• flask of whiskey
• mug
• tarp to sleep on
• socks
• cutting board
• lunch
• snacks and deserts
• towel
• swim trunks (for the hot tub)
• wine

In any case, after an unbelievably long series of email messages, plans for the weekend were finalised with a trip to the meadows and east side, with the promise of a sweet condo to stay in in Mammoth. Mike and I headed out on Friday night, and found remarkably little traffic all the way to Hardin flats, where we crashed for the night, before continuing on to the Meadows in the morning. The plan for the day was Sorcerer's Apprentice (5.11?). This time around, I was able to find the start, and the first couple of pitches passed without incident - that is until Mike pulled a knob off on P2 and took a nice whipper, pulling a piece in the process. P3 is the supposed 11a/11d traverse pitch, which fell to me. When I got to the bolt that "protects" the traverse, I saw that a) it protected the first 2 feet of it, b) falling after that would result in a painful pendulum into a corner c) no f#cking way is it 11 anything! The only "good" hold I could reach from the ledge pulled away in my hand - and by good, I mean that it was a crimp the thickness of a quarter, instead the widely separated dime sized edges on the sheer vertical face. Maybe at one point in history it was 11a or 11d (according to Clint's '92 topo), but not now! After a few desultory attempts, I did a tension traverse to a seam, and climbed that to the anchors.

P4 was where the trouble started, though we didn't realize it at the time. We had 2 topos - the Reid guide and Clint's. Since Clint's had been more accurate at showing the first few pitches, we were following that one, which shows P4 going up and right though a runout field of knobs. Mike headed up, slinging a couple of knobs on way runout 5.7 territory, and eventually found an anchor. We didn't find the trio of bolts along the way that the topo indicated though. I followed, and then set out on P5, supposedly 5.9 face/slab. I found the indicated number of bolts, but they weren't really where the topo was indicating. First suspicion that something was awry, was when I found myself pulling hard 5.10 slab and mantle moves off of 30 year old rusted 1/4" bolts. What fun! Then several feet above the last bolt, the moves turned into 11+, and I started quietly freaking out. I explored the holds for a while, took a nice grating fall, went back up, pulled of a good hold, then finally gave up and jumped, as there was no way to downclimb to the last bolt, and offered the lead to Mike. He grudgingly accepted, made it through the bit that had stumped me, got to the roof, put in some pro, and came to a halt. The roof seemed improbably, and promised an ankle breaking fall. At that point we decided to bail, and rapped off of a couple of nuts (luckily, not my HB offsets!). The rope got stuck a couple of times on the way down, but that was just icing on the cake.

When we reached the ground, a careful inspection of the topos showed where we had gone wrong - on P4 we should have gone left, not right, through the "Sea of Knobs" - which actually looked way fun. The pitches we ended up on are an unfinished (15 year old?) project, which go nowhere. What fun! Oh well, more things to finish off next time. We rewarded/consoled ourselves with dinner at the mobil station, where we ran into Jack and Kelly (and Keena), before continuing down to Mammoth, where Bryan had scored us a sweet crib. Megan's folks have a 10 bed condo, that sits unused during the summer, and offered it to us for the weekend. Score! Bryan, James, Matt, Susan and Vivian were already there when we arrived, and we were shortly joined by Erin and Lynsey. Much food, booze and Blades of Glory were had that night.

On Sunday, we all headed to Patricia Bowl, which is near the end of Rock Creek road, about a half hour from Mammoth. The hike in is tolerable, about half an hour over trails and talus. The bowl itself if north-east facing, so it doesn't get much sun, but the temps were great. Most of the climbs are one and two pitch, mostly trad routes, with a few bolts thrown in here and there. We spent the day cragging, with moderate success, before returning to Mammoth, where we cooked up a ridiculously large amount of food, including a bunch of salmon that tasted like baloney. Mmmmm. Bailey certainly appreciated it! We finised off the evening with a showing of "Taladega Nights", and got to sleep way too late.

The lateness of the previous night led to a distinct difficulity in achieving a vertical orientation on Monday morning. The booze might have had something to do with that too. Needless to say, we didn't get moving particularly early, and bailed on going back to Patricia bowl, as it would have entailed a much longer drive back. So Mike and I headed back to the Meadows, where we worked on Cowabunga (5.12c) for a while. Way fun, though placing gear on lead for the redpoint is going to make it rather challenging.... In the afternoon, we headed over to Stately Pleasure dome, where we were going to run up Death Crack and Black Angel, but Death crack was occupied, and Black Angel was in full sun, so instead we did some solo laps on South Crack (5.8) and Hermaphrodite Flake (5.8). Between laps, we ran into Susan and Matt, who had been bouldering - Susan did laps on the lieback problem on Tenaya beach with Bryan, James and Vivian, and Matt was at the knobs. Meanwhile Lynsey and Erin were soloing up Tenaya. We eventually called it quits, and pointed the car for home, and of course, ran into everybody at the taqueria.