15 Days of Freedom: Bishop and Back

Next Adventure employees Rachel and Seth recently returned from a 15-day climbing trip in the Eastern Sierra region of California. Popularized in the early 2000's by climbers like Lisa Rands for its incredible boulders, there are also plenty of sport and traditional, multi-pitch and alpine routes scattered throughout the valley. Seth and Rachel set up base-camp outside of Bishop at a primitive and dusty (but cheap!) climbers' campground and spent most of their time climbing in the Owens River Gorge. When the desert got too hot, they explored the steep granite of the Rock Creek area and short trad lines in nearby Alabama Hills. Of course, you can't go to Bishop and not visit the now-famous Buttermilk boulders. Rest days were spent seeking shade and caffeine at the coffee-shop in town, or hitting the local restaurant for weekday happy hour (which was really, literally one hour), tracking down free hot springs and searching for petroglyphs. Rachel and Seth returned to Portland via Smith Rocks near Bend, OR, and spent their last day of freedom clipping bolts in their 'home crag.'

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