Last Climb at Lee Vining

Spring Ice at Lee Vining Canyon -

Gwen Linde and I returned to Lee Vining Canyon for one last ice climb of the season. It turns out that the ice was very wet and mushy, although still leadable, particularly in the morning. Great for hard toproping! However, if you choose lead make sure you do it in the morning before the ice gets too mushy. My guess is that there won't be a bit of ice left by the end of March.

Return to Lee Vining Canyon

Facing the Bard Head On -

This was my third week climbing ice at Lee Vining Canyon with Gwen Linde. After leading single pitches on the Chouinard Wall and the Bard Harrington Wall. We decided it was time to climb all 3 or 4 pitches of Bard Harrington. The ice in the canyon is still in excellent condition. It's north facing exposure ensures that minimal sun reaches the wall. Nonetheless, it is still recommended to get an early start and avoid the left hand side during the afternoon. Gwen and I witnessed several large icicles detach around 3 pm two weeks ago.

We ended up splitting the route into four pitches, although we probably could have completed it in three. Luckily for me it meant splitting the crux pitch into two manageable pitches. The two middle pitches probably went at about WI 3+ or 4-, which was perfect for me.

Top photo: Bard Harrington Wall on the left, Main Wall in the center (kind of hard to see), and Chouinard Wall on the far right, which appears to be the favorite for mountaineering clubs.

Bottom photo: I'm following the first pitch on Bard Harrington.

Ice Climbing in Lee Vining Canyon -

I got my first taste of Sierra ice this winter. This past weekend I teemed up with Gwen Linde, who is a PhD student in geology at UNR, and went down to climb California's best ice, Lee Vining Canyon. Lee Vining is just outside the east entrance to Yosemite National Park. It is in a spectacular location down amidst a deep canyon. Most of the ice flows are on shady north-facing slopes, so they stay relatively cool throughout the winter. It turned out that the ice was perfect and the approach was superb. Gwen and I both led WI3 routes on Chouinard Wall and we did a bit of top roping too. With such a poor snow season and such great ice I guess it is a no brainer.

About Myself -

I'm a graduate student here at the University of Nevada Reno in the Department of Geography studying landscape ecology and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). I've been living here in Reno for nearly a year now and thoroughly enjoying it, particularly the climbing and mountaineering opportunities that exist in the Sierra Nevada. This blog is intended as an online journal of my climbing and outdoor adventures. Also, I'm holding out some hope that it will encourage me to take more photographs of my adventures.

So, you may ask, what brought me to Reno. I had been living in Fairbanks, Alaska with my girlfriend, Holly Hemming, and working for the Bureau of Land Management as a contract employee doing GIS. I enjoyed my job, but at the same time we both had decided that it was time to further our careers and build our skills. In other words, we decided to go to graduate school. In looking for graduate programs we both decided to only consider universities that had both geography and speech pathology (Holly's career of choice) departments, and we only considered western states within the U.S. (minus California). After phoning several potential advisors and weighing my options Reno stood out above the rest. In addition to the good academic environment, and the good weather, the outdoor opportunities were a big attraction. So, here I am.

As you'll see soon my outdoor pursuits are varied, as are my interests. However, I one unifying theme stands out; the mountains are where my heart is. I enjoy all forms of climbing: big mountains, traditional rock climbing, sport climbing, ice climbing, backpacking, river rafting, trail running, etc. For starters, I'll point to a few websites of three of my closest friends: Sean Bemis, Nate Pamperin, and Andy Mahoney. Sean, in particular, has been photographing and documenting our adventures for a number of years. He has pictures of two trips to the Ruth Gorge in Denali National Park, Alaska, as well as the Black Rapids Glacier and Mt. Hayes, Alaska. He even has some good ice climbing pics from Valdez.

Sean Bemis - http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~sbemis/
Nate Pamperin - http://mercury.bio.uaf.edu/~nate_pamperin/index2.htm
Andy Mahoney - http://www.gi.alaska.edu/~mahoney/Research/Research.html

So without further ado I'm going to sign off. Expect to see journals from a trip last year to Mount Marcus Baker in the Chugach Range in Alaska as well as Mount Whitney from this past January and Mount Shasta this past May.

-Tom