Moon over Garrapata

Kids study ants on Garrapata trail

Having returned from our trip to Zion, we concluded with no more doubt that we needed a new camera. What use is a gadget that fails in the least suitable moment, happens to focus tom times and not other times, while failing to turn on or shut down on occasions? We have been eying a new camera for quite a while now, only hesitating to spend money on something whose older version kept on serving us quite well. Now we had a reason to quit pondering and order a new camera. We succeeded on second attempt, for the first supplier admitted after a while that he did not have any more in stock, letting us pay first, of course. We were naturally not happy about this delay; we had planned a trip to Garrapata State Park, within a relatively narrow window between spring flowers blossoming up and winter rains having stopped, and summer fogs having not moved in yet.

The camera eventually managed to reach us before this beautiful weekend, and we could commit to our already traditional family hike. It seems to me that the trail is getting worse every year; it seems unmaintained and totally depending on winter torrents. It's a pity, for a horribly slick and dusty ditch in a steep slope turns an otherwise beautiful hike into a relatively exhausting struggle.

The following weekend was marked in my calendar as one of a very few opportunities to visit Pája. Although Sid rumbled that he had to be at work on Friday, the next open weekend for Southern California fell on October, thus we decided that we would make it a "shuttle run", Saturday and Sunday only.

A hill near Valencia - Tom, Lisa, Sofinka, Eli and Radek

Devil's Punchbowl

It's three hundred thirty three miles to Pája, so we started on Saturday morning, had a lunch in Paso Robles, and reached Valencia by three thirty. Kids received snacks and we took the whole bunch up a hill a few miles outside their house. It reminded me a little of our Quicksilver - even the view to the city is similar. I was surprised that L.A. can be spotted on the horizon. At this time of year, it has not been so hot in the south and the hills were overgrown with an optimistic, green grass. After sitting most of the day in the car, this was a welcome hike. Kids ran about, letting off steam, and we adults could talk a little.

On Sunday, our host Pája and Radek took us to Devil's Punchbowl Natural Area. We took the easiest circular trail, and the children liked it very much. The path wound among rocks and boulders, with a creek down in the canyon where you can splash a little, have an obligatory picnic, and from one spot we could observe rock climbers. First I thought that we would try climbing ourselves, but a cursory look in the guide book showed only difficult routes, or cracks for which we were not equipped (nor experienced enough). We would be hard-pressed time-vise, too. Juniors enjoyed the local visitor center much more than climbing (we had to stop there before embarking on the trail as well as afterwards). They show live owls, a wild beehive in a hollow tree (behind glass), and various live and stuffed snakes. By the way, I was rather grateful for such a comprehensive show of snakes — finally I could be sure to recognize a rattlesnake, even if it has no rattles (young snakes don't). And of course the offspring was quite fascinated by the collection of various owls, so their hooting has now become one of the many sounds of our household (besides train horns, cats' meowing, chicken clucking and horse whinnying). I hope nobody will disclose to the kids that owls are NIGHT creatures.

Kids in the creek

Another trip to Yosemite Valley (photo Pavel)

A vague promise that the guys would "take me to Yosemite, when I learn to climb cracks", began to take on somewhat more solid shape in the week preceding Mothers' Day. I was wondering how to combine my family and climbing with Hippo's work, and came up with an ingenious plan — Hippo comes back from work on Friday, takes over the kids, I leave for Yosemite. He will then on Saturday morning load the kids in the car and catch up with us; while I would have climbed somewhere, we would meet in the evening, camp overnight together and on Sunday I would join the rest of the family for a hike.

There was a weakness in the plan, in the form of a tent. Hippo maintains that we own too many tents already, but judge for yourself: we have an excellent tent for two people. We also have another one for four people, as long as they squeeze a lot in the middle. This tent suffers some semi-cracked poles, hence it threatens to collapse one fine day (or night). It's also hard to erect, for the poles must be threaded through color-coded tunnels, which is especially after dark a very entertaining endeavor. Finally, there's our last, (giga)tent. It's easy to erect, we all fit very comfortably in. It would probably accommodate a small herd of elephants, but it also needs this herd to warm it up. Besides that, it requires a few acres of a flat meadow to build such a circus dome.

Kids could see their first bear cubs in Yosemite.

A bear cub exploring a swamp.

Alas, manufacturers insist that people sleeping in tents are A) sportsmen, who conquer alpine peaks in maximum team of two hardened men, or B) families of four to ten members, who desire a nylon villa with five bedrooms and three kitchenettes. Nobody seems to count on the case that a four-member family would like to sleep quickly, modestly, and warmly. And then, suddenly, I discovered a very special tent at REI. Or, from my point of view, a very ordinary one. An oblong base, which accepts four regular camping mattresses; mere TWO aluminum (non-cracking!) poles, identical and therefore interchangeable, to which the tent attaches with simple hooks (= no exploratory committee studying color-coded tunnels in the flicker of a flash-light). A symmetric shape with two entrances, a symmetric fly (directionally indifferent regarding the two entrances). It was quite clear that we HAD TO HAVE this tent.

Now that the plans including the last-minute purchase of the tent were in progress, the weatherguessers chimed in and began to worsen forecasts for Saturday night and the whole Sunday. When night temperatures dropped below 40°F, with Sunday forecasting rain, we concluded that it made no sense to drag children into such a weather. Our alternative plan included me driving my own car on Friday night and returning on Saturday evening.

One can even have a snow fight in higher altitudes of Yosemite.

Kids with Yosemite Falls

However, by two fifteen on Friday afternoon Hippo called from work that he could finish up and go. We immediately adopted a new approach to the problem — the whole family would drive out on Friday, all of us returning before the arrival of the storm. I began packing like crazy — it's actually a big deal setting up four people for camping, with warm clothes, food and cooking, while thinking of all possible disaster scenarios (such as kids going down with strep throat at three a.m. inside a tent in some wilderness), plus my climbing stuff. Let me brag a bit: the only thing I forgot was spoons, and we did not need them in the end.

Naively we hoped that starting at four would take us out before rush hour builds up. It took us one and half hour to reach Livermore (30 miles); then we used our back roads all the way to 50's Restaurant near Knight's Ferry. Tom immediately declared that he would go watch the fish (his memory fascinates me; he has not been to this restaurant for maybe a year or more) and he and Lisa ran off to the yard, where a fountain can be found. There was a horse tied to a pole behind a fence, hence Lizzy was all beside herself with glee that she can be near a horsey.

I have found the camp site in the National Forest, which Vendulka showed me in the fall, even late in the evening — delayed by the weekend traffic and dinner, we made it by nine thirty. We had a nice combat exercise, erecting a new tent in the dark, but thanks to my ingenious purchase it was rather simple this time. I fell into my sleeping bag totally exhausted, so I did not hear whether my Hippo snored, but I slept through the midnight arrival of the climbing part of the expedition, so I spent the second part of the night pondering why they did not arrive and whether we would be able to make it to the alternative meeting point at the park entrance booth by half eight o'clock. Meanwhile Hippo started to add clothes in his sleeping bag, birds were screaming, dawn came earlier than it does at home behind the dark curtains.
Lisa peeked at me at six o'clock, and by seven I could not hold it any more and crawled out. To my great relief, Kovar's Subaru was parked next to our bus and next to it two caterpillars of figures in sleeping bags. Sadly, neither Lisa nor Tom could be stuffed back into the tent; we had to get up. I made one last attempt to deposit the kids in the car to eat breakfast and follow the example of sleeping climbers and lie down, but the rascals naturally came up with some game that involved slapping windows and slamming the car's doors, which executed a practical wake-up call for everybody.

Kids at Vernal Falls

Our juniors can take care of each other on our hikes.

To my surprise Pavel hatched near his Subaru and where I would have expected Vendulka, Misha poked out; Vendulka has not arrived at all. We packed and gathered at our first intermediate destination — at the park entrance booth. There we made a plan that I and the guys meet with Sid and the kids at six o'clock at the store, I jumped in the guys' car, leaving Hippo at the tender mercies of the kids and Yosemite crowds. A few miles from the entrance, cars were gathered — I spotted a bear on the meadow, and so I hoped that the kids would see it as well. Soon we parked a Camp 4 and began to get started. The guys slowly began to mention information, such as we would be climbing seven pitches on two routes, but it was too late for me to get scared or wonder whether I will worry or not.
Non-climbers may skip several paragraphs:

A key spot on Selaginella — a wide crack in the first pitch.

Selaginella: my helmet is especially fashionable.

The first route, Commitment, was supposed to be 5.9; right the first step was in a crack, which scared me a bit, and the rest was very pleasant. In the second pitch, there was a (for me) difficult traverse under an overhang, and then it was good again. In the third pitch Pavel looked somewhat uncertain in the chimney, but I with my dislike for cracks, holes and chimneys, took a wall on the right (one can dare airier steps on top rope).

We overcame the first route without trouble in about one hour and half, and advanced to the next stage. Four pitches, allegedly 5.8 (i.e. one level easier than Commitment). When Pavel was stepping into the first pitch, two more climbers showed up under the wall. They intricately described harder parts of the route and threatened with an open crack right at the beginning. It really appeared to me that Pavel spend some more time in this route than he did in the previous parts, and so I began to mentally prepare for a fight. And a fight it was. Selaginella is an old, classic route, vetted by people who insist that however nasty crack there may be, it is safe.

I was huffing and puffing in a hole that was too wide for my hand and too narrow for any other part of my body. At times I dug with my fingers inside the crack, which had a tiny rift inside full of mud. Then I jammed my shoulder somehow, allowing me to take off and wipe my fogged-over sunglasses. After an endless time I emerged on the upper end of the crack, totally bruised and upset. The second pitch was a little better, but it ended in a dark, damp, muddy, moss-overgrown corner, which depressed me. In addition, Misha could not pull out one friend, and Pavel returned several yards down, where both of them fought for about half hour with a fast stuck piece of iron, while I could get consumed by the inhospitability of this corner and wonder, why the two above us were stuck in one spot. For a while, a heated exchange of opinion was happening there — I could not make out the details, but from their intonation I would guess that miss insisted on immediately returning home to mama, while the hero explained that the only way to accomplish such return is via climbing through the difficult spot.

 

Selaginella - an airy step in the third pitch.

Selaginella, a beautiful flake in the last yards.

I was therefore somewhat not looking forward to this pitch; I got no less worried when Pavel climbed through the critical spot with ease and grace. I somehow muddled through the initial yards full of water and moss, and soon I saw on my own two eyes why the miss above screamed so much. An airy step over an open corner, with some six to nine hundred feet of abyss under your butt, could be for a crack crawler, used to huddle among the rocks, a somewhat strong experience. I enjoyed it — bouldering on tiny holds was rather fun.

I truly was not feeling like doing the last pitch; if I had had a chance to pack up, I'd have taken it. I began to feel mighty tired and extending shadows in the valley indicated that the meeting hour with Sid and the kids was approaching. There was no other way, though, and fortunately the last section was pleasant and simple, and soon we were standing on the top.

All that was left was putting on regular shoes, pack ropes and irons, find a tourist trail leading back from an overlook to Yosemite Falls, (not pick the wrong direction) and set out. Misha claimed we would be down in half an hour. Well, even jogging we needed almost a whole hour; after all we had to push through crowds of tourists in an elevation loss of about a thousand feet, over rocks and sometimes deep sand. Meanwhile in the turns where I got any signal, I tried to phone Sid about an alternative meeting right in front of a restaurant recommended by Misha; then I had to run to catch up with the guys. I would like to mention that this of course was the weekend during which Sid's SIM card left us for Valhalla, hence Sid wielded my phone and I had to borrow from Misha.

Kids on a trail

Yosemite Falls - upper 1440 feet (photo Pavel)

By seven fifteen I was sitting with a beer under a poster of Warren Harding and waited for the only food with reasonable consistence and price — chilli — lands in front of me on the table. Mountain Room otherwise offers dinners like lasagna for twenty five dollars — apparently they gold-plate the pasta during cooking or otherwise enrich it with rare ingredients. Tom and Lisa, I'm afraid, had corn chips for dinner; in any case they refused (delicious) chicken wrap. This surprised me, for since the morning they managed to: have a snow fight, watch bear cups (on the same spot I glimpsed one from the car window, roamed actually three animals — mother bear with two cubs), hike up to Vernal Falls, explore local "muzelum" and Tom fit in crashing over a seat in front of the restaurant and bruise his face. Thus I expected they'd be hungry, but perhaps they were tired so much that they could not eat. Either way they began to fade away, so we soon trumpeted for a rapid retreat.

Juniors got their chocolate milk in the car and fell asleep in the first third of their movie. It took us four hours to reach home, reaching bed by midnight. Pavel and Misha stayed in Yosemite with my smelly garments and climbing shoes (before I began to climb, I was convince that only male feet smell bad) that I did not have strength to pick up from Pavel's car. Still the forecast was right and the guys had to eventually flee from rain; we have not missed anything.

On Sunday kids slept till eight (instead of their usual seven) and even did not object when we attempted to stuff them back in their beds at two p.m. The whole family thus enjoyed an afternoon nap (some — Sid and Tom — almost three hour long), and I think it did us good. It was a rather heavy trip after all.