Here’s a classic photo that has a lot of fond memories attached to it. Notice the license plate and that will tell you a lot. This is August of 2000 when I was just barely out of college and full of excitement for my first trip to Yosemite. Two great friends, Pete and Craig, joined me and we had big plans to do a bunch of big walls.
Our road-tripping vehicle – my Chrysler LeBaron sedan, previously owned by my mother and grandmother. Notice the crash pad strapped on the trunk, along with water bottles and sandals attached.
Instead, all three of us got poison ivy and had a horrible time in the sweltering summer heat of the Valley. We young and naive but we tried hard. Inspired by posters in the Valley gift shops, we successfully climbed the Lost Arrow Spire and did the tyrolean traverse back to the valley rim. That was pretty much it though, as we eventually gave into the itching and heat and bailed for an air-conditioned hotel room in Las Vegas, where we finally got the prescription meds we desired.
It was a quite an adventure and a big step up for all of us. For me, it was just the beginning of my climbing career and the experience taught me a lot and inspired me to reach for bigger heights. For Pete and Craig, it was one of their last climbing trips as they both fell out of climbing. Craig moved to Phoenix for a career and a love for cycling. Pete seriously injured himself in a sport climbing accident – he hung from the back of his knee from a quickdraw after falling on a warm-up. His knee was never the same and as far as I know, he’s never returned to serious climbing.
Hence, it’s probably fitting that my memories of that trip are more about the fun and the laughs we had rather than a pitch-by-pitch account of what we climbed. And that’s the moral of the story – friends are far more important than climbing.
