Owens River Gorge

Since my last post I am proud to say that Miles and I both sent Iron Man. We spent the day in town taking care of errands and then went to the Buttermilks in the evening and sent the thing. It felt great to send it after three days of work.

The next three days we spent in Owens River Gorge with old friends and new. The first day we climbed with Roxy who was in the area for a few days and two guys from Tahoe; Andrew and Borja. We got on a ton of great climbs. Unfortunitely, I don't have the guide book with me so I can't tell you the names, but oh well. I started out the first day by leading a cool 11a crack that kicked my butt. After that we went to another area and climbed a bunch of climbs between 5.9 and 5.10c. My highlight was onsighting the 10c.

Roxy on a 10a

A girl from New Zealand on the 10c

The next day we started out the day by going to the Eldorado roof. All of the climbs there are 5.12 or harder. I tried to hop on a 12a and got destroyed. I made it a few bolts up and took some falls before deciding that I didn't want everyone to have to wait all day for me to get up the thing. From there we went to another wall and got on a bunch of great climbs. The one that I enjoyed the most was a super thin crimpy climb that went at 11a. I'm not the best at thin balancy climbs and I've been working on getting better at them. Turns out that I was able to onsight the thing, my first 11 at the gorge. Unfortunitely, I don't have any pictures from this day.

Our third day was one of the best days that I've had sport climbing in a long time. At the beginging of the day I was tired and not really feeling it, but I figured that once I started to climb I would calm down and boy was I right. The first climb that I got on was a beautiful 10a that I onsighted. Next I got on an incredible looking 11b and almost onsighted it. I made it through the crux throw and fell above on a balancy move. After the fall I tried a different sequence and sent the rest clean. From here we went to another wall and I onsighted a two 10a's, a 10b, an 11a and almost an 11b. I was able to climb the 11b clean, but accidentally stood on a bolt, bummer. It was an incredible day. Every climb was awesome.

Roxy on a 10a. I climbed the 10a to the right of this one. It follows the crack.

Miles following the first 11b of the day

A 10a chimney that turns into a slippery lieback

Roxy following the 10b, I also climbed the 10a crack to the left

Roxy redpointing the 11a lieback

The 11b goes up the middle of the face

Roxy & Borja at the end of the day

After three days we decided to take a rest day. Currently we are hanging out in Mammoth Lakes and are planning on heading to check out some hot springs in the evening. I think that Miles and I are going to make the trek to Yosemite tomarrow and get there real early the next morning so that we can get a spot at camp 4. I can't wait to climb in the Valley. I actually just bought a haul bag and now I have everything that I need to climb a big wall. It's going down. Expect a good post in a week or two from the Valley.

Also, check out Miles' website. He has some absolutely incredible shots from the last few days.