Joshua Tree

After the first week of school, we needed to go out to do something. Originally, we had planned to go back to Tahquitz, but after three months, the guy that was supposed to be resoling one of Christian's climbing shoes finally called to say that it was done. So we scratched our plans and headed back out to Joshua Tree.

We were smart and picked a climb that mostly had shade most of the day on Mt. Grossvogel called Dr. Seus Vogel. It is a two pitch climb up 150'. It was pretty hot in the sun. There were no freak thunderclouds above us to keep us cool this time.

Unfortunately, Emily decided to wear her tennis shoes instead of her hiking boots and kicked her foot into a clump of dead Joshua tree leaves and it poked her foot through her shoe. Apparently it hurt pretty bad and she could not put on her climbing shoes afterwards. She hung around and played with the aid climbing equipment.
Christian and I still completed the climb. Caitlyn only went up the first pitch. The second pitch required her to go above the anchor and clip in to a few strategically placed pieces of protection. Basically, she would not be on top rope for it so she decided that she was not ready for that yet.

The descent for the routes on Mt. Grossvogel is not pleasant. We had to come down it once before from a different route. Christian did not want to go back that same way and tried a slightly different way. Luckily, he was able to just lower Caitlyn and myself from the anchor that he set up. Apparently, the way down this time was not much better as at one point he slipped and hurt his leg a bit and got a couple of bruises. Luckily, he prepared himself for the fall and did not get too hurt but it could have been a lot worse. He has never slipped before, so he was not too happy.

By the time Christian finished cleaning up our gear and got back down, we were pretty fried from the heat even if we were not standing in the sun.

We headed out to the mountain shop to pick up Christian's long awaited climbing shoes. We won't be using that guy again. Not only did he take three times as long as the longest quoted time frame but he made one shoe slightly bigger than the other when he applied rubber to the toe box. 

We were at the mountain shop for quite a long time in the end though as it was a pretty slow day and the guy in the shop was very talkative. We got to try on lots of different climbing shoes to consider for the future and we got some interesting tidbits from the guy at the shop. Caitlyn spent a lot of her time organizing their shoe boxes so they offered her a job when she get older!