We will keep you posted for phase two, when Eric takes a hitchhiking trip of his own…

Big Russ Brownley shreddin’ it.

There’s no place like Joshua Tree N.P. We met so many rad people while there. We shared our campsite with Joe Janiak and Anjeli. They are both from London, but Anjeli lives in L.A. Joe is an amazing musician and played us some amazing songs around the campfire. Then, over a week later we ran into him at Coachella Music Festival, amongst 120,000 people!

We held an Easter service for climbers while in J-Tree which was a beautiful time. We had seven people join us to celebrate the life of Jesus. One of those was a girl named Jo Higgens, who is a gem of a person and also went to Coachella with us.

Phil, Mike, the French Family, Monica…so many sweet people.

The Solar Slab

Eric’s Blog post about Solar Slab:

I appreciate life more today than I did a few days ago.

Two years ago Winston and I attempted to climb a 2000 foot rock face called “Solar Slab” in the Red Rock Canyon, just west of Las Vegas. The mountain denied us the summit and sent us rappelling down in darkness…without headlamps.

We have been talking about that piece of rock ever since. How we wanted to go back and take it down.

The Slab fell before us yesterday, but not without a fight. We started our climb at the crack of 10. We moved fast, but were held up by a father and son team climbing ahead of us. The mountain pelted us with violent winds once we reached the exposed upper 1500 feet. We reached the summit but our joy was put on hold. The winds continued to grow stronger, sustaining 25-30 knots with gusts well over gale force. Dark clouds lingered, snow began to fall, and night was fast approaching.

The rappel anchors (hardware drilled into the rock) at the top were impossible to find. We had to down climb a 5.6 crack to search for the anchors at the top of the 11th pitch. Super sketchy. We considered bivouacking on the mountain, but it was getting COLD.

Joy filled my heart when Winston located the anchors. Hope! For the next five hours or so we battled the wind, cold, and snow as we rappelled pitch after pitch. It seemed never ending. We checked and re-checked everything we did, knowing that our senses were dulled due to dehydration, hunger, frustration, and cold.

The ground never felt so good.

We arrived back at the truck at 3 a.m., only to find shattered glass where the passengers side window used to be. Seriously? Both of our laptops and our camera gear was sitting in the cab.

Somebody had been doing donuts in the gravel lot and sprayed Eleanor, busting out two windows on her starboard side, but leaving all our belongings. We taped up the windows and passed out. We would deal with them in the morning.

My sleeping bag never felt so good.

Thanks for making it this far!

We cruised the Pacific Coast Highways from San Francisco to L.A. – still no hitchhikers. Where have they all gone?

We saw many lovely people in Southern California. Matt Hires was playing a show in Hollywood, Scotty Stopnik took us log riding, Rachel Hieberg and Jordan Dowty showed us wonderful southern hospitality in L.A, and the Brownley’s hosted us for two nights of fun in Cardiff-by-the-Sea, one of our favorite places to date.

Now spending some time in Joshua Tree N.P. in the high desert of southern California. Winston and I spent a week here two years ago and we are stoked to be back in this magical place.

To see a short video from the trip go here.

After leaving Durango, we stopped by Canyon Lands National Park to visit the world famous climbing area known as Indian Creek – a sandstone canyon with vertical cracks and smooth rock faces running up hundreds of feet.

The red sandstone that defines the canyon is ideal for climbing. This rock is not brittle like young sandstone; The Creek’s stone is extremely dense. When climbing here one does not have the option to use the face (outside of the crack) of the wall. The smooth face forces one to advance up the wall inside the crack. Looking up a several hundred feet of solid rock is intimidating, but the adrenaline and the views make it all worth it.

Climbing (crack) traditionally  at “The Creek”

Our time in The Creek was brief, because we had to be out to San Jose, CA by Sunday night to work three days for “Get Motivated Seminars”. We marathon drove 24 hours, crossing Nevada on “The Loneliest Highway in America”. We thought Northern Nevada was going to be flat desert; rather, it was rugged mountains with lots of snow.

We put in three days of work in San Jose and Sacramento. Some of our awesome fellow co-workers even donated $120 to help us bless hitchhikers we meet (with food, water, etc.). We were also able to hunt down 55 gallons of vegetable oil in downtown San Jose that brought Eleanor’s tank back to full.

Our Yosemite plans have been temporarily thwarted by snow and road closures, so we are heading south to give the valley time to thaw out. Today we enjoyed the beautiful drive down the Pacific Coast Highway from San Francisco to Santa Cruz, complete with organic strawberry shortcake from a roadside farm, a swimsuit model shoot in a cove (don’t worry Mom’s, we weren’t doing the shooting), and a little beach bouldering.

After a week in Denver working on “Eleanor” we finally set out for more open spaces. The road to Telluride is about as beautiful as beautiful gets on this earth.

Eleanor is powered by used vegetable oil, which is what makes this trip possible. Neither of us would feel right about driving thousands of miles and using many hundreds of gallons of fossil fuels, not to mention the fuel costs that would entail. Instead Eleanor has a 70 gallon external fuel tank that heats up and filters vegetable oil that we get for free from restaurants along the way. So far restaurants  have been very willing to let us raid their stash of waste oil, that often times they have to pay to dispose of. For more information on the veggie system visit our friends Regan and Kirby at Go Green Early.

We came upon a herd of about 80 Elk when we were cooking breakfast up some dirt road near Telluride. They roamed with majesty and moved in rhythm with each other.  We soaked up the vistas as we cooked our eggs and laughed about how the people in the nearby homes paid millions of dollars to have the same view that we were enjoying for free from our home, Eleanor.

We have yet to come across our first hitchhiker, however we did do some interviewing on the bustling Main Street of T-ride. Most people were very willing to talk and answer our questions. A Frenchman, Ju-ju, informed us that in Europe it is not uncommon for hitchhikers to be invited to stay overnight at the drivers home, receive a warm meal, and be taken to their next destination the following day.

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