There wasn't supposed to be any climbing. This trip was about three dudes, a 4WD truck and some brown trout. This trip was gonna be all flannel and iron skillet, not Gore-Tex and Jet-Boil. But strange things happen when you go to the Eastside.

I have been taking an annual alpine trip with these two buddies every Fall for 21 years. We have climbed all over the Sierra and have had some stellar adventures, but this year we wanted to mix it up a bit. We vowed to avoid any cardio. We wanted no approach. We wanted nothing more than three days of car camping and some fishing and a nip of scotch or four around a campfire at night. Then repeat. We didn't want to see other climbers or talk about epics or our latest proj. Little did we know we'd be doing a whole lot of all three before the weekend was over.


We had never fished the legendary trout waters of the Lower Owens River, and after The Chief got me all fired up about chubby Browns here on The Taco, the plan was set in stone. We packed firewood, hip waders and lawn chairs. No rack. No tent. No chalkbag. Nobody would get altitude sickness this year.

We left Fresno Friday morning at 4:59 am.

By 7:30 we've got Mojave at our back and we're shootin' up 395 with Merle Haggard cookin' out a country tune and the lofty Sierra drawin' nigh off our port side.

Playing the old, "pull away then stop then pull away" when your buddy gets out to take a leak never gets old does it?

We text The Chief when we hit Lone Pine and he says he'll meet us at the fly shop in town when we hit Bishop. Never met him but his stoke for all things trouty is contagious and his offer to put us on some pescado has us all fired up.

A quick stop at Taco Bell to fuel up on carcinogens and we're headed toward the water. We can smell the brook trout...hear em callin' our names. We are barellin down the gravel path near the Happy Boulders when up on the hill to the North a pack of Padbacks comes into view. I bellow out a mating call as we drive by at 60mph on the gravel road. "SENDITBRAH!!! SENDITBRAH!!! SENDIIIIIIIIT?!!!" A female from the pack stops and turns our way. Her ears twitch in the desert air, looking for a mate....but the pack keep moving up the game trail.

Soon we're past them and we're parked and packin' and rackin for action.

The river is stunning. The sky is an azure only seen in postcards and the sage fills our nostrils with an intoxication reserved for the Eastside. We are punchdrunk and ready to wet our lines as The Chief charges ahead.

He points out honeyholes and hollers and riffles like a kid showing off his playground to out of towners.

We wader out into the cool crisp Owens water and the chill squeezes our road weary thighs like a tourniquet.

I'm gonna stop typing now and let these photos speak for themselves. Lets just say it was like a fairytale out there and I'm regretful I've waited 40 years to do this.


Wow.

Whoah.

Boom.

Yup.

The day drags on as the action waxes and wanes. We catch some, we lose some, we laugh, we holler and we want the day to never end.


Eventually The Chief comes around a corner and tells us he's caught 12 to our two or three each and he eases back into the water and puts on a clinic for us.

Eventually there's nothing to do but sit down in the grass and let our heartbeats thump in time with the revolution of the sun in the sky and our blood to slow down in our veins to match the perfect rhythm of the stream at our feet. And then take a nip off the ol Macallan.

We shake hands with the Chief and watch his rig dissagppear into the West as we plan to head into town to do three things.

1. Shop for camping food.
2. Buy more flies.
3. Find a campsite for the night to repeat today's magic for the next three days.

But none of that happens.....here's where things get weird.

We pull past the main drag in town and we see THIS:

It turns out THE FALL HIGHBALL is in town and Bishop is crawling with climbers. The streets are full of tradmasters, boulderers, sportos and Wall rats. Every third person has on a nanopuff hoody and Five Tennies or a Touchstone Climbing shirt. Our fishing paradise has turned into a meat market where overweight Wall Vets salivate over skinnyfit Prana tanked hotties in yoga pants miming their latest proj on the stone wall outside Rusty's tavern.

We soon find ourselves inside The Mountain Rambler Brewery rubbing elbows with over a hundred climbers.

We feel displaced. Awkward. Out of sync. We are climbers at heart and have been coming here for more than two decades to get our alpine fix, but we are in Troutmode, and we're feeling disoriented.

Before we know it we have paid 20$ for REEL-ROCK movie passes, raffle tickets and free beer for two days from New Belgian Brewing Co. Our Fishing weekend is slipping away and we can feel it.


We go watch the movie in the crowded downtown theatre. It's average if you ask me but we have a blast and are soon back at The Mountain Rambler. We hook up with some old friends and the place is packed and we meet some new friends and the irony of us trying to avoid climbing while in Bishop in the Fall does not elude us.

The next day we wake up early and fish a little bit, then we head out to the Milks to check out the scene. The place is a zoo.....an absolute loony bin but the energy is fun.


Scantily clad Socal socialites scream and holler and fall off stuff while camera shutters clack away and people scream and yell "Tsaaaaaat!!!!" which is really boulderspeak for "LOOOK AT MEEEEE!" and dogs wander all over the place and dudes cuss and act surprised to fall off stuff six number grades harder than their actual skill level and everybody walks by and caresses the opening holds of Evilution and the Mandala and posses roam the countryside looking at their guidebooks and asking strangers "Is this the Ironman Traverse" and cars line the dirt pullout like a parkinglot at Disneyland and we simultaneously make fun of the scene and join right in and though we are dressed for fly fishing its full on awesome.


Our tips are shredded in 40 minutes and our approach shoes won't let us send anything harder than V7, so we retire back to the truck to pull out Jason's new toy. He is a venture capitalist down in LA and sits on the board for a little company called 3D Robotics. And he's been itchin to fly this baby. Aw yeah.....that's right. It's DRONE TIME yall.


We literally pull it out of the box, attach an I-phone and a Go-Pro and it's mission ready.

We scream like schoolgirls as it lifts off on her maiden voyage. It is un, freakin, believably fun.

The thing is amazing. It can hover seamlessly 400 feet above you. It can follow you (I ran around in figure 8s and it eerily hovered right behind me like a hornet following me). You can program it to fly a coordinate line and shoot film like a steady cam. You can tell it to go up and circle you and film you on a swivel servo while you stand still. And a third grader can fly it. Its wild. And it's on my Christmas list.

The wind picks up, we head back into town for the night's festivities. We care nothing about fishing anymore and we're just letting the weekend have its way with us. Back in the warm comfort of The Mt. Rambler, I get a Facebooktext from a Bigwall buddy of Mark Hudon and we hook up and hang out for the night. He and Mark just got off Genesis and within a couple free beers we're making plans for Zodiac in Spring. This dude invented The Alfrifi!
The Allfrifi is taking El Cap by storm! Get yours Now!

And speaking of Allfrifi, we bump into David Allfrey and we swap his stories of Baffin with our story of nailing the entire first pitch of the Nose when we were in high school......well into the age of friends and free climbing. We get free hats from the American Alpine Club, free stickers and cool beer mugs and I buy an 850Down sleeping bag from the guys at the Brooks Range tent for below wholesale because he didn't want to take it home and he felt bad that I had been sleeping cold for the past 20 years of mini-expeditions. The laughs continue into the night and we meet legends and locals and has beens and nobodys and we drink way too much free beer and win no raffle prizes whatsoever.

We stay up way too late and we're too tired to fish the next day but sleeping one more night under the stars in the bed of my truck and waking up to a camp fire under the warmth of the sun and a windless desert sky is good for the soul.
We gorge ourselves at Jacks, then its time to hit the road.


My posse falls asleep on me by the time we hit Big Pine and I have the open road to myself.


So, our trip didn't exactly go as planned, but man we had a blast. Lemme give you the rundown of our 72 hour Troutfest 2015.

Lifelong friends on a three day expedition to the Eastside? CHECK.
No Approach? Check.
Fishing legendary trout water for the frst time? CHECK.
Meeting new Supertopo friends? CHECK.
Film Festival? CHECK.
Bouldering? CHECK.
Free Microbrew? CHECK.
Party like rockstars with a few hundred of our clan? CHECK.
Fly a drone? CHECK.

oh yeah....at some point we drove way out on some BLM land for a little gunplay.


So overall, I'd say the expedition was a success. Make it to the top. Come home alive. Come back as friends. We may never climb another mountain again. I can hardly wait till next year.


Until next time,

See you around Supertopo.

Micronut,

Out.