As our season of guiding in Yosemite for 2016 comes to an early end, Kelly and I are clocking our climbs in before she flies back to Taiwan to guard The Bivy from the typhoon season. While I stay on in US to attend my WFR course in preparation for my AMAGA rock guide course the following year.
Its been a great season of climbing and guiding and we have some more objectives line up for the next 12 days. And now? We are just sitting in Starbucks in Sonora downing ice coffees and staying away from the 100F week.
This year, our participants are all steroid charged and ready for the climbs. The average age of participant also went up to 40-50 years old range! Our first participant is Uncle Hee, an avid climber known in the local scene and also a lecturer in the outdoor learning classroom in Republic Polytechnic.
San San after attending my trad and multi pitch class (SNCS Rock 1 and SNCS Sport 3) in Long Dong Taiwan, he’s decided to come for a trad climbing boot camp with me in Lao Jun Shan, Liming, China. We jam so much cracks that his toes started to hurt really bad towards the end of the trip. When he got to Yosemite, it took him 2 days to get acclimatised to the slick granite crack climbing before we started blasting up the walls!
That include Washington Column, South Face in a day and getting on East Buttress of El Cap. Well done for getting so much done in less than 2 weeks and being in Yosemite climbing for the first time!
We step down the gear for Chew and Chow and went on some super beautiful and great spots in Yosemite. We climbed on some of the most beautiful routes like Snake Dike on Half Dome and Cathedral peak in Tuolumne. The crew had great weather, saw Yosemite from the top and most importantly had great fun in style. We stayed in the beautiful lodge and yurts as they wanted a little more comfort during their holiday. We truly enjoyed the hangouts in the warm cosy yurts too! Thank you Mr Chew and Mr Chow!
The last participant for July is our Singapore Mountaineering Federation Assessor Mr Lim Kim Boon. Well known for his mountaineering and ice climbing trips and achievements, he set his sights for a few big climbs here in Yosemite. Having been here a few times previously, he wanted to climb some bigger stuff and train up for a big wall ascent eventually. We took him out on the 13 pitch East Buttress El Cap, 10 pitch East Buttress of Middle Cathedral, Arch Crescent on Daff Dome and 16 pitch Royal Arches to wind down the climbing trip. It was all great climbing done in a short period of time. Yosemite is such a great place to climb loads and get super wall fitness in short period of time!
One more group for a short weekend trip and Kelly is off to Taiwan and I’m going into study mode. In the meantime Kelly and I are going to climb loads and we are looking forward to the autumn season in Long Dong, Taiwan!
