The Owens River Gorge is California largest sport climbing crag. It's important for the reader to understand the difference between traditional rock climbing and Sport Climbing. I shot the photo below of the gorge from my Fresno-Vegas flight one fall afternoon.
The gorge contains something close to 500 sport climbs and 100 gear climbs. Short story - this place is nuts for sport climbing. Situated between Mammoth and Bishop, the ideal time to climb is pretty much every season except summer. Winter temps are chilly at night but perfect (t-shirt) conditions during the day. The gorge also has a lot of non-climbing related history which I think is totally fascinating. The gorge history pertains to top of the LA aqueduct. I won't talk about that here but needless to say it's a very interesting story.
In April of 2012 Kristine and I did a recon trip to the gorge and other rock crags in the Owens Valley. We didn't really climb that much but I did get a good overview of the place.
As far as climbers are concerned the Gorge is divided in to 6 sections. North, Upper, Inner, Central, Lower, and Sub with the bulk of climbing in the Central Gorge.
A little background story to why I took this time to go to the gorge. You see the original plan was to take a Level One Avalanche course from Sierra Mountain Center in Mammoth. However with an extremely dry winter in the sierras there was not enough snow to do the course. So instead I decided to pull off a last minute trip to the gorge.
Saturday January 18th:
I left my house in Fresno during the afternoon to get the 6 hour to Bishop out of the way. This was my first trip with my new truck - The Taco. I got the The Pit campground my home for the next couple of days. This place has the vibe of Camp 4 in Yosemite. Temps at night were a little on the chilly side... in the teens.
I secured a partner for my first two day in the gorge from MP while Ivy (my normal partner) would join me for the last two days.
Sunday January 19th:
First stop - The Warm Up warm. This wall is home of a lot of easier routes for the gorge. The wall by 10am was already pretty full with climbers.
Across the river some interesting belay platforms...
A climber is seen here on From Chocolate to Morphine a 5 star .11D climb.
Later in the day we ended up at the Great Wall of China. Who did we see there??? The one and only Peter Croft!
Monday January 20th:
We spent most of the day climbing at the Pub Wall followed by the Banana Belt. The day was finished with climbing a strenuous .9 called Paradise.
Tuesday January 21st:
Ivy showed up at the Pit campground and we decided on exploring the Lower gorge. The lower gorge rock quality was pretty sub-par. We found only a handful on interesting climbs.
Wednesday January 22nd:
After 3 straights days of climbing my arms were a little blown out. We again decided on exploring a different section of the gorge. The Upper and Inner gorge have a much more wild and scenic feel compared to the Central and lower sections.
In the pic below the Gorgeous Towers are seen.
Old Mining equipment.
More of the Gorgeous Towers.
We only ended up climbing just one routte for the day. We had more of a exciting hike that at times felt like a canyoneering trip.
I had fun time at the Gorge but walked away with a feeling that I just wasn't strong enough to climb there. ORG really has the feel of climbing at the gym...not much technique required. I'll quit complaining... it was still a fun time!
