The Best Things in Life are Free
Click here to see the Photo Album
Travelling up out of the valley through the Tuolumne Meadows reveals miles more classic granite climbing on the numerous domes. You could spend a life time between the valley and Tuolumne and only just scratch the surface of this incredible landscape.
I then traveled down the Owens River Valley, (past the Owens River Gorge climbing area) to Mt Whitney. Mt Whitney (14,500’) is the highest point in the “lower 48” states, ie the highest peak in the USA outside Alaska and because there’s an easy route to the top it’s a total hikers mecca. Wanting to avoid the crowds I decided to climb the more direct “Mountaineers Route”. As time was short I decided to try and climb it in a day from the campground. This involves about 8km horizontal travel and 6000 feet vertical height gain to reach the top. The route climbs steeply up a narrow valley past a series of small lakes to the base of the east face of the mountain. Here a steep 500m high couloir bisects the face, providing a route to the summit that is supposed to contain class 3 and 4 climbing. It turned out the climbing was no harder than scrambling up Garbage Gully at Cook but was on generally solid granite, not weetbix choss. There were only 4 other people on that side of the mountain and they were doing the classic east buttress route (5.6). The summit is disappointingly large and flat and contains a stone hut to shelter in. There were about a dozen people on top from the tourist route. I came down the same way and was back at 4:30pm having taken 10.5 hours for the round trip.
After that my knees needed a bit of a break, so it was time for a quick trip to the Happy Boulders, just north of Bishop. The boulders are made from the Bishop Tuff (Ignimbrite to us folk) and the style of climbing is very similar to the boulder field at Wharepapa. The chocolate brown rock is well pocketed and offers hours of fun in the desert sun (mind the rattlesnakes though). No major cranking was done as I was minding my freshly mended fingers but numerous V1’s were sent (woo hoo). Unfortunately Rickie Ishoy wasn’t there either.
Then it was back out through the valley, a quick stop at the giant Redwoods at Mariposa and back to Fresno (dumpsville) airport for the flight to LA and home.
Travelling up out of the valley through the Tuolumne Meadows reveals miles more classic granite climbing on the numerous domes. You could spend a life time between the valley and Tuolumne and only just scratch the surface of this incredible landscape.
I then traveled down the Owens River Valley, (past the Owens River Gorge climbing area) to Mt Whitney. Mt Whitney (14,500’) is the highest point in the “lower 48” states, ie the highest peak in the USA outside Alaska and because there’s an easy route to the top it’s a total hikers mecca. Wanting to avoid the crowds I decided to climb the more direct “Mountaineers Route”. As time was short I decided to try and climb it in a day from the campground. This involves about 8km horizontal travel and 6000 feet vertical height gain to reach the top. The route climbs steeply up a narrow valley past a series of small lakes to the base of the east face of the mountain. Here a steep 500m high couloir bisects the face, providing a route to the summit that is supposed to contain class 3 and 4 climbing. It turned out the climbing was no harder than scrambling up Garbage Gully at Cook but was on generally solid granite, not weetbix choss. There were only 4 other people on that side of the mountain and they were doing the classic east buttress route (5.6). The summit is disappointingly large and flat and contains a stone hut to shelter in. There were about a dozen people on top from the tourist route. I came down the same way and was back at 4:30pm having taken 10.5 hours for the round trip.
After that my knees needed a bit of a break, so it was time for a quick trip to the Happy Boulders, just north of Bishop. The boulders are made from the Bishop Tuff (Ignimbrite to us folk) and the style of climbing is very similar to the boulder field at Wharepapa. The chocolate brown rock is well pocketed and offers hours of fun in the desert sun (mind the rattlesnakes though). No major cranking was done as I was minding my freshly mended fingers but numerous V1’s were sent (woo hoo). Unfortunately Rickie Ishoy wasn’t there either.
Then it was back out through the valley, a quick stop at the giant Redwoods at Mariposa and back to Fresno (dumpsville) airport for the flight to LA and home.