We have returned to the land of immaculate granite. In doing so I am reminded of a question that we were asked more than once on our trip. “Why did you ever leave California?” Great question! California is home to some of the country’s, if not the world’s, best climbing. We’ve got Yosemite, Joshua Tree, and Bishop to name a few of the big ones. Whenever anyone asked us where we were from, we would triumphantly answer, “California!” Most people would then ask, where in California? That question stumped us, as we didn’t know if we should answer our hometown, our most recent place of residence, or San Luis Obispo. Most of the time we would just mumble and stutter and just say, ‘all over the place!’ Wherever we are in California, we are stoked to be back in the state!
We are currently en route to San Luis Obispo. We are reaching the 10,000-mile mark right…now! Oh shoot! That was super disappointing! I was really excited to see the odometer hit 10,000 but it just reset itself to 0. Rats. Now, you may be wondering to yourself, ‘isn’t this entire country 3,000 miles wide? How is it that the furthest east you reached was Colorado, but you have driven the distance of our country 3 times?’ Don’t ask. Let’s just say we aren’t very efficient road trippers.
We spent the past 10 days in the beautiful town of Bishop, California. Sitting at the foothills of the magnificent eastern Sierras, Bishop is not only picturesque, but also home to some world-class bouldering. It was awesome to spend so much time in the three main areas- the Happies, Sad and Buttermilks, climbing with great people. We got to see Eric put down a bunch of projects including Center Direct V10, Beefcake V10, Lawnmower Man V7, Redrum V7 and Atari V6. Quite an impressive ticklist! I wasn’t quite as successful in sending projects, but I was able to overcome my constant fear while bouldering and send a highball V3 called Black Magic. I was slightly discouraged by my lack of ascents, until I realized that I was trying exponentially more problems than usual, which meant there was a lot more room for failure.
When all was said and done, I walked a way with a ton of exciting new projects! I am super psyched to go back to Bishop next weekend and make some progress on them. In the meantime we are making one of our abnormal, high mileage detours that includes a stop in San Luis Obispo to pick up my snow pants and say hi to friends, a stop in the bay for a quick hello to the family and a cocktail party, and then a stay in Tahoe for some skiing! Wait, skiing? I though I was on a climbing trip… Well it was a climbing trip until we got tired of freezing temps and decided to switch sports temporarily.
The weather was somewhat brisk in Bishop, with nighttime temperatures in the teens. Every morning we woke up to find that our water was solid ice, our peanut butter was frozen and had to be sliced to put on bread, and even our poor bananas had freezer burn. The sun set super early and it was pretty much pitch black out at 5:00. Sitting in the dark in the freezing cold wasn’t too appealing, so we would head for our tent and sleep for 12 or more hours a night. So that’s how we decided that after 87 days on the road, it might be nice to switch it up for just a bit before heading home for the holidays. So we will be trying our hands at skiing starting on Sunday.
We were fortunate enough to be in a beautiful setting and amongst beautiful people for Thanksgiving Day. On Thanksgiving morning, we woke up to bright blue skies. We headed into town to pick up some supplies then drove up the road towards Mammoth. After a bit of searching we arrived at our destination – some natural hot springs in the middle of a snow-covered field looking at the gorgeous mountains. We cooked up a delicious Thanksgiving dinner consisting of turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce, yams, rolls, and apple pie. We scarfed down our dinner (it was 20 degrees out, we didn’t want to linger) and crossed the snowy field and jumped in the hot springs. We soaked our tired muscles as we watched the sun dip below the mountain range. It was a lovely day.
Climb on, rock on, ski on, dance on, party on!
sounds amazing girls. miss you guys
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