Archive for February, 2008

Mono Lake is about 45 miles north of Bishop. Its a popular spot with nature photographers and I decided to head up there after work to “scout” the area out for future photo shoots. You usually want to shoot pics at Mono Lake either at sunrise or sunset. And I didn’t want to fumble around some unknown path or trail in the darkness, so hence I’d scout it out with some light left in the day.

Leaving Bishop and heading north, US-395 sharply gains about 3,000 feet in altitude over ten miles. You can see Mt. Tom in the distance. Bishop lies about ten miles out, and 3,000 feet below us from this point.

After climbing another 2,000 feet over ten more miles, the landscape transforms remarkably from a dry dusty desert landscape to a winter-wonderland.

But as it turns out, I arrived there with the day’s light fading and getting some excellent light anyway.. and captured those killer shots.

After enjoying a week of brilliant sun and warm temperatures, the sky darkened yesterday and a massive cloud formation spilled over the western mountains and brought with it incredibly strong winds that blew boxes, trash and large branches all over my yard.

Today dawned much much colder and overcast.  The winds had died down however, so I drove up to the Buttermilks to work on a couple projects.  I ran into this group I’d seen at the Happys over the week and joined them for some climbing.  They were working on Soulslinger (V9), which I was more than happy to give a couple cracks, and managed to add on to my success from two days ago and unlock one more move before the top.   With steady progress like this, it won’t be long.

The group decided to move on to to the epic Mandala (V12), one of Bishop’s most famous testpieces.

We were joined by a climber, which I believe was Matt Birch, a strongman from the UK.  He smoothly sent Mandala, making it seem not that all difficult – (the guy in the pic above is not Birch).

We then moved on to another, more recent area classic, Evilution, which was made famous by Jason Kehl’s epic first-ascent to the very top of the Grandpa Peabody  boulder via this route.  Other strong climbers had established this route to the patina on the lip, then dropped off.  You can see the first ascent video of Evilution over at YouTube.

But still, the route is so good, even if you’re not brave (or stupid) enough to try the full route, climbing to the lip is still a classic effort.

An omnibus ticklist since the last report on 2/6. 

• Don’t Box Me In (V1)
• Slight Inducement (V1)
• Bleached Bones (V4)
• Seregenti (V5)
• Buttermilk Stem Sit Start (V4) – this problem eluded me for years and years.  Finally cleared it on my very last attempt of the day.

Worked on Disco Diva, Soul Slinger and Pope’s Prow.  Made progress on all three.