News from USA #5. Truckee and Stanislaus National forest.

I should start with mentioning that we were training hard, we were torturing ourselves and our hands. And for what? Just to apply all our skills on big walls in Yosemite National Park. But everything went not as we planned. Not at all as we planned.

At the beginning it looked as a joke. You can’t even imagine that all parks in USA can be closed. But this joke started to get real and now everything is very serious and parks will be closed. We are really worried, we don’t have second option, we are planning to go to National parks which will be closed for who knows how long!

We spent already lots of trainings in Indian Creek, this place is pressing you, we need a change. It doesn’t mean that everything is the same, but something hard is already too hard and something easy is already too easy. I’ve got this feeling only with cracks, didn’t notice it before.

We gathered together to discuss out future plan. Nice guys advised us to go to Truckee: it is beautiful there, rocks and lake. Ok, we decided to go there, we don’t have much choice.

Arrived! Rocks were disappointing. We immediately found climbing shop, it is the only place where you can get advice about nice rocks around. Shop was a bit cheerless, we were in low spirits. Surprisingly, shop assistant decided to open secret for us, which is so uncommon here. He said that there are nice high rocks nearby, but there is no guide book in free access, but he can just send it to us by email. We were really shocked to meat real kindness in USA!

We didn’t find the place immediately. Only with help of local fisherman we arrived to the destination on the planned day. The shop assistant guaranteed that the place is open, has nice river, no people and high rocks for 10 ropes. Everything was just in front of us and we started preparation for the climbing. It was quite difficult to understand guidebook, they could put it for free access, and anyway no one will find the place)))

Here is our plan: start climbing in the midday and finish last rope at night. This time plan worked. The rout was very easy and even didn’t bring tiredness. We were climbing calmly and slowly, I like it a lot. For me it is as going up by trail. Only here you feel the height very fast. You only need to look down.

Night came exactly as we expected. Last rope and here we have slow but very long ascent on slab. It feels like this slab took forever. We were not securing ourselves with the rope, it is silly, but if you make a mistake – there are no chances. Pitch darkness, very long day, this wall makes you feel dizzy. Slightly swinging from the height we found a place to sleep.

Lots of stars were shining for us saying: Guys, we give you unspeakable beauty, but for that you have to stand the coldness and taste the loneliness. Small fire helped us but we had to lighten it twice. In addition our food reserve was very poor and we had only one blanked for three, we specially planned that.

At the morning we waited for the operator to make time lapse. We went down by rappelling because going down by trail is more difficult, especially if you don’t know where it is))) And of course going down by rock is more beautiful!

It is very nice here, but not for a training. Again we are on our way towards sun.

More new from this trip you can find here.