lizolas

Yosemite Climbing April 21-22

I was recently patting myself on the back for having my trips go so perfectly according to plan. Naturally the only way to maintain order in the universe was to have my Whitney/Langley solo weekend turn into a Yosemite climbing trip. Eric – someone I’d met through Brett and seen a couple times at the gym – asked if I wanted to go climbing that weekend. I told him what my plans were, and he sounded interested in an attempt at dayhiking the Mountaineer’s Route on Whitney. My initial thought was that it would be preferable to only get one peak in but also only have to pay for half the gas, as I’ve been trying to cut down on my weekend trip spending. The more we talked, the more hesitant he got to try the mountaineer’s route, and the more hesitant I got to drive 7 hours each way for what was starting to seem likely to be an overnight on the trail with no summit. Not that summits are everything, but his attitude seemed to be that he didn’t plan to summit, and just kind of wanted the experience of being outside. Lately I've been trying to push myself to do uncomfortable things, and this sounded like not that. If the main objective was just to be outside for the weekend, there were plenty of places we could go with about half the driving.