Bouncing Marty

I love the Sierra Nevada Mountains. One of the best parts of living in Vegas for me is that it cuts the drive time to the Owens Valley in half, compared to what I used to do from San Diego.

Last year Mollie and I took a fun backpacking trip with Shane, Jayna, Cara and Landry, and since then, we’ve been trying to put together another weekend of similar backcountry adventure. We had a few things that kept us occupied in the past couple months (buying a house, getting married, traveling, getting a dog, mowing the lawn, being domestic…you get the point), so when we both realized that Memorial Day was a 3 day weekend, and we both had nothing going on, we knew we had to head to the mountains.

We loaded heavy, and our destination of choice was the Humphrey’s Basin in the Sierra Nevada’s, outside of Bishop, CA. The plan was to climb up as high as we’d like, eventually jump over Piute Pass, and spend the three days exploring the amazing valley beyond. I had been here last year with the guys on what we affectionately called the ‘Death March’, and the area was one I knew I’d want to return to. Pictures can be found on Lando’s site HERE.

We also had a new addition with us, our new pup Nyah. We have only had her for two months now, but she’s already become a big part of our little family. We were stoked to have her packing along with us. Her energy is amazing, and she didn’t seem to have any issues with the altitude as she sprinted all over the hillsides, as we trudged up the trail towards the pass.

We climbed until the early evening, and eventually reached Piute Lake, a scerene and quiet spot surrounded by Sierra granite. Being the early season still, there was a lot of water present; all the lakes were overflowing and the waterfalls plunging. Plenty of snow drifts in the shady spots as well. We set up camp for the evening at the end of the lake, with a sweet view down the valley.

I was having a particularly tough time with the altitude on this trip for some reason. A big searing headache along with some nausea thrown in made my first evening pretty high on the misery scale. Mollie meanwhile, appears to not be affected by altitude one little bit…what a punk. I slept off my headache, and awoke the next morning feeling fairly good, all things considered. We had some breakfast, and decided to explore the basin a bit more. As we hiked up towards the pass, the trail became more and more obscured by big snow drifts, and overflowing streams and valleys. When we got high enough to see the pass itself, it was clearly obscured by a big drift, that didn’t look too appealing. (You can actually see it in the above picture, its the saddle covered in snow at the horizon.) We conceded to stay inside the valley, and save the Humphrey’s Basin for another day.

We explored the lakes and granite shelf systems for a few hours, then headed back to camp. I was still early afternoon, and we decided we’d had enough of the basin. Without being able to explore further, the Call of good mexican food, down in Bishop, was just too strong to resist. We packed up, and headed for town, a day earlier than scheduled. After a big meal of enchiladas and chile colorado at Amigo’s, we took the pleasant drive back over the White Mountains, and across the desert back to Vegas.

(Our new dishwasher!)

Saturday Brian Frandsen and I headed out for a liesurely day of climbing. Mollie and I had plans for the evening that required me to be home by the afternoon, so we headed for Beulah’s Book, a highly rated 5.9 with a 5.8 bolted variation in Oak Creek Canyon.

We broke the four pitches up in half, with Brian taking the first two pitches, and me the second set. The first pitch was an interesting section with lots of options, and some fun chimney moves. Soon Brian was leading up into the second pitch, which is the crux and ‘classic’ section of the climb. The above picture shows Brian on the exposed 5.8 variation. The chimney in the shadow is the classic route, but it looked too stout for us at the moment. We decided to head to the well protected face instead. It was classic fun Redrocks face climbing.

The third pitch was a 5.5ish face climb, and my first lead of the day. I took a fall, breaking off some loose holds about half way up the pitch that made things rather ‘exciting’, but we were both just fine, and I finished the pitch without problems. Brian took the next pitch for me, and we topped out the climb by the early afternoon.

This climb was fun, but I didn’t feel like it was worthy of the high ratings that the guide books give it. The second pitch is very cool, and the chimney section looked to be full of awesome moves, but there is just too much mediocre face climbing surrounding it to make it worthwhile.

Never the less, it was still a great day climbing in Redrocks. This is probably the last climb I’ll get to do this season without having to worry about the desert heat…here comes the summer time. Good to climb with Brian Frandsen too…we hadn’t tied in together in far too long.

Not too long ago Derek posted some old pics from his past that got me thinking. There once was a time in my life when I looked a little like this.

Back when I wore a hard hat all day, every day, it was tough to keep it under control at work. The easy solution was to put it into corn rows. They only stayed in for about a week, but man it was nice to have the shag up for a while.

I’ve been thinking about growing back the fro’. Do you think I’d still be taken seriously?