This past weekend I got invited to Bishop, CA to go climbing with my friends Matt and Tamara and I couldn't pass up an excuse to get out of LA. Saturday was a pretty typical day at major bouldering area. By 10am the place was swarming with climbers. We spent most of our time on the fringe of the main area where everyone was at since we weren't really digging the crowd. Matt kept talking about how we should go to a place that they that knew about it the next day were we wouldn't see another climber all day. A new climbing area that they were some of the few to know about it, that sounded like my kind of place.
When we got together Sunday morning I jumped in their van for the ride out the the boulders and it wasn't till we got half way out there that I realized I was riding in the back of a van with blacked out windows on my way to a somewhat secret area and that kind of added to the excitement. When we got there you could see some of the boulders around the parking area had chalk on them but as we headed up the canyon we were walking past 10-15 ft tall boulders that were completely untouched. Every time we would see something that looked really cool Matt kept pushing for us to continue on to the top where he thought the climbing would be even better, this went on for at least an hour till we reached an area I would like to call "The Rock Garden" where the landings were flat and sandy and the boulders were tall.
This was one of the first things that caught our attention in "The Rock Garden" area, when we first saw it I would have guessed it to be about 20ft tall but when we got closer it was more in the realm of 40ft. While it is visually cool it didn't look like there was much for climbing on it.
Now this boulder on the other hand was dubbed the "Heller" boulder by Tamara since I had been the one to point it out when we first entered the Garden area. There are at least 5 problems on this one boulder and Matt is sending the first one in this image.
Matt on top of the "Heller" boulder which sits in the middle of the Garden area and comes in at around 20ft tall.
Tamara working on a project in an area we called "Easter Island". From what Matt and Tamara told me the rock here is a lot like what you would find in Hueco Tanks but everything here needs a lot of cleaning since about 98% of the area has never been climbed.
This is the "Easter Island" area, we named it that since the boulders were all kind of leaning the same way and kind of shaped like the heads on Easter Island, its kind of hard to tell in this photo though.Out of all of my climbing adventures I have had over the years this one I think will stand out the most since it was the first time I had ever been to such a virgin area. I am really looking forward to making it back out here with Tamara and Matt to work on establishing this area.
For another take on this adventure check out Tamara Hastie's blog
