Cheri's Birthday

On the last Saturday of the month, we headed down to San Diego to celebrate Christian's mom's birthday. Her birthday is on the 29th, so she only "officially" has a birthday every leap year. Which makes this year her official 16th birthday! The next time Cheri has a birthday, Emily will be actually the same age as her grandmother!

The girls got to help with some decorations. Mike did most of the cooking. I brought down a cake that I made while Erin helped get everything else ready.

We had lunch and opened presents. Christian's mom shared some stories of her childhood.

Erin's kids played some musical pieces for her and then we had cake.

The girls had lots of fun playing with their cousins and visiting with their Grandma Cheri.

Red Rock, NV

For President's Day weekend, we decided to go on a trip. It had been over a month since we have done any climbing due to my accident. We decided on some easier routes in Red Rock in order to ease back into it and see how my back is feeling.

Unfortunately, since it is a major holiday weekend, the place was pretty packed. To make matters worse, the park service also did not charge entrance fees in celebration of the holiday. So, it was definitely more crowded than we would like but if we got out early and went up to climb, we were able to get some relative peace. But when we returned to the car is when it seemed like we were walking through Disneyland.

We went a couple of years ago for Spring Break with my brother and his kids and because Red Rock is not a National Park but a National Conservation Area in the BLM land, they did not have Junior Ranger programs but something called a Junior Explorer. They did the workbook for the program the last time we came, but because we left early (and unexpectedly), they did not get to turn in their workbooks to earn the reward. Consequently, the kids wanted to make sure that we got a chance to get their Junior Ranger badges this time so that was the first thing we got done when we arrived.

We did a couple of super easy climbs on the Scrambler's Wall off of the first pullout. We all practiced lead climbing again.. The first route was called Green Eggs and Ham (5.2).

I guess we are all improving in our gear placements. Christian still goes through to check to see how well we placed our protection pieces. The whole process takes quite a while. Caitlyn is super slow but her placements were almost all bomber.

Afterwards, we had our lunch and tried to decide what route we wanted to do next. The girls decided on Scrambled Salami (5.3).

Caitlyn also wanted to practice belaying. Christian belayed Emily but after Emily pulled through the crux, he handed over the duty for Caitlyn to do while he went up after Emily to check on her placements. When Christian was at the top, he tested Caitlyn by yanking on Emily's rope to see if she would keep hold of the rope or let go and she had no problems. 

Next was Caitlyn's turn to climb. Caitlyn had a little bit of hesitation still on the crux as it was a bit scary for her but she did it in the end.

We did not quite have enough time to do another route so instead, we did a bit of exploring on our way back to find the route we had picked out for the next day. We wanted a bit of daylight still to look for our campsite. 

We camped at the same place we did the last time we were here. Luckily, there was a lot less wind (although we were prepared for it this time). We turned in relatively early as we expected to get an early start the next morning.

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We got up a little bit later than we had intended but we still got a relatively early start, and it is a good thing too because there were lots of people that wanted to do our route.

The route was called Chips and Salsa (5.4). It is a three pitch climb up 250 feet. It's a pretty fun climb.

Emily sport led the entire route on Christian's gear placements and Caitlyn and I followed while cleaning the gear.

The first two pitches are rated at 5.4 but the last pitch is more of a 5.2 scramble. We felt a bit rushed as the next party was climbing directly below us at some point. It took all four of us about 2 hours to get up the 250'. We are definitely improving our time but we are still working on our systems.

When we got back down, we had a late lunch of beef jerky and of course, chips and salsa.

It was a zoo back at the parking area so we had to decide whether we would throw ourselves back into the fray or try to find a new, less crowded area. We decided on the latter. We drove out to the Willow Springs area. We could not quite find the approach to our climb and ended up doing a lot of sketchy bushwhacking through thorny cat claws and poison oak. It was not too fun and we were pretty tired by the time we found our climb.

The climb we wanted to do was called Little Black Book (5.4). Unfortunately, there is this super hard roof problem at the very beginning of the route. It is totally ridiculous. Nobody that can pull that roof wants to bother climbing a measly 5.4. I hate routes like this. The other people that manage to do it do it by cheating and climbing a small tree/bush to get over the roof. The rest of the climb looked dirty and mungy and not at all appealing. We were kind of ticked off.

In the end, we opted to do a route on the left of it called Senior Moment (5.5). It is a long 160' one pitch climb. By this time, the sun was getting pretty low and there was a strong breeze so it was a little chilly. Emily was complaining of being cold and tired so both girls opted to sit this one out. It was a bit harder than we anticipated because there was a big bush growing out of the crack system that we were supposed to go up which was not there  (or was much smaller ) before. The alternate route we chose was a bit sketchier. I think I would have rated it a 5.6. We had a lot of problems with rope drag. It was pretty bad. But overall, the climb was pretty fun.

It took us a little while to find the rappel anchors which all the climbs in this area is supposed to share. Then I had some problems rappelling down because of the weight of the rope. I had to feed the rope through my device during the first half of the way down in order to move. While I worked my way down, Christian had the kids pack up and start heading down as we were losing light quickly. At least we found an easier way back to the car.

On our way back, we heard some punk teenager yelling to his younger sibling to call 911. Apparently, he found his way up to the top of the rock formation that we were on but could not find his way back down and was stuck up there. The sun was down and it was almost completely dark by this time. His mother went to try to get help. She tried to get us to help her son but we do not know the area, we did not know how on earth he got himself up that high (our route did not even take us to the very top of the rock formation), there was no light left and we were exhausted. We recommended that she go get help from the search and rescue team as that is what they are there for. It won't hurt her son to sit up there and stew on the consequences of his actions for a few hours while they got help. 

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The next morning was Sunday so we took it easy. We had the kids sleep in. Christian got up to take pictures of the sunrise though.

We made biscuits in our new camping oven for breakfast while we read our scriptures. The biscuits got a little burnt on the bottom but they were pretty good! We made some plans of how to make improvements next time.

Emily was still pretty exhausted and there were a lot of people driving into the area. We were originally going to go find some place to take a nice walk but opted to just stick around as we did not want to lose our campsite for our last night in the area.

Christian went up to check out the climbs in the area. It was a long and hard hike so we opted to just hang out at the campsite. Some time in the late afternoon, a big group of rowdy young people came in carrying lots of junk food and beer and settled themselves under a nearby tree. We did not want to camp next to them. It was not going to go well. We had to decide whether to tough it out with a sleepless night so that we could climb one more day or cut our losses and go home and get a good night's sleep at home. We ultimately decided to just go home.

The girls slept most of the way back. They took a shower and got a late dinner and went right back to sleep. Emily slept in the next day. We discovered that she actually had a fever and did not tell us so it is a good thing we opted to return home. She rested on and off all day and ended up staying home from school for the next two days as well!

Chinese New Year and Other Matters

On February 6th, we got together with my family for our annual reunion dinner to celebrate the end of the lunar year. We went over early to help my mom with the preparations. My mom put Christian to work chopping things up and then she wanted to run out to get some Chinese roasted pork so I went to help her with that. Emily wanted to tag along as well.

The place is a zoo this time of year so, my mom jumps out to wait in line while I attempt to find a parking space. It probably takes me about 15-20 minutes to find an open spot after circling the parking lot for the nth time. We find out that my mom hasn't moved much in line and decide to go into the grocery store next door to look around. The line inside the grocery store is not much better so we only look around. Emily and I check on my mom's progress a couple of times before just sitting outside the place waiting for her. An hour after my mom got in line, she finally gets up to the front of the line to find out that the lady in front of her just bought up the rest of what was left of the roasted pork. They are all out, they don't know when they will get more and no, you can't prepay for the next batch and come back later for it. What a colossal waste of time. She buys a chicken and we leave.

My mom is so disappointed and since we were out, we run over to the next available place that has roasted pork (someone else mentioned that there is still pork there). We circle another crowded parking lot and find a spot relatively quickly. We get inside and take a number. It doesn't appear that we should have to wait too long but it ends up taking us nearly another hour before walking out with our goal in hand.

We get back home to help Christian finish lunch which consisted of our traditional winter solstice soup.

We also had the chicken that we ended up getting at the first place, the roasted pork that we went out of our minds trying to obtain, along with some bbq pork my sister made.

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After lunch, we celebrated my mom's birthday (which was actually at the end of last month), with a Japanese Cheesecake that I made her.

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Chinese New Year was actually on February 8th, but we did not get together to celebrate until the 20th since my sister was out of town the weekend before. This year is the year of the monkey.

We got together to make dumplings. My mom made the filling the night before and we got together to work on the actual dumplings together.

In addition to our traditional dumplings, we made, shu mai, daikon cake, taro cake (none of which are actual cakes, but more dim sum fare), and fa gao (a steamed cupcake). My mom planned to make another deep fried dumpling but she was exhausted so we told her not to worry about it. She was up late working on the stuffing for all the dumplings and then as she was finishing up, my father gets up and starts moving about. My father has been legally blind for the last 40 plus years and has been diagnosed with dementia for several years now and possibly alzheimer's to boot. He used to get more exercise and walk around more but in the last several years, he has gotten tired easily and hasn't moved around as he should. His leg muscles are not what they used to be and he seems to get episodes where he gets dizzy and loses his balance. I would not say that he simply loses his strength and falls because he always falls backwards. He has hit his head a lot. This night, he put a hole in the wall. 

My mom manages to get him up and he seems okay for the most part so she puts him to bed and tells him to stay there. She gets ready and gets in bed. A few minutes later, she hears a big bang. Apparently, he got back up and walked back out into the living room, lost his balance, fell again...hitting his head yet again, and put another hole in another wall. My mom was beside herself. She only ended up with a couple of hours of sleep because she was afraid that he would get up again and hurt himself again.

While we were there, he actually fell again. Christian and I watched in what seemed like slow motion from across the room as he teetered and we ran to try to help him. We did not make it in time but he hit is lower back on a soft chair and not his head at least. The grandkids kind of watched the whole thing in horror. He was okay though, Christian took him around for a walk so that he wouldn't try to do it again on his own. My sister took a turn taking him around a bit later so I don't think he got himself in any more trouble that day. I don't know how my mom manages him. I don't know how long she will be able to continue taking care of him at this rate.

School Update

The girls are doing good in school. It was a little sketchy for Emily at first and we were a bit concerned. She had skipped several assignments in a few of her classes that she did not like but as they were special projects and were graded and weighed heavily, it had the potential to really pull down her grade (which would be a real shame as she was doing really well in the classes otherwise).

We had to force her to crack down and get the assignments done before the end of the semester. She was able to finish most of the missing assignments and make up for some of the lost points enough to pull off all A's except for one B that she got for English. There was no way for her to make up those points.

We went to her honor roll assembly on February 5th towards the end of the school day.

They calculated her GPA wrong on her certificate. And then that evening, I get an automated call from her school saying that she was truant during 6th period that day. Can you believe it? The awards ceremony was held during 6th period. The principal was there, as were the school counselors and 300 plus other students from 7th and 8th grade and they mark them all as being truant! Apparently, someone went through to correct them all afterwards but not before making themselves look ridiculous and having 300 plus parents notified that their kids were ditching 6th period. How these school continue to run is beyond me with how inept the staff appears to be. It makes me really worry about what kind of education my kids are managing to get out of attending.
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Caitlyn went to the district science fair the next week. Since she is now in 6th grade, she had to have oral interviews as a part of the judging process. She had to spend an entire day at UCR (where RUSD science fair is held). They couldn't bother with assigning time slots to different grades or schools so they all had to just sit there twiddling there thumbs all day until it was their turn for their interview.

None of the other kids from her school bothered to go but she knew several kids from other schools there. After missing a day of school to await her interview, we find out that her "interview" consisted of several useless questions.

1. What is your name? How do you spell it?

2. What was your project about?

3. How long did it take?

4. Did you have fun?

They recorded their answers via video but apparently it would be too much trouble for them to actually look at the project and judge it on it's own.

Then, that night, I get a call from her school telling me that she missed school that day. I turned in 3 separate permission slips to her school for her to be at the science fair that day. Her teacher said that it would not affect her attendance record and some district personnel checked the kids into the conference room at UCR that day. There is something seriously wrong with these people.

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We were notified that Emily was accepted into the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma program at North!

January in Review

Not too much happened in the rest of January. I spent half the month sitting on the recliner and watching movies. There are a few things I wanted to note though.

Near the beginning of the month, Caitlyn got the results for this year's science fair. She got first prize and since they thought her project was so good, they dug out a best of show award for her as well. She will be moving on to the district level again.

I did not make it to this year's Science Fair. Although I was able to get around now, I did not want to get jostled by the crowd or run into by some kid running through the narrow isles.

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Christian and I got new callings. We will be teaching in Primary again but we will be able to team teach together this time. We have some mixed feelings about the change.

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We attended a parent information meeting on the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma program at North High School since Emily will be moving on to high school next year. We were fairly impressed and decided that Emily should apply.

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Towards the end of the month, Christian got a really good sale on a new haul bag and could not resist it. It is huge! Since we have not been able to do any climbing this past month, he decided to try out his new bag by lugging it to the anchors that we had been working on last year in the local Box Springs Mtns. 

After school on Friday, we had dinner as usual and then Emily and Christian packed up to spend the night on the portaledge. They hiked out in the middle of the night from our house. We were able to keep in communication with them using our walkie talkies with no problem.

They had a great time and came back down in the morning in time for breakfast.

Pendulum

After we returned early from Yosemite and got some sleep, we decided to head out to the Quarry to slip in a bit of climbing since we cut our trip short. The place was pretty crowded. We headed to the back and found the route "Fear the Smear" (5.8), a 45' sport route. Christian lead the route and the rest of us top roped it. It was a pretty difficult route and I wasn't quite feeling it that day. I ended up going up a couple of times because I refused to let the route beat me. I did better but I still didn't do it as well as I would have liked. Emily did a couple of laps on it as well.

We still had a little daylight left and Christian has been wanting to try a route called Fun Factory (5.7). Christian thought the route was pretty fun but it seemed a little scary to us as some of the loose blocks were bolted so that it would not fall. When Christian got near the top, there was a crack with bats squeaking inside. I think that they were readying to go out and Christian was blocking their way. We were afraid that he would get bit. In the end, he decided to just put the ropes through the rappel rings and come back down since it probably wasn't a good idea for any of us to go through tonight.

Unfortunately, as Christian was coming down and cleaning the pieces of protection that he placed, we had a bit of an accident. I was belaying Christian from a spot that was some 20' left of the line that lead up to the anchor. The ground was rocky and uneven. As Christian cleaned his last piece, and I was going to finish lowering him back to the bottom of the route when the rope pulled me off my perch and I went swinging. I tried to stay on my feet but I hit my shin on some rock and my elbow too and went spinning, stopping only after slamming my back into another boulder and landing on my side. Christian was helplessly dangling from the other end of the rope. He swung out in a pendulum too and hurt his leg a bit but he couldn't get to me until I finished lowering him. Emily was hysterical. I was in a great deal of pain. Luckily, I missed my spine and had hit on the right side of my lower back. I was finally able to let Christian down and he gave me a blessing and helped me up. Everything seemed to be working. It was just very painful.

After the initial shock, Caitlyn got to work, clearing a path for me so that I would not have to stumble over loose rock to get back down. Christian put Emily to work putting away our gear to give her something to distract her. It was slow going but we were able to walk back to the truck.

The kids made dinner while Christian tried to make me comfortable and distract me. I pretty much lived on the recliner for the next 5 days or so. Christian had to take the kids to school and pick them up while going to work in between. On the 5th day, I was finally able to drag myself into the car to pick up the kids so Christian could get more work in. It was all pretty traumatic but nothing was broken and I seemed to be getting better everyday...slowly but surely.

Ringing in the New Year in Yosemite

The day after we returned from San Diego was spent shopping, preparing and packing for our trip to back to Yosemite. We've never gone to Yosemite in December but since we survived the cold and snow back in November, we thought that we knew what we were getting into.

As usual, we slept a couple of hours and then drove through the night. I took a turn driving so that Christian could get in a power nap and we arrived in Yosemite with the sun. We stopped to take some pictures at the overlook after tunnel view. It was icy and cold out!

Most of the waterfalls were even frozen. Yosemite Falls was still flowing but the water was supercooled as it fell and turned into a pile of ice/snow at the bottom.

It was pretty neat to see. When we were here last month, we were taking pictures at the base of the upper falls. It would have been interesting to see the difference now.

We arrived at Camp 4 to pick out and register for our campsite. The whole campsite was covered in snow. I forgot to take a picture of it. We were dismayed to find out that the rangers closed off the main restrooms and left only two stalls in the back for the 40 or so some odd groups of campers to all share. It was kind of ridiculous. Although, it was no where near to being filled to capacity, there were still plenty of people in the campground.

We knew that we were in for it when we arrived into the valley. It had just snowed again a couple of days before we arrived and so there was snow everywhere. Unfortunately, we had decided, for some inexplicable reason, not to bring our snow boots! We even brought them in November, although we didn't really need them, but we definitely would need them on this trip! We had to pack down a patch of snow just to set up our tent. We paid for two night and left the third up in the air.

Originally, we were going to do some climbs either on Swan Slab or on Glacier Point Apron. We found both walls to be wet and icy so that wasn't going to happen. We decided to go grab some hot cocoa and consider our options.

We went out to the El Cap Meadow to check out who might be climbing and to warm up in the sun.

Of course we took a lot of pictures and the girls got to play in the snow a bit. We could not let them go too crazy though since we did not have our snow boots and only Caitlyn brought her snow gloves (although she didn't wear them most of the time).

Unfortunately, there was not much sun to be had as it was already disappearing from our end of the meadow. We then opted to find a climb that we could do. We decided on some practice aid climbing routes on the famous LeConte Boulder.

The first route was called The Hooker; a short 40' A1 route. Christian had no problem going up. I attempted it but only got about halfway or so. It is a slightly overhanging route and I had trouble reaching the next bolts while trying to hold myself up using a fifi hook. In the end, I got too tired and frustrated to continue. Emily went up next and she managed to make it to the top using an adjustable daisy to keep her up. It worked a lot better than the fifi. Caitlyn decided to stay in the comparatively warm safety of the car. Emily spent most of her time in there with her except when she ran over to do the climb.

Next Christian worked on the famous Kor Practice Aid Ladder. No one else made the attempt as it is much more overhanging than The Hooker.

At least the snow kept the crowds at bay. A bunch of cars did stop by to do some sledding next to where we were so that was a bit annoying. I couldn't feel my fingers or toes so we got back into the car to warm up and went to the grand Ahwahnee Hotel. From there, we found the approach for the Royal Arches.

Unfortunately, the start of that route was also totally wet and iced up. The sun was starting to go down by this time and we decide to go back to camp for dinner. We attempted to go to the Lodge for our usual Ranger Evening Program but they were doing some lame promotion for Skiing at Badger Pass with a movie of a bunch of delinquent adrenaline junkies. We left after only a few minutes. We took advantage of the facilities at the Lodge before turning in for the night. We had our heater and our winter sleeping bags so we were pretty comfortable.

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We were not in too much of a hurry to get going the next morning as we were not terribly sure what we were going to be able to do. Most of the climbs were wet and icy and most of the hikes were too snowy for us. The thermometer in our car read 13℉...and the sun was already up. We had breakfast and drove out to Knob Hill in the Lower Merced River Canyon to do some investigating there. It turned out to be just what we were looking for. We found a bit of sun and the climbs were clear and dry. We hiked around to see if we could find some of the climbs that we were looking for. Caitlyn came up a little with us but stopped and played at some point while we did our scouting. She made a mini snowman.

We had our lunch and headed back down to the Valley for a Ranger Walk. The walk with Ranger Brandon Adams was a about trees in Yosemite. It was pretty interesting.

Christian went into the gift shop at the Ahwahnee to buy some cards. Then we went back to the Ranger Station. Christian had some additional things he wanted to discuss with Ranger Adams as he was also a climber. We walked back to camp as the sun was starting to set. We had dinner and headed over to the Lodge to see what they were doing. Apparently, they were still doing the promotion for Badger Pass so we did not bother going in. It was New Year's Eve, so there were lots of parties and things springing up. We decided to retreat to the relative safety of our camp and turn in somewhat early. The campers were pretty loud and stayed up quite late. Of course, we were unfortunate to be next to the loudest group in the campground, as per usual. Most of the campground settled down by 11:pm (except for our neighbors). They all yelled Happy New Year and most of them turned in at midnight (except for our neighbors). But eventually, they turned in (or passed out). 

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The next morning was New Year's Day and we decided to pack up our stuff. Honestly, we did not want to camp next to those morons another night. They came in in the middle of the night on our first night waking everyone up as it was. Also, it was supposed to be a bit breezy today and it was going to get a bit windy the next day. It is cold enough without the wind blowing at you in those temperatures. We never really found out how cold it was. I got Christian an anemometer for Christmas but it was a piece of junk and did not work at all. I planned to return it once we got home.

After we packed up, we headed back to Knob Hill to do some climbing. We climbed Anti-Ego Crack (5.6).

Everyone did the climb. It was pretty fun. Christian headed up from the climb for a bit to investigate but I guess it wasn't that great so he came back down and we had to traverse over to a rappel station from a tree across the way. That was a little scary but we didn't have too much trouble with it.

It still takes us quite a while for all four of us to climb. The chilly breeze made it a little uncomfortable at times. I think we definitely made the right choice to leave tonight rather than stay for the windy day tomorrow. 

We still had a little daylight left and Christian wanted to do one more climb. It was called Pot Belly (5.7). It was a shortish climb and only Christian was going to do it, so we figured we had enough daylight left but it proved to be a lot harder than they claimed the climb to be. The start of the climb was the problem. A lot of people do not take into consideration the first 15' when rating a climb but if you can't get up the first 15' feet, you can't climb the route! There was no where to protect it either so that made it even more dangerous and difficult. All there was was a thin crack up a slick steep slab. There was an alternate start but it wasn't any easier and had other complications to it. In the end, we ran out of time and gave up. Christian wasn't too happy about it.

Then, as we were driving back down to the 41 to leave, we almost got into a head on collision with some tourists who were driving on the wrong side of the road. We were driving down hill on ice and when we tried to brake, we started sliding down towards them. It is only by divine providence that we did not hit them. Apparently, there was an accident on their side of the road and although they got past that, some of the cars were either going too slow still or decided to stop in the middle of the lane because they didn't know if they wanted to keep driving on the icy road or the moron just wanted to take a picture or text a friend and the car behind him decided to pass them on our side of the narrow icy mountain road.

We got control of our vehicle and continued to head out of the park. The line behind the accident went as far as our eyes could see. We were a little conflicted as to whether we should continue driving with these crazy reckless people on the icy roads or head back in to stay another day. In the end, we just opted to continue on. We were very tense and stressed out the entire way but we did not have too much more trouble and returned home without further incident. There were a few speeding, impatient drivers but we let them all pass and stayed away from them as much as we could.

We did stop in Fresno for some dinner. Christian's sister gave us gift cards for In-N-Out for Christmas so dinner was on them.