Lover's Leap Day Four: Deceptively Easy

We awoke the morning of our final day with the anticipation of getting a few more climbs in before having to split back to real life later in the day. "PBR" had a soccer camp to get to in the Bay area, and "Ratherbe" and I had a connecting flight out of Sacremento to catch in the early evening so that we would be comfortably red-eye bound on a Long Beach-to-Boston flight closer to midnight. The

Lover's Leap Day Three: Chasing Osman

The unfortunately irrevocable Dan Osman climbed the 400ft Bear's Reach at Lover's Leap in four minutes and 25 seconds. Let that settle for just a few minutes......................Bear's Reach (5.7 with a 5.9 variation finish) - Three Pitches - Trad Gear Anchors - All three ledApproach:Turn of Highway 50 onto Strawberry Drive next to the Strawberry Lodge. Drive up the road and turn left onto

Lover's Leap Day Two: Frying Times

Two things surprised me the most when it came to my trip west: the effects of altitude and the heat.I'll start by saying that I played "This Monkey's Gone to Heaven" by the great Boston band The Pixies (see above) just as I started this (and a few times over and over again). Not that there's anything linked to the song and my below post. I was just fixated on that one song (well, I did listen to

Lover's Leap Day One: Making The Leap Away From Crack

With the success of the previous day behind us and leaving a good feeling in my head and chest, we got up early and headed out of The Valley toward Lover's Leap in Strawberry, California. But we didn't head off without a few stops along the way.The first stop was near the base of El Cap. Sure, anyone can say they stopped and saw El Cap, but it was important to me because I'm a complete nut job