Overview of October

I have been so incredibly busy with school and the hospital, that our blog has been suffering. The good news is that I have As right now and hopefully I will get a 4.0 this semester. Wish me luck!

Anyway, I do not have the videos ready to be viewed, but here are some beautiful pictures for everyone to enjoy. Plus the promised overview of October.

October 1: Camping at Courtright Reservoir and climbing at the Tiger Wall and other walls near it.

October 7 & 8: Camping at Tamarack Ridge and bouldering on the Ridge

October 14 & 15: Kaiser Peak with my dad and my cousin Trent's wedding

October 21 & 22: Chase hiking with the scouts

October 29: Three Sisters

I made a list of what we did because this is not only a blog, it is our journal.

I have two movies to post, one of me climbing on a wall by Tiger Wall and the other is a giant storm that passed over us when we were bouldering on the Ridge. Hopefully I can get those on this week.

My family came up the weekend of the 15th for my cousin Trent's wedding. My dad was on a business trip in San Diego the week before, so he flew up on Thursday night and we decided to climb Kaiser Peak the next day. We picked him up super early from my Grandparents house and drove up to Huntington Lake where the hike started. The hike was long (5 or 6 miles one way) and we gained 3000 feet of elevation. The view from the top was tremendous and totally worth the hike. We could see the coastal mountains, Kings Canyon mountains, west and east side of the Sierra's. Basically we could almost see everything. All three of us made it to the top, but we couldn't find the register. We think it was buried under the fresh snow that fell a week before.

Me on the top

My dad made it to the top! I was so proud of him!

The trail went through a beautiful red fir forest and this is a picture of us going down on it. We were so tired afterwards! The next day, my mom came and saw our little love nest apartment and then we went to my Grandparents to hang out with my family and Jonas, the German exchange student that is staying with my family for the year. We had a great time at the wedding and I had a really hard time saying goodbye to them, but they are coming back for Thanksgiving! I can't wait!
Chase took this picture last weekend on his hike with the scouts. He is now the Deacon's Quorum Advisor and the other leaders are thrilled to have someone who loves the outdoors helping out. The older scouts had to do a twenty mile hike to meet a badge requirement, so they hiked from the Dinkey Lakes trailhead past many lakes on the way to Courtright Reservoir. After eating foot long subway sandwiches that a bishopric member brought up, they headed back the same way. Chase had a great time and was able to show the scout group what a mountain goat he is after hiking a ridge off trail while the rest of everyone took a fifteen minute break.

The above picture is the Three Sisters mountain taken from first Dinkey Lake. This is the mountain that we climbed today. Chase told me when I mentioned that I was going to update our blog that I should "wait until tomorrow to post about the hike today so that you can think of something good to say about it." So I am not going to post about it. I am going to say that it involved a lot of down hiking and not a lot of food or water.

Courtright Reservoir

I have decided to be lazy this beautiful, chilly morning in October and not do the laundry like I am supposed to. Instead, I will try to catch you all up on our weekends.

Two weekends ago we went rock-climbing on Tamarack Ridge, but since I do not have any of the pictures from that trip, I will save that for a later post.

This past weekend, we did our annual Courtright reservoir camping trip. We picked up Sam from the Miller's house (along with all of our camping stuff that we keep stored there) and drove to Courtright, which is about a hour trip from his parent's house. We got there in the dark and managed to get the last good camping spot. Camping is allowed anywhere around the lake, so we pulled off the road and camped in a little ring of trees that looked onto the lake. Last year there was practically no one there, but this year it was full!

The next day, we went rock climbing at the Tiger Wall. Chase and Sam climbed it last year, but Sam did not get all the way up the rock, so he had been thinking about it for a whole year. They decided to warm up on a easier rock face before tackling the Tiger Wall and I actually climbed it! Sam took videos of all of the rock climbing, so I will post my video later. I was pretty proud of myself! After climbing the warm up rock, Chase lead the climb on the Tiger Wall, but he was not able to get past a hard part, so Sam lead the rest of the way up. He climbed the wall in record time. Chase and I couldn't believe it!

After walking back to the car (it was quite the hike with the amount of equipment that we had), we drove to a lookout spot to eat our lunch. We did the exact same thing last year, but last year, there was a really obnoxious man at the lookout with his daughters who kept telling them that he was going to accidentally shoot them instead of the bears they were hunting. I almost called child protective services on him.

After filling up with sandwiches, we drove to McKinley Grove to meet Chase's parents. McKinley Grove has a large stand of huge Sequoia trees. The day before Chase and I took our engagements photos (almost exactly three years ago) I was stung by a bee in the grove on my face.