Yosemite and Joshua Tree

I spent last Tuesday-Friday at Yosemite, and Friday-Sunday at Joshua Tree, climbing with Ben and Dima.

I got to Yosemite on Tuesday night, via Tioga pass, possibly on the last or second-to-last day of the year when it was still possible. I'd wanted to leave the car near Tuolumne campground and head into the backcountry up there in the high alpine stuff, but they didn't want cars parked on the side of the road overnight, so that wasn't possible. Instead I went down to the valley and stayed at Camp 4 on Tuesday night. On Wednesday I headed up to Little Yosemite Valley, and camped there. On the way I had the most incredible encounter with a gray wolf, maybe a quarter mile before LYV. We stood there looking at each other for minutes... I was spellbound! Thursday morning I got up at daybreak and day-hiked up to the base of Half Dome. The weather was closing, and the cables were down, so I didn't go any higher. The same afternoon I backpacked back down to the valley, arriving at the bus stop at Happy Isles literally two minutes after it started pouring rain. I got my crap together and decided to drive back to the boat instead of staying another night just for the pleasure of getting my gear wet. The drive back from YV via 41 to Fresno in the rain and the gorgeous evening light was the most fun I've ever had driving, and the car got an incredible 29 mpg in that section.

Friday afternoon Ben picked me up and we headed to J-Tree. Dima had got a fantastic campsite at Belle Campground. The next morning Ben dragged our asses out of the sleeping bags at 6 so we could get a climb in before sunrise. We did 'Diagnostics' before breakfast, and 'Music Box' after. Actually, the latter spat me out and I cracked my shin. I was pissed and nauseated for the rest of the morning. We then went to Split Rock, where we did 'Invisibility Lessons', some other ugly 5.7 thing up a rock off to the right from it, and 'Continuum'. The next day we got on 'Touch-and-go', which spat me out where the crack got too wide for me to jam and I was too pumped to sit around and figure anything else out. Then we went to Hemingway buttress and did 'Feltonean Physics', which also had a nasty wide crack section in the bottom that one could avoid by going left. I had never climbed cracks before, so this was my big lesson in jamming. It went pretty well, I thought, though my hands were a bit sore a couple days later. I also learned there's nothing more miserable than seconding on too tight of a belay (which happened on Continuum), and seconding through a section where your leader chose to go through some giant crack because it was better protected than the rated route also sucks (this happened on Feltonean Physics). Note to self: first climb of the day needs to be a warmup, otherwise I end up injured and pissed.