Part I: 2020 in Review - Pre-Lock Downs

2020 started off mostly right, really good weather for January and for climbing. We started off the year with climbing outdoors every chance we had. Even the one mishap occurrence of attempted car break-in on the 1st day of the year was considered a lucky close call. Our passenger window was cracked, but not broken into and nothing was stolen. Our friend, Devon, was not as lucky. In hindsight, maybe this was a bit of foreshadowing for 2020.
Cougar Crag
Attempted break-in, cracked window

Devon's car break-in

Anyone that knows us, knows that climbing is a big part of our family. Being outdoors, connecting with nature and each other, becoming a participant of the landscape versus just an observer, reminds me that we are small in the grand scheme of this world. This moment in time is what we have, and yet the surroundings.. these rocks and boulders, the land, will last longer than we will. My kids will come back to these places and remember their youth; This land and this activity may also be comforts and escapes for them when life is overwhelming. They may come back to these places and feel the same feelings that their parents did when climbing these rocks and camping in these aeas. Joys of success, agony of defeat, frustration in limitations, discovery of determination and grit, and amazement in persistence and determination through small steps, small changes.

Ryan on Stranger Danger, 5.10c

Liam on Insecurity Never Wins, 5.10a

Joshua Tree

Ryan on Satellite Left, v3 pg-13

Warm up bouldering

Liam

Emilia chilling

Kids against JT Sunset landscape

Roger & Ryan bouldering JT Sunset

Beautiful pink JT sunset

New Jack City

Ryan working The DX, 5.12d

Dylan and kids just chilling.. and napping

Not sure if it was because I was waking up earlier, but seems as if there was so much more beautiful sunrises and sunsets this year. One of the many photos I took throughout the year. This was right before the 1st Covid lockdown, mid-March.

Beautiful Sunrise

To be continued...
Part I: 2020 in Review - Pre-Lockdowns
Part II: 2020 in Review - First Lockdown
Part III: 2020 in Review - Red Tier
Part IV : 2020 in Review - Second Lockdown

Part II: 2020 in Review - First Lockdown

While we were keeping track of latest developments of Covid, it still came as a shock when the 1st lockdown happened. Work, school, schedules, daily life was now uncertain. Grocery stores had lines of shoppers buying everything off the shelf. We didn't panic but prepared for a long haul at home.

Liam built an army of paper malitia to guard the compound.

Adapting wasn't the easiest, and took some iterations of logistics. Ryan and I had to keep tabs on the kids and help with their schedules and school work while juggling our own.

Having the kids as my new office-mates was quite distracting.


With anything, there's always ups and downs. One of the upside of this was we finally we put the home gym to good use.

We started off lockdown with keeping our weekly tradition of family climb time... that lasted a couple of weeks. =P


The start of lockdown was okay, but as time went on, obviously there was still quite a bit of adjustment and adapting. Kids missed friends and school. They missed going out and being active. In fact, I found both of them one afternoon, just sitting in the car, in their carseats, hanging out and reading. They missed being in the car!

Web surfing has gone up and kids have discovered Mark Rober, a former NASA engineer turned gadget inventor. His YouTube video on squirrel ninja obstacles is the best!


They watched all of his videos and created their own version of squirrel catcher traps in the yard, and their version of the glitter bomb.


We literally spent the first 6 months of the firt lockdown at home, aka our compound. Ryan's saying at that time was "No one leaves the compound." If you leave the fortress of covid-freeness, you don't come back in. Yes. He was that dramatic. InstaCart delivered groceries to our gate.

There were moments of frustration, anger, fights and tears, and stress on all. Our 24/7 constant proximity to each other meant nerves getting rattled often. Still, this time together presented unexpected opportunities to get creative for fun activities, explore our yard, and do things at home that we simply were too busy to consider doing before.

Lots of cooking and baking.

Iterations of mask making. Trial and error of different patterns.

Kids had an awareness of the situation and they, on their own, drew pictures, wrote stories, etc in their manner of processing and what they could do for support.

Live action superhero comic


There was a bit of exploration in the backyard this year.
This is most likely a giant leopard moth caterpillar.

A cool find! An owl pellet.

There were several pet spiders the kids would feed daily with bugs found in the yard.


Saved and freed a couple of bats that fell from their roost.

This hawk flew into our window. It was a little frazzled, but okay.

Liam's become an expert at catching lizards without them losing a tail.

We do have a bit of wild life here and summer time flew by with us observing the changes in nature. Bug season came with lots of bugs. I never took photos of "Big Fatty", the biggest, thickest lizard we have seen around here with a tint of orange. It would come visit our deck every day during katydid season. We had numerous giant 2" long katydids lying around for it to eat.

For a short time, praying mantis's started appearing. This one with a classic "praying" pose.

Giant wolf spider! Body about an inch long. This one was inside!

Wandering scorpion found in our sink. Ryan likes to relocate these to the numerous squirrel or gopher holes in the yard. =P

We planted and grew pumpkins from June through November.

Makeshift mini-pool when the summer temps were hot.

Kids opened up an at-home pop up restaurant.

Check out this menu!

Ryan taught the kids how to bunny hop on the bikes.





As well as teaching them how to ride the electric dirt bike.

Hands on lessons on computer architecture.

The whole family joined in for the kids first 5K race, virtual at-home edition. They *were* suppose to train for this, but it was really off-the-couch kind of run. Don't ask about our time. Simply completion was an accomplishment.

These were some of the highlights from the first lockdown. Obviously I focused on the high points, and like most social media, the lowpoints are not really displayed. There were lowpoints, some not so good ones, and when lockdowns started to ease, about 6 months now that we exclusively home isolated, we knew the kids needed out of the compound.

Kids marked up this portion of the wall by putting on their climbing shoes and climbing it. There's a sign that clearly says "Please Remove Your Shoes". 🤦‍♀️

To be continued...
Part I: 2020 in Review - Pre-Lockdowns
Part II: 2020 in Review - First Lockdown
Part III: 2020 in Review - Red Tier
Part IV : 2020 in Review - Second Lockdown

Part III: 2020 in Review - Red Tier

Summer was ending, and autumn was right around the corner. Lockdown restrictions were relaxing now that the county was in Red Tier, and kids were back in school, virtually. It was adapting to a new schedule again with a bit more structure. Furniture re-arranged so kids could have their space. I now worked in my own quiet area away from the kids, which worked out much better.

Ryan started to take the kids out for short, lunch time hikes to local trails around so they could have some new scenery. It gave me a short, needed amount of quiet in the house as well.

Our first family venture out of the compound. We all took a day off from the daily grind, on a weekday, and went for a day hike to a more remote trail in the San Bernadino mountains. We encountered only one other family with kids that were very respectful. Everyone gave good distance on the side of the trails, stopped to let us pass, and put on their masks.

Everyone, except Ryan, was out of shape. Kids huffed and puffed. We hiked pretty slow. Even with a home gym and some outdoor activity in the yard, kids and I had mostly been complacent after the first month of lockdown. It was a good wake up call that we needed to get our fitness back, and we needed the outdoors. Being back out was a tiring, but happy feeling for all of us. Some people go to church, for us, we go to nature. It makes things right again.

Got in one family beach day at the end of summer.

First visitors! I met up with Brian and Naomi for some surf and beach time during their visit. (Masks only off for photo.)

October rolled around.
Autumn Moon/Fall Harvest

There was a better understanding of Covid. Outdoor dining was re-opening. Adhering to the guidelines and going to establishments that implemented good protocols seemed fairly safe.

A brand new climbing gym that has been in the works for the past year opened up early October that has proven to take lengths at establishing protocols for covid-safe environment. It is very spacious. Giant garage style roll up windows with good air flow. Limited number of occupancy at a time, only 10% capacity allowed. And masks are required at all times and enforced. Keyword: enforced! We had our first family climbing night followed by outdoor dining, which felt almost a tad bit return to normalcy. The difference was there was an appeciation for being able to do this family tradition of ours.

So happy for great outdoor dining right next to the gym.

For the two months of county level Red Tier that allowed a little less restrictions on outdoor activities, we started climbing regularly at Mesa Rim on the week days, and outdoors on the weekends. We podded up with Roger, who was covid tested and negative beforehand. And the kids needed some kind of structured physical activity, so we enrolled them into the climbing camp for kids. They were the only two kids enrolled in their session which made the decision easier to make.

Here's a climb that Emilia projected during kids camp.


I had the chance to get lead certified at Mesa Rim. Thanks to Youtube and refreshers from Ryan, I passed the test.

Slowly getting back into shape and was able to do this 5.10a. That's part of the test, to do a clean lead climb with no falls.

Outdoor climbing - Joshua Tree
Igneous Ambiance, v7

Outdoor climbing norms have changed in this time period. People are respectful for the most part. We don't go to areas that others are climbing at. We go to open boulders, and notice others do the same. And it is okay to let another group know that you're not comfortable with additional people on the same climb for covid-safety reasons. They move on or we move on. Climbing outdoors looks like this:


Bishop We took a long Halloween weekend as a first trip to Bishop. We were pleasantly surprised at the overall emptiness at the boulders. There were a few cars and groups of people, but not the typical crowds.

Night climbing, Birthday Direct, v3

Some highish warm-up climb, v0

Ryan re-sending with ease, The Weekender, v4

My physical has diminished significantly. It was eye opener and disappointing to see myself struggling. Outdoors is always the real test. Always humbling, yet always motivating. For this time period, I had to re-adjust my expectations. Getting off the ground, making 1-2 moves on one of Ryan's projects was an adjusted happy.

Off the ground on Acid Wash, v7

Kids Scrambling on a formation we dubbed, Dragon's Head

Sparseness of cars down at the parking area of the Happy Boulders.

Halloween Candy Scavenger Hunt at the campground

Liam has been getting more interested in climbing and we keep an eye out for boulders for him to climb. Here he is working through the moves which turned out to be a project for him.

Liam on a variation of Anti-Hero, v0

We had time to check out the scenery at our campground before driving home.

Autumn Scenery at Brown Town Campground

Our camper. Always in the works, but good enough to sleep in. Night temps were down to the low/mid 30s. Temps in the camper with the four of us was in the 50s.

It was really great to be back outdoors for several days focusing on nothing but climbing, camping. Being in the moment. Kids were much happier and content, more laughter, a noticably little less squabbling. We couldn't wait to get back out there, and so we did a few weeks later, for a short, weekend before Thanksgiving trip. We bubbled with Roger and his friend, Antoine.

Back-country camping in BLM, no other campers in sight

BLM was pretty empty, but the boulders were different this time. The Happies was crowded. Compare the cars this time versus Halloween weekend.

Even with more people, it is so spacious out there. There was no problem finding empty areas to climb in. Weather was still pretty nice, with sun in the afternoons for warmth, but a bit crisp, chill in the shade.

Working this classic beauty, Atari, v6

Such a seriously beautiful climb and area

Kids exploring the top of the Happies Tableland

Crux finish moves on Every Color You Are, v6

Solarium, v4, perfect for Liam's little hands

Sunset over the Buttermilks, near Ironman

While I'm in no shape to finish any climbs this trip, I did finally put together the beta that works for me on Ironman. This will go... one day.

We did a couple more day climbing trips over the Thanksgiving holiday. Joshua Tree on Thanksgiving day.

Jack in the Box FTW. Thanksgiving Dinner.

Thoroughly tired out.

Culp Valley Last trip before the start of the 2nd lockdown was to Anza Borrego Desert, Culp Valley.

Solitude is a welcoming sight in these Covid-times.

Liam's been on a roll with climbing. He was always excited for climbing camp sessions and asking us to find climbs for him outside. I found this little section of crimpy, balance for him to try and the kid is doing really well on precision feet placement.


The day has come where Liam has surpassed me on a climb. This slabby line I cannot get past the start moves. Liam with the focus and really good precision hand and feet placement has it solid.

Slab line on "C" boulder
Another fun slab climb, Black Dot, v3

Spotting Roger at high heights

One last beach outing, a calculated risk, where Emilia got a short play session with cousin Anna at the beach.

Bye Bye Red Tier and less restrictions. Back to Purple Tier, and 2nd lockdown.

To be continued...
Part I: 2020 in Review - Pre-Lockdowns
Part II: 2020 in Review - First Lockdown
Part III: 2020 in Review - Red Tier
Part IV : 2020 in Review - Second Lockdown