Climbing Getaway

This past weekend was supposed to be the weekend that the annual UCR Heat Concert was scheduled for. We thought that maybe they would cancel due to the imminent rain threat but they declared that the concert would go on whether there was rain or shine.

Normally, the music starts blasting from the afternoon until the wee hours of the morning when it would finally end at the University only to have after parties sprout up at various location throughout the neighborhood. We've tried calling the police but they say that their hands are tied because UCR has a permit to abuse their neighbors. We've tried talking to the city, but they just talk in circles and not taking responsibility with what goes on in their city. In truth, they let UCR do mostly whatever they are one of the biggest tax payers in the city. Where do you think their priorities lie? Not with us.

This year, we decided to just throw our hands up in the air because nobody cares and we are unable to do anything about it. So, we decided to leave town for the weekend. We didn't want to stick around to be abused by UCR and the city.

Although we desperately need the rain, it was going to also put a damper on some of our plans. In the end, we opted to go to the Alabama Hills to do some climbing. Originally, we were going to leave Friday afternoon as soon as the kids got out of school but due to the rain, we figured that we would leave super early Saturday morning instead and just spend one night out camping.

We arrived in Lone Pine around 7:am. It was pretty chilly out but the whether seemed to be at least keeping the crowds at bay. We decided to climb the "Shark's Fin." Christian had been wanting to climb it for a while now and there were always people on it every time we went. This time, we got the place to ourselves.

Christian, Emily and I climbed the arete and two other routes on the shark fin. It was fun for the most part but the last route was kind of difficult. Because it was a bit much for Caitlyn still, we headed back over to "Lost Eye to the Moon" to find a climb for her.

The last time we were there, Caitlyn was able to climb up the 5.3 route in the dark. This time, we figured that she should be able to at least complete "Rhythm on the Range," a 5.5 route and then attempt the "Riders of the Purple Sage"...a 5.7 route. She shocked us by completing both. She needed a little help on a couple parts of the 5.7 route but she did it. I think next time, she should be able to do it without any help at all. The help isn't us pulling her up or anything. She just used on of the bolts as a hand hold once and another bolt as a foothold. We usually aren't allowed to use them as part of the rock face except as a safety for our rope.

Emily actually led both routes!

In between climbs, the girls got to play with Dad's new toy, an ascender. We only got one so far. 

We climbed until we were out of daylight as usual. We had dinner and went into town to get warmed up and get the girls a treat from McDonalds. It never got above 48 degrees F. all day. It was almost just as cold in the restaurant as it was outside. The girls enjoyed their fries and ice cream anyway.

We camped out in Alabama Hills that night. Although the weather never warmed up, the weather didn't drop very much either so it wasn't too cold. We didn't get more than a few sprinkles now and then so we didn't really get wet either. I think that we were pretty lucky overall.

We slept in Sunday morning, had breakfast and went for a drive up in the mountain passes. We tried several and at some point, all of them were closed because of the snow and rock fall.

The girls got to play with the snow until their hands froze. 

They made a mini snowman and we had some hot cocoa before heading back down for some lunch.

We hung out and read some scriptures before hitting the road.

When we got back, we found out that the UCR Heat concert got canceled after all because they were afraid of the lightning...small favors, huh?

Daddy-Daughter Luau

This past weekend was the Activity Day Girls Daddy-Daughter Luau. Christian took both the girls this time since Caitlyn turned 8 shortly after the last dance. Caitlyn would not stand for a picture with her Dad though. They were taking a picture with a parrot and although she denied it, I'm pretty sure she didn't want to get any where near it as she could not safely view it while it was tucked away in a cage.

Emily took one with her Dad and then came back to take one with the parrot!

I had to represent our Primary so I went with them to go help out. They had a lot of people helping though. I got people checked in and did a few odds and ends but they didn't seem to need me in the end so I went to help the girls after they had lunch for their dance number. 

Since the girls have been taking Polynesian dance lessons with a couple of other girls in our ward, their teacher (who is also in our ward) was called on to help out with the activities. The girls were to perform two numbers and then help teach one of them to the other girls and their fathers.

It was kind of last minute request, so they performed a couple of their old numbers and got to get some more use of their costumes from last year. They did a great job and the girls had a lot of fun.

Valentine's and President's Day Weekend

The girls had a four day weekend recently. Normally, we would try to take the opportunity to head out of town, but we were not prepared for it and had other obligations to keep us in town.

Friday was Valentine's day. I thought it a cruel joke that the school district was playing on the parents by having them stay home all day! But since the girls were home with us, we decided to make a day of it and take off for our monthly Joshua Tree trip.

Amazingly, Joshua Tree was not quite as busy as usual. I haven't seen the park this empty since the heat of summer. Thankfully, not everyone gets Friday off as a holiday. I guess it isn't quite the romantic place most people are looking for on Valentine's either so we lucked out.

We went back to the Atlantis Wall that we were working on on our last trip but ended up leaving from when it got too crowded.

I couldn't even get a picture of it last time because it was so crowded. Actually, I could have gotten it if I took it the minute we arrived, but the first set of people arrived within 5 or 10 minutes after with more to follow.

Emily (aka Wallerina)

Only one other couple came to climb the wall that day. They did a couple of routes and then moved on.  We had not planned to stay here the entire time, but as we had the wall to ourselves, we figured that we would just take advantage of it and do as many of the routes that we could.

Caitlyn

Although, Caitlyn has come a long way in overcoming her seemingly selective fear of heights, she still have her moments and it is a work in progress. She climbed most of "Solar Technology" but stopped within 10 feet of the anchor and would not go on. It's frustrating some times. She did complete one full route though on a rather easy route unfortunately named "unwiped butt." "Solar Technology" is decidedly more difficult and higher to boot so I guess it is reasonable.

Christian spent a lot of his time an energy setting up the top ropes for us, belaying and climbing a 5.8 route called "wet pigeon." I wanted to climb it but was not able to get up the first 12 feet of the route no matter how hard I tried. 

We did find a pretty fun climb called "self abuse" towards the end of the day. Christian, Emily and I went up it although, I got a bit banged up going up and down this one.

I guess I should have made some effort to take a picture with Christian since it was Valentine's Day, but we were too busy climbing and helping the kids so I guess the only shot I have is one Emily took of me climbing. You can see Christian's head peaking up at the top of the climb as he was belaying me from the top!

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On Saturday morning, I made an effort to go to the Stake Women's Conference as I promised a friend that I would drive.

When we returned in the afternoon, I found that Christian got the girls to finish their chores in a timely manner (as opposed to how they normally drag out all day) so we took off to investigate a new wall we found at the Box Springs Mtns. We passed by it several times on our various hikes and had been wanting to investigate further. It appears to be unpublished so we did not have an idea of the difficulty of the climbs. We found at least four anchors set up. Most were pretty difficult but there appeared to be one or two that might be approachable. It is a beautiful area and I expect that we will definitely be back.

Only Christian, Emily and I climbed. Caitlyn wasn't ready to tackle another wall just yet and we left her to her own devices. We did see some deer in the distance running around at the base of the hill. I didn't have a camera that could capture them with me. That is the first time that I've seen them there. You can hear wild burros in the distance sometimes, but I haven't been able to spot one of those either.

In the evening, we joined a Chinese New Year celebration to celebrate the Lantern Festival in Eastvale. They had chinese food, music, dances and a dragon dance. The Lantern Festival marks the last day of the New Year celebration. 

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Sunday was church as usual for us. Christian has meetings all morning. I had to teach sharing time and then Christian ran around teaching with the missionaries and helping one of the new foreign converts learn to drive, so we were pretty exhausted by the end of the day. 

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On Monday, we invited some friends to climb with us and headed back into the Box Springs Mtns. As they have just started, we took them back to the Knob Wall where we used to practice a lot during the summer between trips.

We saw a bunch of hawks flying above. Unfortunately, Emily and her friend also saw a snake out and about. We are not sure what kind it was. Luckily, no one got bitten and we were about done for the day anyway and decided to pack up and head back out.

Chinese New Year

Last weekend, we got together with my family for our annual "reunion dinner" since the new year is almost upon us. Traditionally, we are to meet around the hearth on new year's eve, but as everyone has their own jobs and families and live apart from each other, we tend to get together on the weekend just before the new year. We get together and have a traditional winter solstice soup. It's one of my favorites. I used to wait all year for it. Now that I can make it on my own as well, we tend to have it 2 or 3 times a year because I just can't wait that long to have it again.

Since the new year officially began on Friday, we went back to visit my family again this past weekend. As usual, we made dumplings all day while we ate. The girls love getting to just eat all day for some reason. Probably because they are never allowed to do it normally. You eat your food during meals or you go hungry until the next one! Of course, they get a snack when they get home from school and everything but it's not like keeping your stomach full all day! We loved it when we were young as well but we can't quite appreciate it as much when you get older. Don't get me wrong, we still eat all day too but mostly because we can't help it with all the tasty celebration food all around us and new ones coming out all the time. But for once, I was looking forward to actually fasting a bit the next day.

Plus, it is a lot of work...especially as we take on more and more responsibilities and need to help my mom out more as she is slowing down a bit. But we feel that it is important for us to keep these traditions going with our family and to learn all the aspects of it as one day we will be left to keep this up on our own.

Of course the girls also like getting to dress in their chinese clothes and getting red envelopes! Who doesn't like getting some lucky money? Hopefully, we can instill the love,importance and knowledge of these traditions to our girls so that they can keep it up with their families as well.

January

The month seemed to fly by. At the beginning of the month, we took a hike to the top of Sugarloaf Mtn. I'm not sure if it is an actual mountain but that's what everybody calls it because it is at the end of Sugarloaf Road. It may just be the western most part of the Box Springs range.

It is a short but fairly steep hike. We probably made it worse for ourselves by not taking the actual trail that starts from the neighborhood. Our trail looked more like a cross between a game trail and the ditch that the water runs off from! But it was a nice day out and we found some boulders to climb while we were out.

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The girls had their science fair this month. Emily did an experiment on cave stalactites. Caitlyn did a kitchen science experiment on chemical leaveners. Caitlyn actually got first place in her grade category.

There were tons of people there and more science boards than you can look through because they made it mandatory this year for grades 3 through 6. 

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We went to Joshua Tree again. We tried a new area called the Western Wall. We were the first to arrive and so we got our choice of routes but there were people right behind us and pretty soon, the whole wall was filled up.

We did two routes on the wall but it quickly became too crowded so we decided to move on. As we were leaving, hoards of more climbers were arriving so we were happy to be departing. I think that we will have to go early again if we want to try some of the other routes on the wall.

It was 1:pm by the time we got back to the truck and headed back over to cyclops rock to see if the rappel station was available. Luckily, it was free so we went up to reserve the spot while we had our lunch. 

Since it was late last time, we didn't get too many pictures or videos and Caitlyn didn't even get to try it so we wanted to make sure we got a chance to go back in the early afternoon to do it again. Christian and I both got to go on it once. Caitlyn was pretty scared to go off the edge (as it is a 150 foot drop) but once she did, she had a lot of fun and actually went down twice. Emily went down three times!

By the time we managed to pull the kids away from the rappel, it was getting late and we wanted to get in one more climb before leaving. Christian and Emily did a climb on the other side of Cyclops rock called "Penelope's Walk." It was pretty much dark by the time Emily got up so there was no more time for anything else.

We also took some friends to try their hand at rock climbing at the quarry. It still amazes me how far along Caitlyn has come since December. We were not getting any where with her for a while. She managed a few small climbs here and there but generally had panic attacks on the rock at some point and either had to come down or she just stood there not willing to move. She can now make a lot of those climbs effortlessly.

Death Valley - Part 2

Day 4 begins at Mosaic Canyon. We got up with the sun, as usual. Mosaic Canyon is one of the reasons we decided to try climbing. It is a easy hike that winds through the canyon, but at some point, it ends unless you can climb and continue through the canyon.

It is a beautiful canyon. It is one of my most favorite places in Death Valley. It is pretty crowded (even early in the morning) where the canyon begins. There are little climbs that you have to get through to continue and people who don't really like to hike and/or people with small children, never get farther. There is a bigger, somewhat easy climb at some point and most people will stop there. If you continue farther though, you end up at a 40 foot wall that you basically need rope in order to scale.

Luckily, we went prepared! It took us a while though because some of it is just smooth marble that was difficult to protect. Christian ended up going up and around to an easier part for him to free climb and top roped us up the wall. He had to make this massive anchor in order to help us up. That wall pretty much stopped the rest of the people from continuing.

The canyon just gets more beautiful as you go up. Unfortunately, I did not bring my camera when I made the climb up so I didn't get any more pictures. Christian got some when he went back up though. The canyon continued on a little more before coming to another wall. It also had some awesome side canyons that were just stunning as well. Unfortunately, we did not have enough time to get our gear up and continue on this trip so we had to call it a day.

We had plans to watch the sun set on the Mesquite Flats sand dunes and needed to head out. I think that we will have to devote more time to Mosaic Canyon the next time we come. When we finally got to the dunes, Christian and I wished that we just stayed at the canyon because the dunes were just crawling with people. It was like watching ants on an anthill. The girls loved it though. They love playing on the sand dunes.

Our camping spot was kind of central to all the places we were visiting so we stayed there again. It is a comfortable spot away from any people. We just had to get up early and pack up before other people started moving about as there was no cover to shelter us from the view of others once the sun came up.

Early on Day 5, we headed into Golden Canyon. This is another one of the areas that neither Christian nor I have had the chance to explore yet. Incidentally, it is also the place where some of the original Star Wars Episode IV was filmed along with Mesquite Flats Sand Dunes which we visited yesterday evening. The kids got a kick out of that.

At the end of Golden Canyon sits the Red Cathedral which is pretty breath taking.

From there, we continued on to Zabriskie's Point which we found really crowded as well. We hiked in from Golden Canyon but you can just drive there which is what most people did.

We took some pictures and quickly took our leave as the place was just packed with loud tourists.

From there, we headed through the 20 mule team canyon. It is also a one way route that you drive through. It was crowded and unimpressive. We had the same problems running into people that just stopped in the middle of the road oblivious to those around them (and in back of them). We did not stop to take pictures and proceeded right back out and on our way to Dante's View.

There were lots of people there as well but we found some places to ourselves and decided to watch the sunset. The the cockroaches started to climb over us to see the sunset as well, we figured it was time to take our leave.

We went back to the ranger station to wash up, fill up on water and have our dinner. We called Christian's brother that evening to see if they were in Lone Pine where they had planned to spend the night. Apparently, they had not left but were planning to leave early in the morning to meet us in the afternoon. We then went back to our campsite which was feeling a lot more like home now that we've spent so many nights there.

Day 6 was another traveling day. We planned to head out of the main part of Death Valley and into Eureka to meet up with Christian's family. We stopped by to show the girls Scotty's Castle. Luckily, it was still early. It was not open yet and so there were only a few people milling about.

It is a tourist trap, but a really beautiful one. The place and workmanship is just stunning. By the time we headed out, all the people started pouring in so we got out in the nick of time.

We got into Eureka Valley just after noon. We set up camp and had our lunch and waited for Christian's dad and brother. We figured that they might not be able to see our car from the main road so Christian went out to the main road to wait for them. We sat around and waited for hours but no one showed up. We sent the girls to play on the sand dunes and kept in contact with them through walkie talkies. They would call every now and then to see if Grandpa had arrived yet. They were so excited that they were coming out to meet us.

We met up with the girls again and we were starting to get really worried about what might possibly be detaining them. After grabbing a snack, Christian and I took one last walk out to the main parking lot to see if we could find them, to no avail. We returned to make dinner. Every time we saw a car drive into the valley, the kids or Christian would run out to the road to see what kind of vehicle it was. It was never them. The temperature dropped really quickly with the sun and we had to retreat into the tent. It was super cold there. Luckily, we brought a heater. We had not yet had any use for it but boy did we need it here. We were afraid that it would singe our tent or our expensive sleeping bags but it was so cold, we left the heater on all night...well, until it ran out of fuel. We do not have a four season tent that fits all four of us, so the tent has vents that the heat just rises out of and we are not able to keep in nice and warm like our four season tent. You knew when the gas ran out because it got pretty cold fast. We estimate that the temperature got down to at least 24˚F. 

It was still pretty cold when we got up in the morning. As Christian's brother and father never arrived, we figured that we would climb to the top of the sand dune. It is the highest dune field in North America. The last time we came, we could not keep up with the girls and never made it to the top. I still couldn't keep up with the girls but Christian easily passed them up. We all made it to the top in short time. Christian couldn't enjoy himself though because he kept going back and forth between being pissed off that we wasted half our day waiting for his family to come and being worried that something might have happened to them. 

Christian headed back down and I stayed a while at the top to watch the girls play. They kept sliding down and climbing back up. I don't know where they keep all their energy. They finally came back up to have a snack. We decided that we better head back down to Christian to see what the plan was. 

The girls were disappointed that they didn't see any fighter jets. They had yesterday off because of the New Year's holiday but we figured that they would be out and about today. Just as we were about to head down, a couple of F-16s streaked by.

They were fully armed with missiles! We waited around a bit for them to whip back around but it seemed like they were on their way somewhere as they were not as playful as they normally are. They did not come back so we proceeded back down. Every time we heard an airplane, we stopped to pull out our cameras but they were just commercial airplanes flying by.

When we made it back down, Christian was packing up to go. We decided that if Christian's family was not coming, we would just start heading home as none of us wanted to spend another freezing cold night out there in the dunes. We had been out for 7 days and were ready to be home in our own beds.

As we were driving out of the valley, three more fighters came up over the mountain range and over our vehicle. The last airplane was just a stone's throw above us. We were so excited to get a last farewell from the fighter jets. Incidentally, they were all also fully armed with missiles. 

We ran into a bunch of snow through one of the mountain passes and stopped so that the girls could play.

The snow would not stick together enough to make snow men or anything but the kids and some fun throwing snow balls.

We got into Lone Pine in time for a late lunch. After lunch, we headed into Alabama Hills to have some last minute fun before heading home. We went back to climb on the Lost Eye to the Moon which we started climbing back in October.

This time, Christian and I managed to make it to the top of "Eye for an Eye", a short two pitch climb that we started last time but was not quite ready to finish. 

It was gratifying to see how we have progressed since the last time we were here. Caitlyn was able to climb "Fiddlin Buckeroo" without a rope. Emily climbed the "Riders of the Purple Sage" that Christian and I climbed last time as the last of the daylight faded away. We stayed until the sun went down. Caitlyn climbed "Rootin' Tootin' Rhythm" in the dark! I think that somewhere between the climbing gym and now, Caitlyn has finally started to get over her fear of climbing. We have been amazed at how well she did in the canyons, as well as here in Alabama Hills.

The girls had made a little friend while Christian and I were climbing. She is between Emily and Caitlyn's age and was there climbing with her family. Emily was excited to meet another little girl with common interests.

They were there for a long time but left some time after it got dark. We stayed and had our dinner before hitting the road. We got back late but was never happier to come home and be able to take a shower and get into our nice warm, soft beds.

Death Valley - Part 1

After all the Christmas festivities came to an end, we packed up for our family trip to Death Valley. It involved a lot of shopping, cooking and packing. We were planning to be away 8 days...the longest trip   that we've ever attempted. It is difficult to decide how much of everything we need. We were not expecting to have access to gas and water during half of our trip so we had to have extra of both. You wouldn't believe how much stuff four people need for a week. We ended up having to really limit how much we brought with us because there just wasn't even enough room in the truck.

Day one was just a traveling day. We got up early and hit the road. We planned to enter Death Valley from the south and head up as we went along. When we were almost there, we started to get a big cramped after sitting in the car so long and got out to stretch and explore.

We stopped by the ruins of an old mill.

We called it a day and camped just south of Death Valley. We had enough time and daylight to set up camp, have dinner, take pictures of the sunset and go for a walk before bed.

Day 2: We got up with the sun and headed into Death Valley. Our first destination was Badwater. The lowest point in North America at 282 feet below sea level.

We wanted to be there for the sunrise to take a video of the sun racing across the salt flats. It was a bit anti-climatic. The sun took a long time to get over the mountains. The salt crust was really muddy. The last time Christian and I came here, it looked almost like snow. The kids had seen pictures and were a bit disappointed at what it was actually like this time. It was also noisy and crowded so we headed out to our next destination.

We climbed around and hiked through some of the canyons. The kids loved exploring and finding all the different colored rocks.

We spent some time looking for a new campsite. We drove up a 4x4 trail through another canyon and and hiked around a bit while we were there. It was a little too crowded for our taste and ended up going back down and camping near the Devil's golf course. It was a really sweet spot but the wind really kicked up that night. We thought that the gale force winds would rip our tent to shreds. Our rain fly almost got away from us. Christian had to go back out in the middle of the night and re-stake and secure our tent again. We didn't get a whole lot of sleep. It was pretty miserable. I think we might have went home after that if we did not have plans to meet up with Christian's brother and Dad at the end of the week. As it was, we did not have a choice but to continue on our trip.

Day 3: We decided to drive through Titus Canyon. Christian and I have never been there as it is a 4x4 trail. It is a one way road but we had to dip into Nevada and catch the entrance to the canyon on the eastside. We decided that we might as well gas up while we were out there and ended up at the Rhyolite Ghost Town. 

The kids liked exploring and reading about the old town.

We also ended up splurging on some homemade ice cream and fresh beef jerky when we went to get gas. Gas is a lot cheaper in Nevada but we got reamed on the beef jerky! It was good, but pretty pricey for what we ended up with.

Titus Canyon was pretty neat but pretty crowded. Christian got a GoPro from his mom for Christmas so we attached it to the windshield of our car and tried to get a stop motion video of the drive. It was pretty neat but cars kept getting in our way. They would just stop in the middle of the road to take pictures or whatever. They wouldn't pull over so that you can get by. It's a really neat drive but I think we want to try it again some time when it isn't so crowded...maybe when it's a lot warmer out there!

We stopped about three quarters of the way through and pulled off because Christian found a climbing route he wanted to try. He even found some old pitons on there so obviously, someone else had the same idea at some point. The rock was cruddy and as sharp as glass though. Christian got up but none of the rest of us wanted to try it.

We ended up going to the ranger station to clean up a bit and have our dinner at one of the picnic tables. We stayed for a seminar they had that night. It was pretty good and we got a weather report for the night so we decided to risk it and head back to the same campsite we had last night and risk another night out there. It was a lot more pleasant as the wind did not kick back up. We had found out that another family of campers did have their tent break from the wind that previous night. They were in the campground and was at the ranger station trying to get a refund for the balance of their stay as they had no tent left and wanted to go home. The rangers would not give them a refund...another reason not to stay at a campground.