We arrived at our top-secret, uber-awesome, free camp spot late in the afternoon on Friday. It was HOT! So, instead of charging down into the Owen's River Gorge for some late-afternoon climbing, we set up the trailer, made margaritas, Dave took some photos and we enjoyed the view.(NOTE: Several blog entries that come before this one will be posted soon. Keep your eyes peeled! I'll get the up as Dave gets the photos to me)
It is gorgeous here.
Though my feet are greatly improved, climbing remained a bit of an unknown. Last year, we climbed Cardinal Pinnacle when we were here. It was great fun, and I was most surprised that my feet did well on it. So, we thought it'd make a good choice to see what he hooves would tolerate.
I mean, check them out! They look like normal feet now.
We hiked up the talus field. Dave took off. Then I. Misery. My feet could not do this since it was pretty much 100% slab moves with marginal hands. I believe I made the first "no feet" ascent of the first 10a pitch. Then we had to bail.
We spent some time driving in the canyon, checking out a couple of rustic lodges, looking at the lakes, etc. It's quite a beautiful area. This is about when the "stable" Sierra weather started seeming not-so-stable. It started raining. No biggy though. We returned home to the trailer to figure out a new game plan.
The next day, we hiked to the Dike Wall. It is just a little over a year since John Bachar fell to his death here (still hard to believe). I'd never been, and Dave hadn't been in some time. Not only did Dave want to climb some, we both wanted to go to where this terrible event happened.
We hiked around the lake and got to the wall. The weather was pretty unstable again. Dave climbed several pitches (given the nature of the climbs, it was clear I couldn't do them due to hoof-resistance). (Not sure how we managed to take no photos of the climbing).Then the weather got increasingly worse (lightning, thunder, etc - NOT good stuff when one is up high at all). So we started hiking out pausing where John fell. A prayer wheel is mounted on the wall, and a pile of rocks marks where his body came to rest. RIP JB. It's was a somber moment.
We started hiking out quickly given the dark weather. We had to avoid a big bear who was stealing food and a bit aggressive (according to the family that lost their food). Before getting to the car, we had to take cover next to a tree. Not only was the lightning a problem, it started hailing...a lot. (See movie below).
We finally ran back to the truck while being rained/hailed on. Crazy.That evening, we headed into Mammoth and met our friends Fish Finder (Greg), Donna, and Chez. We had dinner together and enjoyed a fun evening chatting. We headed back to the trailer. We came to find out later that FF and Donna hit a deer on 395 their way home. The deer was the only fatality.
The following day, we hiked up into the Canyon behind Convict Lake. We'd hoped to find a huge display of wild flowers, but like pretty much everywhere else we'd been looking, there was not any grand stand of them. We did get to enjoy watching a Bald Eagle soar around the area. We always manage to see them here.
While my feet are cranky when it comes to some climbing, they are happy on the bike. Up next, a really fun ride involving a big pass in which we managed not to become road kill!
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