Yo Se Mite

Four deep in the van, with me being the only American, we rolled 9 hours south from Corvallis and made it just outside of Yosemite NP on day 1. As we are members of Team Extreme, we entered the granite laden Yo Sem Ite valley with one goal in mind and that was to dominate. And dominate we did (read we got seriously denied). Being the climbing mecca that it is, we found camp 4, donned our climbing gear and proceeded in our attempts to dominate the rock. What we rudely found was that getting past the first bolt was extremely difficult and that our rope was waaaaaaaaaaaaay too short to do any top-roping. Our interests soon turned. If we couldn’t dominate the climbing scene, we could surely dominate the hiking scene. Half dome it was then – put your dominating pants on, its time to go: but again, not really – the snow was too deep and the wires weren’t up yet on the back side of halfdome. So again, we searched for something to dominate – and finally we found it, Yosemite Falls – 3000ft up of pure domination. We spent a good day hiking up and beyond the falls, we also quickly learned how to dominate relaxation which became the number 1 priority of the team.

On the way to Yosemite we relaxed

Oh really...

Yosemite showed us her stuff, and we showed her ours

Me and Shaun scouting our route up El Cap

You can just barely pick shaun out where the arrow indicates

Shaun making the final move after 2 days and 14 pitches up El Cap, We offered him a rope and shoes and he said "Na Bro, Get Stuffed" What a legend

Why a blur you ask? Its cause im falling. We made it no further than 2 feet below the 2nd bolt. Denied...

We did however, dominate the hiking

The spray of the falls froze each night and then fell throughout the day as the sun entered the valley.

Camp 4 under the moonlight

We had gorgeous sunny days!

After doing all that there is possibly to do in the Yosemite Valley, we left to go check out some rather large trees – the Giant Sequoias in the Mariposa Grove. I love trees, awesome things they are. We went on a wee walk and found some sticks and soon engaged in a game which involved taking your stick and hitting anything with it that could be hit; we dominated. And so finished our trip to Yosemite, we took off from there on our way to Vegas to pick up Jono – adding 1 more kiwi to the group. We then headed to the Grand Canyon for some grand times.

Standing Giants

And Those that have fallen.