Ni Hao China

Recently returned from a trip to China - right there where the red arrow is pointing to Yangshuo. I went with a group of 6 (read: too many to travel abroad with) with the intention of climbing and taking lots of photos. Both missions accomplished, but I also managed to sweat more in 3 weeks than I had in the entirety of my previous life, and how to say bullshit in Chinese to the people trying to charge me more for everything because I was foreign (it sounds like "go pee").

Here's a shot of a creek in the town . The water, like much of the countryside, was unfortunately dirty. We didn't dare drink anything other than bottled water. One should also look out for roaches (live) in the packaged pasta. Note also that they should not cost extra. Better to eat out and brave the mystery meat. Surely the Chinese have a saying amounting to "what you don't know can't hurt you." Go pee.

But the landscape around that area was incredibly beautiful.

The hills are actually limestone protrusions called "Karsts" carved out of an ancient undersea landscape. There is no order to them, but true to their country there are more of them than one can count.

Monarch sized butterflies fluttered near every climbing area we came to.

One even landed on my hand right before I got on a climb. I think I cursed it though, because after I fell on the route I noticed that White Mountain's resident spider had a new meal...

Local kids tending water buffalo heard the yell of a falling climber and came to investigate the hanging foreign tools. Without knowing a word of what anyone was saying, I spoke extensively with them about how they were going to be the strongest climbers in China, and why they should really push for pollution controls in their country.

I'm pretty sure they understood the message because they immediately tied into the ropes and swung around laughing while they sent the smallest one to go find the wandering buffalo.

Here's Shannon utilizing her experience to make the highly techincal "sit on the tufa" maneuver before she finished the rest of this route - truly impressive ;)

And here's Immi, a Dutch friend who I met there, blending into his project at White Mountain -he'd been travelling for nearly seven months, and Yangshuo was his last destination before heading back home - from 90+ degrees and 100% humidity over to 12 degrees without any humidity in Holland - he wasn't all that excited to go back home - we had an empathetic moment

This is a shot of my new buddy Leo (he's dutch too, Immi's brother) shooting another new friend Abond (local Chinese guy) - it's a pretty good portrayal of what it can be like taking climbing shots - hanging up above in a harness for a couple hours can be pretty exhausting actually -really makes the back sore and cuts off circulation to the legs - makes the ass hang out of the pants...but so worth it.


Leo is a professional phototgrapher (and a good one)- he and I had some good times kickin it up on ropes together - taking shots, trading cameras and lenses, discussing light and what he called "gayphotography" (see: butterflies, also shots of dragonflies not posted) - and having fun in general -

I was also lucky to meet up with a guy named Colton who worked at a local guiding company - he actually grew up and lived in my college town of Davis, and has been living in China for the past two years - he's been pretty active with establishing new routes in the area - I'm on one of his routes called The Phoenix, which is one of the best routes I climbed in China - really nice - he also takes photos of his adventures and snapped this shot of me while I was climbing that route -

All in all the trip was a good experience - but just too hot to stay - Shannon and our friend Jacob arrived in Hong Kong nearly a month early, but were lucky enough to get the last 3 seats on the next flight leaving to San Francisco -

Since I don't get the Bar results back until November, I'm reasoning that it's not yet time to look for a job (as an aside, the test seemed to go as expected and I'm optimistic about November) - so after visiting with family I'm headed to Wyoming to continue the trip - more later