Getting high !

So there we go, I finally left Canada as my working visa expired. Really good time and a damn interesting experience. If you’re one of these wondering if doing a Working Holiday Visa is the thing to do or not, well don’t, and take it ! You may not especially learn or improve your skills in your field, some may say you’ll loose a “professional” year, but I can assure you you’ll get much more than that. Life is not only about work, believe it or not 🙂

So after finally having fixed the motorcycle and praying every single day for it not to break down, it looks like it ended up doing pretty well cause it’s still running like a charm after more than 8000 km !

This time, I focused on one thing : doing my first big wall ever ! After having discovered the trad’ climbing (climbing where you place yourself your protection system during the ascents) last summer and after having played in Squamish almost every single weekend for a year, I wanted to take it to the next step. For the one who don’t know, a big wall is a multi-day climb where you usually sleep on the wall. Meeeeh no it’s not terrifying … it’s fun ! 😀 (supposed to)

The downside is that sleeping on the wall mean more gear … MUCH more gear. I didn’t weight it but that’s probably the part of the trip where the motorcycle was the most ridiculously loaded.

The Loaded Baby

First pit-stop next to Smith Rock, Oregon. Cannot not go to that one, there is so much to see. Plus I randomly met Nate at a gas station, a buddy I climbed with last year in Yosemite.

Second stop in Eugene, at my friend Aaron’s house, who kindly let me borrowed his big wall gear.

And then, direction Yosemite !

At that time, Gilles was supposed to meet me in California after his trip in Yukon. It’s been a while we planned that trip and were really excited to get to go big wall together. Unfortunately, the fact he extended his tourist visa in Canada up to 9 months made the customs quite suspicious and they denied his access to the USA. Even worse, after that deny, Canada kinda supposed US had a reason to refuse him and they refused his access back to Canada as well. Stuck in the no-man’s-land, Gilles has been forced to go back to Europe and I was on my own again. That’s too bad not to be able to share all this with him, but travelling alone is still freaking awesome and I can’t wait to go sleep up there !

I met pretty sweet people at the Camp 4 willing to learn how to big wall just as me and our skills complete each others quite well. That’s therefore with Sam from California and Morgane from France that we’ll experience our first big wall attempts and do all the mistakes we could ever do (the best way to learn ! Not the fastest though)

Yosemite

We’ll spend in total 3 nights on the wall, but more camping than really big-walling. Simple reason : we were 3 (not the most efficient number), 3 newbies, had to bring 2 portaledges (that thing we sleep on) and it was, even for September, reeeeeally hot still. The 3 of us were just looking to dial the big wall techniques, learn, and mostly, have fun ! So we directly gave up the idea of topping out.

After Yosemite, direction Vegas !

I’m meeting there Nate, Pepa (a good friend met during my year in Vancouver) and Lea that I met few months earlier in Squamish as well.

We went climbing in Red Rock first, a beautiful national park just next to Vegas. It’s now the desert and in the desert, the rock is pretty particular ! This kind of rock is called Sandstone. That beautiful and so attractive red rock. Downsides though : it’s definitely not as solid as granite, so doing traditional climbing in there is kinda more scary cause it’s not rare to see holds breaking during a fall, your protection falling with you. Also, it dries pretty slowly and is very fragile after rain, so you have to wait at least 2 sunny days after a solid shower.

After that preview of Sandstone, Pepa goes back to Chile and Nate keeps his way up to Oregon. Lea and me are now heading to the main goal : Zion.

Incredible national park, but also incredible climbing area and big walls way less crowded than Yosemite, this place is magical.

That’s the first big wall for Lea (and I’m not so far from that as well), so we practice few days and finally are heading for the classic “Moonlight Buttress”, an amazing big wall in the canyon. We plan to do it in 3 days to really have no time pressure and enjoy a maximum. Unfortunately, on the second day, some people climbing pass us and tell us that the weather is getting worse, and a storm isn’t impossible.

In the water, as I said, the Sandstone is getting really fragile, so do the bolts. So unlike the Granite where you can install your portaledge and wait for the storm to end, here, you don’t want to be hanging on these 🙂

So we finally choose to let the portaledge at the first night spot, play around the bivy on the climbing routes above, keeping an eye on the weather and being ready to bail, to finally sleep there a second night and go down in the morning.

Zion National Park

The storm finally hit a bit after we got down, so we could have done the whole thing if we didn’t met there guys, but the way we choose was probably the safest. Another reason to come back !

It’s now time to go back to Vegas cause Lea flies back in a few days. A massive storm hits all Utah on our last day, causing flash floods a bit everywhere. It’s pretty intense and impressive, but we end up just being wet on the last hour and weirdly thinking it’s actually quite fun (2 on that overloaded motorcycle under a massive rain storm causing the highway to close .. I’m not sure I get these people !)

Lea is flying back home and it’s time for me to move. I’m riding back to Oregon to give the gear back to Aaron, have a few talks with Gilles and we agreed on meeting each others in Thailand.

So I’m now in the plane, ready for a new adventure ! First time in Asia, quite excited. Unfortunately, I had to let the motorcycle in US for many reasons, but actually I can’t wait to travel light and in another way than with a 600 pounds motorcycle ! (It’s still there waiting for the next walls though hehe)

Aaaaand that’s it I guess !

Hope it wasn’t too long to read, but I got pretty lazy doing various articles and choose to keep the Facebook page a bit more alive and just summarise each country on the website.

Few things you should check out if you still don’t want to get back to work 😀

My friend Daisy’s project

Daisy’s Travelling Kitchen

The brand new NGO of a sweet couple I met in Bend, having project in Nepal at the moment, helping rebuilding schools destroyed by the earthquake

People Helping People International

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