Yosemite National Park (31 Nov 06)

Good Morning Sunshine


This is Burdo cooking Bacon and Egg Bagels, or as he calls them, 'Baceggelos con una bola'.

(Behold the mighty Trangia: our travel stove that can turn the simplest of ingredients into cuisine!! All you need is Metho, or as they call it in the US: Denatured spirits, ethylated alcohol, and good-luck-trying-to-find-some spirits. We've had to marvel at the humble Methylated Spirits recently, and it's many, many uses. In the US, they have many different versions of Metho - all basically identical but for a dash of benzene, a trickle of toluene, or a splash of pyrazine. These make them especially suitable for a single use, and are marketed thusly. This all makes poor ol' flexible, reliable and cheapable Metho a wee bit redundant... and quite expensive.)
Now where was I ??

Oh yeah, mountains.
The impressive Yosemite valley. On the left you can see El Capitan, on the right you see some other peak, and in the centre, away in the distance, is Half Dome, but we'll get to him later.

El Capitan is a close-enough-to-sheer granite surface that draws in rock climbers from all over the world - or at least, I assume it does. But amateur climbers need not apply, for it takes a good 3 days to climb. Did I say 3 days?? Not hardly, it actually takes 7 - 9 days to climb. Apparently during the warmer months the face is littered (well, littered might be an exaggeration, just like Budweiser's claim of 'King of Beers') with little specks, moving slowly up the granite. We couldn't see anyone while we were there, but we stayed in the climbers' camping ground and there were a few groups of people training and sleeping in those dinky rock-climbing beds. I can't attest to the fun factor of being suspended on a cliff face, several days climb from anywhere, and having your bed blown around by some the vicious winds that sweep up the valley, but I can imagine they'd be quite high - like popping Nitrous Oxide bottles.

One thing to note about Yosemite is the valley. See it? Girded by those impressive granite cliffs?? Engulfed almost entirely by shadow. Well, we didn't have an alarm clock, on account of our mobile not actually being endowed with 'international voltage' as previously thought.

Whoops.

But that's okay, we're camping, we'll get up when the sun gets up and touches the sky with a hint of pink merry and a golden smile. We'll get up with the chirping birds and the rousing chipmunks, greeted by a glorious new day and the smell of a fresh morning's dew. It sounded alright in principal but as we learnt on the first day, the sun doesn't really touch the valley floor until about.. ooooohh, midday. Well, 11am really, but let's not split hairs. Instead, let's split six six packs of beers and sit around the roaring fire.

We loved that fire. Not just because the wood was free (procured from other campsites and deserted fireplaces). Not just because there's nothing like camping with a roaring fire, and to be without the warm and mesmerising glow is to feel ashamed and downtrodden by 'the man', but because it was freaking cold. Sure, now as we write this, it's about -13C outside, and it was only hovering 0C at the time, but dammit, we were outside then and that shit was cold. When you have sleeping bags that are good for 0C, and you're too cold to sleep - it's cold. When you place down a cup of water for a minute and return to find pieces of ice forming in it - it's cold. When you'd rather pee your pants than go to the toilet - you're probably in Anton's footy team and enjoying the warmth spread o'er your loins. But anyway, the point is, we slept in and didn't get anything done.

Now look at the Coyote.