Livin' the Dream

We left Marshal's Uncle's place, ate breakfast with Mashal's Grandpa, and hit the road.  The last stretch.  One quick stop for gas, a few necessities from one of a million Walmart super centers, and we were there!  Past Miguel's pizzeria, we headed straight for the Motherlode parking lot.  It was 2:30 by the time we had our packs on and started hiking.  I followed Marshal down a path that looked familiar to him. Excited by the prospect of fresh sandstone, we started running.  A quick right turn, and a cliff was within sights.  Vertical, and less featured than the pictures I had seen, I figured that we cut right too soon, and would regain the main trail as long as we followed the cliff band.  Just around the bend,  it must be there... 5...10...15...30 minutes past.  Where was it? We took out the guidebook to see if we could figure out where we had gone wrong.  Non of the rock looked familiar.  A ways back we saw a well worn trail at the bottom of the valley.  After 5 minutes of bushwhacking we found the trail.  With hung heads we walked to what we thought would be our parking lot.  What we did find was a parking lot, but no van of mine was to be found.  A group of climbers stood around exchanging beta on the routes they climbed that day.  "Where are we?" we abashedly asked.  The wrong turn put us in the Sore Heels parking lot, 20 minutes down the road from where we parked.

Half an hour later we arrived at our destination.  I am by no mean religious, but viewing the sculpted beauty of the Motherlode is the closest I have ever come to believing in a higher power.  Words cannot do justice to this extraordinary piece of rock.  We spent that afternoon climbing routes, and loving life.  This was why we tormented ourselves in a car for four days.  This was what we had come for.

Marshal retro-onsighting 8-ball 5.12d

Jay Audenart on Flux Capacitor 5.12d