On The Road — Seattle, Portland, Smith Rock, San Fran, YOSEMITE!

September 10th — September 15th

Time to make my way down to Yosemite, with a fair few pit stops along the way. First stop was Seattle to catch up with a good friend who’d moved there in January. Yet another kind soul putting me up with a bed and some food. Hopefully I shall repay everyone one day.

The day I collected the van, I got some new tires just in the nick of time on a Sunday. The van badly needed it with the mileage I was going to put on it. I spent 1400 CAD on them but, sure look. I ploughed on down to the border where I had the immigration officers joke that I must have paid more for the Tires than the van.. I wish. One of them was a climber and we had some great chats about Smith Rock. Who said US Immigration was painful? I had a wonderful experience.

Left: New van Happy. Right: Smoky driving down to Seattle.

I continued on down to Seattle, passing a McDonalds every 2 mins. Surely Washington has the most McDonalds of any state per capita? Nope, apparently, it’s California. Anyway, I abstained and made it down to Sean’s place for 10 ish. He had some burgers, sweet potato fries, and a few beers ready. I was pooped, the driving had been pretty intense in the new van on 6 lane highways and I had been up at 4 am to avoid a road closure. We planned what to do for the next day and hit the hay.

The next morning we headed into Seattle to do some of the classic touristy shit. Pike Place Market was pretty sweet to be fair — Would recommend. Next up was a trip to Costco. What the fuck is this place? A different level again to Walmart, it literally feels like the internet in a warehouse. Anyway, I got some food items in excess, squeezed them into my already jam-packed van, and had a few more beers that night.

Unnecessary purchases — I don’t even like Cliff bars but the value was too good. Dam I’m becoming a Yank.

I hit the road again in the morning for Portland after a quick pit stop at REI to buy an essential (not really) gilet, pictured above. Russel had been due to arrive a few days earlier and chill with Alex and her family in Portland, but due to an Aer Lingus IT issue, their flights had been totally messed around. They arrived on the same day I was driving down. I stopped for a Chic Fil A on the way down, damn it’s good, then found a park to sleep in for the night. Possibly not the best idea? Sure enough, I was woken by a flashlight and a cop announcing himself pretty loudly around 2 am. First night staying in the van, classic.

I scrambled to open the window, conscious not to do anything stupid with the way cops are over here. He asked me what I was doing and I explained I was just passing through. In the daze I was in I couldn’t find my passport, but managed to find my driver’s license. “I’ve got an international driver's license too, would you like to see that?” Why did I offer? I couldn’t find it anywhere. Anyway, he was dead sound, asked me some questions about the trip, checked I wasn’t illegal, and then was generally just psyched about my plans. He let me stay and just asked me to leave early in the morning. All good experiences so far really.

I popped over to Alex’s in the morning for some breakfast, Van cleaning (thank you Russ and Alex) and myself and Russ hit the road for Smith Rock via the gear shop in Portland. Russel (as stupid as me) had also held off buying TC pros until now. We picked them up, passed by the truly desperate homelessness in Portland, and cracked on. The plan was to get some climbing in that day, so we needed to get some miles under us if we were gonna do that. We arrived in Smith that evening and went straight to the climbing shop to buy the book and get some beta from the dude working there on where we should climb and camp. The climbing beta was clear, but the camping, well, that’ll come later.

We cracked on up to one of the most popular areas, known as ‘Morning Glory Wall’. It was fairly warm but the routes we got on were now in the shade. Smith was absolutely stunning at this time in the evening. I onsighted a 10c (Nine Gallon Buckets) and an 11a (Magic Light) and again felt pretty comfortable. The climbing was incredible, some amazing movement in a surreal location. Despite the rock looking questionable, it is surprisingly bomber.. Maybe it’s the traffic it gets? Either way, cracking spot. Time to pack it in and find a campsite for the night.

Left: Sunset in Smith Right: Russ leading one of the first climbs we did.

We drove into town with two aims. The first was to get some dinner, and the second was to get rid of the fridge in my van that barely worked and just took up space. There was a Goodwill in town that had unfortunately just closed when we got there. Despite the clear signs saying that leaving things after hours was dumping, we chucked it at the door and legged it. Surely they’ll take it in and sell it on. Be grand.

Hopefully someone else has found some use for this fridge :)

We found the local Mexican joint, Rigobertos, which Russel had been to a few years previous. This turned out to be one of those places you just live in for a couple of days. Good value, good hot sauce, and questionable meat. Perfect.

Next up was camping. This story gets good. So, the dude in the climbing shop/bar/cafe had suggested we could camp out the road just before a bridge in BLM (Bureau Land Management) land. This would be free and we preferred that to the paid campsite (obviously). He did give us a bit of a warning that there may be the odd ‘crack head’ wandering by, but they should be fine. So off we go out of town, looking at some satellite images on Google maps. Hmm, looks like a few people camp in this spot. We turned off the road where he suggested and made our way into the BLM area. The van did not like the offroad, I think it’s the Superduty model that has a stiff suspension. Anyway, in we went until we saw some fellow campers. Oh, the hood on their trucks are up. As I turned the van around a little I could see a shack in front of us. Ah ok, I don’t think this is where we want to stay.

I started to turn the van around before I heard some people in the distance. For some reason, I actually thought it may be some friendly campers having a party. I said it to Russ as I rolled down the window. Nope, it was one of the crackheads screaming ‘Who are you?’ over and over again. He was now running after us with a flashlight as I quickly turned the van around and started to drive out. ‘Who are you?” he continued to shout. “Nope, you don’t need to know”, we both thought. I hit the gas and weaved out the roads that we came in, hoping I was going the right way. We hit the main road and I put the 6L V8 engine to the test. Fuck me, that was proper scary and we both were full of adrenaline. What a weird encounter.

Our friend's home in the desert.. Great place to camp

We headed to the other place the dude had suggested. Based on our experience this felt sketchy too, but Russel made his bed on the floor of the van, we smoked half a pre-rolled joint we had (thank god, we needed something to calm down), and went to bed. But not before Russel freaked out one more time thinking he heard someone. An adventurous day where we joked the cops would be after us for dumping and the local crackheads for invading their home.

We legged it in the morning, not sure if we had stayed in a paid campsite or a free one. Anyway, more reasons for people to be after us. We were at the crag for 7 am where we heated up some of the leftover burritos we had made in Alex’s mum’s house.

Banana bread and burritos as the sun rises

We headed down to Morning Glory Wall to rack up a few more climbs before it got too hot. The sun came up and soon we were struggling with the heat. We had an early lunch and wandered back up to the van. There was a canyon back the other way, so we moved the van down the road and headed for the canyon and some shade. The shade wasn’t quite there yet so we lay around for an hour or so before jumping on some fairly difficult sport routes. Pure Palm (11a) was fucking amazing. Technical pressing and smearing up a corner with no holds. I had a foot slip at the first crux, which proved pretty hard to do. A few more takes and I was up. With better conditions that would be seriously cool. With the draws in situ, Russ gave it a lead attempt. In his own words, this quickly became a quickdraw recovery mission. Jet lag was kicking in and you really needed to be on your game for this route.

I cracked on with one more route before we hit the road, aiming to get part of the drive to San Fran done. We did a quick oil change in a Walmart car park (Russel did an oil change), fueled up on some Rigobertos and Red Bull, and hit the road for a while. On the way, I gave Russell his new head torch I had bought in Vancouver. Within about 30 seconds of taking it out of the box, he had cracked the back off it, resulting in duck tape being needed to keep it closed. To be honest, another poor experience with another Black Diamond product. Very much starting to doubt their quality after our portaledge arrived faulty a few months ago. To their credit, they are going to be replacing it as there seems to be a faulty batch. Doesn’t inspire confidence though. Anyway, I drove for way longer than expected and suddenly it was 1/2 am and we were in North Cal. We pulled into a Walmart with about 4/5 hours to go from San Fran and kipped there for the night. It felt way safer than the previous night.

Left: Russel midway through the oil change when he realised he didn’t have everything he needs and had rammed a screwdriver into the oil tank. Right: Broken head torch. You can even see the little piece of plastic he broke off

With such a big drive done yesterday, we had some time to chill out today before we collected Sean in the evening. We rolled out of Walmart after using the jacks and went to find a water source to swim and wash in, with Russ taking over the driving. We managed to find a wee gem off the main road where we could dip, stretch, do a mini workout, and have a beer — God life is good. We stopped off at another REI near the airport to pick up some more bits, including camping meals, cordelette, and some other bits and bobs.

Left: Van parked by the stream. Middle: Russel with a quick bitta shoulder stuff. Right: Beer time.

We were pretty pooped by the time we reached San Fran and collected Sean, but nothing some Red Bull and Coffee couldn’t solve. I took back over driving, we collected Sean, chucked him in the back, and hit the road. The final 4/5 leg was destined to be tough. We hit up a Walmart on the way to gather the essential bits we need for the next two weeks. Lots of wraps, beans, pasta, oats, were the staple items for our diet. Oh, least I forget the gallon-sized zip lock bags, essential for big wall climbing (will leave you to do the rest of the guessing).

Somehow Sean ended up shotgun after we left. About 30 mins in I decided Sean sleeping in the front was useless as I started to struggle. We swapped Russ and Sean and within no time Sean was asleep on the bed in the back. When we hit the Western Sierras, Russel's gummy he ate at Walmart had started kicking in. It turned out to be pretty funny timing. As the roads started to wind Russ would say “Bert, you’re a little close on my side”, that escalated to “Bert, seriously, you’re fucking close”. I may have been driving a bit quick and hadn’t quite figured out how to use my full beams, but I wanted to make the Valley that night. We arrived at 2 am, had a quick scope of El Cap, set up our tents in Camp IV, and got some sleep. Tomorrow we would be climbing in Yosemite Valley!!