By Davy’s last day we were getting a bit slab-crazy and decided to do a 6-pitch route up Glacier Point Apron. The Supertopo description for this route makes it sound a bit easier than I found it to be.
We made it to the top without any major complications though.
Some cragging, an evening hike, and multi-pitch climbing on Middle Cathedral Rock.
My brother Davy came up to Yosemite during my last couple of weeks there, and discovered that he is pretty into climbing. We went just about every day he was here. Usually pushing the daylight. These aren’t totally in chronological order.
The pictures that are on the wide and smooth chunk of granite (called Glacier Point Apron) were from some of his last days here.
Davy has had a pretty old-school introduction to the world of climbing. We climbed outside for his first time ever years ago in Gallatin Canyon, MT. I don’t think he’s ever climbed indoors and most of the climbing we did this trip involved cracks.
Crack climbing was all they used to do back in the day, but the advent of sport climbing and climbing gyms has made face climbing more the norm now. I would venture by the time he left that Davy had gained more crack-climbing experience than the majority of climbers.
This was the first time I’ve experienced snow in the valley since moving to El Portal last May. I am leaving soon and I’d been hoping to see some winter before then, so this was a nice bit of closure.
The route is 1200′ tall and summits due to its starting location and El Cap’s tapering shape on its east side.
This all happened yesterday. A warm and sunny Saturday in Yosemite Valley. We didn’t see any other climbers.
These are pictures from the course of the trip that were taken with my iPhone. Thank you Jeff and Joseph for hanging out with me for a month. Good times.
We spent a night at each of those places and did some biking in between. Our trip was coming to an end.
We started the day in the mountain town of La Fortuna we ended up on the Caribbean coast in Cahuita thanks to a bus and 100k of riding.
Cahuita was a quant little town, and after spending a night there and taking a stroll in the nearby national park we decided to spend new years eve in the nearby town of Puerto Viejo.
After one action-packed night in Puerto Viejo that seemed like two in my memory due to how action-packed it was, we hit the road again, bumbled our way across the border into Panama, spent a night in the port town of Almirante and then grabbed a boat to the resort destination of Bocas del Toro.
We left the Pacific Ocean at Coco and biked to Liberia and hopped on a bus to Upala, near the border of Nicaragua. We had been told that Rio Celeste was a very blue river worth checking out and Joseph had been talking about wanting to go to La Fortuna for a long time.
After swimming in a hot river we discovered that La Fortuna is a very popular city with white people. Ziplines and mini-golf are mandatory. We promptly left.
