7/15  Rest and recovery day at Ryan's house.  I sort my gear and wash my car.  Ryan is staying here to start medical school.  We have to separate all our gear, including the huge stash of electronics.  I have my digital camera with two sets of batteries and a charger; my electric razor with car charger and AC charger; my phone with car charger and AC charger; three FRS radios; Rio MP3 player; CD player; tape adapter; and weather radio.  Ryan has a digital camera with charger; a phone with charger; an Ipod; and a laptop computer with wireless.  All of this is powered by my 140 watt inverter.  If we are driving, something is charging.  The inverter is definitely key to road trip survival in a modern, electronic world.

7/16 Solo for the first time this summer, I drive north.  I beat the oppressive heat by eating a box of six ice cream sandwiches.  Looking for somewhere cool to spend the night, I randomly select the National Forest around Mt. Shasta.  It is a good choice because the higher elevation brings cooler temperatures and there is free camping at the Bunny Flats trailhead.

7/17  Mt. Shasta is beautiful.  On the spur of the moment, I decide to climb to the top.  A bit of research reveals that the Avalanche Gulch route is the easiest and most popular path to the summit.  It requires ice axe and crampons, but there are no technical sections requiring a rope or belay, so I can do the climb solo.  I have my Stubai Ultralight crampons with me and had planed to buy a mountaineering ice axe for the Bugaboos.  So I drive to town and buy a really nice Charlet Moser Snowalker ice axe.  I also buy a box of eight butterfinger ice cream bars.  Got to sock away some fat for tomorrow.  I call Marci and she kindly agrees to be my emergency contact and alert the authorities if I don't return by a specified time.

Back at Bunny Flat, I hang my hammock and read until the sun is below the trees.  As soon as my car is in the shade, I climb inside and do my best to sleep.

7/18  Awake at 2:30am.  Ugh.  This is the earliest I'll wake for any climb this summer.  It may be the earliest I have deliberately been awake ever in my life.  I quickly grab my pack and depart Bunny Flat (6,880').  The sky is clear and the half moon is up.  But the first mile or two of trail is in the woods and I have to use my headlamp as I move in and out of shadows cast by the moon.  I reach Horse Camp (7,880') at 4am and get 3 liters of water from the spring.  This is enough to get me to the summit and back.  A bit before Lake Helen (10,400') I put on crampons.  The slope isn't steep, but the snow hasn't been warmed by the sun and is still very hard.  From here  it is a long slog up The Heart to Red Banks (13,000').  I have my MP3 player with Harry Potter V to keep me company as I step and rest, step and rest, step and rest.  At this point the altitude is really affecting me.  I hadn't taken any time to acclimate and it shows.  But my head and lungs are clear, and resting always rejuvenates me.  I continue up lower angle terrain to Misery Hill and the summit (14,162') which I reach right at noon.  My first 14,000' peak!

I hang out on the summit for about half an hour.  Skies are still perfectly clear, no worries about thunderstorms.  It is cold, but not frigid.  I chat with a French climber for a while.  The long rest has me feeling much better.  The hike back to Red Banks is difficult, but easier than hiking up.  From here I can glissade all the way down The Heart past Lake Helen.  There are deep trenches from many climbers who have slid down before me.  It is an absolute blast!  A 4000' toboggan run on my butt.  In no time at all I'm back in the thick, chunky air below 10,000'.  I walk to the rocks a mile above Horse Camp and spread out my gear to dry.  After all that glissading, everything is soaked.  I eat most of my food and relax in the sun for two hours.  Then I gather my gear and hike back to Bunny Flat, reaching the trailhead at 5:30pm.

The entire scramble was a 14 mile round trip which  gained (and lost) 7282' of elevation.  It took nine hours to reach the summit and three hours to come back down (not including the two hour stop to dry gear).  I eat some food and string up my hammock for a pre-bedtime nap.  Ahhh....

7/19  Driving north again.  I pass through Weed, California where a crazy guy stands on the side of the road with a "pot is a good thing" sign.  Stop for an hour at the library in Sunriver.  I reach Smith Rock, Oregon in the evening.  Head to free camping (from the park, go left at three stop signs, then 4.1 miles).  There I meet Simon and Simone from Germany who are just finishing a long climbing road trip in the United States.

7/20  Head to Smith Rock reasonably early.  I meet Melissa and Ryan who kindly let me climb with them for the day.  We start with Sting Like a Bee (5.10b/c) on Rope De Dope block.  There are a bunch of climbers here, including Kristin who used to work at Sportrock II in Virginia and knew my good friend Elaina.  Melissa, Ryan and I hike over Asterisk Pass to climb Spiderman Buttress.  It is hot and getting hotter.  We take the longer hike back, following the river.  The heat is too much.  Even though we have only done two short climbs, we are done for the day.

Melissa and Ryan leave to meet their family and I head to the pay campground in the park.  $4 gets you a site, park pass for the current day and the next day (I think, never really got a clear answer on this) and really nice bathrooms with free showers.  Free showers!  Yahoo!  I luxuriate and come out perfectly clean.  Meet Matt and Karen from Vegas who are on a road trip.  They had to bail from City of Rocks because it is too hot to climb there.  I had wanted to hit City of Rocks at some point this summer, but now I'm glad that I never managed to get close to it.  The heat wave is plastering the entire west coast of the country.

Bridgette and Jenn arrive having only a few problems routefinding.  I'm already sacked out in my bug bivy, but had told them where to find me.  They set up their tent and simultaneously perform an Abbot and Costello routine.  It goes something like this:

Jenn:  Which is the short pole?
Bridgette:  They are all the same length.
Jenn:  Is it two poles or three?
Bridgette:  Four.
Jenn:  Shit.  The tent is on a rock.  Let's move it.
They move the tent
Bridgette:  I think my sleeping bag is under the tent.

At this point a counselor from the local climbing camp -- thinking that Bridgette and Jenn are wayward teen campers -- tells them to be quiet and go to sleep. 

7/21 Bridgette, Jenn and I head to Morning Glory wall, which is in the shade early in the morning.  We climb Five Gallon Buckets (5.8) just as the sun hits the wall.  Good for photographs and not too hot.  We all take turns leading the climb.  By the time we are done the sun is becoming oppressive.  We head to Rope De Dope which is just getting shaded and will stay that way for several hours.  They climb Sting Like A Bee which I had climbed yesterday.  I scramble to the top of the block to take pictures.  Then we proceed to take turns leading almost every climb on the block.  Five or six climbs, from 5.9 to 5.11.  Not all the routes are shown in our guidebook... I know we climbed Shamu, Low Blow and Float Like A Butterfly.

At some point we meet David, the intrepid French hitchhiker.  He will end up joining Bridgette and Jenn for the rest of their trip, and in less than two months he and Jenn will be in Paris together.  Aren't road trips amazing?

The four of us eat dinner.  I introduce Bridgette to Simon, and she buys his Smith Rock guidebook since he is heading back to Germany the next day.  After we all eat and shower, we head to the local market to buy a half gallon of ice cream.  We eat the ice cream right from the box in the middle of the store.  Climbers always travel with their lexan spoons.  Then the four of us pile into Bridgette's tent to watch Corpse Bride.  Pretty good movie.

Climbing, new friends, ice cream and a movie.  Perfect.