Christian's sister Erin and her family got a membership to the local climbing gym near them and has been wanting Christian to take them climbing. On Veteran's Day weekend, we finally agreed to go out to Joshua Tree. They also wanted to go camping. Christian was in charge of where to go and everything related to climbing. His sister was in charge of all the food.
They met us up at our house and we headed out to Joshua Tree at 5:30 in the morning. We took advantage of the early hour to choose a more popular climb. Originally, we were going to take them to The Eye at Cyclops Rock, but it was a very chilly morning and some people arrived just before we did. We decided to try White Lightning (5.7) instead.
As Christian lead up the route, he realized that no one else would probably be able to make it up. It is a fairly straightforward crack up 120 feet, but there are two slightly overhanging sections of the rock that you have to get over. We had our eye on a slightly easier climb to the left of White Lightning for the other family to try. Emily followed up the route without too much trouble so Erin decided to give it a go. Meanwhile, a couple of other climbers had come and claimed the easier route to our left. Erin couldn't get over the first crux. I went up next. I had some problems as well on the first crux but was able to pull up through it and make it to the top. No one else wanted to try it though. Erin was a bit disappointed and we were getting worried about getting overnight parking as the park was starting to fill up, so we rappelled down and headed over to the Overnight Boy Scout camping area and head out for easier climbs. It was already fairly crowded but we managed to get a couple of spaces.
It took them a while to gather all their stuff together. They had a lot of things that didn't fit in their backpacks. Plus, we were lending our niece Caitlyn's backpack, so they still had to pack that. Caitlyn was going to give one of my old backpacks a try. It's a really nice pack but too small to fit everything I need to bring now with the kids and all the extra climbing gear Christian has to haul around.
We finally headed out to Bear Island. We figure that we had to start them off a lot easier and chose a good starter climb on the way out to where we wanted to camp.
The route Christian picked out for them was Shardik (5.3). It is a very easy introductory climb. WE have done this climb before. It is rated at 5.3 but we had thought it should have been more appropriately rated at 5.2. Erin and her whole family was able to give this one a try and everybody made it up. A few of them where a bit surprised at the height though. It's only 55 feet but we are mostly used to the heights. This was new for them since they only climb in the gym.
I think they all enjoyed this climb. It didn't require very much in the way of difficult techniques but they got a feel for the rock and being up high. We had our lunch out here.
It was starting to get late though, so we hurried up and packed up to continue our hike out to our camping area. We headed out towards West Outer Mongolia to the Asian Fever Buttress.
We finally got to our destination and decided to camp in the wash just before the sun set. Unfortunately, some other campers decided to camp right above us and we could hear their loud voices along with their music. On top of that, we discovered that the girls didn't air out our tent like they were supposed to after our last trip in Yosemite, so there was small amounts of mold all over our tent. We aired it out the best we could and settle in for the night after a brief dinner.
In the morning, we were only a short walk to our next climb, Me Love You Long Time (5.4). It is another moderately easy route up 200 feet with a small traverse near the top. Not all of Erin's family was too excited to try this climb. Christian took some time to set it up. It is not quite so straightforward to climb because of the traverse. And he had a difficult time deciding where and how to set up and anchor for everyone to top rope the climb. There is also a bit of fourth class scrambling to the top of the climb. Christian decided to just set up the climb at the top of the 5th class climbing area and skip the scrambling part altogether.
I followed up Christian and he belayed his sister up before we decided how to set everything up. We finally got everything ready and taught Erin how to rappel back down to the bottom. After all that, the rest of Erin's family was a bit reluctant to do the climb. Emily and Caitlyn went up while they were trying to decide what to do.
Even Caitlyn was a little hesitant about it until we reminded her that she has already done this climb. In fact, she lead this climb already. She felt more at ease knowing this and had no problem scrambling up. In fact, she finished the climb on some difficult slab at the top instead of the nice safe crack we all went up.
Our niece felt re-assured about the climb not being too difficult after Caitlyn went up. She did really good. She's a natural, much like Emily. Our youngest nephew and their dad was not so easily convinced. Erin finally half cajoled and half bribed our nephew to go up. He had some difficulty half way but finally made it up three quarters of the route but didn't want to make the traverse and came back down before he could finish the route. Erin's husband opted not to climb this one at all.
Christian and I had to go back up to clean the anchor and the directionals we left in the rock for the traverse. Then we had to finish the route to the very top and head over to the rappel rings on the farther end of the buttress.
We had to pack up and leave after that. Erin was supposed to work early the next morning. They wanted to stop by and get everybody burgers for dinner before leaving. The kids and Erin headed back out first. Mike stayed to see if he could help but Christian still had to sort and repack all his gear so Mike and I headed out next.
Christian didn't get back out to the cars until the sun started to set again. We were a bit worried because we thought that he would be just behind us. It was a lot more crowded in the parking lot now since it is a free entrance fee day because of Veteran's Day.
We stopped by McDonald's for dinner. It gave us weird flash back to the time we got stranded in the parking lot because our truck wouldn't start when Christian's fuel pump gave out on us. I don't have any pictures of us climbing as our kids were too busy playing with their cousins. Hopefully, I will get some pictures for Erin later.
