I spent last weekend in Yosemite with my husband and brother-in-law, who's visiting from Indianapolis. My favorite parts of the trip were watching the expressions on the face of my brother-in-law as he saw, for the first time, El Capitan and the Grizzly Giant Sequoia at Mariposa Grove.

Twelve of us from the Sierra Club left Palm Springs at midnight to climb San Jacinto via the Cactus to Clouds trail.
10,500 ft elevation gain in 16 miles which took us 12 hours plus three more hours back to the Tram station. The wind on the summit was horrific. There were no takers to descend by the Snow Creek route which is 6 miles.

Excellent: More than 17 hours intensive and demanding hike/climb to Solunska Glava from new route (added already on the page here-don't now how to linked from here-sorry).
The weather was bad which was just fine I felt perfect all the way. Best thing that happened was that finally I didn't have any problems with my ITBS. That’s it

First time rock climbing! @ JTree

Went rockclimbing but there was no-one there and we got bored,

<img src="http://www.cascadeclimbers.com/plab/data/517/5475Crowded.jpg">

so we left there and did some bouldering. It was cool because I sent my new sickfest highball problem yo!

<img src="http://www.cascadeclimbers.com/upload/260879-mountyboulderclass1.jpg">

Lol... Martin, that's a great shot. Hope you didn't hurt yourself on that one! : )

Climbed the West Gully of <a href=//www.summitpost.org/show/mountain_link.pl/mountain_id/1473>Elephant Head</a> this weekend. A lot of fun, plus I got to camp out two nights, drink a lot of beer, hang out, and check out the scenery....

<img src="http://www.summitpost.org/images/190920.jpg">

Martin,
Holy Cow!!! Is that vantage!!
The boulder problem looks sick...

I took a group of 10 employees and their dates to Las Vegas for a Jimmy Buffett concert - managed to win some money too!

Yep, the first one is my shot of Brian Hench following Tangled Up In Blue on Sunday. Crazy!

Betcha had to dyno for that only sloper, Martin!

Whoa!! And no crash pad even!? Destined for the mags, dude.

I went up long scraggy peak.. came back down fairly early AM and took some pretty pictures.... that's about it....


Martin, Juh.... Great Shots!

11 September 2005 - I drove with Nadie to Teruel province. We passed the first night in a hotel of Teruel so we were visiting the town. We also had visited Cuenca when going to Teruel. The second day we went to Albarracín and Sierra del Tremedal, where we wanted to ascend Caimodorro (1935 m), highest mountain in all Serranía de Albarracín. We had gone to the camping of Albarracín before and had lunch there. We also had to buy something before approaching Caimodorro. We didn't know the area and the map that we had bought in Teruel is bad drawn so when we found the best base for ascending Caimodorro it was too late so we turned back and ascended Peña Aguda (or Castillo de ___?) from the road A-1512, a little but beautiful little peak. Finally we visited the nice village of Albarracín. The 3rd day we drove Collado de las Latas (approx. 1765 m) and climbed to the top of Caimodorro through the pinewood, even the summit is covered by pines. We stayed 20 minutes on the top and descended quickly to my car. It was a very short hike (1h 20 min with the descent) but it was nice. We visited the Natural Park of Alto Tajo and Molina de Aragón (one of the coldest towns in Spain) when driving back home. In Alto Tajo we drove to Laguna de Taravilla, where we could see many nice birds.

18 September 2005 - We went to Rascafría, Madrid, where we started hiking at approximately 1185 m on the PR 35 trail. Firstly we walked along a forest trail through the oakwood and took some short cuts. PR 35 is not well visible in those short cuts but we continued and reached the forest trail again. Below Raso de la Cierva we took the forest trail to the left, wich is flat in some sections and then climbs to El Artiñuelo, the SE shoulder of Flecha (2077 m). But at 1760 m we did a 45 minutes stop for resting and having lunch, it was been a hot day til there. We continued to El Ariñuelo where we left the forest trail and crossed a young pinewood first and steep meadow second to the summit of Flecha (3h 50 min). We stayed 10 minutes on the top and started the descent as in the ascent but we took some short cuts that we hadn't taken before. So we passed an important crossing and we took the wrong forest trail to the south. I noticed that the trails was not the same as in the ascent and looked at my map. Then we turned back to the crossroad and continued straight on along the forest trail to Raso de la Cierva. We took the short cuts on PR 35 and reached my car 7 hours from the start.

Went to Cactus to Clouds this last Wednesday and have pictures <a href=http://piotrowski.smugmug.com/gallery/959004/44101877>http://piotrowski.smugmug.com/gallery/959004/44101877</a> We had cloudcover the whole day which makes for a pleasant change in desert conditions.

Well, I guess we underestimated this first winter "dusting" of the Sierra. Thinking that the local forecast may be inflated, we went for climbing University Peak, only to discover at 1AM Saturday morning that the road leading up to the trailhead was already buried in almost 2 feet of snow (8400'). Not feeling comfortable with any guardrails by the road and sliding around a bit (even using 4-wheel drive), we scratched that plan and drove back down the road and headed up to Rock Creek in hopes of doing Mt. Morgan as a consolation. Upon arrival, we also discovered the road was only plowed up to the snow play area (2 miles short of the lodge and 4 miles short of the trailhead). We slept in the Xterra and got up that morning hoping that the snow was managable to travel on. Pffffftttt......yeah, if you like postholing up to your waist for miles on end! Our final choice was to climb up to the super-close Lover's Leap peaklet (as known by the locals and close to the Iris Slabs area). Again, we postholed for a little while but it only got worse. My feet ended up getting really messed up (just couldn't get good circulation...even on the move!). Regretably, we turned around, my tail between my legs. Finally, Debbi and I went to Mammoth and found comfort in x-country skiing at Tammark. The trails were groomed nicely and we had a fairly good time. Still getting the hang of it but it was fun none the less. Think we'll start getting into that as well.....

Bottom line : a learning lesson for us both!