Finally, a long weekend in the Valley with the family! Somehow we were lucky enough to get a site at Upper Pines for the July 4th weekend, so we got to camp in style. We had a lot of different friends--old and new--join us for our weekend extravaganza! And the best part is that we got to rock our new "family tent"--a monstrosity that will fit Ainsley's portable crib, a future portable crib for baby #2, and is tall enough for me and Andrew to walk around in. Yep, no more light alpine style camping for us!
One of our friends is a hardcore sport climber visiting from France, and she was determined to do some sport climbing in Yosemite. So we spent the first half of the day at Chapel Wall playing around on Drive By Shooting, 12a and another 5.11. But not before we made her warm up on a crack though!
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| Raphaelle looking strong on 5.10 crack (though she claims she was miserable) |
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| Time fore me and the baby bump to have a turn! |
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| Raphaelle crushing once again |
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| On the hardest 11d I've done in my life |
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| Finally, a rest! |
Once the sun peeked out at Chapel Wall, we headed to Swan Slabs to meet up with a couple of Raphelle's friends.
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| Ainsley loves climbing too! |
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| Daddy in the background un-sticking a cam for our friends. Quite the boyscout. |
After some lunch at Swan Slabs, we headed to the Lower Yosemite Falls Amphitheater to do some fun crack climbing. Unfortunately, Raphaelle's friend Nicholas took a bad lead fall and broke his ankle at the end of the day. Poor guy!
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| Andrew, our fearless leader |
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| Nicholas, before the ankle incident |
Because of Nicholas' broken ankle (we actually were told it was sprained at the time...didn't find out it was broken until about a week later), we ended up taking it easy the next day. We messed around on some fun roadside cracks and made Raphaelle practice leading on gear, then ended up at Manure Pile Buttress towards the evening. Another friend of Raphelle's, Fanny, was excited to climb After Six--an incredibly fun and mellow 5.7--so the two of us blitzed up all six pitches of it under two hours! There was no time for photos, except for a dark topout shot. I had a great time climbing with Fanny. She's by far one of the most competent alpine climbers I've ever met! A shame that she too lives in France and won't be back to the States in awhile.
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| Topping out on After Six with Fanny |
It was such a great weekend!
