Strawberry Cliffs, Forever

I've had a long day after a stressful week (I had CANCER for more than two full days, you know...) and it is late Friday night and I just spent the last few hours eating beer and drinking pizza with a bunch of guys who give me a very hard time because I am always right and have a cleft chin and can lift heavy things...

I just rummaged through my shopping bag full of pictures and found this one. If you draw an X through the middle of the picture by intersecting the four corners, you will find me near the intersection of the two lines. That's me and a friend of mine, about two hundred feet off the ground at a really cool climbing place we all call Strawberry, because it is near Strawberry Lodge on highway 50 heading toward Reno.

There is a campground and an outhouse. There is a road that makes a loop in a tree grove. You pull in, you park in a camping spot, you sleep. In the morning early, you make your coffee on an ultralight stove and then hike up a one mile path to a big scree pile and then scramble up this pile of fallen granite and begin to climb.

Strawberry is a beautiful grey granite with quartz seams running horizontal in it. These seams are harder than the granite, so have eroded a little slower over time. If you look at the picture closely, you can see horizontal lines that criss-cross the wall. Those are the crystalline structures we called "dykes". Some of these dykes are eight inches deep-- meaning, you can stand four hundred feet in the air and relax and enjoy the view.

I have a pocket full of climbing stories. I won't tell any tonight.

Tonight I will head off to bed and dream of extra terrestrials getting bit movie parts originally written for midgets.

That reminds me of another story.

Maybe tomorrow...