I went climbing at Castle Rock yesterday. This was my first time climbing outside in a long time. We went to the underworld section of Castle Rock. I think we did ~8 routes. I lead belayed for the first time, which was pretty interesting.
Climbing outside is so different than climbing in a gym. None of the holds are as straightforward or as clean.
Anyway this is a pretty cool zone with a lot of different areas. I'm looking forward to go back for more.
On Saturday, I rode the main mountain biking loop at Camp Tamarancho. It's also known as "Boy Scout Camp", because the land is owned and maintained by the local Boy Scout Council. Let me just say that, those Boy Scouts aren't playing around. That was a serious trail with a lot of varied terrain. I think it may have been a 9 mile loop, but it could have been a bit longer due to parking far from the start. Afterwards we ate had some beer and brats in lovely Fairfax.
Back in SF, I somehow managed to stay awake until midnight and rode the SF Midnight Mystery Ride for the first time. It would have been wise to use an app to plot both of these rides, but I forgot. The mystery ride started at 10th and Folsom, and wound through the city for about 1.5 hours. Eventually it ended at the Bernal Heights Mini-Park Slides, which is a place that I've read about but never visited.
I did the loop today at China Camp on my mountain bike. What a rush! I think I've been taking the wrong trail when I've been there before. At the beginning there is a fork where you can climb up using either a firetrail or by using a single track trail. I've always done the climb on the firetrail, and it gets pretty steep and rocky. I end up pushing my bike, which is kinda lame. The single track trail has a lot more switchbacks, which made the climb a lot more fun.
I have been out of action for the past 5 weeks due to travels and injury. A few weeks ago, I injured a tendon in my inner elbow during a friendly arm wrestling competition. Afterwards it hurt to do anything that required grip strength for a long time. I did a little research on my injury, and it is obvious now that arm wrestling is really dangerous.
Anyway I ended up resting and taking a long break from a lot of my normal activities. The good news is that everything feels fine now. I'm back!
Update 9/14:
I went back to China Camp again this morning, and I did two laps of the loop. I saw a couple deer on the trail. One of them didn't even spook as I rode up to her and had a one sided chat. I assume people have been feeding her.
I tracked this ride on Strava. Some cool stats and graphs are here.
Josh invited me on an overnight camping trip to the famed Blue Streak. I wasn't able to make it to his previous trips, and I wasn't going to miss the last one of the Summer. In the past, Josh had told me some stories about camping and cliff jumping here.
We left SF at 8am on a Saturday, drove to the Stanislaus National Forest, and started hiking. It's only maybe a 2-3 miles hike down into the canyon. We camped out right by the river, jumped off the cliffs, and swam the rest of the day. The water was still surprisingly brisk.
The next day we went looking for another spot that we had heard about called Candy Rock. We found a spot, but from what I can find on the internet, that spot wasn't actually Candy Rock. Anyway we had a blast at the unnamed spot.
When we got back to camp, it was getting near time to leave. As a group we had brought a large quantity of water, but we drink almost all of it on Saturday. Note to self, next time bring iodine tablets from apartment. I think we probably had about 2 liters of water between 8 people for all of Sunday. We all ended up fairly dehydrated after the hike out. When we got back to the cars, we took off for the first place that had any kind of hydration. The first thing we found was an Apple Cider stand, which turned out to be amazing!
Holy fucking shit. This was my first burn. I did my research beforehand, so I thought I knew what to expect, but I was blown away. The reality is that there is no medium that can fully capture the experience of burning man.
I have decided to not write an in-depth post on the experience. I just wouldn't be able to capture all the emotions that I felt about it.
