July

July has been a scorching blur. It has been an incredibly hot summer. I am woefully behind on my posts.

We celebrated the Fourth of July with the usual friends.

Caitlyn and Christian were supposed to go on their daddy-daughter campout at the beginning of the month, but since there was still snow at the end of June, they delayed until the end of the month. 

Meanwhile, Christian has been working on my truck. We've been having transmission problems on and off for some time now and it seems to be getting worse. Since it has been too hot to do much of anything, we have been spending a lot of time tuning up the car and trying to diagnose the problem with the transmission. Unfortunately, because of the heat, the only time it has been cool enough to work on the car is usually in the middle of the night.

We have not gone climbing all month. The girls have been spending a lot of time swimming and playing with some of their friends in the neighborhood. They have been spending a lot of time indoors between swimming. They even finished their Summer Reading program at the library in record time. Too bad the program rewards were less than spectacular.

The girls finally finished their crochet projects that they started two summers ago! Neither of them actually finished with the original project that they started with but they finally managed to finish it!

We've been spending a lot of time tinkering around in the kitchen. Christian got some mooncake moulds for Father's Day last month.

It's been fun and we've been enjoying all Christian's new experiments and concoctions!

Marian came by one weekend to spend some time with the kids. She took them out for treats and a movie.

Emily gave her first Sacrament talk as a youth. She was really nervous about having to go up to talk in front of so many people but she did great and gave a really good talk on choice and accountability. On the same Sunday, she had to play the piano for the young women as their leader, who normally takes care of the music, was out of town. It was the first time she has done that and she did really good. She messed up a little once, but she was able to continue on without any trouble. 

By the time that the end of the month came, we were having additional problems wth the car. The radiator is now leaking. We were not having any problems with it before, but in our tune up of the car, we flushed the radiator to clean it out and now it is leaking quite badly. 

In the end, Caitlyn and Christian put off their trip once again until the beginning of August. 

Suicide Rock, Idyllwild

It has been exceptionally hot out this summer. Ever since we returned from Yosemite, we seemed to be stuck in a never-ending heat wave. It has severely damaged our apple tree. A ton of apples are rotting off of them. It is a pretty sad state. One of our roses in the front looks like it has been fried to a crisp. It has been through many summers and has never suffered like this. The rose was already established when we moved in but we don't know if it will survive this.

It was supposed to be a bit cooler this weekend, but that is all relative. We decided to take advantage of the slightly better weather conditions and go out to do some climbing. Our choices are pretty limited as it is still pretty hot out. We decided to go out to Idyllwild since it is at a higher elevation and therefore, a bit cooler.

We got up as early as we could to take advantage of the cooler mornings. Plus, if we don't get there early, we won't be able to get parking. There are not a lot of parking spots and it is a holiday weekend. We arrived in good time and got parking, but the place started to fill up pretty quickly as we  had our breakfast and applied sunscreen/bug repellent for the day.

We opted to got up to Suicide Rock instead of Tahquitz since it is usually the least crowded of the two.

On our hike up to Suicide Rock, we ran into veritable swarm of bugs. When we waved them away from our faces as we walked, it would not just disburse them temporarily, we would actually hit them with our hands because they were so thick in the air. We started to think that we should just go home!

Luckily, as we ascended higher, the bugs were a little less thick and we started feeling a breeze now and then that kept them from being so highly concentrated. We decided to continue up and hope that it would keep getting better. By the time we reached the base of the granite portion of Suicide Rock, the insect situation was much better. We headed up the rocky trail where our climb was supposed to be. There was 3rd and 4th class scrambling up a gully to our left. The trail started to get pretty steep and sketchy at some point. We tried a variety of ways up but none of them seemed good. We retreated back down a bit to see if we could find a way around, but to no avail.

We stopped for a rest break to take off our packs and get a drink. Christian would not accept defeat and took off again in search of where are trail should go, leaving his heavy pack with us. The kids played around for a bit but after a while, we settled down on a rock and we all took a nap as Christian was gone for quite a while. The girls were tired from getting up so early and I did not sleep very well the night before.

Eventually, Christian came back after successfully finding a way up. We had our lunch and had to decide what to do next since he noted that although he found the way through, it was not easy. We decided to go ahead up to the climb, since we came all this way already. Caitlyn was a little nervous free soloing a couple of the spots and Christian had to spot her. She was mostly nervous about having to come back down some of the places where we had to climb up!

Our last hurdle was having to crawl through a small tunnel between boulders in order to get to the upper portion where our climb was. It was dark and Christian had to shuttle our packs through for us. It seemed pretty crazy.

The climb looked pretty good. It was supposed to be a clean 5.3 fist crack up 90'. Emily was not so happy about leading it as the crack was not so clean. The crack was dirty and muggy and not deep enough to get your fist in a little ways up. She had to come back down after a bit and let her dad go up first.

I sport led the climb after Christian and then cleaned his gear on my way back down. I agreed that the climb started out as a dirty fist crack, but it quickly became too wide for my fist and I had to do a variety of hand and fist jams or even a double fist jam to work my way up. The top of the climb was definitely off-width as I had to even do a chicken wing in a couple of places. My biggest hurdle was getting a place for my feet as the crack was too wide for my feet but too narrow for a heel toe move. I would rate the climb closer to a 5.5 for someone my size.

Emily went up next and she attempted to lead the climb again. She got stopped at the same dirty shallow crack area a little way up. This time, she managed to get passed it, but it took a while. Unfortunately, she used up all her easy to place big cams in the beginning and ran out of gear halfway up. She was totally distraught. Christian ended up handing over her belay over to me while he free soloed a slightly "easier" crack to her right in order to bring her up some more gear.

She was then able to finish up the climb without too much more trouble. She cleaned most of her own gear on her way back down as Caitlyn was unsure of whether she wanted to climb and it was getting late.

Christian quickly jumped on the next climb to the left of this climb to a route called Major (5.7), which is a much wider crack. It seemed to alternate between being a large off-width to being a squeeze chimney. Christian was the only one to make this climb.

It was difficult and we now how to race the setting of the sun back down retreating, as Caitlyn had feared, back down the way we came.

We made it back down in good time, but my aged bug repellent was no longer effective by this time and we left our extra supplies in the car.  I started getting eaten alive by mosquitos. The kids got bitten up a bit as well. We jumped into the truck and fled the mosquito infested area.

Father's Day

We returned from our trip and had a brief day of rest. We had a small Father's Day celebration for Christian after church. Emily lent a little hand in making some chicken curry for dinner. Caitlyn made some tasty shortbread cookies for dessert.

Caitlyn started summer school this past week after we returned. It actually started a couple of days ago, but since we were on our vacation, so we skipped the first couple of days. The summer school only lasts another 3 weeks and just consists of a bunch of light elective type classes. 

Her main class is this kind of ridiculous class where they start a toy company. They make a toy and logo for the company with posters and stuff to advertise their product. Then they cycle through a few other classes. Her first class was woodworking. She got to make a birdhouse. Her next class is a class in physical fitness and then she will complete summer school with a class in nutrition.

She's not exactly learning anything of consequence but she is having fun and getting used to her new school and that's good for now.

Summer Vacation - Part 3

We broke camp the next morning and bid farewell to our extended family. Our goal for the day was to climb Gunsight. It is the gully between Middle and Lower Cathedral, across the meadow from El Capitan.

We did not know quite what to expect from the climb. It is supposed to be just a bit of 3rd and 4th class scrambling to the top. We originally had considered, packing our gear and making a bivouac somewhere at the top without our tent, but after so many cold nights inside our tent, with the extra blankets, we were not about to attempt this without a tent or extra blankets. We were sick to death of the cold nights. 

Christian didn't think we should have too much trouble doing the climb and back down in a day anyway. There is a good 1,300 feet of elevation gain up this gully, so it is fairly vertical. It starts off with easy 3rd class scrambling and getting harder as you work your way up. Near the very top, I would say that it goes beyond 4th class scrambling and introduces you to some easy 5th class climbing. The exposure is quite severe, so we were happy that there was a fixed rope on that section.

Our route is across from El Capitan, so we had some nice views from our gully as we climbed. We found lots of bear scat at the top. Apparently, a bear spends a lot of time up there, so we were a bit wary. It was a good thing that we did not plan to bivouac anywhere here. Firstly because of the bear, and also because there is no flat ground. There was a lot of brush. Apparently the top of Bridalveil Falls is just across from where we were, but you would have to do a lot of bushwhacking to get there.

We did not take our packs up the 5th class climbing area, so in order to have lunch, we had to climb back down a little ways to get to it. We were able to rappel down a couple of sections but had to down climb the rest of it. Down climbing is always a bit more tricky than climbing up.

We got back down in good time but decided to head out of Yosemite as we had nowhere to stay and we were very tired of being cold all night. Plus, Obama and his family was due to get into town the next day and we didn't want to be caught up in any of that mess!

There was a storm that hit just before our trip so some areas got pounded with rain and the higher areas actually still had snow! Which accounts for why it was so cold but does not account for why the weather reports were so off.

We considered staying above Mammoth or near Bishop but after checking some more weather reports (we went to McDonald's in Bishop for dinner), we found that it was not a whole lot warmer here than what we've been in and decided to continue to head further down south to camp in Alabama Hills.

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We woke up from the best sleep we'd had all trip. Everyone was toasty and warm. In fact, I didn't even use my extra blanket and had to unzip out of my bag by the time I got up. Christian had some fun doing a neat time-lapse of our campsite while he waited for everyone to get moving. Emily slept in quite a bit. Meanwhile we got breakfast going and Christian got our gear ready for the day.

Caitlyn picked out our climbs while we were getting ready. Most of the climbs were on a formation called The Leaning Tower of Pizza. They are all sport climbs in this area. Our first climb was supposed to be It's a Pisa Pie (5.6). Emily lead it, but it was dicey. Everyone agreed that it was not rated correctly at 5.6. Caitlyn and I top roped it. When Christian went up, he was pretty impressed that Emily was able to do it because, there were some pretty difficult parts on it. No one really liked it very much though. It was awkward, and just not very well thought out.

Our next climb was just to the right of this climb on the same formation. It's called Deep Dish (5.6). The start of the climb is a bit difficult, but overall, everyone liked it better than the first one.

These are short routes, so both Emily and Christian did a couple of laps on some of these climbs. Caitlyn and I just top roped this one once. Then we moved on to Panzarotti (5.7). We all ended up top roping this one except for Caitlyn. She decided to skip it all together. There are only 5 bolts and it's all friction climbing on slab with lots of exposure. It just didn't seem worth the risk.

The sun was getting pretty high so we were getting a little baked by this point. Plus the wind was kicking up. Since the first climb that Caitlyn picked out was kind of sand bagged, we decided to find her any easier climb to lead. The climb we found was just a little ways off in the general area. It is another short climb called Burnt Bacon and Beans (5.5). It was a pretty nice climb, but the first bolt was quite a way up. You could get seriously hurt if you fell before you reached your first bolt for protection. The rest of the climbing was pretty nice but the wind was really blowing by now and we were afraid that Caitlyn would get blown around too much since she is so little, but she did a great job.

We looked around for a little more of something to do here, but we didn't like what we saw and in the end, decided to call it a day and head home. It was a little earlier than we planned, but we were pretty much done and ready to go home.

Summer Vacation - Part 2

We all got up fairly early the next morning to prepare for the day. We had to get back into the Valley early if we wanted parking. We planned to hike up to the top of Yosemite Falls. We attempted this hike before (in November) and made it most of the way up but got side tracked by the beautiful rainbows at the bottom of the upper falls. We ran out of time and had to turn around before we finished the trail. It was so nice and we had the place to ourselves so it was hard to pass up the opportunity to just stay there in Middle Earth and enjoyed it.

This hike was going to be way too strenuous for Christian's dad, so he stayed on his own and explored a little of the valley at his own leisure.

We had no problem getting a parking spot. We first took Christian's sister's family to see the bottom of the lower falls as they had never seen it.

Then we headed out to the start of the Yosemite Falls trail. The trail is 7.2 miles (round trip) which doesn't sound too bad but it is pretty strenuous as there is a 2,700 feet elevation gain.

Everyone broke off in different clusters and hiked at their own pace for the most part but we met up at various points to get pictures. Everyone stopped the bottom of the upper falls. Christian and Emily wanted to show our nephew, Austin a closer view of the falls in Middle Earth. There is a LOT more water there than when we came here last. 

Christian's brother-in-law and I were trailing the most on the trail, so we decided not to go down into Middle Earth and continued to inch up the trail. Christian, Emily and Austin hiked all the way down to the fall and managed to get into the little cave in the back of the waterfall. The waterfall was pretty powerful so with the spray, they could not hardly see, much less take pictures but they got totally drenched and apparently, it was cold! The rest of the group just sat there waiting I think. Christian's sister had to try to motivate her youngest kids to continue up the trail.

Mike and I slowly worked our way almost to the top before we were overtaken by Christian, Emily and Austin. They went quickly to warm their bodies back up. They were still fairly wet when they found us.

As we were close and our group was still pretty fractured, we waited to have a late lunch at the top of the Yosemite Falls trail.

Everyone was pretty tuckered out. Christian, Emily and Austin had to take off their shoes to try to get them dried out. We had lunch and rested for a bit. There was some trouble with our younger nephew at some point though and they ended up all taking him back down the trail before they even got a chance to explore the top of the falls. 

After they left, I took the girls through the crowds to check out the top of the falls. When we got back, we decided to head down as well. We originally had considered continuing up to Yosemite Point to take a look, but since everyone left, we decided to head down as well. It was supposed to be another mile up a pretty steep trail to Yosemite point. I'm not sure I would have made it as I was pretty tired.

On our way down, the sun hit waterfall just right to make the classic rainbow at the bottom of the upper falls again, so we could not help but stop to take a few more pictures.

We have literally hundreds of pictures of these falls! It is so mesmerizing to just sit there and watch the falls explode over the edge and down the steep walls of the Yosemite granite. We took some videos as well.

We met back up with the rest of the family back at the campsite. They through together some tasty grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner and made a cherry cobbler in the dutch oven.

Every time the kids had some down time, they ran off to work on their fort. There were too many coals beneath the dutch oven so some of the crust got a bit burnt. We ended up eating all of what was edible without them, since they didn't come back until it was nearly too dark to see. The kids made themselves some smores instead.

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The next morning, we were up again somewhat early. But we did not get up and go, we stuck around far too long making breakfast and stuff.  We got into the valley a little later than we had hoped but we were still able to find some parking near the falls again. We took the shuttle to the hotel formerly known as the Ahwahnee Hotel to start our hike. We planned for a hike that everyone could do today. Our destination was Mirror Lake. Our family made this hike from Camp 4 some time ago. Unfortunately, it was bone dry at the time, so it was decidedly less than magnificent.

The hike was relatively easy so it was perfect for Christian's dad and since some of us were a bit stiff from yesterday's hike, it worked out for everyone. The kids hopped around on boulders or made little boats of bark to amuse themselves while they waited for everyone.

The lake itself was beautiful. While we did not run into too many people on the trail, there were hordes by the time we got there. Apparently, there is an even easier paved trail on the other side that the rest of the cattle came on.

We had lunch next to the stream and the kids sailed their boats and played a bit in the water. Austin could not resist jumping into the water at least once even though it was icy cold. He ended up jumping in one more time for posterity. The rest of the kids just waded a bit in the water.

We retuned to the hotel and went in to use the facilities and let Grandpa Caldwell get some rest. But we ended up staying longer than we planned. Uncle Mike got us soda pops and he got the kids ice cream. 

We went out to get the shuttle back to our cars, but decided not to fight the hordes of pushy tourists to get onto the shuttle and opted to walk back instead.

We had planned to take Austin climbing at Swan Slab afterwards but we just took a lot longer with everything than we originally planned. We were in charge of dinner tonight, and we did not want to have everyone wait until 9 or 10 to eat, so we opted to just return back to camp and start dinner.

On our way back, we stopped by the bridge in front of El Capitan to see if there was any big climbers there. We found Brandon Adams there. He was one of the interpretive rangers that we met over the winter. He is a climbing ranger now. He had some telescopes set up to see some of the climbers on the wall and was talking to some of the tourists. Christian went to talk to him and he seemed to remember us from last time. Christian talked to him about which climbs he would recommend to our family as our first wall. In the end, he invited Christian to come back and climb with him. Christian was pretty excited and it definitely overshadowed some of the disappointments of the day!

We got back to camp to make dinner. We made a hearty potato soup and a apple cobbler in the dutch oven afterwards. The kids played in their fort and made some weird movies of each other. We cleaned up and organized things as we were leaving for parts unknown the next morning.

There is one thing that I forgot to mention, but it has been excessively cold on our entire trip. We had been checking the weather reports all week before coming and they indicated that the lows would be in the 50's and the high's during the days would be in the 70's. We packed light and brought our lightest sleeping bags which have a range from 45 degrees to 55. Plus we had a couple of light blankets. We were cold every night. It was very cold in Shuteye and I did not get a lot of sleep. When we first got to the valley, we found it to be warmer so I managed to get more sleep but I could't exactly say that it was comfortable. It got colder overnight. We measured the temperature this last morning to be in the 30's. Not pleasant.

Summer Vacation - Part 1

As soon as the kids got out of school, it was time to start packing up to kick off our summer vacation. We spent 3 days cooking, packing, watering and cleaning to get ready for our trip. Believe me, it is no small matter.

Day 1: Shuteye Ridge

We had breakfast and headed out Sunday morning. Everyone chose a couple of favorite talks from General Conference and we listened to them on the road. Our first destination was Shuteye Ridge. It is near Bass Lake. We were hoping to make it out to Bass Lake by lunch time but we did not leave as early as we had originally intended so we ate it somewhere along the way.

We had a difficult time finding the right roads into Shuteye. We drove down many dirt roads and crossed several streams. We finally found what we thought was the correct place but the road was a lot rougher than they described and the camping areas were a lot smaller. Since there was already a person occupying the camping space we were hoping for and it was certainly not big enough to share. The road further up was too rough and even with four wheel drive, we did not have enough clearance to get through it. Since the sun was going down, we decided to head back down to a camping spot we noted further back down the mountain.

Day 2: Shuteye Ridge

In the morning, we had breakfast and broke down our camp. We spent a bit of time taking some pictures and videos. We had to decide whether we were going to try to find the climbing area we came to investigate or head into Yosemite and climb there. Since we drove so far out of the way already, we decided to just continue on and look for the climbing area we came to find.

We found the trail we needed next to the occupied campsite that we found the previous evening and went to investigate. The trail was fine up to the dome but from there, we were unsure of where to proceed.

It was a beautiful area but after searching for the next trail, clambering over boulders and bush wacking through a ton of manzanita brush, we were getting pretty tired of the area. In the end, while we did not find the exact trail up to our intended climb, we did manage to get an idea of where it was and where it wasn't! But by that time, it was getting late and we still had a ways to go to get back out on the main road and get back on the road to Yosemite. That was our next destination. We were to meet Christian's family at 5:pm at the campsite for dinner. Emily got to practice driving down the easier dirt roads.

We went back into town to top off on gas and caved into temptation and stopped by McDonalds for a cold drink and ended up having a small second lunch!

We ended up in the valley some time in the late afternoon. It was pretty crowded and we started to wonder if we ever wanted to vacation in Yosemite during this time of year again. It was pretty stressful and miserable. And then of course, it got worse. The traffic came to a complete halt. We were stopped in the middle of the road for about 20 minutes. I don't know if there was some kind of accident or what, but nothing was moving. We shut off our engines and everyone started getting out of their cars. Christian took the kids to the ranger station to get some information we needed for a future trip. Before they returned, the traffic finally started to move. 

There was no where that I could really pull over, so I drove all the way to the Camp 4 parking lot to wait for them there. Luckily, we talked about that possibility before they took off. Apparently, I passed right by the girls at some point, but since I was moving and they were in the crowds of tourists, I heard someone yell "hi," but didn't see who it was and had to keep moving with the traffic. I got to the parking area and waited for them to walk all the way over to our rendezvous point. 

Once we were back together, we headed back out of the Valley to our campsite. Apparently it was still 40 minutes out of the valley with little or no traffic. Christian's sister arranged for all the camping sites for everyone and it is really difficult to get a space this time of year. You certainly have little choice in where you end up if you manage to get a space at all.

We finally made it out to our campsite in Hodgdon Meadow. We found Christian's dad there taking a nap but his sister and her family was not there. In fact, it was many hours before they came back to the campsite. They hiked out to Vernal Falls late in the afternoon and did not come back for quite a while. We had just given up on them and started to heat up the stove to warm some canned soup for dinner when they finally got back.

They started dinner but it took quite a while and we did not eat until nearly 10 that evening. Everyone was quite tired, so we headed to bed right after dinner.

School Promotions

We went to Caitlyn's school Wednesday morning for her promotion from elementary school. Marian drove out early to be there with us. We got a bit of a break in the weather and managed to get seats that were mostly shaded.

Caitlyn got the gold Presidential Academic award. Marian made these nice ribbon leis for Caitlyn and her friends.

Unfortunately, neither of her closest friends will be going onto junior high with her. They will be going to different schools, so Caitlyn will have to make all new friends next year.

We took some pictures and then Marian took us out for sushi for lunch. Caitlyn stayed in school for a little while longer.

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Marian stayed over and did a bit of work remotely from our house as it would be more convenient since she will be attending Emily's promotion the next morning.

We had a huge rib eye steak dinner (also courtesy of Marian) to celebrate. We normally have some gifts for the kids at the end of the school year. Usually stuff for them for the summer and rewards for working hard during the year. We went a little bigger this year since they were both moving up to a new school this year. Marian also brought a bunch of presents for them so it was almost like Christmas in June for them!

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The next morning, we went to do it all over again for Emily's 8th grade promotion. It was held at North High School for some inexplicable reason though so it took some time to find where we were supposed to go. They had the ceremony out on the football field. The audience was on the side lines while the kids were set up at one of the end zones. It was kind of ridiculous since the kids had to walk in from clear across the other side of the mostly empty field and the audience was only on one side of the field. We could barely see the kids ceremony. 

The place was a zoo with the music blaring way too loudly in our ears. A quarter of the audience seemed to have fog horns. And a group of the worst sort of parents and family members supposedly "earned" their way to have seats right on the field by taking "parenting" classes all year long. Let's just say that I would have flunked every one of them as they were the worst sort of riff raff. 

A RUSD counsel member gave a speech which was surprisingly good. Emily's best friend since elementary school is the ASB president and gave a speech too but she was super nervous and it did not come out so good. The weather did not cooperate as much for us on this day and there was no shade to be had.

We had a hard time finding Emily's friends for pictures afterwards but managed to get most of them for some pictures at one time or another.

Both Christian and Marian had to go to work after that so all that was left was to pick up Caitlyn from her year end picnic at school and another school year is officially over. We are finally done with Highland, of which none of us are sad about. Emily will be going to high school next year and Caitlyn will be attending jr. high.

Unfortunately, even with Emily's last ditch effort, she could not pull all her grades up and ended the year 41st in her class with a combination of A's and B's. We know that she could have done much better. We hope that she takes her responsibilities a lot more seriously next year as she will be starting the IB program in high school.