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the tl;dr guide to crags 19-Jun-2014 At 2:04:39 AM pmonks

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Yosemite (day one): j1zz pants driving in, get lost trying to find parking lot for chosen "mega classic" route, find parking lot, walk through prickly untracked manzanita scrub for half a mile while being eaten alive by mosquitos (attacted to j1zzpants), discover actual parking lot for route, notice 25 cars with climbing brand stickers in windows - don't think much of it, follow 10 foot wide trail for 100 yards directly to base of route, discover 37 parties queued up at base of grungy, loose, moss covered blocks, wait for 3 hours for queue to clear, while watching all manner of bumbly epics (and that's just while gearing up!), sun sets, bail to Degnan's for nasty pizza dinner.

Yosemite (day two): wake up at 3am, shout at partner when s/he wastes time by attempting to eat breakfast, drive at 100MPH to (correct) parking lot, notice 3 cars with climbing brand stickers in the windows - panic, grab gear and sprint down trail - don't notice you've left your right climbing shoe behind, discover 2 parties on the route and 1 party queued at base, time check: 3:15am, start racking up, discover missing shoe, spend 30 minutes walking up and down trail trying to find shoe, lose place in queue (go to the back), wait, wait some more, time check: 8:30am, finally start up grungy, loose, moss covered blocks, climb two pitches of that wondering whether seppos don't understand "mega classic" (or English at all, for that matter), reach "money" pitch 3 - a 50m 5.8 offwidth, spend 20 minutes trying to get off belay ledge, spend 2 hours french freeing the pitch with only one cam that fits, curse Yosemite sandbag grading, curse granite offwidths, get sunstroke belaying second as s/he epics up the pitch without the benefit of the "thank god" cam, bail by abseiling over the 22 angry parties blocked up behind you, vomit, take 45 minutes to crawl the 100 yards back to the car, swear never to go near Yosemite ever again.