7 Climbs for the 7 Year Old
We had another birthday recently. Is it just me or are the birthdays ticking by at a faster and faster rate??!!!!
Silas is now 7. SEVEN! And for his 7th birthday he wanted to go to Joshua Tree and do 7 climbs (no doubt the idea coming to him from Linda’s 35 route attempt on her 35th birthday back in February). The trip was a success…well, wait a sec…I’m not going to sugar-coat it here people. The presents did travel well without being peeked at or destroyed, the cake assembled beautifully and tasted delicious, and the seven climbs were ticked. The not-so-fun parts were it being INCREDIBLY windy all day Saturday (not just breezy or even gusty, but that super annoying dusty desert wind that blows crashpads and small children away and hair into your mouth and dirt into your eyes and grains of sand into your ear canals such that you just want to yell at the wind! Or your kids. THAT kind of wind!), and burned pizza. No, really burned. Really, really, really burned pizza. Pizza that we had been looking forward to feasting our dusty wind-blown faces into after a long, tiring, angry at mother nature kind of day…cooked over the campfire in our sweet little dutch oven. The birthday feast! Burned. And then add to that two kids that were amped up a notch higher than usual, exacerbating the frustration of the whole day. Not one of our best days out climbing for sure.
At the end of that fine day, with wild kids finally asleep in their sleeping bags and Paul and I sitting outside the van, looking at the big beautiful full moon with cups of wine in hand (cause as all desert climbers know, the blasted wind of course stops when it’s now too dark to climb), Paul says to me “April, this is why parents don’t do this.” (referring to the day’s drama). We sat quietly and pondered that thought a moment. And then broke into hysterical laughter.
It’s October and all Joshua Tree camping is full. Standard protocol: BLM land outside the park.
But then we snag an open campsite the next morning! Score! (Note, this is the calm before the storm, literally about 5 minutes prior to the wind just suddenly kicking up and then remaining at full-throttle for the entire day)
Climb #1
Little brother follows
Ivan has declared that he’s only doing 4 climbs today. Hmmm, wonder why? haha
Forgot to snap a pic of climb #2, so onto climb #3. Yes, we’re getting as much mileage as we can out of this boulder since it’s the only one in all of Joshua Tree with actual holds on it.
Climb #4. Yeah slab climbing.
And climb #5, which is a proper guidebook-documented V0 boulder problem. Nice Silas!
Calling it quits early for the day and moving on to dinner and birthday party celebration. The pizza baking in the dutch oven.
Dinner…which was essentially just salad. Take a gander of the burned hot mess on the corner of the table
Cake! Time to turn this party around!
…and then mother nature digs a little deeper and blows the candles out! Grrr. Completely unfazed, he goes ahead and makes a wish (the cake is a solar system, by the way)
Silas opening Ivan’s card
Homemade with love
A very exciting gift. The biggest magnifying glass ever! Thank you grandma and papa!
We give up on the wind and head indoors. This is the big gift – Paul’s rock collection he had as a child (well, half of it that is. The other half will be saved for another small boy later)
I love these photos
Their socks are completely knocked off right now
The next morning: a movie on the computer paired with the favorite gifts of last night – the rock collection and a book on gems and minerals. Silas is SOOOO into rocks right now.
Building the psyche that this day will be a little more fun. This is the day of Silas’ actual birth so how can it not be!
Looking good….
A fun little find on the approach
Tying in
On belay
Little brother waiting patiently for his turn
Climb on!
Climb #6, done!
View from the summit
Ivan’s turn
The rest positions these kids find on their climbs cracks me up
Ivan summits!
And finally, the big climb #7. We offered up the option of Silas doing the previous climb twice to finish out the 7, but he wouldn’t have it. He wanted to do the big one, “the one parents do.”
Go for it buddy. …it’s only a 5.10a 😉
A little tug from dad through the crux…
…and…
…he’s got it in the bag!
Belle Campground, where we camped, in the background
Send!!
I love this photo too – the climax of the trip. Paul and I often refer to what we’ve dubbed the “misery-to-joy ratio” for moments such as this. When hauling the whole family around to do what we do, a high degree of misery must sometimes be endured. But all it takes is that one moment of pure joy to make the whole experience worth it. This is exactly one of those moments. What a perfect birthday.
posted by arr
This entry (Permalink) was posted
on Tuesday, October 25th, 2016 at 6:55 pm and is filed under Joshua Tree-California.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0
feed.
You can leave a response
, or trackback
from your own site.
Leave a Reply