Jackie and I took a trip to the Kern River!
My favorite hotspring in the Sierra, on the bank of the Kern River.
Oh yeah.
That's Jackie standing near the tree, showing us Lembert Dome in Tuolumne.
We hiked the trail to Vernal Falls, and got drenched by mist from the falls.
Earlier in the month, I climbed on the Direct North Buttress (V 5.10b) of Middle Cathedral Rock. This route, which follows a line up the buttress just right of center, turned out to have a crux mantle move of something that seemed certainly harder than 10b [some reports have recently re-rated the climb at 5.11]. A mentally draining climb, most of the rest of the route consisted of very steep, very runout face climbing, with lots of sketchy traversing back and forth between cracks.
Here is a shot of the sort of climbing indicative of the DNB: steep face climbing between inconsistent cracks.
Looking down at Mark, my partner on the climb, after pitch 10.