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.

Genoa

I just looked through all of the blogs that I follow (there are around 10 of them) and I realized that all of them had been updated, except for one (Katie). They gave me the motivation to update our blog, since it has been a couple of weeks.

Over the Labor Day weekend we went to Genoa Nevada with Chase's family, because his parents have a timeshare at Wally World (really David Wally's resort, but they really like the movie Vacation). Even though it would have been much faster to go north on the 99 then over the mountains, we went through Yosemite and north through the little mountain desert towns.

This first picture is of the famous Jeffrey Pine tree at Olmstead Point in Yosemite. Usually there are crowds of people around it, but it was dark. This is about the tenth picture that Chase took and each of them had an exposure of about 2 minutes. I held the iPad in flashlight mode to the left of Chase for the entire exposure and it turned out really neat!

While waiting for Chase's family to catch up to us at Tuolome Meadows, we had two guys walk up and knock on our car to ask where they could camp that night. Since it was Labor Day and Yosemite, all of the campgrounds were full, especially since it was about 10 at night. Chase told them to drive out to the desert because anyone can camp anywhere, but it sounded like they were going to walk up a trail about a mile and get up before the sun rose. Hopefully they didn't get caught or eaten by a bear. Has anyone heard about two Israeli men eaten by a bear in Yosemite?

That night we camped in a Jeffrey Pine forest in the desert by Mono Lake with Chase's family. The air in Jeffrey forests always smells of butterscotch because of the trees. The next day (Saturday) we started in the general direction of Wally's, but we got sidetracked a lot. We stopped in Bridgeport to watch a team branding competition (they used paint) and then we stopped in Walker Canyon at the boulder that I fell off of exactly three years ago. I have never been in so much pain in my entire life. Needless to say, I didn't even get close to the boulder. Chase's mom, dad, and brother left us there while we waited for our friends the Ellisons. They drove down from Reno to spend the day with us, and we had a great time with them rock climbing and swimming!

Sunday Chase, Sam, and Chuck played frisbee golf on the course in Tahoe while I read a book. At about 6, we decided to climb to the D that was on the hill right across from the resort. It was on the top of a very steep hill and only Micah (Chase's brother in law) made it to the D. I went up but decided to gingerly make my way to a less steep ridge where I could walk down safely. Since I was going so slow, Chase thought that I was stuck so he came down the hill to help me down. He is soo nice.

On Monday, we went to Lake Tahoe and watched Chase swim (I have never seen him swim so much in my entire life) and ate sandwiches. We drove home over a beautiful pass called Monitor pass that went through a alpine meadow and back down to Bridgeport. We went through Yosemite again in the dark and did not get home till 10:30.
At the top of Monitor Pass looking out towards the town of Walker in the middle, left of the hills.
Picture of Bridgeport taken by Sam
The weekend after Labor Day, I stayed home and volunteered to make up for the Monday that I missed while Chase worked on his dirtbike (which is getting close to being in one piece, more on that later) and finding boulders to climb on. This one is his next project.

Sorry about the lack of pictures and wealth of words.

P.S. Who lives in Malaysia? Someone is looking at our blog from there and I don't think either of us know anyone from there.

Hidden Secret

Do you know what is the best kept secret of the Sierras? We do. It is blackberries! For the last two years, Chase and I (with a few members of his family) pick wild blackberries from canes not far from his parents house. This year we went with Chuck and Sam and we picked about five pounds of blackberries (about 50 to 60 dollars worth) from two different sets of canes. It took us around 45 minutes to pick all of them, and the mosquitoes were horrible. Probably because one set of canes were by a pond of murky water. The first set of canes had huge bear scat piles and the canes were squished. The bears must like blackberries as much as we do!
Because most of the blackberries were pretty ripe, I froze all of them except about half a cup worth that we ate with a little sugar. Chase is going to have some pretty good smoothies!

Seven Gables

This past weekend, we went backpacking again. This time it was above Edison Lake which is on the Fresno side of the Sierras. Chase wanted to climb Seven Gables Mountains, which is really far back in the mountains, so far back that he could see both Western and Eastern Sierra mountains from the top of Seven Gables. The trail consisted of eight miles up a hill so steep in areas that we were walking on steps cut out of the stone, then down to the John Muir Trail for three miles (our second time that we have been on the JMT this year), then up and over another four or five miles to a little unnamed lake in the Seven Gables Lakes chain so that Chase could climb his mountain.

Because it was such a long trip (four days and over 30 miles), I will just mention the highlights of each day including pictures.

Day one: Hiking the long way up and then down again to the JMT. We followed the Bear River for the first four or five miles and every so often, there would be pools in the river that had sand at the bottom of them and were so clear that we could see everything, including fish in them. The water was freezing, but I was tempted to swim in them on the last day. We camped about 1.7 miles from the trail that left the JMT and went up to the small canyon that was our ultimate goal. The mosquitoes were absolutely horrendous on the JMT. The snow had just barely melted and there were thousands of them. They would all swarm around me (thanks dad) and I ended up with more than a hundred bites.
Day Two: Within the very first hour of us hiking on Friday, we had to do a stream crossing, which is not this picture, but one of the pictures lower down. We had to take off our shoes and wade across because the bridge went out. There was not a distinct trail to our little unnamed lake, so we had to boulder hop through boulder fields and cross many streams like this one. Chase jumped across with our backpacks and then caught us on the other side (did I mention that Chase's mom Judy was with us for this trip?)
That night we camped next to the little unnamed lake looking up at Seven Gables (it is on the far right of the picture above. The sunset that night was absolutely incredible. I stayed in the tent because of the mosquitoes, but Chase got some breathtaking pictures of the red and orange night sky.
Day Three: Chase woke up at 5:50 to climb his mountain. The boulder in the middle of the picture is the very top of the mountain, Chase did not get on it. The lake to the left of the picture is Vee Lake, where Chase originally wanted to go. Once we got to the unnamed lake, Chase realized that Vee Lake is actually up a hill opposite of Seven Gables, so we did not go there. He got to the top at 8:10 and reached camp again at 10:10 after spending twenty minutes on top taking pictures and eating breakfast.
The clouds were incredible on day three. The picture above is Seven Gables. Chase went up the snow shoot in between the two really pointy mountains. the mountain on left is the top.
Also on Day three: After Chase rested for an hour or so at base camp, we packed everything up to start down the trail again. We did four separate creek crossings including one that I threw my shoe and Chase had to rescue it. The one above is the creek crossing on the JMT. Chase didn't roll up his pants because they dried so fast. That night we camped by the Bear river before going up the hill that took almost the entire first day to go up. Chase took a dip in the Bear River, and I took a video of it, but I cannot figure out how to turn the video. oh well
Day Four: Judy and I were both exhausted and I was one big mosquito bite. We met tons of people going up the hill to the JMT. Judy and I kept asking Chase, "are we close to the car yet?". After reaching the car, Judy wanted to go for a dip in Edison Lake. While she was swimming, I tried to use the outhouse, but it smelled really bad. Since there was no one around, I did my business behind a log that was up a little hill. I was hidden from sight, but right when I was done, a car pulled up. I popped out from behind the log (they could see me at this point) and wandered down the lake side nonchalantly trying to act like nothing was happening. I was so embarrassed. I told Chase about it and he laughed for ten minutes.

Hopefully you enjoyed my little discourse. By the way, does anyone else hate the way blogger uploads pictures?

Birthday Boy

Happy Birthday Chase on the 29th of July!

This post is all about Chase's birthday weekend!

Two Saturdays ago, we went to Shaver Lake with Chase's family to try the rope swing that Sam (Chase's brother) had found. Because we had Chase's niece and nephews with us, we also found a little beach to swim at because the rope swing went off a cliff. I didn't do the swing because it was really scary. Sam did double back flips off of it. The jump started five feet up a tree and at the apex, it was about thirty feet off the water. Scary!

Sam had his ever present GoPro and both the videos were made with it. Sam wouldn't jump with it attached to his head because it falls off and smacks his nose, so the top video was filmed by someone in the water. The video below it was filmed on land.

After the lake, Chase wanted to go rock climbing on some large pinnacles that we found a couple of months ago. Chase, Sam, and Micah (Chase's brother-in-law who is married to his sister Natalie) hiked up a ridge to the rocks while Natalie and I stayed with the kids and read. A giant group of trailer campers moved in and set up all around us (we were parked on a pull out in an area where free camping is allowed). We were not impressed, especially since one of them almost hit Natalie's car when trying to get around them. Eventually, the men came back down the hill and we were able to leave. At least the lake was fun!

Some More Bouldering

Chase wanted me to post this video of him climbing the Buttermilk like boulder that he ascended a week and a half ago. Sam is on top of a boulder right next to Chase's boulder with a GoPro. I would have posted it earlier, but Chase had to cut the short clip out of an hour long video. Who else has a GoPro? Sam loves his, it goes everywhere with him.