Jen on a V4
Last week, Jen and I packed up the van and headed west on a road trip to Bishop. The plan was to stop in Ibex, which is halfway between Carbondale and Bishop, and climb for a weekend, and then keep rolling.
Road trips are ultimately liberating. The open road, especially the Grand Army of the Republic Highway (aka Route 6) can sometimes be a freeing and adventurous place. It was great to get away from our daily lives for a week, enjoy some sun, have some adventures and climb some rocks.
My hamstring wasn’t feeling great and I was unable to do certain moves. In some cases, I could do all the hard parts, but then, was unable to toe-in on a high foothold to do the easy party. This was frustrating, but I tried not to let it get me down and instead just climb whatever I could, regardless of grade.
Ibex is one of the most remote and badass places I’ve ever been. I was there once five years ago, and I loved it. We rolled up to Ibex late at night in a total blizzard, but by the next morning, the snow had melted off the snow flat. We also ran into about 10 people that we know … randomly. Only in climbing does it so often work out like this. It reminded me of our trip to Kalymnos last summer, when we walked up to the Grande Grotta for the first time, after 40 hours of traveling, and we saw four people we know. “Oh, hey … of course you’re here! Awesome.”
Once we got to Bishop, we were psyched to see some California sun. That quickly changed as intermittent weather moved in that night, and ultimately dictated where we were able to climb each day. I would’ve preferred to go to the Buttermilks exclusively, but instead, due to their higher elevation, we spent one day at Owen’s River Gorge, two days at the Sads and one day at the Buttermilks, which is more bouldering than anyone should be allowed to do in a week’s time.
The Owen’s River Gorge was pretty cool, but not the most inspiring location. It’s industrial in a way, just a drab colorscape. I was appalled by how bad some of the hardware is there. It’s getting quite old. You lower off these terrible open shuts, there are old Kong-Bonatti hangers on many routes, and some of the fixed chains are rusted with really tiny quicklinks in equally bad shape. I wonder why the community there hasn’t stepped it up and replaced some of the mank. Maybe there is no community … I got the sense that people don’t hold a great deal of respect for the Owen’s. Definitely different than Rifle, where there is a strong community of locals who love the place and keep the hardware in (pretty) good nick. Oh well …
We climbed with my good friend Hayden, who is one of the country’s best climbers, no doubt. I love climbing with Hayden because he always insists that I am better than I really am. He’s got a ton of energy and is insatiable with his climbing.
I’ll be writing more about our trip in a future column, so I don’t want to give away too much of the juicy details. Check out the Photos page on this blog for more photos.
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