High Sierras (Part 2)

We took it easy the next day. We drove up to Bishop to take care of some business. A number of our climbing shoes were in need of some kind of repair. We spent some time in a few of the mountain shops and then headed out to find some climbs and a new campsite.

We drove around a lot trying to find certain areas that we had read about. We finally decided to stay in the Pine Creek Canyon area. We had some daylight left and decided to get some energy out on a climb.

We did the first pitch of a two pitch climb called "Merman" on the Fashion Slab. It was pretty fun but we ran out of daylight and decided to come back to finish the climb in the morning.

We camped a little way down the road. We had breakfast, packed up and got ready for out climb.

Everyone managed to make it up the 200' two pitch (5.7) climb, although it did take us all a while to complete it. There were a couple of pretty challenging spots but everyone did great. Christian led as usual. Emily led a second rope using dad's placements and then Caitlyn and I followed and I cleaned the gear on my way up. By the time we all rappelled back down, it was time to go.

We were still near the Bishop area so we had quite a ways to go to get home. Before the sun set, we pulled over near the Little Lake area to have some dinner. While I worked on dinner, Christian and Emily went to do a bit of climbing on a small volcanic rock wall that was nearby.

Caitlyn just read her book at the base. The sun started setting when dinner was ready. I guess there was a fire out there somewhere so the sunset was especially pretty. When we finished, we continued on our way. It took a lot longer than we had intended as there was road work everywhere. It was insane. But alas, we finally made it back home in one piece and have to get back to real life.

Backpacking in the High Sierras (Part 1)

Since Christian's mom left town and we only had a week of summer left before the girls would have to start school, we decided to proceed with our plans for one last camping trip. We didn't have a lot of time to plan or pack but if we hesitated, we would lose our chance to go. We almost cancelled the thing altogether as the kids would not hardly help or cooperate.

We have mostly done car camping trips with our kids (where we basically camp next to our car). It is easy and convenient. They have gone backpacking before but it has been a number of years now. As we like to keep our kids on their toes so that they don't get too "soft," we wanted to take them backpacking again. We tried last summer but due to unforeseen weather complications, it didn't happen.

Our destination was to be Lone Pine Peak. Elevation:12,944 feet. The hike is 5,095 feet up the northwest slope. Since Caitlyn didn't quite make it to the peak on her trip with her dad, she wanted to give it one more try. This time, instead of making the summit in one day, we would split it up into two so that we would have more time to make it to the top as last time, they ran out of time.

Honestly, I don't know how they made it as far as they did last time. The hike was very difficult. It is nearly a 10 mile hike. It starts at the Whitney Portal Road along the Meysan Lakes Trail which sits at 7,849 feet. The approximately four mile trail to Grass Lake winds up many switchbacks giving us around 3,000 feet in elevation gain. We were pretty exhausted by the time we got off that trail.

We made camp nearby. We spent the rest of the time setting up our tent, making a fire ring, collecting wood and relaxing. We did a little exploring after we got some rest. Then, we had dinner and read stories around the campfire.

We turned in somewhat early as we were supposed to get an early start to the summit. I was pretty tired but I didn't end up with a whole lot of sleep. I had trouble falling asleep or if I did manage to fall asleep, I would get woken up by Caitlyn bumping into me or hearing boulders fall and exploding down the gully we were supposed to climb in the morning. I just ended up tossing and turning all night. I finally got a little more sleep towards the morning but then Caitlyn woke up with a nose bleed and I had to get some tissues to help her. There was no point in trying to go back to sleep at that point. Christian got up shortly after and we woke Emily to start our day.

We didn't actually get up with the sun or anything as we did not have that much farther to go. The gully  rises up approximately another 1,800 feet in the next half a mile or so. It is filled with sand, scree, talus and rock. The kids had dubbed the gully as "The Death Gully." I thought yesterday's hike was hard. That was nothing to this short half mile hike. Luckily, there was not nearly as much rock fall as when Caitlyn went last time. 

After making it up the gully, we still had a ways to go. We had to pass several false summits before getting to the real summit. Luckily, Christian was already aware of those and we did not have to expend extra energy climbing them only to find out that we were on the wrong summit. Another 0.6 miles brought us up to the actual summit!

The girls signed the summit register and we took some pictures. The view from up on top was beautiful. You can see Mt. Whitney and Mt. Irvine towering over Meysan Lake.

We headed back down afterwards. If I thought that the hike up the the Death Gully was difficult, it was nothing compared to going back down. The hike back down is supposed to be the easy part. You kind of just had to ride the sliding scree down parts of it. It was pretty scary. I slipped several times, which was no big deal but on the second half of the gully, I lost my balance and fell pretty bad a couple of times and slid over some big rocks. My right side was covered in bruises. I could not even sleep on my right side for the next couple of nights. It was pretty awful. I was tired and banged up. I was not having fun. Luckily, no one else had as much problems as I had.

We eventually made it back down, and we debated on whether we wanted to stay another night at the campground or head the rest of the way back down the mountain side. I did not want to decide until I got some rest. I washed up next to the stream and changed. I attempted to take a nap but the shade was too cold and the sun was too hot. I managed to get a little rest regardless while Christian had the kids. When they got back, they decided that they were still hungry as we had worked pretty hard that afternoon. We ate our dinner as our second lunch, packed up and headed back down the the mountain. 

Christian sent us ahead to save time but we overshot the trail and got lost. We backtracked our way back to the lake but could not find Christian or the trail. After some deliberation, we headed out again to find our way. This time we were a little more careful about which way we went. I finally found a cairn and followed our way up. Shortly after, we ran into Christian and the trail but we lost a lot of time.

When we finally got down, it was dark. I had to use my headlamp for the very last leg of the trail. We drove down and rewarded ourselves with a late dinner at McDonalds.

Disneyland

In the morning, we had breakfast and headed out to Disneyland. Christian conveniently had to work : ).

We got pretty lucky. Most of the lines did not take too long. Average wait time for the big rides was only 20 to 30 minutes. Which doesn't sound great but considering that we were at Disneyland, we thought that that was pretty good. In the end, we found that the longest lines were for the little kid rides.

Emily's favorite ride is still Splash Mountain. Last time, Caitlyn would not even ride it. She did go on it this time but it is still not her favorite. She still thinks the drop is scary. 

Caitlyn's favorite ride was the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. She also really liked the Tea Cups a lot. Everyone agreed that the Matterhorn was the worst ride. It is such a rough ride, you can't enjoy any of it. I felt like my brain was knocking around in my skull. I guess it is a good thing that we didn't have time to ride the Indiana Jones ride. That one is pretty bad from what I remember.

We stopped to refuel on turkey legs (which is really hot and messy to eat, by the way).

We could not stay all day, however, as Grandma Cheri had to go back to San Diego to say goodbye to the rest of the family and pack for her flight home in the morning.

When the time was up, she took the girls shopping for souvenirs. That took longer than she expected so we were running a bit late.

The girls had so much fun. When we got home, she stopped only long enough to say goodbye to Christian and had to take off again.

The girls showed off some of their new (overpriced) Disneyland garb.

More Joshua Tree

We had heard a rumor that Christian's mom would be visiting from Hawaii soon but we could not get anyone to give us a date. Since the girl's summer vacation is almost over, we had planned to go on one more family camping trip to the Sierras. We went ahead and made plans, knowing all the while that we may have to change them depending on what would happen.

Nothing became of the rumor so we started to plan for our trip. The next thing we knew, his mom was going to arrive the next day! We could not go visit her with the rest of the family as we had other obligations already. We tried to get them to commit to some kind of plan but everyone was a bit wishy washy about their plans. It was quite frustrating.

She was supposed to visit for 3 weeks but halfway into week 2, we found out that she had to cut her vacation short and go back to Hawaii on personal matters and we had not even gotten to see her yet. She finally drove up from San Diego to see us before leaving.

We showed her around our house as this is the first time she has seen it. The girls and Christian were excited to have her watch them climb so Christian came home early from work and we headed out to Joshua Tree again.

We didn't climb anything too challenging as we were not planning to be there a long time. Caitlyn did a route on Trashcan Rock called B1.

Christian climbed Tip Toe. It was hot out but not unbearably so. Next, we drove out to Cyclops Rock as the rest of us wanted to climb the Eye...a favorite fun climb we enjoy.

After which, Christian's mom took us all out to dinner. She planned to spend the night and head back to San Diego to get ready to leave, but at the spur of the moment, decided to extend her stay a little to take the girls to Disneyland. The only time the girls have gotten to go is when their grandmother is in town as it is normally too expensive for our blood and too crowded to boot. 

Joshua Tree and other matters

At the beginning of the month, we took another trip to Joshua Tree. If you can believe it, we didn't do ANY climbing. Christian was taking a bunch of students on a camping trip. The weather turned out fairly nice. We thought that we would end up roasting our butts off during this time of year but we got some nice cloud cover.

In fact, there was a thunderstorm off in the distance that night. We got there and had a bbq. Everybody brought a ton of food. Christian and I sat and watched the lighting for a bit before turning in.

Although, there were not too many people in the campground, we ended up next to the noisiest group in the entire campground...of course. They stayed up until the wee hours of the morning making noise. Actually, they were not that loud when we got there or we would have chosen a different site. They were sleeping, which should have alerted us to the fact that they probably were keeping odd hours. Anyway, everyone turned in at a decent hour. Christian and I were the last to turn in. Within half an hour, they were up and making all kinds of noise. Christian took off to get away from the noise. I laid there most of the night, listening to their inane chatter and pot smoking laughter. I can't believe how long they went on for.

I managed to finally get a couple of hours of sleep in before it got too light. I think Christian fell asleep on a rock for about an hour. It was awful.

In the morning, we had breakfast and went exploring.

The rest of the group just hung out by the campsite and played games.

We didn't want to sit around and decided to try to sneak in some climbing but we went around and around and could not quite identify the climbs that we were looking for. It started to rain and we headed back to the camp to check what everyone else was up to. They broke down camp already because of the rain, so I started to take our tent down as well. It was only sprinkling on and off by now so Christian took everyone else up on the rocks for a short hike.

By the time they got back, the rain kind of moved off so we got a few things back out to have lunch before heading home.

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The girls have been taking swim lessons again. They just finished last week. They are now both in level 5+ (which Emily has taken at least a couple of times now). 

Caitlyn did pretty good...at least she did complete the level. I was a little happier with the structure of the lessons this time. Usually, they just warm up a little and then start playing games. This year, they warmed up with some exercises outside of the water, then got in to do all the different kicks that they have learned with a kick board. After that, they had to swim across practicing all the different swimming strokes they have learned. The instructor would try to get them to perfect their strokes. Only when they finished that did they get to play games. On a couple of the days, they didn't even play games but practiced diving and doing kick flips.

I took the girls out during the "free swim" hours a couple of times. This was the only times we managed to get to the pool this summer so the girls were ecstatic about it.

Only two more weeks of summer vacation...

Mt. Rubidoux

At the end of July, we decided to check out the climbing routes at Mt. Rubidoux. We just got back from our Yosemite trip last week and we are already restless. It is amazing how many places there are to go climbing in our area.

We have not gone to the Mt. Rubidoux area very often because there isn't usually a whole lot of parking available and it is quite crowded. 

We dodged all the crowds and found our climb in the cross rock area. Our route was up a short (30') crack called Jam Crack (5.4).

It was pretty fun, but short. Next, Christian found an aid route that he was really excited to do.

There is a bolt ladder going up it initially, but when you get to the overhang, there is nothing to secure yourself to, so Christian got to use his hooks and stuff. Christian was so excited but none of us were brave enough to give it a try.

By this time, it was getting pretty hot on the side of the mountain, so we called it a day. Between the crowds, constant noise, graffiti and trash, it wasn't the most pleasant place to be. The environment seems akin to the quarry...except at least at the quarry, there are less people. Christian really wants to work on some more of the aid routes, so we will probably go back, but maybe when it is cooler with the threat of rain or something to keep the crowds down.

The girls picked up 2 and a half bags of trash from the surrounding area to take to the trash cans (that were only one or two hundred feet away). The sad thing is that we barely made a dent in the amount of trash strewn around. We usually bring extra bags with us when we go climbing or hiking to pack out other people's trash in an effort to keep natural places more well, natural...and less like a ghetto. We are counting it towards the girls service projects for their Faith in God program.

It is so disgusting to see what a mess people leave behind with no regard for others or the outdoors. You wish that they would just stay home and keep their messes there as they obviously have no appreciation for nature in the first place.