Yosemite National Park, CA

Lafayette, CO - I'm still plugging my way through these pictures. For this post, we have some photos from Yosemite National Park.

Gary and I were still cooking our brains out at Burning Man, when Suwei and our friend Pat flew out to San Francisco and caught a ride up to Pat's place in Yosemite. Pat's family has this sweet cabin out in Yosemite West (near Glacier Point Road) that he has been going to since he was a kid. Those outings have since morphed into a yearly event for Pat and his friends from California. Suwei has only missed one year in the past six (and that was because we were still in Nepal at the time). Sometimes dubbed Virgo Bash because of so many September birthdays including Pat's, the weekend includes massive amounts of food consumed by all and is a great excuse for us to get on some fantastic Yosemite granite.

Gary's flight out of SFO wasn't leaving until Friday, September 5th, so we decided to take a detour through the park so that Gary could see a bit more of California than San Jose and the I-80 corridor. Matt & Cary, friends from Burning Man, decided to follow us on the same detour and met up with us at Pat's cabin. Unfortunately, since time was short, we were only able to spend a day and a half in the park with them, before continuing on to San Francisco.

Gary, Matt & Cary in Yosemite

Suwei & I however, quickly returned with Jenn Tse in tow, and headed back up the hill to Yosemite for more climbing. Still feeling worked over by Burning Man, I was barely able to get my feet off the ground while making numerous attempts on Conductor Crack (5.10d). I blame the heat (yeah, sure). We did however make it up Royal Arches (5.7, 16-ish pitches) on Wednesday and Cathedral Peak (5.6, 6 pitches) on Friday. It was super nice to be back on the rock, as we really hadn't climb all that much this summer due to a busy schedule and Suwei's ankle injury in May.

Jenn on Conductor Crack / Pat, Bill, Suwei & Eng-Shien at Glacier Point / Watching El Cap Climbers from the Meadow / Abby, Part of Pat's California Contingent and the New Generation of Gluttons / Stephan, Liam, Galen, & Gabby playing in El Cap Meadow / Bill Atop Cathedral Peak / View from Cathedral Peak / Karl & Suwei on Cathedral Peak.

Hope you enjoy the pictures. Here's the link to the slideshow:

Yosemite National Park, CA