J-Tree '07

I had been looking forward to this trip for quite a while...
Good weather, good company, good rocks, breath taking night skies, and tons of sleep...
Just what I needed after the last couple of stressful months...

I left the Bay Area last Sunday around 3pm after picking up Emily and Paul. The original plan was to leave at 2:30, but it took a little longer to stuff all the camping and climbing gear plus the food for three people into my Celica :-) We managed it though!

We arrived at the group campsite at Sheep Pass just after 11:30pm. Although I brought a tent this time around I didn't bother putting it up, given the temperatures in the 60's. Setting up camp was pretty quick, I was tucked in my sleeping bag by midnight.

The next morning we met up with Sam and headed over to the Lost Horse area. Sam led Dung Fu, Overseer and Feltoneon Physics which I followed. I led White Lighting being followed by Sam. Contend with climbing four pitches we returned to the campsite around sunset. After dinner and some chatting with the rest of the gang it was back to the sleeping back.

Tuesday I climbed with Ian in the Hidden Valley campground area. We started at Toe Jam, which I led, Ian followed and Emily TR'd. Next was Buissionier(?)...Ian led, I followed. The descent was quite interesting... The rappel sling mentioned in the guidebook seemed pretty nasty to get to, as did the 'walk-off'. We decided to look around for some other rappel anchors, which we found on the top of the formation. It ended up being a quite interesting rappel, since I couldn't see the ends of the rope from the top due to the overhang over which I would have to go. Well I had tied knots in the ends, so I knew it would be safe. Clearing the overhang I found myself free hanging pretty far away from the wall, where I spotted another anchor...Wondering if that was the actual anchor, which would provide to reach the ground I tried to reach for it...
Well...there is something as conservation of momentum, I started spinning and had nowhere to reach to stop. I still couldn't spot the ends of the rope, but there was a big ledge about 40 feet below, so I continued to rap... Once on the ledge I could see the ropes touch the ground...That was it...Quite the exciting rappel, stretching my 70m rope...
After this adrenaline pumping intermezzo we went over to Overhang Bypass, where I led the first pitch and Ian finished the second pitch.
After another four pitch day it was back to camp...
The next day Sam and I climbed 'Walk on the wild side', which also had an exciting descent. This time around we decided to walk off, which involved some interesting route finding and some nice down climbing sections. It was a fun adventure though.
We ended up at DQ Wall, after checking out Echo Rock, which was super crowded. On DQ we did Mr. Misty Kiss and Frozen Cone... both were more like face climbs than cracks...but it was nice to have the crack for protection. :-)

Thursday morning we headed back to the Bay Area, since I had come down with a pain in my right ear during the night...I guess I should have used that tent after all...Well, it was an awesome trip no matter what.

J-Tree inventory

Just coming back from Joshua Tree I sense a need to write down all the climbs I did down there.
This was my thrid trip and I already forgot which climbs I did two years ago...
So here's my J-Tree inventory:

2005

• Mike's Books
• Bat Crack

2006

• Lazy Day
• Nurn's Romp
• The Exorcist
• Gem
• Colorado Crack
• Beck's Bear
• Eff Eight
• Bambi meets Godzilla
• Mental Physics
• Dazed & Confused
• Life's a bitch and then you marry one
• Marital Sin
• Touch and Go
• Planet X
• Planet Y
• Sail Away

2007

• Overseer
• Dung Fu
• White Lighting
• Feltoneon Physics
• Toe Jam
• Buissionier
• Overhang Bypass
• Walk on the wilde side
• Mr. Misty Kiss
• Frozen Cone
  

a little more optimistic....

After this mornings run I am a little more optimistic about the LV 1/2 again.
The 10 km in 58 minutes felt nice and easy, happily chatting pretty much all along the way.
It was a very different feeling from my last two runs. Still I am contemplating to sign up for an other 1/2 marathon in SF in the beginning of February. But that might interfere with the skiing season :-)

Now I will get packed up to head to Joshua Tree for the next week...
Can't wait to get to the desert!

Countries visited

Despite the blogs name there has not been much adventure here. And it was locally pretty confined to the trail close to my house and the climbing gym. But, hey, I have been out there...
Courtesy of world66.com: A map of all the countries I have visited so far...


I hope to color way more of this map in red in the not too far future!
South America (Peru, Chile, Argentina) and Asia (Japan, Thailand, Nepal) are high on the list.

To stay a little more local, here are the US states I visited:


High on the To-Go-List here: Hawaii, Alaska, Wyoming. Also I definitely need to go back to
Utah...skiing, climbing, mountain biking...seems to be a good playground!

Thirteen

That's the number of climbs I did at PG last night.
I climbed with Dan, and we spent two hours in the gym.

It was quite nice, especially since I hadn't climbed inside much lately and the first climb felt really awkward. After a few other routes I got back in the groove and climbed an 11b clean.
I finished of the evening by doing laps on the two 5.9 cracks, which felt really good!
Let's go to Joshua Tree next week!

Torture

Todays 5 mile run was torture...
Although I ran about 3.5 hours after having lunch I had the constant feeling of having to vomit.
Also my feet have to get used to my new running shoes.
I hope it will be better Thursday!

Tomorrow it will be gym climbing and yoga...

Anchors

30% Chance of rain for Saturday and 80% for Sunday, the weather forecast for Yosemite Valley did not look to good by the end of last week. Despite those dull perspectives we decided to pull of the scheduled Anchors class in the Valley. After arriving at Church Bowl around 10:30 Saturday morning I headed out to the Five Open Books area, where I climbed 'The Caverns' with Brian and Grit. It was the first time climbing on granite for both of them, and especially Grit had a hard time getting used to the cracks and the sustained liebacking. I definitely could feel with her, since it reminded me of my first times climbing in Yosemite. But never the less we made good time on the climb and got back to the car way before dark.
During the night the rain set in, so that there was no way we could do any climbing on Sunday.
We spent the morning placing gear at Swan Slabs instead.

On an other note: I did not feel my hamstring during the whole weekend. A good sign!
I did a 4.5 mile run on Friday, where I had to walk a few stretches because my left thigh was tightening up, but no problems since...
Going for another run tomorrow...

Not too bad...

1.5 km...that's the distance I ran today.
Without any pain in my hamstring...I think I can get back on track...I'll bring in a 4 mile run tomorrow, namely a Campus Loop, and then we'll go from there next week.
Talking of distances I really like this tool provided by USA Track & Field:
http://www.usatf.org/routes/map/. It allows you to track your route on Google Maps and gives you the distance and the elevation profile.

I won't be running this coming weekend, since I am headed to Yosemite with a group of SAC people...It has been a while since I climbed outside, so it will be fun!

DAAAANG!

Ok...There goes the plan of the two hour half marathon...

I pulled my left hamstring yesterday. It happened playing touch football...going for a deep pass.
Bummer! I hope I'll be able to actually do the race though, but my training will be way off anyway. In my experience I should be able to jog very lightly within a few days. I also stashed up on Mg-pills and some protein supplements to accelerate the recovery...

I did it!

Well, I actually did it a while ago...
I signed up for a race, which was on my to do list for a long time.
I am a little concious about racing after having been in track & field for 14 years until a few years ago (OK, almost a decade ago). But I signed up for the Las Vegas Half Marathon. Quite untypical,
since I used to say: "Everyone who runs more than 400m is crazy!" I guess perspectives change :-)
Las Vegas it is...I am left with one month to prepare. Up to now I have been trying to run two to three times per week, one 10k, one 5k and one two hour run. Needless to say that this plan did not quite work out. I am still confident though that I can hit my goal of a two hour half marathon.