Road Trip!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Our final week in Whistler was awesome…..we were able to get out on the bikes every day, both on the xc trails and in the bike park.

 We even cycled up 11 km and 1100m of height gain to reach the snow-line of the first new snow of the year.

The temperature had dropped noticeably from a couple of weeks previously, so we were ready to head south and find some sunshine and warmer weather!

After an epic sorting of kit to decide what we needed with us and what could be stored, the car was eventually packed and ready to hit the road. It felt strange to be leaving Chalet Edelweiss and all the guys from Ticket2Ride who we’d spent the last 2 months living with, and like the first part of our trip was at an end. Pete and Mark both kindly offered to store some of our boxes of kit and as they’ll be around over the Winter we’ll hopefully be able to catch up with them for some winter adventures J.

The drive down past Vancouver and across the border was wet and one of those days where you don’t mind being sat in a car as it’s too grim outside to think of doing anything else! The border crossing was surprisingly straightforward and quick, and didn’t even involve a grilling as to why we were entering the US. (I did have to supress my laughter as I filled in the form asking whether I intended to assassinate the President or become involved in terrorist activities, or whether I had been involved in Neo-nazi activity between the years of 1939 and 1945…..do they really think anyone will answer yes to those questions ???!!!If only catching the bad guys was as simple as getting them to fill in a questionnaire!) Gareth was more amused by the size of some of the border guards….definitely fitting the stereotype of an American cop….they might not have been able to chase down criminals but they all had guns so I guess they reasoned they could just shoot anyone trying to run away!

Anyway, the drive continued, over the wet and wild Snoqualmie Pass through the northern Cascades and into the drier, fruit and wine producing area of southern central Washington, and the Yakima River Valley.

We had set off with no real idea of where we would stop for our first night, so needless to say, when we came across a quiet, scenic and free campsite on the banks of the river, complete with picnic tables and fire pits, we were pretty happy! It was a clear and cold night, and the sky was absolutely filled with stars. I love camping in places where there is so little light pollution that you can see as many stars as this, probably because there is nowhere in the UK where you can find a sky like this. There were loads of shooting stars, and I could have spent the whole night sat by the fire just watching the sky and thinking how amazing it is that the light you see from distant stars actually left that star billions of years ago, and how small and insignificant we are when you start to think about the size of the universe…….(and no I hadn’t been smoking any illegal substances! Skies like that just make you sit and think a lot!)

The next morning we were back on the road, heading down to the Columbia River Gorge and the Washington Oregon state border. Just over the (huge) river is the town of Hood River, home to some great Mountain Biking, and a bike ride seemed like a good opportunity to stretch the legs after a day and a half’s driving. The trails here are fast and flowy, not particularly technical like the riding in B.C, but a lot of fun all the same! It was great to be back on dusty trails and riding in the sun, whooping round switchback corners and sliding down steep dusty chutes J

From here it was south again over a wet and cloudy Mount Hood (home to Timberline lodge where The Shining was filmed…..it certainly felt like the setting to a horror film with the low cloud drifting through all the trees!). Our second night camping wasn’t quite so idyllic as the first, as we found that most of the campsites near our destination of Bend were catered for RVs, with prices to match, and there was nowhere we could find to pitch our tent away from a campsite either. Eventually we came across a spot in the town of Sisters, and with hot showers and a fire pit, it wasn’t too bad J

We had intended to do some biking around Bend, but after discovering that Smith Rock, one of the most famous climbing areas in America was only 10 miles away, and the sun was out, it seemed rude not to go climbing! 

Despite feeling weak, my thumb was fine and we managed to climb several great routes, enough to convince us to spend another day there! The rock at Smith is Volcanic Tuff, but seems similar to climbing on limestone, with lots of sharp edges and pockets. There are thousands of routes there and every one of the routes we did was fantastic, it’s definitely an area to go back to!

There is an excellent cheap climber’s campsite 10 minutes walk from some of the most popular climbing areas, (full of lots of climbers who seem to have been living there for months!) which is a great place to meet people and find info on routes to do. Unfortunately, Gareth’s plan of cycling round to the far side of the rock to find a different climbing area back-fired on our second day, as the weight of a heavy climbing rucksack on his back affected his balance and he fell off his bike, taking a big chunk of skin off the end of his left thumb (what is it with left thumb injuries this year?!). Despite feeling lightheaded at the site of the blood initially, we managed to patch it up enough for him to be able to climb again, but I think he gained a small glimpse of how difficult it is to do things without using your thumb!

After Smith, we headed West to the Oregon coast for the drive south, spending the first (wet and windy!) night in the Oregon Dunes. This is a 50 mile long stretch of coast line with up to 500ft white sandy dunes between the highway and the ocean. It is a beautiful and amazing area but unfortunately spoilt by the fact that only a few small sections are reserved for hiking, and the rest is open access for motorbikes and jeeps to tear up and down L

From here the drive along the southern Oregon and Northern Californian coast was incredible. It took us ages as we kept stopping at all the amazing viewpoints and beaches!

We ended up camping at a place called Flint ridge, right on the edge of the ocean with the sound of waves crashing beneath us all night. Being right on the West coast meant we were also treated to a pretty spectacular sunset.

The following stretch of coast down to San Francisco takes you through Redwood National park, home to some of the world’s biggest and tallest trees, and we (well, Gareth) couldn’t resist the once in a lifetime opportunity to drive through a tree! We only just fit through the Chandelier tree, which is 2400 years old and 21ft in diameter, and that’s not anywhere near the biggest tree there!

Next stop was San Francisco, where after a couple of hours of unsuccessfully searching for a campsite on the outskirts of the city, we decided to treat ourselves and splash out on a dodgy cheap motel for a couple of nights….luxury J. This was in Sausalito on the opposite side of the Golden Gate Bridge to the city, so we were able to cycle across the bridge the next morning. As is apparently common, it was really foggy until mid morning, at which point the fog lifted and the sun came out.

It couldn’t have been a better day for cycling round and seeing the sights, and we were lucky enough to be there on the weekend of the annual “Fleet Week”, where the US forces are celebrated with all the navy warships coming across the bay, and a huge airshow with the Blue Angels (US equivalent of the Red Arrows) and lots of different fighter jets. The city was packed, but there was a great atmosphere, and we had a fantastic day just being there and soaking it all up.

From San Francisco we drove East to our current destination, Yosemite. There aren’t really any words that can do to justice to describing Yosemite, quite simply, it rocks! It’s a stunning place even to a non-climber, but when you have spent years reading books describing epic ascents, learning about the history of climbing in the valley, and looking at amazing pictures of the climbs there, it holds a special place in your heart, even if you have never been! There is a ridiculous system of getting onto the climber’s campsite, Camp Four, involving queuing up for a place at 5.30am, but actually this is a good place to meet people and share road-trip stories and aspirations of routes you want to climb. Camp Four is the ultimate climber’s campsite. There are famous boulder problems within the site, and you are surrounded by towering granite cliffs, and dozens of friendly climbers from all over the world. It has soon started to feel like home, and we’ve only been here a week!

The climbing in Yosemite is brilliant, but brutal, and certainly not a place to come to boost your ego, as all the climbs are hard in one way or another. Once you get over this fact though, there are more than enough routes to last a lifetime!

 We’ve been steadily ticking our way through classic routes, and planning for a Big Wall route sometime next week (Big Wall = sleeping on the route, hauling gear up with you, general misery and suffering until afterwards when you’re celebrating your success with a cold beer and your feet on solid ground!)

My favourite day so far was yesterday, when we got up at the stupidly early time of 3.30am to go and climb a route on Half Dome called Snake Dyke. There is a loooong walk-in involving many miles and several thousand feet of elevation gain, and lots of bushwacking through shrubs that rip your legs to shreds. But it is worth it for the route. It is without a doubt one of the best routes I have ever done, climbing an amazing dyke that runs up the southwest slabby face of Half Dome. The climbing is fun and not hard, but on one of the pitches you climb 70 feet from the belay, clip one bolt for protection, and then climb another 80 feet to the next belay without any gear. Anyone who climbs will know how scary that is, and for anyone who doesn’t, well it basically means if you fall off you will go a loooong way, and that thought plays on your mind the whole time you are climbing. Despite most of the pitches being like this, the route is awesome J

After you finish the route there are endless calf-pumping slabs to walk up to reach the summit at 8860ft, and then the scariest part of the day, the descent down the cables. Basically this involves grabbing onto thick cables and walking your feet down a steep slippery wall for what feels like forever. It is incredible that anybody can use these cables given how potentially dangerous a situation you are in, and thousands of walkers do every year. It is also amazing that more people are not killed on them, give me climbing any day, it is way safer!

After the traumatic experience of the cables it’s another long but beautiful walk down to the valley past several massive waterfalls, and hundreds of huge pine cones beneath the towering trees. All in all a long but rewarding day.

So that’s what we’ve been up to in the last few weeks, hopefully we can find some more wifi soon and update the blog with the next part of our adventure J