We just got back from a week in lovely Bishop California. This post will be more of the short of it, just because. First, good news — Seb traveled well. He got a round of applause at the end of our flight into Las Vegas because he quite calm the entire flight. He generally slept well the entire trip, and put up fairly well with being put in layers upon layers of cold, since it was colder in California than it was in Pittsburgh — but more on that later.

The trip, at least for me, could be broken down into three acts:

Act I. The Sickness
I had been valiantly fighting some sort of cold/sinus thing the week prior to leaving, and the cold dry weather in Bishop brought it out in full force. I felt crummy the first few days (to the point that I didn’t want to climb, even), and I really thought the trip was going to be wash for me, climbing-wise. For the first few days, I had a window of about 1 hour to climb as much as possible before it all caught up with me. Typically, this hour consisted of the hike to the boulders, a few warm of problems, then a wasted effort on a project far above my ability.

I had started to feel a bit better by last Thursday, but then the weather took a turn for the worst (see Act II below). Undaunted, Matt and I went to the Buttermilks, where we could see the snow (yes, snow) rapidly approaching, and the wind whipped through the boulderfield. Sounds terrible, right? Well, actually, the conditions were quite good for me to bouted repeatedly on the Mandala. I felt great that day, but paid for it the next.

When the weather stabilized a bit, I felt better, and had more energy, but I’m still dragging a cough around now (which should be worsened by a wet ride to work tomorrow morning).

Act II Hoodwinked by the Weather
As I mentioned above, we didn’t exactly have classic California high desert conditions during our trip. In fact, typically, it was warmer in Pittsburgh. Our average temperature in Bishop was perhaps 55 degrees. They actually had a bit of heat wave before we got there, and we thought we’d get at least a day or two of that, but…..we headed to the Buttermilks on Wednesday, thinking it’d be a cooler higher in the mountains, which it is was. But…the relative exposure on the hillside meant we were blasted by the winds bringing in the cold front. I reckon the wind was coming in at a steady 30 mph, with gusts to at least 45 mph. Not very hospitable, especially when combined with little dust storms. We turned tail to the comfort of the Happy Boulders, and that was certainly better, but my window of non-sickness (see Act I) had come and gone….

We had one more day of relative warmth and wind, and we spent the time tucked in the narrow canyon at the Sad Boulders. It was a bit tough with Seb, though, as we couldn’t lay him down thanks to the gusts of wind and sand. Fortunately, the car is all of 30 seconds away, so we could retreat there to hang out….

And then came the cold…..

The cold front came in and dropped a nice layer of snow on anything higher than 8000 feet. The weather in the valley was not good, with clouds, cold and wind. That didn’t stop us from trying the Buttermilks, and Matt and I spent a few hours suffered to get some burns on our projects.

The weekend brought slightly better weather, though it was cloudy at times, and that brought the temperatures down. Yeesh. A check of the Weather Channel each morning confirmed our greatest fears — it was warmer in Pittsburgh than in Bishop. At least it wasn’t raining. We managed some good climbing time that weekend though, with a day at the Buttermilks and a day at the Happy Boulders.

The weather finally cooperated the final two days of the trip, and we had relative warmth at the Sad Boulders. Finally!

Act III The Climbing
Here’s where I spray endlessly about all the hard climbing I did. That, of course, assumes I did some hard climbing, which mostly wasn’t the case. Thanks to events in Acts I and II, I really only had two good days climbing on the last two days of the trip. Jen and I assumed that we’d be climbing less than usual since we had the boy, but the weather conspired to limit us even more. I think we both went through a couple of days where we just wanted to leave, and in my case, never climb again. But once the weather cleared up, and we could work out a system to keep Seb warm and well-fed, things were good. We still weren’t climbing a lot, but things were good.

So, for those of you that want senseless spray, here it goes…..

I did work on the Mandala. I did not send it. Not even close. But I did manage to do the first part of the crux, and even though I was far from success, it was still good fun, just because the problem is so good.

The last day was my best of climbing. I managed to flash Barnacle (V9) at the Sads, though it felt like V7. But hey, I’m a number whore, right? I also did Pow Pow at the Sads (V7), which gets my vote as the hardest V7 ever. I worked on Beefcake (V10) as well, though it seemed to be beta-intensive, so I wasn’t making huge progress. I also managed to do Chizam (V9) at the Sads, though at the time I thought I didn’t do it, since I did it from the standup. Seems the sitdown start is quite hard and rarely done.

I had my annual failure on Chollos and Acid Wash, and neither felt any easier (though I was in the midst of Act I at the time).

Curtain

I’m sure I’ll post more juicy bits as I have time/remember them. There’s one new picture on the home page, and I’ll be posting climbing images tonight, so stay tuned.

Oh, and by the way — don’t do a red-eye flight with a six month old. Seb was fine on the flight, but only getting four hours of sleep wrecked him the next day…..

Posted on 6 November 2003