Bishop on Holiday
What’s a Tucson boulderer to do with a 4-day weekend? Head to Bishop of course!
Paul and I flew back east for our family “Thanksgiving” two weekends ago, so this weekend was treated like any ‘ol weekend for us. Only this weekend, we had FOUR whole days off from work. And like many of the 4-day weekends prior, we decided yet again to make the grueling trek up to the east side of the Sierra Nevadas to squeeze out 2.5 precious days of Bishop bouldering. 12 hours of driving (each way) for only two and a half days of climbing? Is it really worth it? I’d like to say that we are sane and logical human beings and we ask ourselves this question each time we decide to make this heinous trek. But we don’t. We just go.
Thursday afternoon, Thanksgiving Day, finds myself, Paul and ‘lil brown dog Morgan bumpin’ along in our Sportsmobile van up the washboard dirt road toward the Buttermilks. Our tick lists – which we feverishly scratched down the night before (if you’re me) or 2 weeks before (if you’re Paul) – are packed with more climbs than can usually be ticked in a whole two weeks. And, well, since we have a mere two days, we best be gettin’ to the business.
Our first stop is the Pollen Grains. It’s around 2ish and we have just enough time to go find this amazing looking line we’ve seen in photo after photo. High, technical, not too hard and thin: Jedi Mind Tricks, v4. Paul promptly eats this little morsel up with an onsight and declares it his all-time second favorite v4 ever (Moonshine Roof at Hueco holding the first place position, OF course). I pass on this one. Too high for me today! We then start making our way up to The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, but the steep face of the Honey Boulder sucks us in and we boulder on it until dark. Paul quickly ticks Cindy Swank, v7 and Finder’s Fee, v9. I come pretty darn close on Cindy Swank but then darkness closes in and we call it quits.
Friday is a Happies day. Our mission this day is two lines: Slow Dance, v10 for Paul and Gleaner, v6 for me. Paul spends about an hour linking up the moves of Slow Dance very nicely, but there’s not enough time to pull it together for a send today. On next to Gleaner. After chillin’ in the cold Slow Dance cave with Paul, I thought I’d need some time to warm up a bit on Gleaner before giving it some sending attempts. I think wrong and quickly tick it. Woo!
Originally we had planned on climbing at the Buttermilks on Saturday. However, since we had such an awesome time at the Pollen Grains two days prior, we decided to head back. Turned out to be a great decision because we basically have all the boulders to ourselves on this busy holiday weekend. After some less-than-stellar grainy, slabby, scary warm-ups, we throw our pads under the classic roof of the Beekeeper Boulder. I work on the Beekeeper’s Apprentice, v5. No send – a little burlier than I had anticipated! Or maybe I’m just tired – yeah that’s it, haha. Paul shows me how it’s done and then some – ticking off all the rest of the climbs under the Beekeeper roof. Fun little session. After a few more Pollen Grains classics and some more sending go’s from me on Cindy Swank, we declare our muscles and tips total toast.
With a couple more hours of daylight, we finish off the day – and the trip – with a hike up to the Bardini Boulders to check out The Maze of Death, v12 and to admire with dropped jaws, the monolith highball This Side of Paradise, v10. Dwarfed under the massive Bardini Boulder, with the vast Sierra Nevadas behind us, the multitude of Buttermilk boulders in front of us, and the canyons holding the still more Happy and Sad boulders off in the distance, we pretty much decide right then and there that a 4-day weekend at Bishop is *not* enough. There are too many boulders we want to climb! Too many projects we dream of sending! We’ve been making these short little jaunts up to these boulders for 4 years now. And in these 4 years, the wish list has grown pages longer than the tick list. The realization sinks in. It’s time to start setting our sights on a real Bishop roadtrip. Soon.
posted by arr
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on Sunday, November 25th, 2007 at 7:44 pm and is filed under Bishop-California, Bouldering.
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