Yosemite

Oct 6 - Camp 4 is full, so we're forced to spend the night in a camp site outside the valley floor. The scenery is just staggering. Easy slow drive from S.F. Americans do the whole motorway thing in a much more civilised pace than in Europe. As we drove into the valley at dusk, we could see El Cap lit up with pin pricks from head torches - the tell-tale sign that climbers on multi-day ascents were still at work.

The first thing you have to get used to is bear awareness. ll food or scented items, such as tooth paste, sun creametc must be stored in bear proof lockers. There are significant numbers of blackbears in he woods, but also raccoons and squirrels have a go if anything is left out. Bears 'open' a car with effortless ease.

Oct 7 - queued up for a Camp 4 space at 7am, and were assigned to site #7, just to the side of the Midnight Lightning boulder. After heading back to the first camp site to have brekkie and pack up we finally got ourselves installed and settled in. Camp 4 is the epi-centre of valley climbing, or probably world climbing. 220 people from all over the world, united in climbing. We're sharing with a bunch of Japansese and German. I lack the vocabulary to describe the views. Soaring, 1500m high granite walls, waterfalls, huge redwood trees, and wall to wall sunshine and blue skies. Haven't seen a cloud since we landed, in fact.

Some easy routes to get used to the stuff in the afternoon. Sarah led a 5.6 jam crack. My elbow is ok-ish.