Arriving USA and Yosemite

The 30th of June i arrived in San Fransisco and Jake picked me up at the airport, the first thing we do is to get lost in San Fransisco trying to get on I5 north :) After a night at the Gradek family farm and picking a lot of the best oranges I have ever tasted there we went back to San Fransisco, picked up Kristin (who had lost her wallet and was out of battery on her cell) and drove to Yosemite (I lost my credit card on the way). The first sight of El Cap and Half Dome completly stunned me! It is truly amazing nature there and I have never seen anything like it! Its just these strange 1000 m tall straight up granite walls!

Half dome! (its taller than Galhøpiggen!)

About the climbing in Yosemite: Its hard! But cool! The first 5.6 crack we tried there made us realize our inferiority. But it really is absolutly awsome thought! I would love to get back there and climb more and climb some of the classics like Royal arches. Another cool event appening when we where there was that it was set speed record on El Cap 2.43 i think the new time is. Of course this was the big gossip at camp 4 :)

Jake on top of the manura pile which was a 6 pitch climb

Kristin on a 5.6 crack (5.6 in Yosemite is not as easy as it sounds!)

Another thing about Yosemite that we discovered are the bears. Its a lot of them, and they are really smart and not afraid of humans at all! Its a lot of signs around with warnings about the bears, and at camp 4 they have bear boxes where your are to put all your food, and if you dont do so, you get a fine. Of course we are law-abiding citizens and did as the rangers said, put all the food in the bear box and where very carefull. But one night we woke up by some rangers with flashlights in our faces asking if we drove a golden volvo stationwagon. Reason: A bear had broken into our car! It had broken the front seat window, climbed in and into the back seat, taken Jakes school backback, draged it out, opened it, let all the climbing guides in it out, and taken the cake Jake had gotten from his aunt that we forgot about, eaten the cake and left everything in the parkinglot. Nothing was damaged exept the window and the cake! This resultin in us having to spend a day driving down to the town Merced in central valley and fixing the window instead of climbing... We where a bit sad that we did not see the bear though, but Jake and Kristin saw one later, lucky them!

This is where the bear got in!