Early Friday morning, Hayley picked me up and we drove up to Bishop for some supercalifragilisticexpealidocious cragging. We climbed from 10am to 4pm, quitting early in favor of a tour through the Galen Rowell Mountain Light Gallery (a first for Hayley).
Later at Las Palmas, Hayley got the onsight of a 3.5 pound fish taco, but I was denied my equally convincing attempt at a 5 pound burrito. I blame the half bucket of chips consummed, but Hayley says it’s just excuses 8^) Getting back to town by 9:30pm was nice, as we were going out the following day for a second round of climbing.
A listing of our climbs:
Nirvana 5.10a Clare – RP Hayley – Flash
Orange Peel 5.10c Clare – RP Hayley – Flash (AN AWESOME SEND!)
Yellow Peril 5.10b Clare – led with 2 hangs just after the 11th bolt
Hayley – led with a few hangs between the 10-11 bolts
Intermission – Lunchtime at the Pub Area
Wonderbar (5.10c) Hayley led up to 4th bolt,
Clare TR to 4th bolt. BOTH THWARTED getting over bulge.
At this point, my elbow was hurting, and I didn’t feel like climbing anymore, since it was in the same place I got injured before. We probably could have cooled down on something over at the warm up wall-but it was covered with humans. So, since we were planning on climbing Sat. we just left.
The Yellow Peril route was very long, the 60 meter rope just barely covered the climb (on the rap, Hayley had about 2 feet of rope total extra slack!). While we both enjoyed this climb, the middle was freaky due to the collection of unstable boulders lodged in the crack halfway up.
The ending of YP was my favorite-in the book it says, “A steep dihedral”. That is not an overstatement, it was quite exhillerating navigating the top. Had I not had problems clipping the 11th bolt, I think I would have made the onsight. The extra time fiddling with the bolt, and pulling through the crux after such a long climb did me in!!!
What a great day of climbing, even though we only did 4 routes-they were all a bunch of fun. Can’t wait to get back up there!