Vengeance will be mine!

Well I have a had a lot of fun in the past several days in and around LA. I went bouldering outside at two different location less than an hour and a half from LA. (Of course there are plenty of locations that are roughly in LA and are still over an hour and a half away) I also drank some good beer with Josh (although some of it was slightly disappointing), and yesterday we bottled our first homebrew. Also yesterday, Josh, Meghan and I sampled some typical Vietnamese food in the Little Saigon section of greater LA under the direction of our culinary guide, Jen. I enjoyed it very much, but I have been told it is not "great" Vietnamese food so I have decided to describe it as typical. In any case it was delicious and went far beyond the most common Vietnamese dish in America, Pho. I have some pictures to post from the second bouldering trip, and I want to describe the beer brewing process from my layman's viewpoint since I have been asked about it several times.

But before I do that I would like to throw up a few thoughts about my last trip to Bishop, because I am going back on Tuesday and I will stay there through Saturday. And this time I AM OUT FOR VENGEANCE!!

Well, not really, but I would like to climb a bit better than I did last time. On my last trip (March 27th-30th) I was there for about three full days of climbing. I wasted one whole afternoon on a climb called Action Figure that is fully within my abilities, but involves a relatively low probability move to stick two of your fingers as deep as you can into a small pocket. I got very close to sending the problem but I am pretty sure that in the end I was defeated because I put some tape on one of my fingers to protect the skin when it was inserted into the pocket. However the tape probably made my finger enough wider that I was never able to get the fingers deep enough into the pocket. Frustrating to say the least. I may try to go back and send it this time around, but then again I might stay away so as not to waste any more time on it. We'll see.

Other than that one semi-wasted afternoon, I was climbing with some folks who are not quite as motivated as me. I have a lot of energy at the crags and I always want to run around and get on as many different problems as I can. This was a much more relaxed pace than I set for myself, but I failed to take advantage of it and get lots of good photos. Instead I managed to climb a few good problems over the course of the trip, but I tried fewer than I might have otherwise. I successfully sent three v3s, the ultra classic Ironman Traverse v4, a less classic but popular v5 called the Anti-Hero Roof, and a v6 called Royal Jelly (I linked to a video of that send [successful climb] here) . Not too bad for me but certainly not up to the mini-rampage I went on at Joe's Valley.

So I am getting excited about the return and trying to decided on some good climbs to aim for. I think I want to stay mostly at the Buttermilks, for two reasons. One is that the area is a bit more aesthetically pleasing than the volcanic tablelands. The other is that it is at a higher elevation so I might find a bit cooler temps there. I am hoping I will find some groups of other climbers around so that I can get a spot on some of the higher problem I am aiming for. If not I will just climb some stuff closer to the ground.