Meghan and Ian: June 2009

After parting ways with Jen and Ara, and Matt and Amanda, we left Yosemite and headed west, to San Francisco. My brother Toby lives there, so we wanted to visit while we were in this part of the country. When we met up with him on Sunday afternoon he had just gotten back from a quick trip to L.A to visit friends. I don't know anyone else who flies to another city to meet a friend for lunch. We hung out with him for a couple of days, and he let us get caught up on our laundry and whatnot, and took us out to dinner. I didn't realize until after we left, but we didn't have the camera with us the whole time, so unfortunately we got no photos with him, but he's doing well.

Did you know the Golden Gate Bridge was red? Meghan apparently didn't. Maybe she never watched "Full House"

Meghan and the Oakland-San Francisco Bay Bridge

Leaving San Fransisco, we headed north, driving up the famous Highway 1 along the coast. It was gorgeous, but very twisty-windy and slow, especially with me stopping to take photos every few minutes. We figured at that pace it would take us weeks, so after a while we cut somewhat inland to Hwy 101. We stopped in Redwoods National and State Parks to see the big trees there too. They aren't quite as old as the Giant Sequoias that we saw in Yosemite, nor as big in diameter, but they're taller, growing up to 350 feet tall. It was pretty cool, but personally I thought the Sequoias were more impressive. I think standing at the base it's hard to tell the difference between 300' and 350' in height, but the difference in the thickness of the base is staggering. We saw the Sequoias first too.

Beaches and rocks along the California Coast

The big trees at Redwoods National and State Parks

After seeing the big trees, we drove northeast, visiting Crater Lake National Park in southern Oregon along the way. This is an ancient volcano that collapsed on itself thousands of years ago, creating a large lake. The lake has no inlets or outlets, so the water level is a balance of the precipitation it receives and the water lost to evaporation. Because of it's somewhat high altitude, remote location, and lack of polluted in-flowing water, the lake is very clean and clear. There's an island in the middle of the lake (Wizard Island - cool name) that would have been fun to canoe out to, but it was a bit early in the season when we were there, so some of the roads had yet to be plowed out and the beach access was still closed.

Crater Lake National Park

Continuing north, we stopped for the night at Smith Rock State Park near Bend, Oregon. This is often referred to as the birthplace of American sport climbing. A few decades ago, as climbers began to concentrate more and more on pushing the limits of difficulty, they started climbing rock faces with no natural place for protection. They started placing bolts (similar to concrete anchor bolts) that they could clip into to allow safe progress up the rock. This had been done for decades on blank sections of climbs before, but in North America not generally as the only protection for an entire climb. At Smith Rock, the athleticism of the climbing became the focus, and the bolts were generally placed close enough together to allow the climber to fall at any point and be caught safely by the rope. Smith Rock has now become a world renowned sport climbing destination. We hiked through the park, taking a look around, but had already decided we wanted to get back to Canada sooner than later, so we would wait to buy the guidebook and really get to know the area until another time. We'll be back Smith Rock.

So, we kept driving north. It was now Thursday, and we weren't sure how busy the ferry from Port Angeles, Washington to Vancouver Island (Victoria, B.C.) was going to be on the weekend. We decided we wanted to be on the Friday morning ferry, so we drove through Washington State almost without stopping. It's a shame, because we've heard how beautiful it is there, but if we took our time everywhere we wouldn't get very far. We got to Port Angeles overnight, and got a space on the ferry in the morning. The M.V. Coho made the trip in 1H20, and it was an enjoyable crossing. We didn't see anything too exciting, but that's ok. It was almost strange seeing things like Tim Horton's whose absence we had grown accustomed to. We were back in Canada, and it felt good to be home. Time to explore the island.

The MV Coho

More updates coming soon!

Ian

Sorry for the long time between posts - we haven't had a ton of computer time so we're a little bit behind. This post is for Yosemite, which we left a week ago (we actually just got off the ferry to Vancouver Island less than an hour ago), but we'll try to get us caught up asap.

Yosemite. The climbing mecca of North America. Everyone who really thinks of oneself as a climber must make the pilgrimage at least once. To jam your hands and feet in the solid cracks of Yosemite granite is like going to church. Ok, maybe for some it's not quite such a religious experience, especially if it just keeps raining all the time. It is certainly gorgeous there though - just take a look at these photos:

El Capitan in the Clouds

Vernal Falls on the Mist Trail

Since we knew we'd want to go to Yosemite, we asked around to see if some other climbing friends from back home might want to join us. Ara, from Columbus, Ohio, was able to make it out for almost the entire 2 weeks we were there, and his wife Jen, along with our other friends Matt and Amanda from Waterloo, Ontario were able to join us for the second week. During the first week, Ara, Meghan, and I were able to get our bearings and get used to the rock a bit, and even get on some moderate climbs up to 6 pitches (ropelengths) long. We got pretty lucky a few times though, having the rain start just as we were topping out on a big climb. We also got a chance to head down to the south end of the park to see the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoia trees. Wow - those are some big trees! You've never seen anything like it!

Ara pulling through a roof on "Nutcracker"

Me (Ian) leading the final pitch on "After Six"

Hiking through the forest near Mono Meadows

Meghan the grizzly bear with "Grizzly Giant", one of the Giant Sequoia trees at Mariposa Grove

Ara with one of the trees they used to allow you to drive through

During the second week, we got even more rain - almost every day - so we didn't get a ton of climbing in. We did get to do a bit of bouldering and a few shorter climbs, and got to see some wildlife (well, maybe not so wild...). One of the big objectives of the trip was to do the route "Snake Dike" on the southwest face of Half Dome. Some refer to this climb as "Snake Hike", because the approach to get the climb is usually most of the adventure. We were not an exception in our case when Ara, Matt, Amanda, Meghan, and I made our attempt. Knowing that the pattern we'd been seeing was for rain and thunderstorms to begin developing in the early afternoon, and that the top of Half Dome, at 8,800 ft elevation was no place to be in a storm, we got up early to begin the hike. Now I know what you're thinking - early for someone with no job is probably something like 7 or 8 am. Wrong. I was up at 2:45 a.m., woke up the rest of the crew at 3, and we were on the trail by 3:30. We hoped to be at the base of the climb by 7:30, on top by 11:30, and back down below the treeline before 1:00 pm, when we thought the first of the rain might be hitting us. We had no problems following the major tourist trail in the dark for the first couple hours, but once we got out onto the climber's trail in the backcountry, it got a little indistinct. We may have gotten a little off-route, and with 5 of us, it was at times slow going. We made it to the base of the climb though by 8:30 am - not too bad. I started up the first pitch, somewhat concerned about the clouds off in the distance. By the time I made it to the anchors at the top of the first pitch 200' up, the clouds had moved in, the wind picked up, and the temperature suddenly dropped by about 10 degrees. This would not be our day for Snake Dike. I rappelled to the ground, we packed up our stuff, and started the long hike back out. Thinking we had been off-route on our way to the climb, we thought there must be a better way back down, and wasted plenty of time following cairns to cliff edges and wet dangerous slabs, and having to backtrack. Eventually we gave up on finding a better way, but of course by then, we couldn't even find the "not-so-good" way. Running out of water, forcing our way through thick brush, and not really doing all so well hiking around in the rain, we realized we were lost. We knew we were heading in the general right direction, we eventually found a marked trail and made our way back to the main tourist trail. We stumbled back into camp just after 4:30 pm, having been gone for 13 hours, 12 of which were spent hiking strenuous trails and bushwacking through the backcountry. We were told by some people we met on the trail though that it poured on the summit at about 11:30 am though, so I do think we made the right decision to retreat.

Matt cranking hard at the Sentinel Boulders

Matt giving it a go on Midnight Lightning at Camp 4

The animals in Yosemite are really wild

We kept a little more distance to this guy

So, what to do 2 days later? Try again? Well, not quite. Matt, Amanda, Meghan and I opted to take the tourist trail to the summit, still a strenuous 9-hour hike with 5000 ft of elevation gained then lost. The worst part about the hike? It didn't rain at all. Why is this bad? Because we could have climbed Snake Dike. Stupid weather. Oh well. We'll just have to go back another time.