Stoney Point take 10
Echo Cliffs, take 4
Dangling Bruin
Echo Cliffs take 3
Malibu Creek take 3
Malibu Creek take 2
MST take 1
Stoney Point take 9
New York: The Gunks
Stoney Point take 8
Echo Cliffs take 2
Tick Rock take 2
Malibu Creek take 1
Stoney Point take 7
Stoney Point take 6
Tick Rock take 1
Stoney Point w/Joe
Echo Cliffs
Indoors at UCLA
Stoney Point take 4
Stoney Point take 3
Point Dume
Stoney Point take 2
Stoney Point take 1
Boulding in Bishop, CA
A weekend bouldering in Bishop with people from UCLA's Rock Wall. Over to The Happies and The Sads after driving up and arriving late Friday night, then to The Dreamers on Sunday before heading back to Los Angeles. Topped it off with dinner at BJ's in Westwood after returning to Los Angeles.
One note: this was the most bare-bones car camping campsite I've ever used. At least the ground was flat and smooth, so to that I can't complain. And it was cheap!
Drove up Friday night with Will and Asuka in one car, Courtney, Jermey, and Yulia in Courtney's car, and then Matt/Tracy/James/Aaron left a little before we did.
Saturday:
Started off driving down a dirt road to The Happies. Did a bunch of V0's (High Road and 2 others?) on Which Road? and stared at Heavenly Path (V1) for a while. Very nice introduction to Bishop. Heavenly Path actually looked like tons of fun til the top-- but the top was then all slab, and cheese-gratering down a highball if I blew it didn't sound like fun so I skipped it. More Water, Less Power might have gotten some attention too, but I can't remember. People worked on The Hulk (V6) and The Solarium (Solarium, V3). Actually had a lot of fun on Solarium. Til the crux, that is. Seemed to be the order of the day...
Not too much else-- a few other climbers in the area, but it got hot pretty fast and we fled around lunch. Stopped by the Jesus Chrysler boulder on the way out but didn't climb anything.
For lunch, we headed over to The Sads and had lunch in the Ice Cave via another long trip down a dirt road. The strong climbers (Courtney, Will, Asuka, Matt, Jeremy, Aaron, James) all worked on Mothership Connection (V4) and some other hard stuff. Mothership Connection is an amazing undercut climb that has you horizontal a few feet in the air on your back, doing a foot jamb, then reaching up from horizontal to vertical and pulling up, hopefully without swinging off... I think everyone swung off. Matt might have done it, but I'm not sure.
Tons of other climbs but I can't remember the names. Got hammered on Hauck A Loogie (V2 in the guidebook, V3 on rockclimbing.com, saw a start but couldn't stick. Asuka left Mothership Connection and got two moves up it, but that was about it... eeep!
Two V0 cracks were present, top out looked a little scary though as you climb out of the cave and if you deck, you deck onto solid rock forming the roof. Ouch. I should have gotten off my butt and tried 'em-- one was liebacking the whole way, probably would have exhausted me halfway up. The other I'm not sure anyone really did, looked like a lovely off-width. Instead, farted around on a bunch of VB's and V0's and stuff outside of the Ice Cave. Did one amazing overhang that drops you onto a big fat boulder right below if you drop (or if you swing off, you land feet perfectly on it)... pretty sweet. A cylinder of rock cut out was great for stemming.
Headed over to another area of The Sads at the end of the day. A massive V0 (or V1?) slab crushed about 3/4ths of us, my hiking boots massively peeled the soles (wtf REI?), then wandered over to Prozac Nation (V2), quite possibly the most amazing outdoor bouldering problem I've actually tried to do. You start standing on the right, do a few moves, then reach up to a huge handle with the left hand after you wrap your feet around a gigantic flake. Once you get the handle, walk both feet to the top of the flake, reach for a flake on the right, stand up, grab a pair of flakes shaped like a "Y", then reach higher to a flake at the top, then pull over.
One of the most fun climbs I've done (well, tried to do...).
I made it up to the handle and started to move my feet around before I got hammered. Just too tired. Since the strong climbers were all doing V3 plus, almost all of them made it up. Jeremy ran laps on it, while Courtney made it to the very last move and feel off three times. We had six crash pads plus spotters below her, and the last time she still managed to miss every pad and land butt-first on someone's foot. Oops.
Finished off an amazing day of climbing with dinner at a local Mexican joint along with some of Matt's friends. Served up the remains of Matt's birthday cake that night, along with a s'mores disaster thing brought on by extending too-short-skewers with more marshmellows...
Sunday:
Wandered up to The Dreamers, which may be known by another name because I can't find it online. The guidebook does call it The Dreamers, though.
The approach road is right by the sign for Sherwin Summit on US-395 (sign even says that, plus 7000' elevation). Then a long drive over a relatively flat but very bumpy road. With no ground clearance we had to inch over most of the way.
The Dreamers sport tons and tons of highballs. Hell almost everything there is a highball. o_0
Farted around on a V2 or something that was pretty low-- not a highball at all, at least the crux was low enough that when I got there I wasn't worried about height. Sticking it, OTOH, was the typical 3-fingertips-in-the-hold which works great if you climb V2 or V3 outside. I climb V1-V2-fart-around-on-V3 inside, which translates to about V0-V1 outside. Didn't quite work. Not sure anyone topped out on it, as we spent the day taking it easy.
Did a bunch of V0s that were almost all highballs. First one was cake, second one I actually didn't top out on. Almost everyone else did, but it was tons of pockets to the left of a dark streak of rock, then you reach right to a huge rock, then crank off of that and hit the lip. Felt awesome, but also felt like a really good way to exhaust my limited endurance in my right arm.
More amazing climbing, although I was stuck for quite a bit on one V0. Solution? Just plant the foot on the rock and go up. Rock here is pretty damned sticky compared to some of the worn-down-smooth-fests I'm used to. Everyone else started sending it afterwards. Downclimb is actually a short jump (VB+?), and there was a nice traverse from the downclimb to the V0 I took forever on. Looks like there were at least two more V0's or V1's in-between. I never did get around to doing them as I was too busy taking pictures of Matt and Jeremy jumping from rock to rock and people on the V0 I had just done. One of them-- closer to the end of the pics-- actually looks really good. The last move before the top-out is a left hand side-pull that Will thought would be bad, but turns out is very solid. Must go back...
Left a little after... 1ish? Yulia became the only causalty on the trip, so we packed things up with some help from some other climbers (I think some of them were from UCLA's wall too, crazy) and then hightailed it to the Casino gas station in Bishop. We were all pretty burnt and weren't doing anything hard.
Everyone left from the casino gas station in Bishop. Will, Asuka, Aaron (?), James (?), and I stopped at Schat's for bread and sandwiches for lunch, so we lagged by about 30 or 40 minutes. The pastrami sandwiches and breads were excellent as always, and it was the first time I'd actually stopped there for anything more than a quick bread pickup. With Courtney and Matt's cars a good 30 minutes head of us we zoomed back to Los Angeles, making it back in 3 hours 40 minutes, passing Matt just before Mojave and a good ten minutes or so behind Courtney.
Unloaded, sorted, and repacked gear, picked up a straggler from the Rock Wall (Amanda?) then ended up having dinner with almost everyone at BJ's, because beer and pizza sounded really tasty. Had the world's longest arm wrestling match, too. Ask anyone who was there tonight, they heard the noise...
Saturday: The Happies and The Sads
Sunday: The Dreamers
