sorry i haven’t been posting here as much of late. i’ve been tying to get at it, but this is the busy time in tahoe and the bumblebeast takes up a lot of time as well. enough with the excuses, let’s get to the story. we were looking for somewhere new to climb. somewhere we could camp with the dogs without worry. bowman lake kept showing up on supertopo as an uncrowded spot with a high density of climbs within our range. and of course the lake was a huge plus as well. so we packed up the bumblebeast and headed to the north shore, and then past the north shore, and then 45 minutes down a forest service road that would be the beast’s first test of this sort
bowman lake
and there were little pools along the creek perfect for doggie deep water soloing (actually nacho was chasing the water bugs, stoke had yet to swim at this point)
got one
we hiked up to the big lake, which held beautiful secluded coves along the shoreline
there were flowers
and snakes. actually, there were a lot of snakes
hutch dove in
stoke couldn’t stand to see her with nacho, so he took his first voluntary swim
i flipped out
nacho to the rescue
enough of the hijinx, we were here to climb. we started off with the easier climbs here in a zone called the funhouse
ashley leading circus tricks, an easy 5.7
we busted out the toprope for the unknown 5.10 (5.10b)
next up, candyland, which offers some great moderate routes
me leading up nemo (5.6). ashley played rope gun on the more difficult climbs on this wall. big moves to clear rooves were still tough on the knee
ashley leading candyland (5.8)
and here she is on rock n rolla (5.9), an awesome climb. except for one slab move above the roof, this is considerably easier than candyland
a look over at rediscovery dome and boy scout wall. reasons to come back
then we moved over 100 yards or so to the cove. ashley leading up the lower portion of pulp friction (5.7)
me up on the slabs of pulp friction. we also did flumetastic (5.7+), one climb to the left as daylight waned. that took just about all of our 70m rope to descend.
the next day we headed to the emeralds just to check them out. we will be back after only scratching the surface there.