Big Bear

With the kids gone and less distractions around the house, Christian decided to attempt to crack down and get his work done so that we can spend a day every week going out to do something. This first week, we went out to the Big Bear Lake area. It's been too hot everywhere else, so we moved up to a higher elevation.

We decided to go to the Castle Rock area to go climbing. It is a bit of a hike to Castle Rock...especially when you are out of shape. We got there just in time to get the last parking space. On the hike up though, we ran into a rattler crossing our path. We were not off to a good start.

First, we climbed Easy As Your Sister's Best Friend 5.5. It was supposed to be an easy sport climb but it went around a corner and kicked out near the top, so you couldn't really tell where the next bolt was supposed to be or where you were supposed to go. Christian had to place some pieces of gear here and there so he could try different ways to get up and find the next bolt.

Personally, I didn't find it that easy. There was one especially trying spot that was a bit out of my reach but found an alternate way up.

At the top, you can see a view of the Lake.

After we got back down, we stopped to have some lunch. We had a late start that morning since we didn't want to run into any of the morning work traffic. After lunch, Christian climbed back up to try some different moves and clean up. 

We moved to around the corner a little more towards the south eastern side of Castle Rock to climb Round Table 5.6. Castle Rock is a pretty nice size crag, so this climb is about 80 feet high. I don't care for the short climbs as much. 

Unfortunately, most of these climbs seems to have a section that kind of kicks out a bit near the top which makes it a bit more difficult. You need a bit more strength to pull yourself up and over it. I was a bit worried at first, but was relieved that I could still work my way up okay. When we were done, had a bit more light and was considering doing one more climb, but it was getting crowded as a group of climbers had some "meet up" there and two different people had dogs that barked annoyingly, so we decided to just call it a day. The original couple from the group we were dodging was pretty nice. They had been there almost as long as we had and had climbed most of the south-eastern wall. They offered to take a picture of us as we packed up to go.

We took our time getting back, stopping to see the sights.

The trail was a bit of a mess, so in the end, I'm glad we left a bit early so that we could see where we were going better as we had to re-find our trail twice. The rough thing about going to the local mountains is that there are quite a lot of people up there. We ran into a lot of foreigners as well. Plus there was a lot of trash and graffiti which is always extra frustrating. We ended the day by finding a hole in the wall Mexican joint to get some giant carne asada burritos which totally hits the spot when you've spent the day climbing!