East Side Sierra Fun

Curtis, Tucker, and i joined forces for a little climbing joy on the east side of the Sierra Nevada... we had fun. Our first stop was in the Palisade region. Here one ridge contains seven of California's 14 fourteen-thousand foot peaks. We didn't climb any of them, but not for lack of effort. Below is a shot of the Temple Crag (12,990ish). We did climb this via a route called Venusian Blind Arete. The route was great but the "third class" to the summit got a little gnarly for unroped travel at the very top so we didn't really touch the very very top. Summits Matter.
Chilling with Curtis high on Temple Crag. Latter in our journey i think that Tucker and i swam in that little lake down there.
On our third day in the Palisade region we went up and over Contact Pass from the North Fork to the South Fork drainage of Big Pine Creek. Our goal was to make it to and climb a third class route on the face of Middle Palisade. We think that the face is the one with a little sun and snow at the base beyond the ridge in the center of this photo. It was WAY to far away so we ended up just scrambling around the south fork drainage, chilling, meeting some cool dudes from Prescot College in AZ, and swimming.
After a few days out in the woods getting our butts kicked we wanted to eat some good food and do some chiller climbing to get our heads settled. So we went to the Owens River Gorge. Here is Curtis stockpiling some serious stoke on an ORG funfest.
Tucker in whipper therapy class. He took some his first leader falls on our ORG day.
We didn't feel like we got pumped enough because i guess we didn't do hard enough sport climbs so the next day it was off to Happy Boulders to work it out. That day we climbed til our tips where gone and our muscles refused to pull down anymore. A great day. This shot is of the beginning of a traverse out through this cave that was super fun.
A friend, Mikey O. (a.k.a. BP), met us the morning went to the happys ansd joined us for the rest of the trip. The next day we took him for his first technical rock climb in Toulume Meadows. We did Cathedral Peak and is was sweet.
The posse and some some awesome swedes on the summit!

Good mission.

All of the photos here are the work Tucker Cunningham: tuckercunningham.com