Suicide Rock

We went to Idyllwild again but this time to climb on Suicide Rock. It was quite crowded. There was a big group of mountain rescue people practicing up on one of the routes. There was also a guide next to us with a group of people learning to climb next to us.

We climbed a relatively easy route called Little Murders (5.3) but we did a slightly harder variation through a squeeze chimney above the middle of the route. Christian and I couldn't quite fit through the very top opening and had to squeeze out the side to continue up.

It wasn't too difficult until you started going up the chimney...then it got a little spicy as the opening of the flake was wider at the bottom and the top was super narrow so it felt like it wanted to spit us out. Of course, Caitlyn is so small that she climbed the slab under the flake without hardly even having to use the other side for support as she seems to be our slab master. She says that she is not that good at slab climbing, but every time a climb gets hard, whether it is a chimney or crack, she ends up climbing on very difficult slab next to where the rest of us needs to go in order to get up.

It is pretty difficult taking pictures in the shadows when the sun is so bright out. The contrast is too great and since Caitlyn is so tiny, I could not quite get any pictures of her in between the flake.

While we were climbing and waiting for each other, we listened in on the guide giving instructions to his students on slab climbing. Usually, the guides that we run into out on climbs are fairly clueless. They usually, don't give that much instruction and usually end up pulling their clients up some moderately difficult climbs just so that they think that they are accomplishing something. This guide wasn't faking it with his clients and was giving some really good instruction.  After we finished "Little Murders" and his group moved off, we decided to try out some of his instructions on the slabs that they were climbing.

We free soloed the descent gully to set up a top rope and went up and down the slab three times each using different routes. We know that one of the routes was called Innominate II (5.8) so they were not easy climbs but we all were able to do it using the technique he explained. I think that it helped a lot.

We didn't get to climb one of the climbs that we were planning on because it was so crowded but we ended up being pretty satisfied as we feel that we made some definite progress in our climbing!

July 4th

July 4th was spent, as usual, with our friends' the Deans. We have a bbq and potluck. The kids play and we watch fireworks.

There was no fire on Mt. Rubidoux from the fireworks. Then, by the end of the evening, we inevitably had to fight with the kids about leaving as they never want to leave their friends, no matter how late it gets.

Miscellaneous Climbs

Since we returned from our latest camping trip early and Christian still had some vacation time left, we went on a couple of local climbs.

We began by going to Tahquitz since we have had so much trouble getting there. We climbed a route called The North East Rib which is supposed to be a 4 pitch (700') climb rated at an easy 5.3. We did not find it quite so easy. We did not expect the so called approach to include off widths, a chimney, and a layback. We didn't even expect to rope up through any of that. When we got to the "start of the climb" we had to pull up an overhang which is simply ridiculous for a 5.3. We got passed it but while we were working on it, we heard thunder and got some water sprinkled on us. Past the overhang is a steep slab climb up mossy rock which seemed like a really bad idea during the rain. We did not know what to expect past this section either since we all agreed that the climb was rated very badly and decided to bail. We think that what we encountered on this climb so far would have been more aptly rated at 5.6...which is totally still within our range, but not at all what we expected.

We were pretty frustrated by the end of the day. To add insult to injury, we got eaten alive by mosquitos when we got back down.

After a few days, we were still disgruntled about the North East Rib and decided to wash the bad taste of it by going on another climb. Christian wanted to go back to the rib to conquer it once and for all but none of the rest of us wanted to look at the thing again any time soon. This time, we went to a new area near Lake Matthews called Ortega Falls.

The drought has rendered the falls completely dry, so there were no crowds and we could easily belay from the bottom of the falls which was bone dry. 

We climbed a dihedral (5.7). Since this climbing area is pretty small and there are only a few climbs within our range, we each climbed it twice before it got too hot.

We all thought it was a pretty fun, but challenging climb. Christian even had us practice falling near the top since the fall would be clean and it would give the girls an idea of what it feels like to fall. I, personally, have already had the experience but gave it a try as well. 

The idea of it freaked the kids out a bit but they were little troopers about it and did as they were told.

Afterwards, Christian did one more climb on the line next to this one on a route called "Fingers." It was a 5.9 finger crack.

We had to call it a day by early afternoon as we had dinner plans with Lily's family (the family we went to Mammoth with) that evening and I needed to finish up an apple pie for dessert that I had started the night before.

Mammoth Mtn.

We had the car all packed up the evening before leaving on our camping trip. When we got up in the morning, we basically just had to get into the car and be on our way. We made it up into Bishop just after lunch and we had a late lunch at a park there. We did our rounds through the mountain shops before continuing on our way. We had some clothes on consignment at a used gear shop that we wanted to check on. We got about $90 for some clothes we couldn't use anymore but ended up getting a cheap set of gaiters for one of the kids with part of the funds. We took the rest in store credit.

We got to Mammoth in the late afternoon and stopped by a few more mountain shops. We were looking for a big pot for our camp stove. We had an old one that is over 25 years old probably but we have to be real careful how and where we pack it because the edges could cause damage to the pack so we thought that since we are doing a lot of camping these days, that we would get an upgrade. Unfortunately, all the nicest new pots are made especially for specific stoves these days. And since they no longer sell the fuel for our backpacking stove anymore, it was something we would have to consider before buying a new pot.

We finally got to our friends' campsite in the early evening but they were running late and had not yet arrived, so we decided to hike around a bit and see what we could find. They were camping in the Twin Lakes Campground. We hiked up a field of scree to investigate some rock croppings above one of the lakes.

Christian found that the rock up there was very chossy and not of good quality. While we were up there, we saw our friends' car pull into the campground, so we decided to head down and meet up with them. They were still setting up camp when we got back down. We had dinner together and made plans for the next day. We then took off to our normal wilderness campsite just outside of the city. Unfortunately, it was very dry and dusty.

In the morning, we went back to break our fast with the rest of the group. Our friends were also camping with another family that they knew and both families had a daughter Emily's age. Our girls quickly made a new friend and all the girls got along great. We took the girls and headed towards McLeod Lake. A short hike brought us to a short, easy climb we thought we could take the girls on. One of the girls had never been rock climbing before and the other had only climbed at a gym a couple of times so we thought that it might be something fun and interesting for the kids to do. Plus, because it was so easy, we didn't worry about Emily putting any undue stress on her injured finger.

We all took a turn on the first climb, Fun-gi. Even the parents of Emily's friend went up this one. Christian, Caitlyn and I went on a slightly harder route called "No Applause." Christian did an additional one called "On The Count of Three" which was a bit more challenging. It was pretty hot and dry out there and the girls were a little overwhelmed with the experience and wanted to relax by the lake.

We had a snack and headed back to meet up with the other girl's parents. They did ride by on their bicycles once while we were climbing but we wanted to find out what their plans were as we did not want to intrude too much on their plans. They were still out riding when we got back so we had some lunch and rested. Emily's friend was not feeling well as she started getting sick just before the trip.

When other set of parents returned, the girls took off for a bike ride but the hills was a bit challenging for Caitlyn as she had not had any experience on a bike with hand breaks nor in changing speeds on the bike. Luckily, Christian jogged along with her and helped her out a bit as she could not keep up with the older girls.

Meanwhile the moms took a walk over to the lakes. When everyone returned again, we discussed what we would like to do next. We decided to go check out the Mammoth Consolidated Gold Mine.

I think that it was the only thing that all three families ended up doing together besides just hanging out at their campsite and having meals. We did return to their campsite afterwards to have dinner. The girls played games while they waited for dinner.

The girls were still having lots of fun together but we were afraid that our presence was too disruptive to their plans since the other two families did plan this vacation together, and Christian was getting restless to go do something bigger than the tourist thing and hanging out around camp. Therefore, we decided to continue on our way to Yosemite the next day and bid farewell to our new friends.

Unfortunately, Christian wasn't feeling so good during the last part of the day and so when we got up in the morning, we decided to doing something smaller until we were feeling 100 percent as what we had planned in Yosemite required us to be in top physical condition. We decided on hiking up to Crystal Crag in Mammoth to do some climbing there. 

We got somewhat of a late start and the parking at Lake George was a veritable zoo. We barely managed to get parking on the side of the road and had to move some big rocks around a bit so that we did not get blocked in by all the other tourists trying to squeeze in by whatever means necessary.

Unfortunately our plans continued to go awry. We headed up the crowded trail up to Crystal Crag but half way up, Christian noticed that Emily was limping behind. We had to toss her hiking shoes away because she had worn them out. Not only is she just nearly as tall as I am, she almost has the same shoe size as me now so we let her use an old pair of hiking boots of mine that I didn't fit anymore since my feet grew a half size after the pregnancies. She said that she fit it and it was comfortable but after all the little hikes the day before, her foot began to get sore.

On the hike to Crystal Crag, she wore a pair of hybrid approach/climbing shoes. They are close fitting and apparently it rubbed her sores the wrong way. We ended up having to bail. 

We considered going back to our friends' camp to see what their plans for the day was going to be. On our way down, we spotted our friends' car at the bottom of the parking area. We know that they were interested in going canoeing. We looked a little around Lake Mary and then up at Lake George but we could not find them. The girls wanted to go swimming so we went back to our car to get swimsuits and lunch. 

We had picked out a spot to return to but on our way back to it, we saw that it was crawling with people now. We gave up and just stopped by a spot on the side of the trail to let the girls play a little in the water. Unfortunately, it was cold and was filled with gnats. When we got there, it was breezy so there were no bugs, but every time the wind died down, the air around us was filled with bugs. The kids waded in the the cold water while we fixed lunch.

After lunch, we headed out again. Our friends' car was still in the area so we knew that was a lost cause. We ended up getting our new backpacking stove on our way out of town. We got a discount on it and we were able to use our store credit from the consignment branch of the store with it. 

In the end, we decided to cut our losses. With Emily's hand hurt still (although it was healing nicely) and now with her feet sore, there was not a whole lot that we could do. We definitely could not do any of the things we had planned for Yosemite.

We did stop by Convict Lake for it a bit since we had some time to kill. We did not plan to return home in the middle of traffic. We had planned to leave after dinner and drive through the night to avoid traffic. It was very windy down by the lake. In fact, the lake looked almost more like the ocean.

We were excited to try out our new stove in the wind. One of the big gripes we have with our previous stove (besides the fact that no one can get the fuel canisters outside of Africa these days) was trying to use it when there was a breeze. It was difficult to light and if you could keep it lit and not blow out in the wind, it would still take a while to heat up our food. Getting it to boil water in the cold with a breeze was basically not possible. 

We decided to take a hike up to the base of Laurel Mountain which towers above the lake. 

Caitlyn decided that next year on her daddy-daughter camp out, she wanted to to climb to the top of Laurel Mountain. It was a really beautiful area. Emily was back in her hiking shoes and she was a little slow but shoe was doing okay until about halfway back to the truck when she started limping again.

She made it back down and we had dinner. The new stove was fabulous! In the high wind, we were able to light and bring two liters of water to a boil in 3 minutes. It more than lived up to the advertising claims. In fact, it exceeded all expectations.

Plans Gone Awry

Summer has been pretty unstructured this year. I have no packets for the kids to work on. We are mostly working on getting chores done...teaching the kids to work harder and to take some responsibility in our home. The first week went pretty well for the most part but the bickering and petty fighting started cropping up before the week was done.

Our apples are ready so we have been spending a lot of time harvesting apples and making apple sauce, dried apples, apple cake, apple bread and apple pie. The kids had been helping do a lot of it this year. In between chores and things, they have gotten to go swimming several times at a neighbors house. Some friend's of ours were actually house sitting this house for the week and had invited the girls to go swimming. It was very convenient as the house is just up the street.

For Father's Day, we were going to attempt, yet again, to go climbing at Tahquitz. Unfortunately, Christian got sick and was not quite up to going. To make matters worse, he was called earlier in the week to give a talk during sacrament meeting on Sunday. He had not quite finished it come Saturday so he had to put some time aside to finish it up. He did take a break to get relief from the unbearable heat by jumping in the pool with the girls for a while. So once again, we did not make it to our climb in Tahquitz. I think we have tried at least three times now since Mother's Day and have not made it thus far.

On Sunday, after Christian gave his talk, we left church early to go visit with my mom. Although it is Father's Day, we didn't exactly visit with my father (although, we did see him). His dementia has progressed so far that we cannot be sure that he knows who we even are any more. He seems to respond well to us but we will tell him who we are and my mom will ask him if he knows who we are and he will say "no." He hardly knows who my mom is sometimes now...which although disturbing and disheartening, has made him somewhat more polite.

Anyway, we visited with my mom as she needs the company and we made zongzi (粽子) as it was that time of year. A lot of my mom's grandchildren don't really care for it that much but our kids love it and look forward to having some every year, so my mom will make it just for us. It is very time consuming and labor intensive. We are slowly learning to do it on our own. This year, Christian worked on getting down the method for making the salted eggs. We tried two different methods and have decided that the brining method worlds the best. We brought our samples to put in the zong. We have also been working on learning how to wrap the bamboo leaves so that it isn't too tight (otherwise the rice will not have room to expand as it cooks) and making sure that the zong is wrapped completely so that food does not fall out of it and make a mess or get wasted. It is a rather fine line.

We were getting ready for our big summer Yosemite trip after that. The girls were once again, working on our apple supply to make dried apples for our trip when Emily sliced open the top of her thumb. It was a pretty bad cut. We were not sure if we should take her in to get stitches or not. In the end, we decided to just keep it clean and strapped so we can see if it will just stitch itself together. We had to weigh the possibility of canceling our trip altogether as now she will not be able to climb. After a couple of days, we decided that it was stitching itself up pretty good on it's own and there were no signs of any infections or anything. We went back and forth about our plans (many times). It was pretty frustrating. Meanwhile, Emily could not do any more swimming as we had to keep her bandages and wound clean and dry so that it will heal faster.

In the end, we decided to continue with our plans to go to Yosemite, although we would have to change around our itinerary a bit to make sure Emily had more time to heal and that we did not do anything to challenging. But we also found out that the family the girls had been swimming with was also heading out on vacation the same day we were. In fact, they were going to be camping in Mammoth near where we were going to spend our first night. We decided to meet them up there and spend a day or two with them before heading into Yosemite.

San Diego

The day after school let out, we headed down to San Diego to visit with Christian's family. Our nephew, Mason just graduated from high school this week and will be heading out to the MTC in Argentina for training for his Mission in Uruguay. We all went with him to the San Diego Temple for his Endowment. Christian's mom watched all the younger kids. Unfortunately, I forgot my camera. We got a couple of him and his parents with their phone in front of the Temple, that's about it.

It was nice to finally make it into the Temple. We have not had very good luck getting in these past years. Luckily, they took extra care of our reservations because we were all tagging along with our nephew who is taking out his own Endowments. He leaves for his Mission on Wednesday. He had no time to mess around.

We got back pretty late. Christian's mom left dinner for us and the kids got to sleep over with their cousins.

In the morning, we had breakfast and went for a short hike in the Santa Ysabel Preserve. It was pretty nice out there but we could not stay too long. We had to return home and Christian's sister had to go home to take a nap as she needed some more rest before she went to work.

Mason had taken off to the beach to hang out with his friends as much as possible before having to leave. His schedule is pretty crazy.

Caitlyn

Another school year has come to a close and none too soon. I usually do not look forward for a school year to end, to have the kids home 24/7, bickering one minute and conspiring with each other the next. But this year, for once, I am glad that the year is over. A lot of it probably has to do with the constant frustrations over Emily's laziness and irresponsible behavior over her homework. We have yet to find out what her grades are at the close of the year.

Meanwhile, Caitlyn had her last Girl Scout meeting. She earned a patch and was supposed to bridge over to the next level but they have put that off until September. They had a little ceremony for the girls and had a celebration.

I think that she enjoyed her time in her Girl Scout troupe for the most part but I think that we will most likely not be continuing on. They really misled us about the money we needed to join the Girl Scouts. They still wanted us to pay monthly dues in order for the troupe to have money for activities since we formed after the cookie sales. They did not tell us this until after we paid our annual dues to join in the first place (half of the year already having pretty much passed). They had also vehemenently claimed that we did not even have to participate in the cookie sales, but after talking to another mom already in the Girl Scouts, and after them pressuring us to pay more dues, I know now that this is also untrue.

Plus, in the end, the leaders of the troupe are parents of Daisies and Brownies and are much more concerned about what the very little kids needed and the needs of the older Juniors was only a second thought even though they were the reasons the troupe was formed in the first place.

In the end, I just don't think that it was a very good fit for us. They are still quite disorganized. I like the ideas behind the Girl Scouts but I don't think that the leaders take it very seriously. Plus they like to do a lot of singing and Caitlyn really doesn't like it very much and refuses to participate. 

Caitlyn also had her year end party at the park...of course it was pretty miserable as it was one of the hottest days of the year so far.

She also had her award ceremony for the third trimester. She got the Principal's Honor roll again and perfect attendance, of course.

Great job Caitlyn!