Fire and Flood

After leaving Los Angeles we drove about 250 miles north to a climbing area called the Needles, in Sequoia National Forest in the southern part of the Sierra Nevada mountains. The Needles consist of 150m high granite towers, which have names like "the Witch", "the Sorceror" and "the Magician". The rock is beautiful orange granite streaked with bright yellow lichen. It's at about 8,000 feet, so not too hot in the summer.

The Needles are also famous for the Needles Lookout, which is a building owned by the US Forest Service perched on the top of the biggest tower, the Magician. The purpose of the Lookout is to keep a watch for forest fires, and a Forest Service employee is stationed there during the summer months.

Forest fires are obviously a big issue in this bit of California - while walking in to the Needles we could see a big forest fire not far away, which we were told was covering an area of several thousand acres.

Lots of people had told us that the climbing at the Needles was brilliant. They weren't wrong. The towers are split by beautiful clean cracks which give really striking lines, which look really hard but aren't as hard as they look (like the climbers in this picture, who we think are on a 5.10b called Thin Ice)

We started off by doing a route called Igor Unchained, 5.9, which takes the crack system that splits the headwall in this picture

It was good but hard for 5.9 we thought - or maybe our crack climbing skills are a bit rusty. Unfortunately, Igor Unchained turned out to be the only route which we got done at the Needles, for a reason that we would never have thought of. When we walked in to climb on the second day, there was smoke coming out of the roof of the Lookout. As we passed the stairs at the foot of the Lookout we met a rather agitated young lad, who was the grandson of the woman who worked there. He told us that the roof was on fire, and the fire had been caused by them burning paper in their stove. Helicopters had already dropped seven huge bucketfuls of water on it, and he thought it was under control. He told us we should be OK going climbing. To get to the routes you have to pass right underneath the Lookout, but reassured by what he had said we carried on. A few minutes later we turned back to look at the Lookout, and while we were watching big flames engulfed it - it went up incredibly fast.

At this point we decided to get out of there - we could see that the building would disintegrate, and bits of burning wood would start falling down into the tinder dry forest below. The Lookout was in between us and the path back to where we had parked the van, and we didn't fancy getting cut off. We were influenced by the fact that we had no experience of forest fires, and no way of knowing whether or not it was sensible to stay in the area. We then had a slightly hairy walk back past the burning Lookout (we could hear the propane tanks exploding, and see bits of the building falling down the cliff above us). Once we got to a safe distance we met lots of fire fighters. They were glad that we had decided to leave, and told us that the area would be closed and evacuated. By this time there was smoke coming from the forest below the Lookout, so it looked like the fire might spread. There was no water anywhere close by (it is 3 miles to the nearest road) we couldn't see what the firefighters could do to put it out. There was definitely a certain irony in a fire being started by the person who was supposed to be responsible for keeping a lookout for forest fires.

We decided to leave the Needles, as we were told the area might be closed for several days. Before we left we went to visit a grove of giant Sequoias. They are amazing - it took my breath away to see a living tree that was so big and so old.

Then we drove round to the town of Lone Pine, at the base of Mount Whitney. Whitney is the highest mountain in the Lower 48 States, so is pretty popular. Access is regulated by a permit system, so we were pretty happy to be able to get a permit to walk in and camp overnight for the next day. We planned to walk in, camp, and then do the East Buttress to the summit the next day. This is a classic rock climb, about Hard Severe, and we really wanted to do it. However it wasn't to be - we were thwarted by the elements again. It rained all day the day before we were supposed to walk in, and when we got up the next morning to drive up to the trail head, we came up against this road block

Apparently the road had flooded, and both the road and all the trails up Whitney were closed. They were rescuing people off the mountain by helicopter, and expected it to be closed for at least the rest of the day.

Since then the weather has been bad for the last couple of days - not what we expected in Southern California. We've managed a bit of cragging while we wait for the weather to improve, and today we were reduced to going for a run in the rain - good altitude training as we were running at 10,000 feet! Hopefully we should get another shot at trying Mount Whitney over the next few days.

Ruth

In America now...

We arrived in Los Angeles a few days ago and picked up the van which will be our home for the next 6 months...

Its pretty cool. Its a Dodge Ram 3500 conversion (Ruth has therefore named it 'The Ram'). Its much newer than the Sport Jamboree, and the good thing is that everthing works, even the air-con which is good thing at this time of year in California.

Anyway here are few pictures... more blogs to come asap.

Innes

Back again... this time at the 'Best Crag in the World'?

Ceuse

Rumours of the death of our Blog have been greatly exaggerated...

As our friends will know, Ruth and I both quit our jobs a few weeks ago. All this is due to us having had such a good time when we went on our last trip to the US that we decided that we needed to do it all again. So we are resurrecting this blog to post more photos and news of how we are getting on with our next big trip.

Although we are going back to the US again for 6 months (the limit of our entry visas) because we don't have jobs to go back to this time we decided that we might as well go somewhere else first. We decided to start our trip this time by going climbing at the "Best Crag in the World" - namely Ceuse in France. Not a bad place to start really?

Alpine flowers at the Ceuse campsite

The climbing at Ceuse is at the top of a 1,800 metre high mountain (it actually has a small ski restort on top), and to get to the crag from the campsite involves a 1 hour uphill slog and over 500 metres of ascent up a reasonably steep hillside. So although it's just sport climbing, it actually involves quite a big day out. Especially as it's 30C at the campsite and you have to carry 6 litres of water up the hill to stop yourself dehydrating, on top of everything else you need to take climbing. The actual rock climbing is pretty hard when you get to it as well.

Sector Demi Lune at Ceuse

The first few days at Ceuse proved to be a bit hard on the ego. Ruth and I were definitely in 'office shape' and both the approach walk and climbing seemed way harder than we would have liked. So much so that I failed on my first 'warm up' route, and Ruth didn't want to lead anything for several days as the routes can be quite bold, with big falls being on the cards if you blow the moves in the wrong position. However, the climbing is brilliant and we persevered.

Ceuse enforces a slightly strange routine on a climber as it's too hot to climb in the sun at this time of year, so you must wait for the shade which reaches the crag around 3pm. To accommodate this you adopt the following routine:- pitch your tent in the shade of a big tree and sleep as late as you can each morning; get up have breakfast, then cook your evening meal, and then have lunch; set off at 1:30pm to walk up to the crag; climb as hard as you can in the shade from about 3:00-9:00pm; walk down (often by headtorch in the dark) and eat your pre-cooked evening meal about 11:00pm; and then sleep. Now repeat...

Ruth and I spent nearly 3 weeks at Ceuse, every day hiding a stash of ropes and assorted climbing equipment in the forest just below the crag so we didn't have to carry everything up the hillside the next day. 12 days of climbing out of 18 spent camping at the hillside - 3 days climbing in a row was the most we managed before we were knackered and needed to rest - Nibs will be proud of us ;-)

Despite our slow start we both managed to end up climbing quite well. In fact, Ruth managed to climb (on-sight) her first ever 6C, and also climbed a beautiful 7a+ called 'Noir sur Noir' - which is probably the best route that either of us managed to climb on the crag. Not bad after not wanting to lead anything for the first few days!

I managed to surprise myself on a few things too (probably by finding the few soft touches at Ceuse). Nevertheless, it seems like I might be currently on better form than I was when I last went to the US. I can't complain about that then - and luckily we are not planning to start our US trip at J-Tree, so our egos may remain intact.

After our time at Ceuse, and with just a few days remaining before we had to be back to London for our flights to the US, Ruth and I decided that we had had enough of sport climbing and that we were going to try and climb something a bit bigger in the Alps. The weather was looking shaky anyway. We left Ceuse and drove into the Ecrins...

I won't dwell on this bit of our trip to France. Cold weather swept in from the northwest, which is actually what Ruth and I were looking for, but it came with a huge amount of rain - much more than was forecast. We ended up not even being able to drive to La Berarde, where we wanted to camp for the night, as the rainstorms had caused an impressive landslide of mud and huge boulders that had completely blocked the only road to the village.

We spent an entertaining half-hour watching a very aggressive CAT driver attack the landslide and try to dig out the road and some entombed cars - all under the 'watchful eye' of a foreman (in the grey coat, below) who stood on top of the still active landslide as the CAT driver bull-dosed the rubble away from beneath his feet. Go figure....!

Alpine-style highway maintenance on the road to La Berarde (there is actually a road under this lot)

Ruth and I ended up being comprehensively washed out of the Alps by the weather. Sometimes the extent to which your ambitions are shut-down can be entertaining. This time it was by an impressive alpine storm involving hailstones the size of marbles, which made me glad I was in the valley and not on some peak up high. We left the Alps and returned home via Fontainebleau. The bad weather followed us, and nowhere in France was spared. We managed a few greasy hours at Col de Chien. We are now in London at Sheona's flat packing for our flight to the US, which leaves on Sunday. Best regards to all, Innes