Bishop Bouldering

Areas included

• The Buttermilks

• Happy and Sad boulders

• Druid Stones

• Rock Creek

• Sherwin Plateau

About the author

In 2002, a 21-year-old James Lucas escaped the Green Mountains of Vermont and the Catskills of New York where he grew up, and headed for the granite of the California Sierra. The technical rocks west of Bishop called to him, and so began an obsessive climber’s life amongst the boulders. Each winter for two decades, James lived in the Bishop area — his Saturn station wagon, in an apartment on Clark Street, in his van at the Pit, at the California Hostel, or with Inyo County friends. Somewhere in those 20 years of bouldering in the Buttermilks, he found love and lost it. He climbed and got injured. But the tall granite boulders, the lunar Tablelands petroglyphs, and the community of the East Side provided a solace like no other. After moving to Boulder, Colorado, to work as an editor at Climbing magazine, James returned to Bishop seasonally.