I won't bore you with a bunch of climbing photos as most here climb much harder than I do. Great trip- Saw Elk, on Pacheco Pass at San Luis Res., very cool. Lots of wild life in the park-quail, turkey, rubber boa, baby rattle snake, condors, vultures, other raptors, rabbits, drunk college students who had crashed a borrowed car over the steep ravine between Bear Gulch and the camp ground and then walked back to campground without shirts or shoes, and tens of thousands of painted lady butterflies flying up the flood plain.
Rant Alert
One question-Was I a jerk or was he a jerk. On Wednesday I was going to tr my kids in one of the easy climbing areas, First the Tourist Trap- full with the Private school group with guides, next through the caves to First Sister and again full of the private school group with guides, checked out the upper Sisters but too exposed for the little ones. Then on to Teaching Rock and you guessed it- taken up with the guides, two ropes hanging down but no one climbing. The head guide said they were waiting for the kids to show up. I asked if we could do a quick top rope as my kids were getting grumpy, and I too. He said no his insurance would not let him. I replied no, I meant with my rope and I could set it up in minutes and take it down before the students showed up. He again said no, he had a permit to use the area and he was going going to use it. He also said he was there first and that whoever is at a place first has dibs on a climb. He said he had permits on all the areas he was using. And he said he would be done in a couple of hours anyway. I was going to ask him if I was there first if that would overrule his permit but decided to play the nice guy, I dropped some names and bs'ed about other climbing areas and asked again if I could set up and take down quickly before his group showed up as there as there was nowhere really for the kids(he and another guide were just eating lunch).
Then the thing he said that pissed me off was when he finally said," You're lucky I am feeling nice and you can use one of the tr until the group shows up" I said thanks and left it at that but I truly thought that guy picked up some bad Karma. We were able to get in about 20 minutes of climbing. At the time I did not know there were three sets of bold on top or I would have clipped into the third as they were only using two of them. And he did get some bad Karma because when we all got back to the campground the store was to be open but it was not and he was out of beer. SCHADENFREUDE YES!!!
Sorry for the rant but this is the first time I have been to a place climbers were not willing to share.
Pinnacles March17-20
Campground was pretty empty except for a huge group of a private school students loud but not too bad.
Camp cook
Tom Turkey- strutting his stuff
Wild flower-Indian Warrior
Condor
Kids messing around
Where the car went over the edge We did not learn the full story until the next day.
Of course Photographer's Delight after a long hike
Old folks at Tourist trap
Sindbad
Teaching Rock
Bad Photo- but Condor flying overhead while climbing
Burgundy Dome
The Grasshopper
The hike in
The last one, I promise-
The Cave
