Having no climbing partner on this trip, I am limited to doing Top Rope Solo or finding someone to climb with. Top Rope Soloing is a way to climb by yourself while remaining protected by a rope. It works by setting up a fixed line and then utilizing progress capture devices to ensure you don’t fall. As you climb, the device slides up the rope. However when the device is weighted (you sit back, let go, fall, etc) it pinches the rope, ensuring you don’t fall and remain roughly in the same place.
Images from “On the Line” by Andy Kirkpatrick
TRS requires access to the top of the climb in order to anchor the fixed line. You can then either hike down (if possible) or rappel down, then climb. This limits my options quite a bit, since most places to climb require starting from the ground and going up.
I found a spot called Rimview Cliffs in the Owen’s River Gorge, located within the Inyo National Forest near Bishop, California and Lake Crowley. I was really stoked because it checked every single box:
- Easily accessible from the top (you camp at the top of the wall essentially)
- Located in a national forest (free dispersed camping)
- Large number of easier routes (perfect for practicing after several months of no climbing)
- No detour required from the route I was planning on driving
- The weather looked to be 30s at night and upper 50s in the daytime, all sun
So I hit the road and headed to the Owen’s River Gorge! (…once I cleared all the ice off my car 🥶)
I got to the Inyo National Forest right around sunset. The entrance to the forest was a pull off on the side of the highway, right next to the Sherwin Summit. I was not expecting to be at 7,000 feet.
Man, after all this time, here I was driving through dirt roads, mountains in sight, and climbing on the agenda. To say I was hyped is an understatement. I snaked through the forest roads, roughly headed to the climbing spot, but keeping an eye out for good camping options.
Eventually I got to a really steep section of road I wasn’t confident I could get up. It was getting close to dark, so I stopped and set up shop there for the night. I scrambled up the hillside to get some pictures and noted how quickly perspective changed. The hill didn’t look that steep, but the car looked so small by the time I got the top.
Not wanting to do the whole tent setup, I hung my hammock up the road a ways. Looking forward to finding the climbing spot in the morning, I tried to get some sleep.
The elevation definitely threw off my weather forecasting. The night was way colder than anticipated— a hammock being the wrong call (I don’t have a proper underquilt, and my sleeping pad acts like an air hockey puck inside the hammock).
After a restless night, I went back to my car and made some breakfast, then went exploring. I followed the road up the hill and headed to the GPS pin where the climbing wall was. After a couple hours of scrambling around, I found what I was looking for and headed back to the car. I decided I was going to relocate to higher up, the hill looked less scary in the daytime, and there were better spots for my tent closer to the climbs.
Back at camp, I grab the car door handle — it doesn’t open.
I look around camp for my keys to no avail 😬. Starting to get a little bit panicked, the last time I definitely remembered having them was in my pocket. Realizing that they could have easily fallen out of my pocket while scrambling around, I went to retrace my steps.
Besides the road, there are no paths through the boulder fields. This made it challenging to know exactly where I walked before. While memory took me through the same route, I had to rely on pictures I had taken to determine which specific boulders I was sitting on. After a couple hours of this, and finding nothing, I headed back to camp empty handed and heart rate high.
I did have a spare key…but inside the car 🤦. I accepted that I’d have to just use a rock to break a window and get the spare key. Before going through with this plan, I sat down in my chair to collect myself for a moment.
jingle jingle 😅😮💨
The keys were in the freaking chair pocket the whole time! In my defense the pockets are concealed and you can’t tell they even exist. In my offense, I’ve definitely ‘lost’ my wallet the same way before, so I should have known better.
Extremely relieved, I packed up and decided to try the hill. I arranged some rocks to try and fill the pot holes in the sand, which worked surprisingly well. It was bumpy as shit, but I made it to the top. Between the rush of losing my keys and then making it up this hill, my adrenaline was surging. Uncharacteristically, I felt myself unable to resist the urge to let out a celebratory yell into the void.
After re-setting up camp, and the mornings mishaps, the day was about over. At least I was finally all set to climb the next day!
The next day I spent climbing, which was awesome. It felt great to finally touch rocks. Feature rich volcanic tuff made for really fun, yet deceivingly challenging climbing. Getting to run through the whole TRS setup outside of Richmond for the first time also felt good.
That night I went to go get some supplies and ended up getting stuck going up the hill. I knew this would be the last time I reasonably should try and go up here. It felt like I was pushing the limits of my suspension driving over the giant rocks at the speed required to not get stuck. For some reason my new car head unit pauses the music whenever you go in reverse, which I find really funny. The dash cam records the audio inside the car, so the footage from when I got stuck was cracking me up.
Unfortunately I misjudged how much water I had, so the next day was my last here. After climbing again, the next evening I headed to Bishop for The Hostel California. Going to miss this place!
Here’s a fun video showing how I got to the bottom of the wall to retrieve my rope and get my things.
Then this shows how close I was able to camp and why it was worth risking going up this hill multiple times.
Leave a Reply