day 1

ok, so we stopped in san luis obispo to eat and get gas, and while we were there we figured we'd see if there was any climbing.

turned out there were some boulders just a few minutes from where we ate, so we drove to the parking area, hiked the short approach, and got to it.

there were only a couple of boulders, but the rock was nice; some kind of volcanic stuff that felt really solid, and had lots of little crimpers, which i liked. we put in a couple of hours on the two main boulders (called pete and chlorissa), did a little on another one that was a poison-oak infested 5 minute-hike away, and decided to move on to santa barbara.

the area we went to in santa barbara is up on top of the coastal mountains, and has mind-blowing views of the channel islands and the surrounding area.

the rock is fine-grained sandstone, with scary, slopey, highball, top-outs, and holds that have a disconcerting tendency to break off.

the boulders are nestled here and there in the chapparral, and are hard to see from the ground, but once you get on top of them it's pretty easy to see the full extent: there are TONS of them, and very few people. the whole time we were there we only saw one other party of climbers.

argh.

i have had two hard drives fail on me in one week, hence the utter lack of any updating.

i will try to get something up in the next few days.

roadtrip!

on april 24th 2005, j., m., and i got into a rented minivan at 7:00 a.m. and headed south on 101 for a week-long climbing and bouldering (mostly bouldering) roadtrip through california.

our original plan was to drive to sonora first, since it's only 3 hours away, climb there for two days, then head to bishop on our rest day, climb there for two days, then on to joshua tree for two days, and home after that.

the weather had other ideas though; there was an 80% chance of rain in sonora on saturday, so we went with our back-up plan, which was to head down to santa barbara, where, according to a few sites i'd found in the web, there was great bouldering to be found.

more to come...