Ropeless: Water in the Sky???

Although we were sad to leave Yosemite, it was time to move on. The weather was nice when we left the campground...

...but the clouds were moving in, and by the time we had done laundry and checked e-mail in Lee Vining the thunder storms were on the horizon. During the drive up to Lake Tahoe we experienced something we haven't seen in a long time - rain.

We'd been in arid environments for so long we almost forgot that water could fall from the sky! Tahoe also brought another unpleasant weather phenomena we were no longer used to - the dreaded humidity. The temperature was pretty reasonable, highs in the mid 20s for the most part, but climbing in the sun was ludicrous. We couldn't understand what all the people were doing, baking in the sun on the cliff in the afternoon. We did all of our climbing in the morning, while the cliffs at Lover's Leap were in the shade.

Thank goodness too. On our second day, just after topping out Corrugation Corner, a 450+ foot sustained 5.7 with an awesome variety of climbing (including and incredibly exposed arete a few hundered feet off the deck), the sky opened up. By the time we made it back to our site, and for the rest of the afternoon, it was pouring. There was even a little bit of hail thrown in for good measure.

We spent 4 days at Lover's Leap, climbing some super fun multi pitch trad routes, then it was westward once more to the coast. Along the way we stayed at this awesome free campground, which was, from what we could tell, full of hippie and redneck squaters. One lady introduced herself to Kristal and warned us that a homeless man was wandering around stealing stuff. Not that she had anything against homeless people, because, you know, we've all been homeless at least once or twice.

We passed some nice scenery on the drive.