Wednesday, July 27, 2005

California Road Trip

Thomas, Didier and myself took a short road trip across central California. We started out in Monterey (aquarium) and camped in Big Sur. The next day, we drove down the coast on Hwy 1 (where we saw some elephant seals) and headed inwards to Death Valley, were the temperature was a cool 122 deg F (50 deg C) at 7h30PM! We spent the night sleeping in wet clothes to try to control our body temperature, as the thermometer never went below 105 deg F (40 deg C) during the night. The next stop was Yosemite National Park where we hiked from Tenaya Lake into the Valley, climbing Cloud's Rest and Half Dome on the way. During our 2-day trip, we had to fight off ferocious mosquitoes, set up a bivouac under a rock (we deemed our tent flys superfluous, a thunderstorm taught us we were wrong...) and although we were prepared to fight off bears with our camping sporks, we did not see any, to the great disapointment of the belgian contingent. In the Valley we had arranged to meet up with Goeric who drove in from the Bay Area. Our plan was to get a wilderness permit to climb Mount Sill . We hiked the approach on Friday and set up our base camp at 10100 ft (3030 m). The next day we got up at 4AM and headed for the summit. The climb was mostly rock-scrambling and some snow-hiking up to ~13,000 ft. Then the serious climbing began: 50 meters roped climbing, followed by 5 "real" pitches to the top at 14,153 feet (4,314 meters). The face of the Mount Sill is VERY steep, and we enjoyed some rather airy moves, ratings range from 5.7 to 5.9 (French equ. 5-6a) depending on the logs you read but most of the climb is moderately easy and offers sufficient protection, the hardest thing is to forget about the void beneath you and dealing with the effects of high altitude.
We returned to our base camp at 6h30PM. In the meantime, a storm had moved in and the 14+ hour climb had taken its toll on me. I collapsed into my sleeping bag immediately upon reaching my tent, only to wake up the next morning for the descent. The hike out was easy, although we got lost several times, and the mosquitoes were as aggressive as ever. The drive back through Yosemite was uneventful, except for a speeding ticket for Goeric, and an all-American Applebee's experience that did not suit our Belgian friend's digestive system too well (or was it the stop at Soda Springs to taste the naturally carbonated water). I am sure Goeric will put up pictures as well, so go check out his post.

Back to Blogging

I have not been very consistent with this blog since May. It's not that nothing happened, it's just that we were too busy to report. After 4 weeks in Germany (Cedric) we moved to San Francisco on July 20th, and enjoyed the company of many visitors: Maureen's brother (2 weeks), Kenneth & Anne (1 week) and Thomas & Didier (2 weeks). We spent some time in San diego on the Spriggs' boat , went oyster-grilling and kayaking in Point Reyes and generally took our role as a tour guide very seriously.