The Red River Gorge

I was shocked to discover that it had been a month since we last posted anything.  I guess time flies when you're having fun.  We've spent most of the last month in the Red River Gorge, Kentucky.  This was one of the places that we were most excited about going to before we came out to the States, as we'd spent quite a lot of the few months before we left looking at the very inspiring guidebook.  The climbing certainly didn't disappoint.  It is a huge area, with miles and miles of sandstone cliffs.  Some of these have been developed, but there is a lot more which hasn't.  The climbing is generally steep on good holds - the climbs don't have many hard moves, the difficulty is keeping going until the top, fighting the legendary Red River Gorge pump.

Shady Grove, a typical Red River Gorge crag

Me on a typically steep 11a called Little Turtle.  This is about the only photo we have of either of us climbing in the Red - it's difficult to get photos when there are only two of you, as you are either climbing or belaying.  This photo was taken by another climber who we got talking to.

The most famous crag is called the Motherlode.  This is about the closest you could get to an outdoor climbing wall.  It has lots and lots of steep, bolted climbs, right next to each other, above a flat sandy base.  When we arrived all of the routes had fixed chain quickdraws.  It also stays dry in the rain, which is just as well as it seems to rain quite a lot in Kentucky.  Strangely enough the area that the Motherlode has some oil reserves, so occasionally you come across very small oil wells, and there is a funny smell of methane in the air. 

The Motherlode

Unfortunately the Motherlode is pretty popular, meaning that it can get crowded.  This has led to tension between so called "local" climbers and visiting climbers, with the locals viewing it as their crag and resenting the crowds.  The irony is that the locals aren't really locals in the sense of being born and bred there, they are just climbers who have moved to live in the area to be near the climbing.  While we were there, some local climbers came and removed all of the fixed quickdraws, apparently to try and keep the crowds away.  I'm sure this will be counter productive, as people will just leave their own quickdraws on the routes which will then deteriorate and become dangerous.  What happened is symptomatic of a slightly unfriendly atmosphere at some of the crags, the first time we had come across this in America.

Kentucky is also very different from the Western states such as California or Colorado.  As far as I could see it seemed to be a lot poorer and more deprived.  Going into a grocery store near to where we were staying was a fairly depressing experience, as there wasn't much on the shelves.  The towns don't have very many chain stores, but do have a lot of pawn shops.  Obesity rates seem to be even higher than back West.  Just going for a walk can be a fairly frightening experience - it seems to be fairly common for people to have a couple of large dogs (usually Rottweilers) outside their houses which are not chained up.  These dogs come hurtling towards you as you go by, and you just have to hope that they don't attack you.

The other thing that's different about the Red River Gorge is that it is in the middle of an enormous deciduous forest.  Most of the crags are hidden away and you don't see them until you get close to them.  At this time of year, the colours of the trees are beautiful.

Innes reached a significant milestone while we were there: his first 13a.  This was a route called Convicted at the Motherlode.  He fell off the crux, which was right at the top, more than 10 times over a period of several days before he succeeded.  He was very pleased to get it.  Sadly I didn't manage to get my first 12b, partly because I injured my wrist slightly and couldn't climb hard for the last week that we were there.  Once Innes had got Convicted, we decided to leave the Red.  There was still a lot of climbing we wanted to do, but we felt ready for a change of scene.  We were also missing the bright sunshine and low humidity of the West, as it had started to get a bit cold and rainy in Kentucky.

We decided to head back to Utah, where we plan to do some bouldering at a place called Joe's Valley, and also climb some desert towers.  On the way we have stopped off again at Rifle, where we were in September.  Here we did a couple of days' climbing and celebrated Innes' birthday.  It's pretty cold - last night there was a heavy frost, and the condensation on the inside of the van windows was frozen.  So we're about to set off for the desert, where we hope it will be warmer.

Best wishes

Ruth

Longs Peak

We left Rifle just over a week ago. We could have stayed, but we were getting pretty tired. We had a successful last day when we both managed to send our projects so we thought we’d better leave before we acquired any new projects (as there has been a request for some actual numbers, I will tell you that Innes’ project was 12d and mine was 12a). We treated ourselves to a slap up meal in a nearby town, and got drunk for the first time on this trip (on two pints of beer – either it was very strong or we’re not used to drinking anymore!).


Then we headed east to Rocky Mountain National Park, where we planned to have a go at climbing Longs Peak, 14,259 feet. Longs Peak is famous for a sheer rock face on its eastern side called “the Diamond”, which has lots of hard climbs on it. We started by thinking that we might do something on the Diamond, but as we realised how cold it was getting high up, we quickly became less ambitious. In fact, the day before we arrived at Longs Peak a big storm had blown in, and 11 inches of fresh snow had fallen down to a level of 11,000 feet. It really felt like autumn. So we decided that we’d just go up the easiest way, which is called the Keyhole Route. In summer conditions this just involves a bit of scrambling and some exposure, but with snow and ice we thought it would be quite a lot more difficult.

We went to the Ranger station at the bottom of Longs Peak to get a weather forecast and some more information. Here we met a ranger called Bob, who was very pleased when we told him that we were British as he had spent three very happy years living in Chester. He offered us a place to stay for the night in an empty cabin next to his house. For once we got over our British reserve and politeness and accepted. We thought when he said cabin it would be fairly rudimentary, but it turned out to be luxurious – with a hot shower, a large double bed, comfy sofas and heating.

This is the outside of the cabin

And this is the bed!
Unfortunately we didn’t have much time to enjoy the luxury, as we had to get up at 3.30am for our attempt on Longs Peak. We spent the first couple of hours walking uphill in the dark, but were rewarded by a beautiful sunrise. Longs Peak is the last mountain before the Great Plains start to the east, so the sun comes up over a totally flat horizon.

Sunrise on the Diamond, East face of Longs Peak

It was very cold, about -5 degrees, with significant windchill. For some reason it reminded us both of walking in to the Northern Corries in the Cairngorms in winter – something to do with the shape of the mountains and the fact that we started from below the snowline.

It was cold – me at 13,000 feet

Once above the snowline the route traversed some exposed ledges and then went up a snow gully. It wasn’t difficult but we were glad to have our ice axes and crampons. We met a bloke who not only had no ice axe or crampons, but was also wearing trainers. Luckily he had seen sense and he had decided to turn back when we met him, but he seemed to be planning to descend the whole mountain on his bum.

Me in snow gully

Now Longs Peak is pretty high – high enough that the altitude can make you ill. I knew it was a bit of a gamble to try and climb it without doing anything to acclimatise first. Unfortunately the gamble didn’t pay off for me. At about 14,000 feet, very close to the summit, I started to feel ill and decided to stop. I felt very dizzy and not quite in control of my legs, so was afraid that I would slip crossing the next section of exposed ledges. I waited while Innes carried on to the summit, which was only about 10 minutes further on. I was a bit annoyed with myself later for giving up, because of course as soon as we started going down I felt fine. Then Innes showed me this photo of me that he’d taken at the point where I’d decided to stop, and I thought it had probably been the right call – I looked pretty ill. One thing I’ve learnt on this trip is that I do acclimatise quite slowly, certainly compared to Innes.

Sick Ruth (I wasn't even aware that Innes was taking the photo)

The next day we set off east again. Our destination was the Red River Gorge in Kentucky. To get there we had to drive across Eastern Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois and Indiana. It was 1,300 miles and it took us 3 days. My god it was boring, especially Kansas. Kansas is totally flat, and there is mile upon mile of cornfields, plus another crop that we couldn't identify.  There aren't many towns, but the motorway has petrol stations, fast food restaurants and (curiously) porn shops at fairly regular intervals.  It got less monotonous as we got further east, as the country got hillier and more fertile, so more densely populated.  However I think that the most interesting thing that happened in the whole three days was crossing the Mississippi River, which is enormous.

Now we’re in Kentucky, where we are staying at a very nice campsite called the Lago Linda Hideaway, run by a woman from Liverpool. It’s very different to the West. The weather is much milder and more temperate, and it’s greener and lusher with more trees. This bit of Kentucky reminds me a bit of the wooded parts of Southern England, except that here the forests are much more extensive.

We’ve done three days climbing in the Red River Gorge so far, and are having a rest today. More soon on what it’s like – what we’ve learnt so far is that the climbing is steep!

This is where you normally end up when lowering off from routes here

Best wishes

Ruth

Utah into Colorado

Having left the High Sierra for something a little more laid back, the first place we stopped off was Maple Canyon, a little south of Salt Lake City.  We had been to Maple Canyon before as it was the last venue that we visited before flying home at the end of our last trip to North America, so it was interesting to go back to a venue that we knew, and try some of the climbs that we had done before.

Ruth and I both left Maple Canyon last year with 'unfinished business', i.e. routes which we had tried to climb previously, but were unable to get up without falling off.  We were both dead chuffed to get up our respective routes very quickly, and quite easily this time.  This can only mean one of two things: a) we are both climbing better than we were at the end of our last trip, or; b) we were both completely knackered at the end of our last trip, and should have just gone home!

Maple Canyon

Maple Canyon was a perfect antidote to climbing in the Sierras.  No days of approach marching carrying rucksacs here; at Maple we could park the van up within a few feet of the crags, and stroll over to do some climbing after breakfast.  So we parked up and did just that for several days.

Rain doesn't stop play at Maple Canyon - climbing at the Pipeline during an afternoon thunderstorm.

We would have stayed at Maple Canyon for quite a while, except I managed to fall off and bruise my arm in the process... but that's a story for another time.  As an alternative we decided to do some proper tourism and joined the queues to enter the Arches National Park, which was only a few hours drive away (which is the equivalent to 'just around the corner' in America).

The desert scenery in Arches is superb and made both of us want to come back and spend more time in the Utah desert.  However, if we come back it is going to have to be much cooler.  It was 37C when we were there, and that is way too hot for Ruth and I.  It was too hot for us to stay long, and I seem to remember our tour ending by Ruth and I lying flaked out in the back of the van and saying "let's go and see this bloody arch and get out of here". 

State symbol of Utah - Delicate Arch (previously known as 'the cowboy's chaps')

It was still clearly too hot for us to do anything anywhere except up high in the mountains.  With this in mind, we continued our drive east and entered Colorado, where we have remained.  We are currently staying near a place called Rifle which has an excellent little local park called Rifle Mountain Park with excellent climbing in it. 

Rifle Mountain Park is quite high at an altitude of around 7,000 ft, so it's nice and cool during the day and we've actually already had some light air frosts at night.  The climbing is also in a deep gorge which runs pretty much north-south, meaning all the cliffs face either east or west allowing you to chase the shade or the sun at anytime during the day depending on what you want.  Perfect!

Rifle Mountain Park

Rifle is a steep sports climbing venue with no easy climbs, and a lot of hard ones.  The general standard of the climbers here is probably the highest I have seen anywhere.  A few of the climbers are just 'above average', most are good or very good, and some are brilliant or even legendary (Lynn Hill is sieging a project at the moment).  Like several other venues we've been to in the US, the standard of the female climbers puts the UK scene to shame - there are so many women climbing hard routes here.

The 'Wasteland' Sector

We've been in Rifle for just under 2 weeks now.  In that time we've managed to climb for 9 days.  This means that ruth and I have actually been taking quite a few rest days, which is not like us at all.  The reason behind this is that Rifle is such a physical and brutal cliff to climb on that our poor arms are destroyed after only 2 days.  It's hard here!  You either climb 11+ or go home... 

I think that we will stay in Rifle for another few days, do a bit more climbing here and then move on.  I'm sat in Rifle Library at the moment contemplating the unthinkable: taking 2 consecutive rest days off climbing.  Yep, we are pretty weary!

We are trying to formulate some kind of plan to snatch another little alpine adventure in Rocky Mountain Park.  Something before the autumn starts to shut down the high peaks, and something that will be an antidote to all this overhanging limestone.  A bit more research is required though. 

All the best

Innes



More High Sierra Climbs

Firstly, an apology for not having updated our blog for such a long time. The reason for this is that for the past 10 days we’ve been in Utah, and we haven’t been able to find anywhere with both plug sockets and Wifi. The concept of the independent coffee shop where you can sit with your laptop seems to be alien to Utah. A woman we met from Colorado said (in a very dismissive manner) that this is because they don’t drink coffee in Utah. They also have a pretty strange attitude to alcohol. If you want to drink anything stronger than 4% beer, you have to go to a “State Liquor Agency”. These buildings seemed to be designed to make you feel like a criminal just for going inside.

However, the purpose of this blog is not to talk about Utah but to tell you what we did before leaving California. After climbing Mount Whitney we did three more Alpine routes in the High Sierra. The first of these was on a mountain called Temple Crag. Again, we had to camp at the base the night before and do the route on the second day. The route was OK, but was slightly marred by there being a lot of mosquitoes where we camped and us not taking enough food, so being very hungry.

Temple Crag

The route we did was called Venusian Blind and went up a long arête on the left hand side. It had some good climbing on it but the rock wasn’t as good as the other routes we’ve done.

Innes high on Venusian Blind

Then we decided to take a few days off from the high mountains, and went to a place called Mammoth Lakes. This is a town on the east side of the Sierras, which is a very posh ski resort in winter. It reminded us a bit of places like Chamonix. The reason we went there is that there is good climbing at around 10,000 feet, so we could escape from the heat. The most exciting thing that happened there was that we got to see some black bears. We were walking around a lake to go climbing when we spotted a mother bear with two quite small cubs. They were coming our way, and so we just moved to one side and let them pass. They must have gone within 30 yards of us. Strangely enough it wasn’t frightening at all – the bears were obviously aware that we were there, and were completely uninterested in us. If the bears had been grizzlies it would have been a different matter, but black bears are a lot smaller and less likely to attack people. It was great to see them so close.

Black bear coming our way

Bear cubs

Our next route was on a mountain called Bear Creek Spire. We did the North Arete, 5.8. We did this car to car in a day, so it was fairly tiring. The route goes up the obvious arête leading straight to the summit which is catching the sun.

Bear creek spire

The climb ended on a very satisfactory summit, not big enough to stand up on. I have to admit that I wasn’t brave enough to climb up and sit where Innes is sitting in this photo, as it was very exposed and there was no way of protecting it.

Innes on summit of Bear Creek Spire

After this we headed north about 100 miles for our last stop in the High Sierra, a mountain called the Incredible Hulk. We were excited about climbing on the Hulk, because it has been featured in the climbing media quite a lot and we’d seen a cool film about it on Vimeo. As you can see from this picture, it’s an impressive piece of rock.

The Hulk

We planned to do a route called Red Dihedral, 5.10b, which takes a corner system near the right hand side. We camped in a really nice spot at the base, and got up before sunrise to make sure that we had enough time to do the route.

Hulk at dawn

Unfortunately two other teams of climbers had got up even earlier than us and beat us to the base of the route. This wouldn’t have been a problem except that one of the teams was really slow. After watching them for an hour, during which time they made little progress, we decided to cut our losses and climb an easier variation so that we could overtake them. We didn’t fancy being stuck behind them and getting involved in an epic not of our own making. This was a bit of a shame, because the variation that we climbed missed out a lot of the best climbing. Never mind – we’d been lucky up to this point, as we’d had all of the other routes we’ve done to ourselves. The next day we said goodbye to the High Sierra, and started heading east towards Utah. We took a day and a half to drive across the Great Basin. This is the bit of Nevada which is in between the Sierra Nevada and the Rocky Mountains. It’s called the Great Basin because no rivers flow out of it. It doesn’t get much rainfall, but any rain that does fall either evaporates or soaks into the ground. This means that it is an empty, barren landscape, punctuated by the occasional salt lake. It was pretty freaky to drive across – you really wouldn’t want to break down or run out of petrol. Our destination was a place called Maple Canyon in Utah. Attentive readers of this blog will notice that we’ve been there before, at the end of our last trip. We were exhausted after climbing in the mountains, and fancied going somewhere familiar where we could relax and not have to move for a few days.

More soon about what we’ve been doing for the last week or so – we’re now in Moab, where I’m writing this in an RV park. We decided to treat ourselves to an evening with Wifi, and the first showers that we have had since 24^th July (disgusting I know, but then I always was a soap dodger).

Best wishes

Ruth

Mount Whitney

As Innes said in the last blog, last Thursday we got a permit to climb Mount Whitney. Whitney is 14,496 feet high (4418m). This is a good 1,000 feet higher than any mountain I have ever climbed, although Innes has been higher than this in the Himalayas. So I was apprehensive about how I would cope with the altitude. It’s also a beautiful and impressive mountain, with big cliffs on the eastern side but a flat summit plateau and a gently sloping western side – a bit like Ben Nevis in shape.

Whitney at sunrise, photo taken from our high camp

There are two popular ways of getting up Whitney. Most people walk up the Mount Whitney Trail, which is 11 miles long and goes round the back of the mountain where it is less steep. More adventurous is the Mountaineer’s Route, which takes a fairly direct line up the east side and involves a bit of scrambling. This seemed to be very popular with guided parties. Because Whitney is the highest mountain in the contiguous United States, lots and lots of people want to climb it, including people who have never been up a mountain before (again, a bit like Ben Nevis). Unfortunately some of these people attempt to climb the Mountaineer’s Route rather than going up the trail, despite all of the warning signs at the bottom trying to put them off.

Our plan was to climb Whitney by the East Buttress Route and then descend the Mountaineer’s Route. The East Buttress Route roughly follows the right hand skyline of Whitney in the picture above. It’s about VS and 11 pitches long. To do this we had to walk in on the first day to camp at a place called Iceberg lake, at 12,600 feet. I found the walk in hard – we started at 8,000 feet, so it was a lot of ascent, at altitude, carrying a heavy pack.

View up towards Whitney on the approach

The place where we camped was fantastic. A really unspoilt, pristine place. Perhaps the Americans have got it right with their permit system – there were a few other people camped there, but not many, and none of them were planning to do the same route as us. One reason it’s so pristine there is that it is illegal to leave ANY waste behind – and that includes human waste. So we discovered the delights of pooing in a bag and carrying the bag around with us for a couple of days (they do give you a special bag, called a “wag bag”, which is supposed to be leak proof and contains a deodourising powder).

Camp at bottom of Whitney

It was a pretty cold night – it was definitely below freezing, as our water bottles were frozen and I had to break the ice on the lake in the morning to get water. Once the sun came up it was pretty warm, and it was an absolutely perfect day – not a breath of wind and no clouds in the sky.

Me getting water from Iceberg Lake

The East Buttress Route turned out to be brilliant. Not too hard (which was just as well as the smallest bit of exertion left me gasping like a fish), exposed, and following a great line. We had the route to ourselves again.

Innes climbing pitch 5

Then we popped out onto the summit and entered a different world, as there were at least 30 people there. It was fun to surprise all of these people by emerging right onto the summit, having climbed what looks from above like a sheer cliff – they were very impressed, and congratulated us heartily.

Crowd on the summit of Whitney

At this point it was about 1.00pm, and we mentally relaxed thinking that it would just take us a few hours to get down. We didn’t realise that the day’s drama hadn’t yet begun. We had just started scrambling down the Mountaineer’s Route, when we met a party of four who were on the way up, who turned out to be in quite a bit of trouble. The two more experienced members of the party had gone on ahead and were climbing up the rocks that we were climbing down. The other two, who had apparently never done any climbing in their lives, were trying to traverse across a snow slope to get to an easier way up. In doing this one of them, a guy called Kevin, had slipped and fallen and gashed his leg badly. The other one, a woman called Sachi, appeared to be completely exhausted. When we arrived Kevin was apparently unable to move, Sachi who was close to him when he fell was too scared to try and get across to him, and the other two members of the party were too scared to climb back down what they had climbed up. To make things worse this party had set out from Whitney Portal (at 8,000 feet) at 2.30am, having had no sleep the night before and having come straight from sea level. They really had no business being on the mountain, and we were surprised that they had got so far. Even if nobody had been injured, they would have been in trouble (Innes says I shouldn’t be judgmental, but the more I think about it the more angry I get, particularly at the so-called experienced members of the party, who put their friends in a lot of danger).

Anyway we helped them out. Innes bandaged up Kevin’s wound, which luckily wasn’t bleeding too much (it was pretty nasty – at least half an inch deep) and we got him and Sachi and the rest of the party to a safe place. We then managed to convince them that the only sensible thing for them to do was to go back down the way that they had come up, as although they were close to the summit there was no way they were going to get there. We also thought that they all needed to get down as quickly as possible – they all seemed to have altitude sickness to some extent, and Kevin was in shock and quite confused. Then we shepherded them down the Mountaineer’s Route to where we had camped at Iceberg Lake. This wasn’t difficult, just a bit of steep scree and scrambling, but it took Kevin and Sachi more than 3 hours to descend, and we had to give them a rope in a couple of places.

Me helping Sachi down the Mountaineer’s Route

When we got to Iceberg Lake I’m afraid we abandoned them, as we wanted to get down ourselves. From there it was just walking, they had plenty of food and water, and we reckoned that the two fit members of the party would be capable of getting them down, although we thought it would probably take them until well after midnight. I hope they got down okay.

We were back at Whitney Portal in time to have the famous burgers and fries from the Whitney Portal Store for dinner – tired but happy!

Today we’re having a rest, and then we plan to do a few days cragging before heading back into the mountains.

Best wishes to all

Ruth

Charlotte Dome

Just a quick blog 'cos I'm sat in a coffee shop in Lone Pine and we've actually managed to get some climbing done over the last few days.

Having been knocked back due to floods we spent a few days climbing at a place called Rock Creek, which is a high valley between Bishop and Mammoth. Nice climbing, but not what we wanted to do really. It was all that was available to us as it was 35 C in Bishop, but raining at altitude in the mountains. Neither are much use really!

The rain eventually looked forecast to stop so we dropped into the Ranger Station in Bishop and got a permit to hike (that's American for walk) in to climb something called Charlotte Dome in the Sierras.

Charlotte Dome has a famous climb up its south face which is one of the "Fifty Classic Climbs of North America" and so we went in to climb it.

This is Charlotte Dome. The classic South Face route climbs the left skyline.

The route itself is about 12 pitches long (maybe 400m high) but it took us three days in total to climb the route as it's 12 miles from the trailhead, and requires crossing some high alpine passes to get to it. We had to camp for two nights in the wilderness.

The climb itself wasn't that difficult. In fact the hardest part of the whole expedition was dealing with the altitude. At one point on the approach you have to cross the Kearsarge Pass which is at an altitude of 11,670 ft. This would actually make it the same height as a reasonable summit in the French Alps. The difference here though is that this time we were carrying heavy rucsacks filled with climbing gear, rope, tent, sleeping bags, and food for three days (stored in a heavyweight bear-proof cannister), and a stack of other assorted stuff. We carried all this stuff for 7 hours on the approach and never dipped below 10,000 ft after we left the van.

High meadows in high summer - very nice!

Ruth got a bit sick due to the altitude and felt nauseous. She also went a little bit grey for a while immediately after the Kearsarge Pass, but recovered when we dropped down a bit of height. Ruth approaching Charlotte Dome on day 1.

We camped for the night by a little spring at over 10,000 ft and climbed the south face of Charlotte Dome on the second day. Its not a difficult climb (5.8) but it is one of those routes that goes up a cliff that looks way more difficult than it really is once you get on it. The rock on Charlotte Dome is very featured when inspected up close, and covered in quartz knobs. This lets you climb up sweeping faces that look completely blank and impossible, but prove to be quite simple once you get on them - though sometimes the protection is 'sparse' shall we say.

Looking down Pitch 6 of the South Face.

We didn't see another soul all day, and probably had the entire valley to ourselves. It was a treat. A route as good as this in the Alps would have teams stretched from top to bottom, and guides climbing all over you. I remember climbing the Cassin Route a few years ago and thinking we were lucky only having 4 other teams on the route with us - how things are different in America!

We walked out back to the trailhead on the third day. Having subsisted on mostly tortillas, peanut butter and packet noodles for too long, we made a bolt for a pizza restuarant to stuff ourselves senseless. We have just this morning been successful in the bizarre ritual that is the 'Whitney Lottery Draw' which takes place at 11 o'clock every morning in the LOne Pine Ranger Station. This means we have in our possession two very interesting things: a permit to camp tomorrow night at Glacier Lake (under Mt Whitney's east face); and, a good weather forecast. So our luck is in now!

Innes

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