Van Life Week 4 l The Obelisk (King's Canyon climbing)

Look at that. This one has like a pretty solid trail all the way to it. Left at the pine, working around slash through rocks and vegetation until you hit the lake below. Camp here, multiple plus camp center. Climbing day. All right we're at Lower Geraldine Lakes. Jordan's over there. We hiked eight miles. It was a combination of bushwhacking, a little bit of route finding. It's not a maintained trail. We are headed to climb the obelisk which is in the Sequoia National Forest. We don't know how far it is from the lower lakes. Probably a couple miles. So we're gonna camp here tonight and then go climb tomorrow. Out here in Lower Geraldine Lake. We are going to be climbing the obelisk tomorrow. Out here in the Sierra National Forest. So it'll be good. It'll be a pretty fun climb. A lot of bugs out here but it'll be worth it. There's the lake. So they say the crux of the climb is the approach. We did eight miles yesterday. 3,800 feet of elevation gain. We did about two miles today on unmaintained trail. It's been hard to find. We've had to go up a ton and the bugs have been relentless. The obelisk is in sight. Hopefully it's close. Hopefully we can start climbing soon. It's a little farther than we'd like. That's the obelisk by the way. We realized that we have to go down now to get to that gully over there to drop our backpacks off because we'll wrap up this side. Climb the other side. But the approach has not been planned. All right we'll leave our packs here. Here's where we'll rappel down. And our climb is down that way. This is uh you know these canyons, sequoia, forests, and then we're up here on a sea of chicken heads and knobs. Good stuff out here. We're having a good time. And yeah we'll see how many more pitches we've got. All right here we are on the summit of the obelisk. It's pretty awesome. The climb we came from over there. And this is the 360 pano. You can see Kings Canyon National Park is over here. Where we originally saw this climb from the other side of the valley. Decided to do it a few days ago. So pretty good stuff out here. It's been a good one. It's uh been rough you know route finding and uh approach. But we are on the top. So starting to make our way down. 2018. 2020. No parties in 2021. First of 2021. All right here's Kristen going off the edge. Just free hanging rappel there off the obelisk. All right. Sun's going down there. The packs are just below us. There's the valley. A little more wrap down there. And then uh we'll be hiking out. I think sadly we're gonna have to camp at Geraldine Lakes again. Bug City. It's a little too late I think to hike the whole 10 miles out. But the last rappel is right back at our packs which is pretty nice. All right. You can see where we went up. This side. Climb to the top. Wrap down. All right we're at the top of the pass as the sun is setting. That's the obelisk that we climbed over there. You can only see a chunk of that from the lower side. But we're here. Making it down here. A little bit less mosquitoes than down back at Geraldine Lakes. Which is uh we'll head down there after we eat. Sleep and uh get out early in the morning. It's not cold out. It's 80 degrees. We have to wear our jackets because the bugs are everywhere. And I might have a mental breakdown. It's June. I get it. But the more bug spray we put on, the more the bugs come. I have eight more miles. Hopefully they go away.