Tramway Highlights

We spent 2 days exploring the boulders at Tramway. Roger also once again joined us for climbing shenanigans. Even with a guidebook in hand and GPS coordinates, the boulder areas were hard to find. We spent about half the time hiking around, off the main trail and getting lost. It was exhaustingly fun.

Kids were, for the most part, good sports about it.

After spending hours hiking around, being re-directed by a park ranger, and STILL not finding the boulders we were seeking, the guys dropped the packs for more efficiency, and left the kids and I in this beautiful remote clearing. I laid down for a nap while the kids played around. After a while, the kids became quiet, and the nature around took over. The birds were chirping away in song. There was a light, cooling breeze in the comfortably warm temperature under the shade. I looked up and saw this:

They each were doing their own thing in quiet solitude. It was a very peaceful time and place. At least that's my take on it.. who knows.. maybe they were squishing bugs or drawing circles in the sand. =P

Finally found Shagri-La area, and with it...
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,v7*** @Tramway - Ryan's best attempt


He didn't finish it, it was end of the day, but he has the beta to do the 2nd, crux move.

While the big kids were working the boulder, the little kids were busily working away too. They showed great teamwork, carrying massive logs they found and put them together to form their version of a tram.

Liam's got the look of a hard working tram engineering.. dirt smeared face with a giant smile.

Kids tired, but still pretty happy at the end of the day.

Riding the Tram back down to Palm Springs. Crash pads take a bit of room.

The next day...
The boys getting their last minute screen time before heading off to the "no service zone". haha.

2nd day was better as we were getting more oriented with the area. First objective was Frank's Boulder which had various problems to work on.

All of us worked on a classic Frank's Roof,v3***. It is a burly, short power moves kind of problem with a small dyno catch out of the roof. Ryan and Roger both were able to complete this one. (Did not get the video of Roger's send.)

Frank's Roof,v3*** @Tramway - Ryan's Send

(Note Ryan's over-dramatized finish... hahah)

I could not muster the strength nor mental courage to do the Frank's Roof dyno... and I didn't know it at the time, but I was starting to get sick. =P So downgraded to an easier climb...

The Terminator,v2** @ Tramway - Connie's Flash


After Frank's Boulder, we moved on to Gluttony, a potential V8 problem for Ryan. It's a highly, 4-star rated roof problem. Our favorite kind of problems! All of us worked the few starting moves. I am happy to say I was the first to stick the 1st and 2nd move. Though Ryan was the one that made the best progress.

Gluttony,v8**** @Tramway - Ryan's best attempt


Roger working on his core tension.

Gluttony,v8**** @Tramway - Roger's core tension


The Green Hornet,v5*** was the last boulder climb of the day. Mountain Project calls this one "the best at it's grade at Tram". Ryan picked it specifically for Roger.

Tramway has some good stuff there. No doubt we will be back.

Tramway

When the temperature gets hot, it is time to hit Palm Springs. So... the logic would seem to be the opposite since Palm Springs is a desert environment with typical scorching temperatures over 100+°F. But... Palm Springs is one of the gateways to the San Jacinto Mountains, with the highest peak at 10,834 ft. The air can be as much as 40°F (22°C) cooler at the top than in the desert. It also helps that there is great bouldering up in the mountains...

And off we go on the Aerial Tramway!

This was the kids' first time riding the 360° rotating tram, 2.5 miles, and ~6,000 feet elevation gain and it was quite spectacularly fun, with an amazing view of the city below.

The history and the engineering feat of the tram construction is also pretty neat as the kids got to view the gears in motion and the display of various cables and structures.

Tramway is also reminiscent to me as my first backpacking excursion, a good 12+ years ago!

We spent a couple days bouldering at top of the Tram Station at ~8,500 feet elevation, in the San Jacinto Mountains. Plenty of time for the kids to hone their creative play. In that time frame, they opened a tattoo parlor for climbers, built their own version of a wooden tram using team work, practiced musketeering skills, and opened up a temporary snack shop. I'm always curious on what the kids come up with on each of our trips. They seem to always have new ideas!

More to come...

Yosemite : Part III

Continuing from Yosemite : Part II

Day 5 --> Candyland Boulders

Day 5 we ventured to a new area called Candyland Boulders. One of the more remote bouldering areas in Yosemite. Kids were excited to go to Candyland...well.. until we got there and there was no candy. Haha!

(photo by Roger)

Kids stopping to have a lesson about cairns, aka trail markers. Also teaching them why they should not knock these rock stacks down.. which Liam wanted to do, of course.

Candyland was hard to find. We followed the directions from the guidebook, as well as GPS indications through Mountain Project (which turned out wrong). It took over an hour to location these set of boulders, hiking off trail. But we found it, and along with it, a highly-rated 4-star, V4 climb called "Once Upon A Time".

I didn't take too many photos here cause this problem worked me. See how Roger is all contorted? It's a stemmy, delicate footwork kind of problem that is a bit of a highball. At 15', it is not that high, but the slope of the mountain and the surroundings make it feel more.

Next we moved on to find a problem that Ryan wanted to check out, The Diamond, V8. Still located somewhere in Candyland, but we needed to find it. So off hunting again...

Gorgeous view of El Cap along the way.

And we find it!

This is an amazing problem that requires strength, technique, body positioning, and solid core strength. So.. of course we all flail. =) Hopefully this is a start for a progression video for Ryan.. but the fact that Yosemite is not easy for us to have access to (hard to get camping reservations, far away, etc)... it will be a TBD for the future.


In the meantime, the kids had a try at their hang time on the crimpy edge of a start.

Emilia's Hang Time


Liam's Hang Time


At this location, the kids also decided to start a moss-carpet installation service. The rocks here have patches of green mossy, shrubbery growing which the kids would peel off and put together and "sell" carpet plus installation services. They created this area where we were hanging out climbing.

Neat looking natural balance rock in the background.

Day 6 --> Curry Boulders

Our last full day at Yosemite, we stuck close by and searched for climbs right by Half Dome (aka formerly Curry) Village, called the Curry Boulders.

We thought it would be easy to find, but the guidebook is outdated and the description to find the boulders are now inaccurate. Mountain Project and GPS failed us once again, so we spent a bit of time looking for climbs and climbing unknown, unnamed things.

In the meantime, the kids found things of their own to climb and play on.

Emilia climbing up a kid-friendly slab.



Good thing I kept the kids rain pants on, even though it was not raining anymore, but nice and warm, and sunny. Both kiddos have put holes in many of their pants by doing exactly this. I'll find the kids rolling and butt sliding on all sorts of things.



Seriously, if anyone knows of pants that are re-enforced with kevlar butt protection.. please let me know.

We finally found the boulders and played on several of the ones around.

Ryan trying the start to The Angler, V3

We also worked on the Unnamed, V3 that connects to Kevin's Traverse, V0. No photos or videos, but the Unnamed V3 had a fun, hard start that took a bit to figure out. Ryan's beta of using a toe cam was the key!

And lastly, to end our Yosemite highlights.. this small waterfall was amazing to look at. It flowed down the mountain like a staircase. Ryan didn't know the name to it, but said it was like a staircase waterfall. That turned out to be the exact name and it doesn't always flow like this at Yosemite. This year the water level is high with all the rains and so we get to see the Staircase Falls.

(photo by Roger)

(View of Staircase Falls from Kevin's Traverse)

Yosemite : Part II

Continuing from Yosemite : Part I

Day 3 --> Tourist Time

Day 3 was our family tourist day. That is, Andy and Violet had to leave that morning, and Roger wasn't coming in til later that evening. (Yes, Roger, the 5th member of our family, was able to rearrange his schedule to also come out and join us!)

It had been raining through the previous night, the grounds were wet, and it was still continuing to rain on and off. So tourist time. We took the kids to Yosemite Village to buy souvenirs at the store, browse the Ansel Adams gallery, learn about Yosemite at the Visitors Center, and did an easy, kid-friendly hike to see lower Yosemite Falls.

Tree just outside of the Village store.

The previous day's rains lead us to discover that the kids rain jackets were not so waterproof anymore. They were okay for water-resistance, but not for being out in pouring rains. After all, they have worn those jackets on all our adventures the past 1-2 years, as well as on rainy days to and from school. Luckily the store had kid-sized, bright yellow rain ponchos.

Gotta say... I think the kids look so cute with their bubbly cheeks sticking out of this bright yellow fluff...

Photo of lower Yosemite falls.

It was a meandering kind of day, and fun to do touristy things. Though we were looking forward for the rains to clear, Roger to arrive, and scoping around for some climbing.

Day 4 --> Camp 4

The rains finally cleared and the sun came out on Day 4. Roger arrived in time for dinner the previous day and set up his new pop-up tent, in the rain, in a jiffy. See tent below. It held up pretty well too.

This morning it was still quite chilly, but starting to warm up from the past few days. I was scrambling the week before our trip to make sure we had to right gear to keep the kids warm. Temperatures dropped down to the upper 30s with the winds and rains. A breathable layer system is the way to go to ensure they can still be active and sweat, but retain body heat and keep out winds and rains. REI had sale on winter gear, so I was able to dress up the kids in Patagonia Thermal-weight Capilenes, Patagonia down jackets, and waterproof pant shells. The rain jackets were the only unexpected malfunction.

Today we went to scope out some of the problems around Camp 4. Yosemite has a long and rich history for rock climbing, esp well-known for the multi-pitch wall climbs such as the Dawn Wall on El Capitan or Half Dome. Bouldering became popular too, esp around Camp 4 where many climbers would situation themselves, warm-up, or wait for weather conditions to clear prior to their big wall climbs. So Camp 4 has a lot of established bouldering routes.

As the afternoon progressed, the sun came out and it even started getting hot. With the heat also came the infamous Yosemite mosquitoes!! Anyhow, here's Ryan on some crimpy, slabby V3.

Ryan working some crimpy, slabby ?? V3 problem @ Camp 4


The kids found these cool looking leaves with artsy details etched onto them. They decided to name whatever bug that ate and created these cool looking leaves as "artist bugs".

Like I said before, Yosemite has a long history in climbing. This time of year there were lots of famous, well-established pro climbers in the area. In Bishop we met Bobbi Bensman. At Camp 4, we encountered Nina Williams. Not much interaction, but we did see her partner working on this V4 which caught our attention as well. Ryan bumped into someone he knew from his climbing gym and our two groups hung out to work on Tendon's Give, which has a V4 route and a V7 variation.

Ryan on Tendons Give, not-the-real-V4 @ Camp 4


Roger on Tendons Give, not-the-real-V4 @ Camp 4


So the guide book is not descriptive enough and the interpretation of how the route actually goes was not quite known. What we thought was the V4 route was what we did in the video above. But it really did feel a tad on the easier side to be V4, and Yosemite is known to have hard ratings, not easy ones.

Roger on 2nd upper, half of what we thought was the V7 of Tendons Give.


We think that the lower portion of the 2nd half of the climb, up to the peak completes the V4. (Roger climbed the upper portion) So all in all, we can only say that we did 1/2 of this climb.

To be continued... Yosemite : Part III

Yosemite : Part l

Day 1 --> Arrival

Campsites at Yosemite are, so I've heard, hard to come by if one does not plan early in advance and register at the exact time that registration opens, which is on the 15th of every month, 5 months in advance to desired camping dates. Needless to say, we are not that organized to plan so far in advance.

So when one of Ryan's climbing friends had a week long reservation that he could only use a part of, we shuffled our schedules so that we could join him and use the rest of the reservation days.. cause, after all, it's YOSEMITE!

I have lots of fond memories of Yosemite.. from my first multi-day, back-packing trip hiking a portion of the John Muir trail from Toulumne Meadows to the Valley... or the time I join my college pals, Christina and Sam, to hike Half Dome. Ryan has many memories there too, climbing routes at the base of El Capitan with Bill, and describing aspects of the climb on Lost Arrow Spire.

The kids' teachers gave us homework assignments for the kids to work on for the week, which I had Emilia work on every morning prior to getting out of the tent. The kids also learned about aspects of Yosemite - how the valley was created through glaciers. How waterfalls are formed; And of course, lessons on bears. Ask them how to differentiate between a black and brown bear, aka grizzly bears. Re-occurring theme was to respect nature and its beauty and force by being responsible humans.

This is the kids first time at seeing waterfalls. (Liam is wearing his secret agent spy glasses.)

This is the Yosemite Valley view as you drive through the Wawona Tunnel, heading into the valley.



It wasn't quite peak season yet, but the huge crowds of cars and people was crazy. Took us 2 hours to get from the tunnel to the valley!

Here at last! A deer hanging in the meadows by Camp Curry (aka most recently re-named as Half Dome Village).

Emilia and Violet became fast friends.

Emilia liked this tree-trunk chair...

And she wanted a photo of this heart-shaped rock...

Our campsite was at Upper Pines Campgrounds, which is a skip and a walk away from Half Dome (aka former Curry) Village. We hung out at the Pavilion quite a lot on this trip. Dinner every night at the Pavilion and the first couple days we hung out there instead of the campsite since it was raining on-off.

The Pavilion bear. It's okay to pet this one.. NOT a real one.

Hanging out with our friends at the campsite... kids having a kiddie glowstick dance party.



Day 2 --> Kids Top-Roping at Camp 4

Weather forecast called for rains the next two days. Luckily it hadn't started yet, so we were able to make our way over to Camp 4 and set up top rope for the kids to climb. Camp 4 is a walk-in only campsite which is situated near a bunch of bouldering problems.

Liam was pretty eager to climb; He went up first and also climbed it twice.

Every one coming down from the down climb.

Around the corner were a bunch of other climbers on different routes. We were going to set up a 2nd top rope for the kids, but the on-off rain showers had begun.

We were able to hang out with Andy and Violet for 2 days before they had to leave. Kids had lots of fun despite the weather. They collected pine cones and branches to create a nature shop. Then they asked us if we wanted to visit their nature shop and charged us 10 cents. This time, they got smart and asked for a real dime.. none of this pretend money anymore. =)

The on-off rain was nice to us. It stopped enough to have a campfire and give the kids some Smores time.

To be continued... Yosemite : Part II

Imagine

I got this photo from Matt recently. He took this photo as we were leaving the Happy Boulders one evening. I love love love this image because it sums up what it is all about.

It was the end of the day, dusk was creeping as the light started fading. Ryan, Roger, and Emilia stopped at this unique artsy-looking boulder to wait for the rest of the laggers (aka Liam and I) to catch up. The boulder stood tall in the faint glow of the dusk sky with the beauty of the Sierras in the backdrop. It captivates the imagination and wonderment of all that transpired to etch such detail in its formation. Emilia went up to it in her own curiosity, carefully and exploratively felt and climbed up it.

Imagine the amount of time and natural elements and weather that created this. Imagine the human lifetimes and events that have occurred throughout this rock's formation... and imagine, in 15, 20 years.. (ok.. probably sooner than that) when my kids come back here when they are older, and this rock will still be there, with memories, familiarity, of their youth and time that we spent together out here.

Part IV : Bishop - Last Chance Happies

(Continuation from Part III : Bishop - All About the Happies)

We woke up on our 4th day, to ominous grey skies. As we've already seen from the previous days where we were in temperatures in the 30s one day to 80s another, it was not too much of a surprise. It was time to pack up camp before the winds and rain started.

Definitely was a disappointment thinking our climbing trip was ending early. Roger was contemplating leaving since forecast called for mainly high winds up to 50mph, and some rain. However, we know forecasts can't ever be trusted. There was slight rain in the campground valley area, but it stopped and a faint rainbow appeared. Good sign.

We took the morning off and went for breakfast at the popular Erick Schat's Bakery. If you are ever in Bishop, this place is made to ruin your diet with high amounts of carb and sugar consumption! Geez!

After eating all that, we decided at least to hike in to the boulders to at least burn off some of those carbs. The clouds had parted and sunshine was starting to beam through. If the winds were intolerable, we could turn around and come back down. Matt had successfully completed Monkey Hang the day before, and I thought I had a shot if the opportunity to climb it came up again.

Heading to the trail head once again...

The winds were pretty brutal up at the boulders. Sand every where which made it hard to see at times. Note for next trip, we need to bring clear goggles. We mainly hung out at Slowdance Cave area where I worked.. and kept failing on Monkey Hang. In the late afternoon, we spent time at the Son of Cladius Rufus, V5**, a project for Roger.

Kids worked in their bakery/restaurant early in the day, but spent the afternoon enjoying the winds. Gotta love their creativity and ability to have fun in all sorts of weather.

Kids playing and Roger working the extremely difficult mantle move to get over the ledge.



It was an early departure from the boulders that day... only so much whipping winds and sand-in-your-eyes that we could handle. We called it an early night and hoped for our last chances the next day.

On our last day, we went... you guessed it.. back to the Happy Boulders for our final attempts at completing our projects. The kids were tired now. They used to be the first ones blazing the way up the trail, now they were lagging behind. Liam kept stumbling over his feet. The skin on my hands were shredded with dried blood here and there. Muscles were sore, and nice bruises had formed. This was our last chance to conquer.

We started off on Monkey Hang, and I just COULD. NOT. DO. IT! Sigh. So we moved on to Cladius Rufus. Ryan got it!

Ryan on Son of Claudius Rufus, V5**



Roger worked and worked it. Got all the moves figured out, but couldn't link it all together. Both him and I were resigned to conquer our climbs next time.

As light was dimming and temperatures started to drop, we made our way to leave Happy Boulders, passing by Monkey Hang one... last.. time. I was tired and already accepted that would not complete Monkey Hang on this trip.. but I gave it one more try. As Roger put it with the chill temp kicking in... "this was sending conditions". He was right.

Connie on Monkey Hang, V3**



SUCCESS!!!!!

Perfect ending. I can't THANK enough Ryan - for helping to figure out the beta that worked for me and spotting my falls over and over and over again.. Roger - for taking videos and/or spotting me over and over and over again... and for both of them that kept encouraging me to "try again" or "work out the beta" even after I said "That's it. I'm done!"

Glorious dusk view as we were leaving the Happy Boulders for the last time... and with a faint showing of the crescent moon.

Bye Bye Eastern Sierras! We miss you already!

Our group photo at the end of the trip (missing Matt, he had to leave a couple days earlier).

And on our drive back home, on a beautiful, clear, sunny day, we had a good view of Mount Whitney.

The End... for now.