rock climbing – Paint Your Landscape

Bishop, largest populated city in Inyo County, sits at the crossroads of well-known Highway 395 and Highway 6. It has a small town feel as you walk its streets, meandering among long-time locals, hippies with dreadlocks and weathered backpackers. With all Bishop has to offer, it may well be the most popular stopping off point along the Highway 395 corridor.

When I think of Bishop, this is the scene I first envision.

We had planned several days in Bishop before we headed out for the summer as we wanted to experience this bustling little jewel in the spring, but our stay has been longer than anticipated as Mother Nature has decided she is not yet done with winter in the Sierras. So what is there to do in Bishop when you are waiting out storm fronts? Here are our top 3 picks:

1) Feasting

Bishop is the foodie paradise on the 395, with over 40 restaurants covering any type of meal a discerning palette could want. We followed Nina’s lead on this one.

Any guesses whether we ate the whole thing?

Bishop Burger Barn – offering a wide choice of burgers on homemade buns (even gluten-free) and grass-fed beef, the barn is a must if you love a good burger. Be forewarned, you could blow your daily allowance of calories in one sitting. We opted to bike out to the barn and felt just a wee bit comforted by the fact that we burned off a few extra calories, but definitely not as many as we consumed.

Mountain Rambler Brewery – new to town, with four of their own brews, one being a porter…yeah! They are working on eight more taps and will surely improve over time.

Terry, Tom, & Z at Mountain Rambler Brewery

The best part of our time at the brewery was meeting new full-timers Zsuzsa (better known as Z) and Tom. Z is from Hungary and they are a delightful couple. We learned during our visit that it was their 5^th-wheel that was parked next to Dragon Face Rock in the Alabama Hills when I was respectfully trying to capture a photo without encroaching on their campsite. Facebook brought us together from there.

Great Basin Bakery – go for the cookies, especially the Sierra Mud and Molasses…amazing!

Thai Thai Restaurant – another meet-up with Z and Tom. We had eaten here during our last visit…tasty!

One last meal with Z & Tom before we leave Bishop.

2) Window Shop or Contribute to the Bishop Economy

There are lots of little boutique shops in which to spend your hard-earned money. Here were our top three favorites.

Mountain Light Gallery – If you are the least bit interested in landscape photography, you should not miss out on the opportunity to visit this fabulous gallery, a tribute to the magical, one-of-a-kind photography of Galen Rowell and his wife Barbara. We spent hours here during our last Bishop visit and did so again this time.

Wilson’s Eastside Sports – fabulous products, wonderful clerks and Terry is the proud owner of new hiking boots.

Spellbinder Books – a quaint bookstore with a variety of new and used books.

3) Hiking, Bouldering, Rock Climbing (now we’re talkin’)

There are plenty of high elevation hikes to consider but since the winter storms keep rolling in, this has been out of the question. It has made for some beautiful mountain photos but is not conducive to hiking. We did get our high altitude fix in when we last visited in the fall, which you can read about here.

Bishop, unbeknownst to us, is one of the top rock climbing places in the world, offering over 2,000 bouldering “problems” for all climbing levels.

Afternoon light in the Buttermilks

Expansive views

Gigantic egg-shaped boulders to entice climbers

Gigantic granite egg-shaped boulders dot the landscape in the Buttermilks, challenging the very best climbers. It is said that the open windswept nature of these mountains will freeze your skin before your muscles give out. The vistas are breathtaking, the hiking wonderful, and we were greeted by some interesting characters on the way back to our camper.

I think he likes bouldering!

Takin’ a bath in buttermilk!

A lovely new friend

The patriarch of the herd

Beautiful, gentle arctic wolf

In the Volcanic Tablelands, where we spent several days boondocking, the volcanic tuff of the Happy and Sad Boulders present countless bouldering opportunities. The “Happies” have a larger choice of boulders and the “Sads”, less visited, have a dense population of more difficult problems. We visited both and the rock formations were spectacular. We hiked from where we camped and took the long way home, making for a 7-mile day of hiking and bouldering…fun times.

Not a soul in sight in the Sad Boulders

Joining in on the fun

Spiderman in his “older” years, still rocking’ on!

A climber studying his route. We were told most use the pads shown on the bottom right.

Still a bit of a daredevil in him!

As of this writing we are still in Bishop, hoping for a break in the weather further north. It looks like spring here, with temps hovering near 70 degrees but the snow-capped mountains all around us tell another tale of what to expect on the mountain passes. If we stay here much longer, we might get to experience Mule Days, Bishop’s week-long festival held since 1969 celebrating the contributions pack mules have made to the area. It might be fun to see but fingers-crossed we will be heading north soon.

Blue hour in the Volcanic Tablelands before the storm

Legend of Devils Tower ~ photo credit Google

According to the Lakota tribe, while at play, a group of young girls were chased by giant bears. Their escape was to climb atop a rock and pray to the Great Spirit to save them.The Great Spirit heard their pleas and the rock rose to the heavens, keeping the young girls safe from attack. Deep claw marks in the sides of the rock evidence the ursine’s attempts to reach the girls. These are the marks which appear today on the sides of Devils Tower. When the girls reached the sky, they were turned into the star constellation Pleiades.

There are things in the natural world that induce a stillness of spirit, a sense of wonder. For me, Devils Tower is one of those things. President Theodore Roosevelt must have felt this same sense of awe as he gazed upwards at this rocky sentinel rising 1267 feet above the surrounding landscape, as this was to be his choice for the first national monument on September 24, 1906. With a one-mile circumference, it is a sight to behold.

Graceful beauty

Silent elegance on a cloudy day

The name “Bear’s Lodge” given to this stately tower by Native Americans became woefully mistranslated by a U.S. Army interpreter to that of “Bad Man’s Tower”, which then became Devils Tower. Northern Plains Indians have objected to this name and wish to see it changed to Bear Lodge National Historic Landmark but they have been met by local opposition, fearing a name change would affect tourism.

There is an ongoing debate about how this massive tower was formed. Most geologists agree that Devils Tower was formed by the forceful passage of molten material between other rock formations but they can’t agree whether this magma reached the earth’s surface or how that process took place. What is known is that this material cooled and crystallized, forming hexagonal (4 to 7-sided) columns separated by vertical fissures, compatible to columns found at Devil’s Postpile National Monument in California, but those at Devils Tower are much larger. These are the tallest and widest columns in the world, some more than 600 feet tall and 10-20 feet wide.

View from our campground

‘Circle of Sacred Smoke’ designed by Japanese sculptor Junkyu Muto, representing the first puff of smoke from the pipe used by Native Americans to pray.

Many ask, “should this be a sacred tower, a climbing mecca, or is there room for both?” It has long been held as sacred ground by over 20 Native American tribes but has also been sought as an international climbing destination since its first ascent on July 4, 1893. Out of respect for Native American beliefs, the National Park Service has asked climbers to refrain from climbing the tower during the month of June, when many tribes gather here for prayer, sun dance, sweat lodge ceremonies, and vision quests.

With wind blowing through the pines, the sun's final light sets the tower aglow. — With wind blowing through the pines, the sun’s final light sets the tower aglow.

Records of the tower climbs have been kept since that first ascent by William Rogers and Willard Ripley in 1893, using a wooden ladder to climb the first 350 feet. Two years later Mrs. Rogers used that same ladder to become the first woman to summit. Remnants of that ladder can still be seen today on the side of Devils Tower. Annually 5000+ climbers world-wide come to tackle this technically difficult tower and over 220 climbing routes have been established. Five deaths have resulted from attempting this climb, the most recent being in 2003. We watched in awe as one climber worked his way up the tower barefoot.