July

July has been a scorching blur. It has been an incredibly hot summer. I am woefully behind on my posts.

We celebrated the Fourth of July with the usual friends.

Caitlyn and Christian were supposed to go on their daddy-daughter campout at the beginning of the month, but since there was still snow at the end of June, they delayed until the end of the month. 

Meanwhile, Christian has been working on my truck. We've been having transmission problems on and off for some time now and it seems to be getting worse. Since it has been too hot to do much of anything, we have been spending a lot of time tuning up the car and trying to diagnose the problem with the transmission. Unfortunately, because of the heat, the only time it has been cool enough to work on the car is usually in the middle of the night.

We have not gone climbing all month. The girls have been spending a lot of time swimming and playing with some of their friends in the neighborhood. They have been spending a lot of time indoors between swimming. They even finished their Summer Reading program at the library in record time. Too bad the program rewards were less than spectacular.

The girls finally finished their crochet projects that they started two summers ago! Neither of them actually finished with the original project that they started with but they finally managed to finish it!

We've been spending a lot of time tinkering around in the kitchen. Christian got some mooncake moulds for Father's Day last month.

It's been fun and we've been enjoying all Christian's new experiments and concoctions!

Marian came by one weekend to spend some time with the kids. She took them out for treats and a movie.

Emily gave her first Sacrament talk as a youth. She was really nervous about having to go up to talk in front of so many people but she did great and gave a really good talk on choice and accountability. On the same Sunday, she had to play the piano for the young women as their leader, who normally takes care of the music, was out of town. It was the first time she has done that and she did really good. She messed up a little once, but she was able to continue on without any trouble. 

By the time that the end of the month came, we were having additional problems wth the car. The radiator is now leaking. We were not having any problems with it before, but in our tune up of the car, we flushed the radiator to clean it out and now it is leaking quite badly. 

In the end, Caitlyn and Christian put off their trip once again until the beginning of August. 

Suicide Rock, Idyllwild

It has been exceptionally hot out this summer. Ever since we returned from Yosemite, we seemed to be stuck in a never-ending heat wave. It has severely damaged our apple tree. A ton of apples are rotting off of them. It is a pretty sad state. One of our roses in the front looks like it has been fried to a crisp. It has been through many summers and has never suffered like this. The rose was already established when we moved in but we don't know if it will survive this.

It was supposed to be a bit cooler this weekend, but that is all relative. We decided to take advantage of the slightly better weather conditions and go out to do some climbing. Our choices are pretty limited as it is still pretty hot out. We decided to go out to Idyllwild since it is at a higher elevation and therefore, a bit cooler.

We got up as early as we could to take advantage of the cooler mornings. Plus, if we don't get there early, we won't be able to get parking. There are not a lot of parking spots and it is a holiday weekend. We arrived in good time and got parking, but the place started to fill up pretty quickly as we  had our breakfast and applied sunscreen/bug repellent for the day.

We opted to got up to Suicide Rock instead of Tahquitz since it is usually the least crowded of the two.

On our hike up to Suicide Rock, we ran into veritable swarm of bugs. When we waved them away from our faces as we walked, it would not just disburse them temporarily, we would actually hit them with our hands because they were so thick in the air. We started to think that we should just go home!

Luckily, as we ascended higher, the bugs were a little less thick and we started feeling a breeze now and then that kept them from being so highly concentrated. We decided to continue up and hope that it would keep getting better. By the time we reached the base of the granite portion of Suicide Rock, the insect situation was much better. We headed up the rocky trail where our climb was supposed to be. There was 3rd and 4th class scrambling up a gully to our left. The trail started to get pretty steep and sketchy at some point. We tried a variety of ways up but none of them seemed good. We retreated back down a bit to see if we could find a way around, but to no avail.

We stopped for a rest break to take off our packs and get a drink. Christian would not accept defeat and took off again in search of where are trail should go, leaving his heavy pack with us. The kids played around for a bit but after a while, we settled down on a rock and we all took a nap as Christian was gone for quite a while. The girls were tired from getting up so early and I did not sleep very well the night before.

Eventually, Christian came back after successfully finding a way up. We had our lunch and had to decide what to do next since he noted that although he found the way through, it was not easy. We decided to go ahead up to the climb, since we came all this way already. Caitlyn was a little nervous free soloing a couple of the spots and Christian had to spot her. She was mostly nervous about having to come back down some of the places where we had to climb up!

Our last hurdle was having to crawl through a small tunnel between boulders in order to get to the upper portion where our climb was. It was dark and Christian had to shuttle our packs through for us. It seemed pretty crazy.

The climb looked pretty good. It was supposed to be a clean 5.3 fist crack up 90'. Emily was not so happy about leading it as the crack was not so clean. The crack was dirty and muggy and not deep enough to get your fist in a little ways up. She had to come back down after a bit and let her dad go up first.

I sport led the climb after Christian and then cleaned his gear on my way back down. I agreed that the climb started out as a dirty fist crack, but it quickly became too wide for my fist and I had to do a variety of hand and fist jams or even a double fist jam to work my way up. The top of the climb was definitely off-width as I had to even do a chicken wing in a couple of places. My biggest hurdle was getting a place for my feet as the crack was too wide for my feet but too narrow for a heel toe move. I would rate the climb closer to a 5.5 for someone my size.

Emily went up next and she attempted to lead the climb again. She got stopped at the same dirty shallow crack area a little way up. This time, she managed to get passed it, but it took a while. Unfortunately, she used up all her easy to place big cams in the beginning and ran out of gear halfway up. She was totally distraught. Christian ended up handing over her belay over to me while he free soloed a slightly "easier" crack to her right in order to bring her up some more gear.

She was then able to finish up the climb without too much more trouble. She cleaned most of her own gear on her way back down as Caitlyn was unsure of whether she wanted to climb and it was getting late.

Christian quickly jumped on the next climb to the left of this climb to a route called Major (5.7), which is a much wider crack. It seemed to alternate between being a large off-width to being a squeeze chimney. Christian was the only one to make this climb.

It was difficult and we now how to race the setting of the sun back down retreating, as Caitlyn had feared, back down the way we came.

We made it back down in good time, but my aged bug repellent was no longer effective by this time and we left our extra supplies in the car.  I started getting eaten alive by mosquitos. The kids got bitten up a bit as well. We jumped into the truck and fled the mosquito infested area.