Yosemite Trip

This last weekend Jen and I went up to Yosemite Valley to meet up with Matt Upton, who is in San Francisco going to law school.  We did some climbing, and some walking around, and some checking stuff out, and a lot of relaxing.  I had Friday off of work, so we left after work on Thursday, and got up to the valley around 11 pm.  It was really nice to get there Thursday night, because that left us with two full days with no traveling.  It was a mini vacation.  The weather was absolutely perfect, 40's at night, 70's in the day.  

We stayed in Curry Village because all the campgrounds were full, and I didn't want to hassle with camp 4, setting up a tent a midnight and all, if we could even get in.  Curry Village is a bit expensive for what it is, but it was a fun throwback to an older time (turn of the last century) when American's didn't all own RV's and actually liked to do things like hiking.  

We didn't do a huge amount of climbing, a little bit each day, but it was fantastic.  Of course, if you don't like climbing in Yosemite, you probably don't like climbing.  We did some easy stuff,  and some harder stuff with the help of Matt's friend Tim's leading skills.  The climbing really reinvigorated my enthusiasm about climbing.  I'd been a little down on climbing lately because of what I see as crappy (and mostly sport) climbing in the immediate LA area.  I'm just spoiled because it's not Boulder.  But now I'm psyched to cruise down to Joshua Tree for some more great cracks now that the weather is cooling off down there.  

We also saw some wildlife up there.  On the walk up to one of the climbs, I wasn't watching where I was going and almost tripped over a big buck that was laying down at the base of the cliff.  Ten minutes later while we were hanging out, a bear cruised past!  Neither of them gave us any trouble, but it was pretty exciting!

Overall, the trip was a great little mini-vacation from the LA area.  It felt like we were gone for a long time, and it was really relaxing.  I posted some pictures on Picasa, follow the link on the right to see them.