June 23rd, 2016
Next stop, Tuolomne Meadows, 1.5 h North East of Yosemite Valley and ~1500 m higher. Of course that did not work, since it had already been five weeks without our car complaining.
The all wheel drive was malfunctioning (indicated by the AT Oil Temp light flashing again) and this time we could not fix it by using front wheel drive only, because we had already done that five weeks ago. So, instead of Tuolumne Meadows, we drove to Sonora Subaru 1.5 h West of Yosemite and had our car fixed and our trip expenses increase by 25%. I suspect that a large portion of this expense is to be blamed on the frustration icecream ingested during waiting. They gave us a courtesy vehicle and we spent two nights in the area. It was nice, hot and a bit boring.
Then, as the weekend arrived and the part had not arrived as expected, we drove off to Tuolumne Meadows, escaping the heat (40°C) for some climbing. The climbing part turned out to be quite difficult as Todd had forgotten to transfer my climbing shoes and chalk from our car. Organizing climbing gear on this trip is always Todd’s responsibility, whereas I am usually more inclined to organize the food, as it should be. So, we climbed something easy (Holdless Horror, 5.6).
We also hiked in the Saddlebag Lake Area. It was the second hike on our trip which I could successfully force Todd to attend.
It was beautiful, five hours of alpine lake to alpine lake with very little elevation gain or loss,
some creek crossings,
a bit of snow,
and frogs.
And then the weekend was over, the car part had arrived and we could happily pick up our car.
June 26th, 2016
Back to Tuolumne for some real climbing!
