Bishop and Death Valley
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Bishop, February 16th-17th, 2007
I guess Sarah initiated this trip to Bishop, to get some skiing, bouldering, climbing, and hot springs in over President's Weekend. Stefan and I joined late this time. Actually we were a bit skeptical. Wouldn't it be either too warm for skiing or too cold for climbing? But then we met this guy in Planet Granite's sauna. He was nice and fun telling us he can't do more than six pullups but boulders V10s. He's been to Bishop and said the place is totally amazing. He's right!
Stefan got a sweet Volkswagen van, TDI with four-wheel and "outdoor package". The car is really cool, but it was even more fun because constantly met random guys appreciating the car. Some got really excited about it! We agreed to pick up David on our way there, so we drove down to his cabin in whereeveritwas, stayed the night there and got up early the next day. David is a nice guy. He could use a new pack, though. We arrived at Bishop around noon. We tried to find the others, checked out a closed campsite and drove on the first dirt roads. In Germany there are no dirt roads, so Stefan and I found it amazing that these dirt trails, not even roads, made it even to the van's GPS! Also it's funny nobody else gets excited about it. At some point David announced "Yeah, guess I need to take a dump." We had smelled it coming pretty much since we left, but the way he then delivered took us by surprise anyway. "Ermm, you guys happen to have some soap?" Eventually we drove over to the Buttermilks, that's where we happened to run into the others. They were having fun bouldering!
David soon took off skiing, all alone by himself, and Stefan and I drove to Owen's River Gorge canyon to start climbing. We found the canyon right away, but actually getting into it was not so easy. The gully where the path runs in was still covered with ice and snow, which was a good thing because it probably the only thing holding all the loose rock in place. The decent was sketch, we put on our helmets. We wanted to climb the Great Wall of China, but failed to find it because we crossed the river too early. So we just climbed something we found, which wasn't even in our guidebook, but looked easy enough, 5.7ish. Later another party came over and we traded topropes on some 5.10b stuff.
We had fun at the camp fire, listening to all the stories from what everyone had done the day. But soon stories changed to more serious topics, norwegian energy politics for instance. I guess that's just what happens when you put together a group of well educated people (which climbers for some reason are) from all over the world mostly europe. The night was freezing cold. You could tell, if anything, from the fact the soft muddy ground had become rock hard again.
The next day Stefan and I found the Great Wall and did a couple of easy sport routes. We were so relaxed! Nothing could bother us. The plan was to meet up with the others in the hot spring bath tub. We had rough directions, drive up the highway for 20 miles, turn right at the green church, pass four cattle crossings and you are there. But we messed it up. We thought a cattle crossing was something like a fence for some reason, so we counted fences... The we saw cars parked at the side of the road and some guys and asked them. They said yeah, it's here. You gotta walk for a mile through the snow. Wrong. We walked at least two miles, it was strenuous in the snow, we didn't find any springs. It got dark and we turned around. In the dark two guys on a snow mobile passed us, they said the springs would have been one mile further down. Also they told us what cattle crossings are. We got back to the car to give it one last shot and after ten minutes of driving we arrived at the right spot! So finally we relaxed in the bath tub! Too bad we didn't bring some beers like the other folks there... The night was warmer than the last one.
Death Valley, President's Day, February 18th, 2007
On President's Day Stefan and I drove to Death Valley. It was a kinda spontaneous idea, and luckily we figured out the logistics to get everyone and everyone's gear back to the bay area. Getting there was easy, driving through wide and weird landscapes. All of a sudden you are there! We stopped a the sand dunes and had fun goofing around. Stefan took his snowboard up a dune but didn't want to ride it. The sand is amazing. Super fine! It's really fun to walk bare foot. Stefan: Hatschi. Mo: Staubig hier, was? Stefan: (guckt nach links) Stefan: (guckt nach rechts) Stefan: Boah Alter, deine Sprueche! (lacht sich schlapp) Then we drove to Badwater, the lowest point in the US. I really liked the idea of celebrating President's Day at the lowest point of the US, given the current President. But nobody else got the joke. I suppose it's non-american humor! Badwater is not too exciting actually.
So we went on to see Devil's Golf Course. It's the salty remnants of an prehistorical lake. At first sight it looks like rocks, but it's all salt! The structures are really weird, and super hard and razor sharp. You better don't fall while walking around! Good times we were in our flip flops. We ran into a bunch of boy scouts, they even brought golf drivers, so we took the obvious pictures... We drove the Artist's Way which offers rocks in all colors, checked it out from the car of course. Then we wanted to walk the Golden Canyon, but there was an ambulance blocking the entrance. An old lady had fallen and her arm or leg was broken.
I had spotted a ghost town on the map we had, Leadfield. It even appeared on the second map we had, but it didn't show up in the GPS. We checked the time and decided to do the little extra miles! We didn't know it was 50 miles rough dirt road... Good times we had the outdoor package on the van! It got so bad we couldn't even have turned around if anything had happened because there just wasn't enough space! We met two motorcyclists and chatted a little and let them pass. Then we got to Leadfield. It was a bit disappointing actually, all there was left was one metal sheet house and a bedframe. And thousands of empty food cans. Looked like the town died when no cans were left. We got going again, only to find one of the motorcyclists lying down in a curve. The guy was ok, maybe a bit dizzy. We helped him lifting the bike. The road turned into an impressive canyon which was getting really thin at times but the van fit through. We emerged from the canyon right when the sun set.
We drove all the way back to the bay area. The most exciting thing was finding gas stations who would sell diesel to cars! We made it with about two gallons left in the tank. We got back at 1:30am. The next day I had to give a talk which I hadn't prepared yet, but that's just fine. It was a great trip!
