Bye Bye Pebble Pinching...Hello Splitter Big Walls

Our time in Bishop has come and passed. I have to say, Bishop proved to be the most surprising stop of the trip thus far. Surprising on account of the awesome times and killer climbing! Originally we planned on mostly sport climbing in the Owens River Gorge, but ended up spending the majority of our time bouldering in the Happies and the Buttermilks.

Don't tell Mike Johnson, but I really enjoyed bouldering for the last 2 weeks. I guess, when you compare the Hueco Tanks and the Buttermilks with the Black Hole in Morrison, it is easy to see why my passion for bouldering was suffocated until now.

As we were driving out of Bishop, I made Cameron come and spot me just a few more time on Serengeti. I had tried this climb for 3 days prior and kept getting shut down at the very last move. There are two distinct ways of doing Serengeti and supposedly both are the same difficulty.

It is generally thought that the left is the easier way for shorter people to do the climb. Well, I'm short and it just wasn't working for me. So I started trying the right variation and sent it shortly thereafter. Then we loaded up the crashpads, stuffed away the downturned shoes, and pulled out the widgets for the gnarly sandstone splitter cracks of Zion National Park.

Sticking the Crux of Serengeti

I am glad we got to spend some time getting strong in Bishop as well as ticking off some uber classic boulder problems, but the time has come to start jammin'....good-bye welded tuft, hello windgate sandstone!