool guy. He'll be at the Smith Rock Detour again this fall and we hope to see him there!
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| Juan & I with world-class climber Kevin Jorgensen in downtown Bishop. |
The funny thing about these five chance meetings is that not one of them would have happened had we passed by 5 or 10 minutes later, or walked a slightly different route, or chosen to climb at a different spot in the Gorge! Or in the case of Kevin & Amelia, we had sprinted over to Whiskey Creek at 5:57 pm to get an order of beer & nachos in before Happy Hour ended at 6, and ran into them when we walked back to our car - so if we hadn't cut it so ridiculously close, we probably wouldn't have crossed paths at all! So call it chance, or whatever, I'll call it plain good luck that we got to meet so many friends (and nice new folks) out on the road. It always brightens our day to see familiar faces besides each others' ;)
Bishop was a fun place to be, though I won't miss our bovine alarm clocks (last week) or waking up in the snow in the middle of a Little League tournament (first week). The weather, climbing, and people were wonderful, and I'll definitely come back again someday.
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| "Norm", seen (& heard) through our back window at ~6am. One actually licked our bumper. |
But we had other places to climb and people to see. Thursday night Juan drove us down to Vegas, kindly letting me sleep and watch Back to the Future 2 on the way :) We rested, hung out with Juan's family, and watched more movies Friday, and Saturday (yesterday) headed out to climb one last time at Red Rocks. Guess we can't get enough of that place! Actually, we only stayed to climb because thunderstorms were forecast for St. George that same day. Who did we bump into on the hike in? Ben from Maine, on his way out! We warmed up at the Burns Wall behind Kraft Mountain, where we met a great local climber named Todd who was rope-soloing some routes there. Then Juan & I headed over to Cannabis Crag next door, looking to get on some starred, steep 11's and 12's. I was psyched to send a fun, overhung, juggy route called Synapse Collapse (11d) on my second go, and Juan came SO close to sending a stout 12d called The Fiend. I too left with some unfinished business there, a short 11c called The Felon that eluded me simply because I didn't have much strength left at the end of the day. That's okay though - if history is any indicator, we will be back at Red Rocks to climb again!
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| Juan gearing up for The Fiend (12d) at Cannabis Crag. |
Sunday morning we drove the quick 2 hours out to where we are now - St. George, Utah. The agenda for the day was to check out a cool area we'd heard about called the Turtle Wall, just north of town. We continued our lucky streak by parking next to a group of three climbers from Salt Lake - Brent, Dave, and Scott - who knew the area and offered to show us around! They told us all about the local climbing and we worked on some fun routes together. Turtle Wall is a sandstone crag whose most unique feature is a beautiful arch/cave with routes ascending both sides. One of our favorites there was called Banana Dance (11d), which Juan & I both onsighted and Brent got it on his 2nd go! It was so similar to Synapse Collapse (see previous paragraph) that it was scary - I think we had an advantage from "practicing" on its sister route the day before. Brent and Juan also sent a 12a called Dancing Fox, and I worked it too, but couldn't get the crux. I'm aiming to keep pushing myself on 12a's on lead even as I continue to work hard 11's (got my 3rd, 4th, and 5th 11d's in this past week!) - because doing more 12's will make hard 11's feel easy by comparison, right?? In any case, it's good for me. At the end of the day, the wind picked up, the clouds moved in, and the thunderstorm that had been forecast for yesterday finally came in. But at least we got some great climbing in first. Thanks Brent & friends for taking us under your wing today!
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| Me on my onsight of Banana Dance (11d) |
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| Brent redpointing Dancing Fox (12b) |
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| Juan doing "the Superman"on Dancing Fox (12b) |
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| Dave and Scott (climbing) working Knuckle Bones (10c) |
That's all for now, folks, we're going to go scout out some free campsites and enjoy a rest day tomorrow after a couple hard days of pulling down. We'll probably be in the St. George area about 2 weeks before heading over to Colorado. Hope everyone is doing well, and as always drop us a line here or at our gmail anytime you want, especially if you wanna come climbin!
Best,
Marie
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