Joshua Tree

We headed back to Joshua Tree to continue our training this past weekend. It was a bit colder than we had anticipated. And it was a lot more windy than they said it was going to be. The two combined made it pretty miserable in the beginning as we tried to huddle out of the wind and hopefully catch some sun to warm us.

We arrived early to try to beat the crowds as our route is near the Hidden Valley Campground. Anytime the climbs are near the campgrounds, it is usually a zoo. Our first climb was on Intersection Rock, called Upper Right Ski Track (5.3). The pitch is 100 feet long and involved just some 4th class scrambling until it traverses up a ramp and then follows an obvious crack to the top. We roped up before the crack.

Christian went up first to set up the anchor. I followed and stayed up on top to take pictures of the girls. Emily went first but was having trouble because she was cold or something. So Christian got her off and had Caitlyn go up instead. Meanwhile, I sat up on the top waiting for someone to come up while being blown about in the cold wind. It was pretty miserable.

She took a while but she is always very meticulous about all her gear placements which is really great. Christian lowered her off but she pretty much had to down climb most of it.

Emily finally came up next. Apparently she took a nap in a sunny bowl and felt all the better for it.

Christian came back up after and checked Emily's pieces. They were all really good so she is getting really good and placing protection and leading without panicking. We rappelled down some nearby anchors above all our stuff to join Caitlyn. 

We found a sunny spot to have some lunch and we saw a guy free soloing the Lower Right Ski Track which was pretty incredible. When he got back down, Christian thinks that he recognized him as the author of one of our guide books!

After lunch, we headed to the other side of Intersection Rock to work on a climb called "Beginner's Three." It is another 5.3 climb up a 50' crack. Unfortunately, the start of the climb was not so easy and definitely not 5.3. Christian went up and I was going to follow as before but couldn't quite get up the start of the climb. I took a break and Caitlyn went up instead. She was originally supposed to lead it as she did the previous climb but opted to just follow and clean because of the difficult start.

The rest of the climb is straight forward and fun but it is definitely a challenge to get off the ground.

Emily went next and opted to lead the climb still. Christian came back down to spot and help her up.

She did really great. I got back on to follow on her gear and finally managed to get up off the ground. The rest of the climb was really good though.

When we were done, we headed over to The Blob. Christian had a climb picked out called Bussionier (5.7+). The climb was awkward, strenuous and most agree that the rating is a bit sandbagged. Christian almost wanted to quit part way up but powered up anyway. He was pretty worked by the time he got up the hardest parts. Neither Caitlyn nor I wanted to try the route so Christian had Emily clean and follow. 

Luckily, Emily is pretty thin and was able to balance and walk up most of the crack traverse and only lie back the very last part that went up to the chimney. With all Christian's gear and being much bigger than Emily, he had to lie-back a good part of the climb and since the rest of it is super slick and had nothing for your feet, it was beyond strenuous.

Unfortunately, Emily was not able to clean one of the nuts that Christian had slotted into the crack so we ended up having to leave that piece behind.

Afterwards, we went into town to do a bit of shopping and splurged for dinner at Carl's Jr. on our way out.

Spring Break - Red Rock Part 2

We were able to sleep in a little on day 3 of our trip. We were to meet up with Christian's dad at the visitor center at 8:am. We broke down camp and had our breakfast at the visitor center. Terry pulled up to the parking lot shortly after we arrived. Everyone had breakfast and used the facilities before we headed out to start our day.

We tried to do a bit of hiking in the Calico Hills but we did not get very far as the terrain was a bit rocky and required scrambling over boulders to get around.

We only went a little way before deciding that it was going to be too much for Terry and turned around. We spent most of our time chatting and visiting with each other. The girls played with rocks and things when we dawdled too much. 

It was pretty warm out. We found some shade to have some lunch and headed back out to see if we could find a tamer trail for Terry.

We ended up on the Lost Creek -Children's Discovery Trail. It was a relatively short hike with a little waterfall at the end. It is a bit late in the year, but there was still a trickle of water coming down off of it.

It was a pretty slow day for us, but Terry was pretty tired by the end of the day. He had a lot of trouble finding a place to stay so we called it a day early so that he could find another place to stay away from the Vegas strip. However, we probably spent another couple of hours talking in the parking lot before we finally parted ways!

We were feeling a bit sluggish after sitting and standing around most of the day, so after we set up camp and got dinner started, we went for a walk while Emily watched the stove. Looking back, she wasn't being that vigilant, so we decided to just go back and check on dinner ourselves!

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We met up again with Terry the next morning and went back to the First Pull-Out to do some climbing. Terry wanted to watch the kids climb.

We picked out a relatively easy climb on the Scrambler's Wall for the kids to do their lead practices. It was an 80' climb following a prominent crack called Dinosaur Omelet (5.3).

Christian went first to check out the route and set the anchor as usual. Then Emily and Caitlyn each took their turn while Grandpa watched. I went last then Christian came back up to clean my route and the anchor and we were able to walk off the climb.

When we were done, we headed over to The Slab to do a 5.8 sport lead that Christian wanted to try called Smear Campaign.

Christian sport led the route and then Emily and I top roped the route. The crux is just about 10 or 12 feet up the start of the climb and it took a little while for me to figure it out since I could not reach the slightly more obvious holds (all of which are pretty small and thin). 

It was still pretty early and there were lots of easier sport climbs on this wall, so we had lunch and proceeded to see how much we could get done. Apparently, we got quite a bit done as we were able to go up another 5 routes before calling it quits for the day. 

Slab and Tickle (5.5)

Slabotomy (5.5)

Slab-A-Dab-A-Do (5.6)

Slabulous (5.7)

Slab Stick (5.7)

It was a pretty productive day, to say the least. The kids were totally in the zone! Those were Caitlyn's first 5.6 and 5.7 sport leads and she didn't even hesitate. She did great. Terry took off after about 3 of these routes to use the facilities and had not come back so we thought that we had better send a search party out to find him. By the time we had finished the 5th route, I had to go use the facilities myself. If it was not for nature calling and our need to find Grandpa Caldwell, we probably would have stayed to do another route or two. 

Apparently, he drove down two parking lots over to find a restroom because there was no parking at the Second Pull-Out and since the road through the park is one way, there is no way for him to make his way back to us. We packed up and met up with him at the Sandstone Quarry. Since we had never stopped there before, we took a quick look around.

Since we basically achieved most of our goals on our trip, and a new weather system was moving in, we decided to cut our trip short again. Terry was planning to leave the next morning anyway, but we were originally going to stay another day or so depending on the weather. It was supposed to rain the next morning and we would not be able to do anymore climbing on this trip, so we decided to go home as well to work on all the pictures and videos that we took.

On our way out of town, Terry took us out to eat at McDonald's. It was a nice treat after eating canned soup and meals from pouches and stuff for the past four days! Terry stopped near the border of Nevada for the night but we continued on the rest of the way home. 

Spring Break - Red Rock Part 1

For Spring Break this year, we headed back to Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area.

We arrived in the early afternoon and headed over to the First Pull-out. Our destination was in the Oasis area. We climbed the route "Approaching the Oasis" (5.3). 

The beginning of which, was an easy chimney that we all just free soloed up with our packs. For some reason, Emily had a bit of trouble with it and Christian had to go down a bit to help her. She hates to climb with her pack on so that might be part of it. We roped up for the next part. While we worked on getting all our gear on, Emily went back to work the chimney several times. She was fine after that and was able to lead the rest of the route up.

At the top of this route was our next climb. It is called Diamond Dance (5.7). It is supposed to be a short (25') finger crack and then, it traverses up and over to the right to the anchor. The climb was not too bad, but the crack was not very useable being too small, flaring and shallow. Caitlyn opted to not climb this route. When I was lowering off of the route, there was a small white tricam, placed as a directional, that got pulled. Apparently, the rock broke and I dropped over a little. Luckily, there was one other directional piece put in, so I did not swing out too far but it was a bit startling.

We cleaned up to head out to find our camping spot after that. Luckily, our usual camping spot was available so Christian set up our tents while I heat up our dinner for the evening. We never spend too much time or energy on our food. It is usually just something that we heat up like soup or other MRE type foods that we just need to warm and eat. Almost no dishes to even clean up after.

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We woke up early for day 2 of climbing. We planned to get up a 5 pitch route (540') up the Solar Slab Gully (5.3). We got up pretty early, but then we went to the visitor center to sort our gear, use the facilities and have breakfast, so that took a while. From the parking lot of our climb, it took us over an hour to hike to the base of our climb so it was well after 9:am by the time we actually got our gear on and started climbing.

We ran into some difficulty at the very start. The rock is unlike anything we have climbed so far and Christian found that it was really difficult to protect. 

In addition, we found that the first pitch was significantly harder than the claimed 5.3. There were overhanging bulges that we had to muscle over. Christian lead as usual. Emily went next, sport leading on a second rope while Caitlyn belayed her. We ended up making an anchor only part way up the pitch to reduce rope drag. After belaying Christian, I cleaned the gear as I moved up. My gear kept getting caught on the rocks. I was not having a very good time of it to say the least. At the bulge,  a cam that was hanging off my harness got caught on the lip of the bulge below just as I was trying to hang on for dear life while pulling myself up over the hump. I tried to free myself to continue up but it was very difficult. By the time I got the gear loose, I could not hang on anymore and slipped and scrapped up my arm somewhat. As I proceeded up, more gear kept getting caught and I got a bit bruised up along the way. I barely remember the rest as I was so frustrated and exhausted. It took us two hours in the end for all of us to make it up one and a half pitches.

Christian decided that we had better just stop for a breather and have some lunch in the shade and see how we felt after that. We did feel much better after our break but it didn't look too good for us as we were not even up to the top of the second pitch.

Luckily, the climbing got much easier after that and we did not have any more trouble.

We were moving much faster but it was still taking us quite a while to manage both ropes for the four of us.

Since we had fairly large ledges at our belay anchors, we should probably have just dumped the rope down instead of trying to coil them up nicely. Emily and Caitlyn needed to get ready to move once Christian was on his way so that Emily was only a little behind her dad. As it was, we would wait for him to get some distance, then Emily would get ready but Caitlyn and Emily would have some trouble untangling themselves from each other and the rope and by the time Emily would actually start, Christian was already up and making the anchor.

They got the hang of it much better near the end and Caitlyn even took a turn sport leading up on dad's pieces while Emily belayed from below. We ended up breaking the 5 pitch route into 6 pitches to cut down on rope drag. That added some time to our climb as well and by the time we got up to the top of our 5th pitch, we were running out of time. We had a long way to get back down and a long hike back out to the car. The park closes at 8:pm and the tickets are expensive if you don't follow the rules.

We had a small snack to decide what we were going to do. In the end, only Christian went up the last pitch to check it out as we planned to come back to complete it. At the top of this route is the beginning of the next climb that we eventually want to do. It is another 5 pitch route (somewhat harder) for a total of 10 pitches in all that we would want to complete. 

Once Christian got up and made it back down to us, we had to hurry up and start the long process of rappelling back down all those pitches! The first rappel was a bit scary but the rest were easier and we got into a rhythm and all made it back down. Then we threw our gear in our bags and hustled back down the trail to our car. The sun had already set but twilight and then the moon provided enough light for us to mostly make it back to our car. The girls had to use the facilities and then we made it out of the park with only 1 minute to spare!

Easter Weekend

We had a really busy Saturday. After Caitlyn and Christian returned from sleeping out on the portaledge, we had breakfast and then headed over to our friends house for their annual Easter Egg Hunt.

There were over 50 kids and over 2000 eggs. It was crazy. It seems to get bigger every year. The kids (except for Caitlyn), are pretty much too old for the egg hunts now, so they have Caitlyn grab a few egg and they split the booty between the four girls. Mostly, they went out in search of the "special" eggs which contain gift certificates to Dairy Queen. Abby found one but ended up giving it to Emily.

The girls got to play and visit with their friends for a while but then we had to drag them away around noon to get back to the house to meet up with Marian, who was coming by to do another egg hunt for them.

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Marian arrived in time for a late lunch. Christian started working on our car which needs some work before our next big outting during Spring Break. I worked on lunch while Marian worked on her Easter Egg Hunt. She put together some rather elaborate plan to make it a bit more difficult for the girls but then we found out that she included us in on part of the hunt.

Some of the eggs contained treats and some contained clues for part two of the elaborate hunt.

While we searched for our clues, she proceeded with stage two.

The whole thing took quite a while and there seemed to be endless surprises. Marian figured that it should be their last egg hunt and wanted to go out with a bang I guess. The girls are trying to convince her that they are not too old yet for egg hunts though.

While Caitlyn and Christian was out on their overnight trip on the portaledge, Emily and I put together a few things for a minor egg hunt for Marian. It was only a few treats.

We visited for a bit longer before Marian had to depart and Christian had to desperately get back to work on our vehicle. Unfortunately, we found out that it needs more work than we anticipated so there will be many more weekends of work on the vehicle in our future.

March in Review

We finally got some rain this week. Christian got a beautiful picture of a rainbow over our house when he came home from work.
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Emily got her report card for the third quarter of this school year. It was less than stellar. We are not pleased.
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We went in to meet the counselor at North to register for Emily's classes next year. We were pretty excited with the idea of the IB program but with her last grades, we are concerned that she will be doing a lot of extra work and we will all have a lot of extra stress and it will all come to nothing because she is not self motivated or responsible enough to take advantage of the opportunity before her.
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Christian took Caitlyn on Friday evening out to so some portaledge practice on our wall in the Box Springs Mtns.

They went after dinner on Friday and returned in the morning for breakfast. Everyone is having fun practicing camping on the wall. I'm the only one who hasn't gone yet. I think next time, we will have to take everyone at the same time, but that means having to set up two portalelges on the wall at the same time!

Texas Canyon

Last weekend, we drove out to Texas Canyon which is located in the high dessert northwest of Los Angeles County. It was kind of a far drive for the climbs we would encounter there but we like to try different areas and get experience on different kinds of rock.

The place was quite beautiful this time of year. I don't know what it looks like normally but because of the wet Spring, we got rolling green hills that smelled of sage. The first formation you see as you approach is the Elephant's Head and the big caves at the base of it.

Our first climb was in The Canyon on the back side of the Elephant's Head because it was nice and shady there. We warmed up by going up a route called The Spider's Line. Our book said that it was a 5.4 sport climb but the internet claims it to be a 5.5. It is really hard to tell where the route is supposed to be on these sport climbs anyway since there are so many routes all on top of each other. In the end, I think that it was supposed to be a two pitch climb but we only did the first pitch.

It was a bit steeper than we thought it would be but there were some neat little pockets here and there that you could stick your fingers in. We also did the route next to it called Acme Top Rope Wall (5.7). This one was supposed to be more difficult but we all found that it was more straight forward with better holds overall.

We wanted to do another climb left of this line but it was really crowded. There were two groups that climbed it in the time that we were there and a third arriving as we left. Since there was no more shade in the Canyon by this time, we thought we would get away from the riff raff a bit and do the climbs that we originally came to find on the Elephant Wall.

We had our lunch in one of the big caves at the base. There was a super neat natural bee hive in the side of the rock.

After lunch, we started our multi-pitch climb. The first part of the climb is a 200' 5.6 climb called Goldline. 

The crux is of the climb is only 20' from the ground. It is pretty hard, especially if you are not too tall because you have to get up over this bulge and there are not a lot of good holds on it. Caitlyn decided to forego the bulge and opted to go up the super steep 5.8 slabby part instead. I attempted to go up the way Christian and Emily went up but could not quite reach the holds too well while trying to clean the route. I had just barely reached up to unhook the quick draw from the rope to clean it before proceeding because it would be too difficult to reach down to clean it if I climbed passed it first. Unfortunately, I was not able to quite reach the next holds to get up and my fingers were getting a bit fatigued in trying to stay in my current rather precarious position so I decided to down climb back to where I was more stable and start back up closer to where Caitlyn went up now that I cleaned the quick draw. 

Unfortunately, as I was taking a step down, I lost my tenuous hold on the rock. Christian had me on a rope from up above so I was in no danger of falling. However, since we were working our way up and the anchor was to the right of my position, I swung over when I slipped and because of the bulge above me, I could not quite stabilize myself on the rock where I fell but ended up rolling over once before I came to a stop. I scratched up my arm pretty bad. It hurt quite a bit but there seemed to be more blood all over than I had expected from my scratch. I assumed that it was just at a bad spot. I could not quite see it.

After the initial pain and shock wore off, I just got back on and finished cleaning the climb as I worked up to where Christian and the kids were. I found a spot with better holds and made my way up.

The second leg of the climb was supposed to be an easy 5.2. Christian originally wanted the kids to lead it but the climb was not straight forward and not as easy as they claimed. The bolts were few and far between and he was not comfortable having the kids lead the runout 120' climb when we were already up 200'. 

There was a nice couple on the climb next to us and they took a few pictures for us. Christian took a few pictures for them and we traded pictures after we got back home.

When we all got back down, Christian took a look at my elbow and found that my injury was a lot worse than I had assumed. Apparently I split it open, which is why it was bleeding so much. He cleaned it off, which hurt as much as the initial injury and put a butterly closure on it and then covered it with an extra large bandage.

After discovering the severity of my injury, I was not quite up for any more climbing. Christian and Emily did one more climb nearby. The climb (She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy) is a 5.8 climb up 85'.

They both enjoyed this climb but as neither Caitlyn nor I wanted to climb it and the sun was starting to set, we decided to call it a day and hiked back out to our car for some dinner before getting back on the road to go home.

2nd Trimester Awards Ceremony

Yesterday, I attended Caitlyn's 2nd Trimester Awards Ceremony. She got perfect attendance and Principal's Honor Roll. She was also awarded with a medal for making it to the district science fair. She did not place in it but as we did not go to the award ceremony anyway, she did not receive her participation medal.

Caitlyn is doing great in school, as always. She and her best friend, Anevay are both always on the Principal's Honor Roll. They spend a good portion of their extra time helping out in their former 5th grade class room organizing, cleaning and sometimes helping out with the students. We are happy that she has good friends. Unfortunately, they will not be going to the same middle school next year.

Last week, most of the 6th graders went up to Big Bear for most of the week. We did not allow Caitlyn to go but all her friends got to go. Caitlyn handled it pretty well. The actual camp wouldn't do anything special...especially since we take her on plenty of real camping trips and adventures. She mostly just missed her being with her friends. But she made the best of it and was fairly excited to go to school still as they were doing a lot of fun things with the 16 or so kids that were left behind. They didn't do any actual school work since all the other kids were out having fun so her teacher did mini "science" camp activities with kids that were left. She enjoyed herself but was waiting anxiously for her friends to come back and for their schedule to go back to normal!

Of course the bus that was suppose to go and bring the kids back never showed up so they had to send for another bus and they ended up returning several hours later than they were supposed to.