We were planning on two or three days of hiking and climbing in Vedauwoo, so we didn’t hurry there on Saturday. We arrived after noon and I took off to scout out climbing within hiking distance. I ended up scouting for a couple of hours, enchanted as always with this place, always drawn to look a little further. When I finally get back we set up a cozy camp, grill salmon for dinner, and plan to get an early start to climb in the morning.
It’s a grey, cold morning. We push ourselves to leave the sleeping bags, make coffee, and put together our climbing packs. The day doesn’t get any warmer, but we push off anyway, hiking through aspen groves and beaver ponds. Our route offers great views of Reynold’s Hill, the MRC, the Crystal Freeway, Turtle Rock, and Valley Massif, our destination. By the time we reach it and find our way to the base of the climbs, it’s sprinkling rain. We eat our lunch and watch the sky grow darker and colder. At last we give up on climbing and continue our hike in light rain. Vedauwoo compensates our climbing loss with many sights: swimming beavers, soaring hawks, a giant blue heron, a tree that continues to grow after falling over, an old bee hive, and many other things. We can’t help but love the place.
6 responses to “Vedauwoo Cold and Rainy”
so uh… what’s the deal with Vedauwoo?? sounds like a lot of hiking. i thought you just parked in a lot and took a short walk to the crags.
jezzedonkey looks ~cool. did she act all embarrassed or was she stoked to be shorn? i gotta know. a lot of dogs act a bit stand-offish after a serious clipping.
speaking of climbing… claire and i went to the ORG last Sat. i cruised Expressway straight up (no moving to the left) and Pick Pocket, no hanging on the draw to clip it or nothing. both felt easy. stoke.
so uh.. i know it’s hard to take pics of someone and belay, but you really neeed to get more pics of actual climbing at Vedauwoo.
ps, EVERYTHING looks suspisciously like SPAM.
hey! that didn’t look like spam!! maybe ‘cuz i did’t say “fuck”.
one more thing:
yer pics, the properties don’t reveal unique names, so i can’t reference them in my posts. that’s prolly done so the picks can’t be linked to other sites.
there’s a pic of ann severely bundled up. what’s up with that? it’s that cold?
some of the other pics were perty.
please describe Vedauwoo.. like compare and contrast to places WE have been (JTree, tuolumne, kernville, church domes, etc..). rock, camping, routes, bolts, trad, crowds, ,,, naked girls in creeks.
SPAM – I can’t help it. If I turn off the spam killer, I get flooded. It may be stupid, but it keeps me afloat.
Jezze – she might have been just a tiny bit self-conscious after getting clipped, but you’d have to know her pretty well to see it.
Pics – sorry I didn’t hide any info in the properties, why not try the title? They’re all numbered, IMG_6210 is the one you were looking at. It was cold!
Vedauwoo rocks are in piles a bit like J-Tree, but it’s over 8000 feet high, so there are aspen and pines, streams, and beaver ponds. There’s a central park that charges a fee, but dirt roads all around you can use to hike in. Might as well, cause the hiking is superb. Climbing tends towards the infamous “fat cracks”, but there’s a few hundred routes I think, all kinds.
Is this in California? I know California but I’ve neverheard of Vedauwoo.
Artdobber
Vedauwoo is Wyoming, between Laramie and Cheyenne. (You should see a variety of maps available in a menu at the top of my post). Name, however, lives in California, and we’ve climbed together in places like Joshua Tree.