Sport Wankery in the Owens River Gorge

Kostas, urologist Josh, diagnosis Nathalie and I went on a sport climbing vacation! (The purpose was training for hard Alpine routes, I swear). Two days of sport climbing, one evening of easy bouldering, and a naked full-moon soak in the hot springs was just the punishment we needed.

Saturday:

After warming up Kostas and Josh both flash Expressway 5.11b, an awesome pumpy edgefest, while Nate gets the redpoint.

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Josh gets a quick onsight of Ripoff 5.12a

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and then it's lunchtime.

It was about this time that Kostas said "Fuck all this sport climbing," and renounced his European heritage of grigris and quickdraws.

Despite how cool he looks in this photo he got spat off and swam back to the island of Greeks in shame. Why don't you pull harder next time, asshole.

For the rest of the day Kostas and I sat around and pretended to look at the guidebook while Josh and Nat climbed some crazy long climb that came out of the water.

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To finish the day off we climbed a bunch of easy stuff at the Happy's then soaked in the hotsprings to rejuvenate our tendons.

Sunday

After a couple warmups we got to the business at hand: Sending Hard!

After a fall at the 2nd bolt, Josh redpoints Mind Meld 5.12c, a heinous slap and powerfest and beautiful arete:

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Meanwhile, Kostas, Nat and I all cruise up Photon Torpedo 5.11b, thin edges to a slopey topout:

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Still feeling strong, Josh decides to take a lap on Enterprise, a super steep 5.12b, and gets the onsight:

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To finish off the day, we all took a ride on this beautiful 10c arete/roof:

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Starving, and to the utter disgust of Josh and Nat, Kostas and I polished off this delicious meatloaf sandwich that had been sitting in the car for 24 hours.

Mo' Meat, Mo' Betta.