March in Review

We finally got some rain this week. Christian got a beautiful picture of a rainbow over our house when he came home from work.
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Emily got her report card for the third quarter of this school year. It was less than stellar. We are not pleased.
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We went in to meet the counselor at North to register for Emily's classes next year. We were pretty excited with the idea of the IB program but with her last grades, we are concerned that she will be doing a lot of extra work and we will all have a lot of extra stress and it will all come to nothing because she is not self motivated or responsible enough to take advantage of the opportunity before her.
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Christian took Caitlyn on Friday evening out to so some portaledge practice on our wall in the Box Springs Mtns.

They went after dinner on Friday and returned in the morning for breakfast. Everyone is having fun practicing camping on the wall. I'm the only one who hasn't gone yet. I think next time, we will have to take everyone at the same time, but that means having to set up two portalelges on the wall at the same time!

Texas Canyon

Last weekend, we drove out to Texas Canyon which is located in the high dessert northwest of Los Angeles County. It was kind of a far drive for the climbs we would encounter there but we like to try different areas and get experience on different kinds of rock.

The place was quite beautiful this time of year. I don't know what it looks like normally but because of the wet Spring, we got rolling green hills that smelled of sage. The first formation you see as you approach is the Elephant's Head and the big caves at the base of it.

Our first climb was in The Canyon on the back side of the Elephant's Head because it was nice and shady there. We warmed up by going up a route called The Spider's Line. Our book said that it was a 5.4 sport climb but the internet claims it to be a 5.5. It is really hard to tell where the route is supposed to be on these sport climbs anyway since there are so many routes all on top of each other. In the end, I think that it was supposed to be a two pitch climb but we only did the first pitch.

It was a bit steeper than we thought it would be but there were some neat little pockets here and there that you could stick your fingers in. We also did the route next to it called Acme Top Rope Wall (5.7). This one was supposed to be more difficult but we all found that it was more straight forward with better holds overall.

We wanted to do another climb left of this line but it was really crowded. There were two groups that climbed it in the time that we were there and a third arriving as we left. Since there was no more shade in the Canyon by this time, we thought we would get away from the riff raff a bit and do the climbs that we originally came to find on the Elephant Wall.

We had our lunch in one of the big caves at the base. There was a super neat natural bee hive in the side of the rock.

After lunch, we started our multi-pitch climb. The first part of the climb is a 200' 5.6 climb called Goldline. 

The crux is of the climb is only 20' from the ground. It is pretty hard, especially if you are not too tall because you have to get up over this bulge and there are not a lot of good holds on it. Caitlyn decided to forego the bulge and opted to go up the super steep 5.8 slabby part instead. I attempted to go up the way Christian and Emily went up but could not quite reach the holds too well while trying to clean the route. I had just barely reached up to unhook the quick draw from the rope to clean it before proceeding because it would be too difficult to reach down to clean it if I climbed passed it first. Unfortunately, I was not able to quite reach the next holds to get up and my fingers were getting a bit fatigued in trying to stay in my current rather precarious position so I decided to down climb back to where I was more stable and start back up closer to where Caitlyn went up now that I cleaned the quick draw. 

Unfortunately, as I was taking a step down, I lost my tenuous hold on the rock. Christian had me on a rope from up above so I was in no danger of falling. However, since we were working our way up and the anchor was to the right of my position, I swung over when I slipped and because of the bulge above me, I could not quite stabilize myself on the rock where I fell but ended up rolling over once before I came to a stop. I scratched up my arm pretty bad. It hurt quite a bit but there seemed to be more blood all over than I had expected from my scratch. I assumed that it was just at a bad spot. I could not quite see it.

After the initial pain and shock wore off, I just got back on and finished cleaning the climb as I worked up to where Christian and the kids were. I found a spot with better holds and made my way up.

The second leg of the climb was supposed to be an easy 5.2. Christian originally wanted the kids to lead it but the climb was not straight forward and not as easy as they claimed. The bolts were few and far between and he was not comfortable having the kids lead the runout 120' climb when we were already up 200'. 

There was a nice couple on the climb next to us and they took a few pictures for us. Christian took a few pictures for them and we traded pictures after we got back home.

When we all got back down, Christian took a look at my elbow and found that my injury was a lot worse than I had assumed. Apparently I split it open, which is why it was bleeding so much. He cleaned it off, which hurt as much as the initial injury and put a butterly closure on it and then covered it with an extra large bandage.

After discovering the severity of my injury, I was not quite up for any more climbing. Christian and Emily did one more climb nearby. The climb (She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy) is a 5.8 climb up 85'.

They both enjoyed this climb but as neither Caitlyn nor I wanted to climb it and the sun was starting to set, we decided to call it a day and hiked back out to our car for some dinner before getting back on the road to go home.

2nd Trimester Awards Ceremony

Yesterday, I attended Caitlyn's 2nd Trimester Awards Ceremony. She got perfect attendance and Principal's Honor Roll. She was also awarded with a medal for making it to the district science fair. She did not place in it but as we did not go to the award ceremony anyway, she did not receive her participation medal.

Caitlyn is doing great in school, as always. She and her best friend, Anevay are both always on the Principal's Honor Roll. They spend a good portion of their extra time helping out in their former 5th grade class room organizing, cleaning and sometimes helping out with the students. We are happy that she has good friends. Unfortunately, they will not be going to the same middle school next year.

Last week, most of the 6th graders went up to Big Bear for most of the week. We did not allow Caitlyn to go but all her friends got to go. Caitlyn handled it pretty well. The actual camp wouldn't do anything special...especially since we take her on plenty of real camping trips and adventures. She mostly just missed her being with her friends. But she made the best of it and was fairly excited to go to school still as they were doing a lot of fun things with the 16 or so kids that were left behind. They didn't do any actual school work since all the other kids were out having fun so her teacher did mini "science" camp activities with kids that were left. She enjoyed herself but was waiting anxiously for her friends to come back and for their schedule to go back to normal!

Of course the bus that was suppose to go and bring the kids back never showed up so they had to send for another bus and they ended up returning several hours later than they were supposed to.

Indian Cove, Joshua Tree

We have been trying to get back on track on our rock climbing training. To this end, we took a trip out to Indian Cove in Joshua Tree to Iceberg Boulder.

We did some slab training on a route called Girl Power (5.4) and Baby Steps (5.5).

They are pretty fun and easy sport routes up a 40' slab. We did some practice sport climbing each route first.

Then, while on top rope, we tried walking up the face without using our hands at all. 

A group of people arrived while we were working on Baby Steps so we did not linger and went on to our next climb. Unfortunately, when the other people arrived and threw down all their stuff next to ours, Christian did not see that he left some fancy draws behind when we left. When we got to our next climb, he realized what happened and took Emily and ran back for them. 

Christian and Emily split up to see if they could catch the people either back towards the climb or the parking lot. Luckily, he was able to get it back from that group as they were leaving the climb. Emily took the wrong way so Christian had to go back again to find her. Emily and Christian ended up free soloing the route once more while they were out there.

The next route was called Stucco (5.8). It was a super steep, mostly featureless 40' rock formation that had the texture of well, stucco. As you try to use friction to climb up, little pebbles gets scraped off and your footing slips.

Caitlyn sat out this climb. I attempted it but gave up after I got stuck about a third of the way up. Only Christian and Emily managed to make it up this route.

Next, we headed over to the Feudal Wall for the kids to lead their own multi pitch route. The route is called Marchesa and is supposed to be an easy 5.2 two pitch route up 100 feet. As always, we usually do the routes first so that Christian can make sure that it is safe and within the girls' abilities. This was not.

The first pitch I guess can be considered 5.2. The second pitch had this really difficult overhanging spot that you had to pull yourself over. It was somewhat hard for Christian being tall. It was very difficult for me. I doubt that the kids would be ready for it. There would be what we would describe as several 5.7 moves to get over it. There was an awkward fist jam on one side and a fragile flake on the other to pull yourself up while your feet pretty much dangled over the overhanging part. It was difficult to reach the holds and then you had to muscle up them. It was most certainly not a 5.2! We were not very happy about it. I managed to thrash up but my muscles were very sore afterwards!

Above that was what I would describe as a 5.4 chimney. So still not something the kids would be ready to lead by themselves. We had to do it while dozens of boy scouts swarmed the area, climbing on rocks and screaming like animals. Our nerves were shot and we were pretty irritated. It is definitely a wonder that none of the boys got hurt as they were pretty much left to their own devices out there.

When Christian and I finally made it up, we had to find the way down. Some of the moves we had to down climb were even harder than 5.2. Christian climbed down without the rope but he short roped me down some of these rather precarious boulders. The girls would not be able to do this climb right now. Emily would not be able to lead the second pitch and Caitlyn would not even be able to reach the handholds in order to get up it. We were all pretty disappointed. We could not believe that this route was so completely sand bagged. We were not happy about it.

The girls ended up just scrambling around to have fun but we did not stay too long since it was near the campground and just filled with noisy groups screaming and blasting music. One group even had a bull horn to bark out instructions to each other. It was pretty awful.

Emily's 13th Birthday

Emily turned 13. She is officially a teenager! Life as we know it is over...but we went through the motions of celebrating nonetheless.

We had Marian and some of Christian's side of the family over for lunch. My mom stopped coming to the birthday get togethers when her cataracts made it more difficult for her to drive out to unfamiliar areas. They won't operate to fix it until it gets much worse.

We cleaned up the yard a bit, which was quite a challenge since we have let it go for many months now. Plus, every time the Santa Ana winds kick up, it looks like a tornado came through.

We asked Emily what she wanted to eat. All she could think of was fresh bread toasted over the fire. Since we can't expect everyone else to just eat bread, we made paella too.

We had more people come than we were realistically expecting and ended up making two batches of paella, plus two big loafs of rustic bread and salad so we had quite a bit of food in the end and had what was left of the second paella for dinner later that evening.

We sat around and told Emily stories (half of which seemed to also involve bread for some reason). She had a ton of presents.

Grandma Cheri had sent a whole bag of gifts with us when we were together in San Diego last weekend thinking that she would not see her for her birthday, but they made it down after all and she brought a whole new stack of presents to add to what she had already given us. It was crazy.

We got her some more arrows to go with the bow we got her for Christmas and the quiver she got herself with some of her Christmas money.

Even though she doesn't get much of a chance to practice, she is getting pretty good.

Afterwards, we had cake and everyone had to roll on home. Marian is the only one who stayed a little longer and she indulged us by watching the Emily videos and pictures we painstakingly spent many days putting together for the special event. Eventually, she ditched us too...literally.