apAdventures

Winter has arrived! Guess this is our cue to head home.

Goodbye Yosemite. We will be back, sooner than you think!

posted by arr

Our decision is made. We’re going to do the whole drive back to Tucson in one day to maximize our time in the valley. We’re not leaving until tomorrow morning! Woohoo! So what to do with this last glorious full day? Well…

I’m not at all exaggerating when I say that the first time Silas saw Yosemite Falls he wanted to hike to the top of it. He made this very clear to us, each and every day of this trip.

“Can we hike to the top of the falls today?”
– No.
“How about today? It’s a rest day! Can we do the hike?”
– No.
“But I want to! Why can’t we?”
– It’s too far. It’s too steep. Maybe when you and your brother are a little bigger.
“Can we do it today? It’s Thanksgiving! Let’s do a Thanksgiving hike to the top of the falls!”
– NO! We said NO! NO MEANS NO!

We decide to make this last day a ‘kids day.’ We let them pick. Climbing? Sightseeing? A walk? And you can of course guess what they said (because at this point in the trip Silas has badgered us so much that he’s now got Ivan badgering us too! Grrr). Alright, alright. We all compromise by deciding to do a portion of the hike and then they can see how steep and strenuous it is and we’ll just turn around. Just a short out-and-back. Agreed? Agreed.

Meanwhile I throw lunch and some extra water in the pack and make everyone take along their down jackets. ….just in case. You all know where this is going, right? heh heh. 😉

Heading up…

We make it to the top of the lower falls (base of the upper falls). Kids are psyched and fresh as daisies.

Higher…

Higher still…

Yep. You guessed it. The top.

We did shoulder them a bit near the top, not because they were tired (they actually protested at this!), but because we wanted to ensure they didn’t GET tired with so much more to hike. For those not familiar with this classic trail, let me just share some stats straight from www.nps.gov:
Distance: 7.2 miles (11.6 km) round trip
Elevation: 2,700 ft (823 m) elevation gain
Difficulty: Strenuous
Typical Time: 6-8 hours round trip (It took us 5 hours. Bam!)

And now the boys are chatting about wanting to climb El Cap. Uh oh.

posted by arr

Uncertain on whether to depart tomorrow or the following day, we decide this day has to be a climbing day. Our last one! We head back to the boulders we started on in the trip.

Paul samples Shadow Warrior, v12 to see if there’s potential on a future Yosemite trip

And I give another attempt at The Diamond. There is a v6 exit to The Diamond that I desperately wanted to tick on this trip. The v6-ness is all in this big one move though, and I’m still unable to stick it. An issue of trusting the tiny granite foothold and body position. Boo! I suck on granite!

…which makes me just want to climb it MORE! I dial back the ego and school myself on a vB slab instead.

Send! Yeah! hehe.

posted by arr

Today we got an early start so we could have plenty of time to prepare our dinner that afternoon. Unfortunately for us though, early meant COLD! I swear it was below 30 degrees!!!! …and I refused to climb until 10am, when the sun finally peaked out from behind the giant rock walls of the valley. The kids were not phased a bit by the cold…as they typically are about any kind of weather mother nature decides to dish out while we’re climbing. They had a blast playing in frozen mud puddles and tapping on frosty vegetation, all the while completely fascinated by “seeing their breath,” something we rarely experience in the desert due to the dry air.

A bitter cold send of the Camp 4 classic, Cocaine Corner, v5

The sun has peaked out and I warm up

Crack shot

Another classic! Paul sends King Cobra, v8

Sending in pairs seems to happen a lot for us. Immediately after Paul’s tick of King Cobra we walked over to the climb I’d tried two days prior, Ament Arete, v6. Send!! Woohoo!

Now on to dinner!

The kids preparing a pickle platter

We decide to head indoors for the feasting. Home sweet home in the van! We had nut loaf, cranberry chutney, mashed potatoes, green beans, butternut squash with brazil nuts, kale and pepitas, a variety of olives, pickles and my mom’s pickled beets, Barrio bread, flourless seed and nut bread, champagne, Sand Reckoner wine from AZ, sparkling cider for the kids and no-bake vegan pumpkin pie. Thankful for homemade deliciousness!!! YUM!

posted by arr

Rain early again this morning. The rain is lining up nicely with our rest days, woo!

We take a drive…

…to all the vistas.

Cool woods

Checking out Yosemite Falls…

…from the bottom (more on this later)

Three boys, in the woods, in the tree

posted by arr

It rained early the morning of Day 3. We made pancakes, scored some free hot chocolate and coffee in the Ahwahnee Hotel, scoped boulders and rested.

Now on to Day 4:

Silas runs up first climb of the day, Unnamed #10, vB in Camp 4

Ivan gives a go

The Kor Problem, v3

Unnamed #11, v3 on the same boulder

Thriller, v10. He’s on…

…and he’s off.

Ament Arete, v6

posted by arr

Time to climb!

Paul doesn’t hesitate and jumps right on the 4-star smear-y, stem-y and tall classic Once Upon a Time, v3

I settle for Alobar, v2

The Diamond, v8. AMAZING!

This is the view from this particular set of boulders. Not bad.

If you look really really REALLY close in the center of this pic, you’ll see two portaledges (i.e. hanging tents affixed to vertical rock). They belong to Adam Ondra and party, and at this very moment he was trying to complete a repeat of The Dawn Wall. He succeeded and later in the week Paul and the kids ran into him and got to share their congratulations.

Back down on earth’s smaller stones, Paul makes quick work of Bridalveil Pogo, v7

…while the kids entertain themselves on fallen trees

Love it!

posted by arr

For the last few years we’ve spent the Thanksgiving holiday at Hueco with our dear Pittsburgh climber friends. Alas, this year they didn’t make the cross-country trek (but will later in the season! Stay tuned!), so we decided to change it up a bit. Back in 2008 Paul and I spent Thanksgiving in Yosemite, and have kinda wanted to repeat that memorable trip every since. Well, this was our chance. Time to show the kids the big rocks. 🙂

We arrive! I’m just as awestruck by this place as the very first time I saw it. I honestly can’t say that about most.

All settled in Upper Pines Campground

posted by arr

The expiration of Daylight Savings typically marks when we begin our Hueco rampaging. Even though we’re on Arizona Time (and thus don’t observe Daylight Savings) we are well aware of it’s yearly cycle since it steals an hour from us when we head to Hueco during the warmer months. We have a funny story about this. Our first season at Hueco back in the spring of 2004 we were clueless as to when Daylight Savings started. We had forgotten about it completely, cause well, it didn’t affect us in AZ. And this was back in the day when we didn’t carry our silly cell phones around with us wherever we went (which are now our helpful reminders). Out on North Mountain one late afternoon, we let the hours tick by and stayed in the Martini Roof right up until park closing time, 6pm. Our mistake was that it was 6pm Tucson-time, meaning it was 7PM EL PASO-TIME!!! Needless to say we got a stern talking to the next morning by the park rangers. In our naivety we even argued about it! And then some Tucson friends arrived later that morning and clued us in that the time switch had happened. Whoops. One lets a mistake like that happen only once. haha.

So here we are. The season is ON! Hueco season obsessions commence!!!

Kicking the season off with a new climb. Denizen, v5

Notice the pool shoes on the kids feet. I guess it was our excitement in our first trip back that made us forget one crucial piece of gear: the kids’ street shoes!! We literally had nothing for their feet. $9.99 pool shoes at Target was all I could stomach to spend to get us out of that pickle. For them it was a treat of course. Grrrr.

Paul on a repeat of the four-star Jingus Bells, v5

Precarious pad stacking to work the upper moves of Two Days with Gene, v11. Don’t try this at home kids.

Paul’s birthday! A homemade, not burnt “van pizza”

Is that a tornado I see over the campground bathroom? Hmmmm.

This cracks me up. Rather than putting their climbing shoes on and actually climbing with us, the kids much prefer to “play” climbing. Using bungee cords (that we use to lash pads together so we can carry more than one), they rig up and yell climbing commands at one another, “on belay!” “up slack!” “off belay!”, while scaling some random piece of rock. And yes there is a beautiful rainbow in the background. Is this not a climber mama’s most perfect portrayal of happiness?! 🙂

Up high on West Mountain. Should we stay…

or should we go?

Stay! So Paul can bang out Natural Disaster, v10. Which he did.

Looking for animal tracks in the mud

Back to camp

The kids “cooking up” a “five course meal” in their “ovens”

Paul’s Hueco season obsession: Crown of Aragorn, v13

As for me, I’m posting these photos of me on The Bathtub, v9 because i think they’re rad..or perhaps I’m just secretly diggin’ my green pants. Anyway, I SO WANT to report that this is my Hueco season obsession. But I need one more day on it to suss out the moves a little more before I can decide if it’s possible. It’s very burly. And very long. Two things I’m usually not good at.

The good news is that I had tried this climb back in the spring and couldn’t do the moves you see me doing here in these two photos. Yeah summer training. 🙂 More later… I hope!

posted by arr

We made a quick jaunt up Mt. Lemmon last weekend to climb some local boulders. First the River Boulder for Paul and then the Matterhorn Boulder for me. No pics of Matterhorn, sorry!

Paul on Odin’s Revenge, v10 at the River Boulder

We can’t climb here without the kids getting completely soaked

Notice the dark red sneakers…normally a lighter shade. Wet perhaps?

No send. Maybe next time.

posted by arr