Chapter 4.
More Training, More Planning
We’d driven by Lake Casitas on prior outings. It looked like the sort of place (finally!) where we might be able to practice boating. March 18, 2000 had it’s share of conflicts in everybody’s schedule, but summer was approaching, I wanted to do the Big Event this year, we hadn’t been out in about four months, and I wanted to do something to declare we were getting back on track. Katy and I got away from the house at about a quarter to noon, had lunch at Wendy’s in Simi Valley on the way west, and arrived at Lake Casitas between Ventura and Ojai about two.
The road up looked like it had a turnoff that went toward the dam. I tried it and shortly came to a dead end. Access to the dam itself appeared to be restricted or at least difficult. Maybe we would try that again on another visit. We went around to the visitor center, passing developments of various sorts along the way. Some looked like farms established before the lake, others like low-end weekend or seasonal residences for recreational users. At the park entrance we parked outside in order to avoid paying the $6.50 vehicle entrance fee. Instead, we walked in and down half a mile to the boat rental place where we rented their canoe for $15.
We were in it for only about an hour, 2:25 to 3:30 and just explored around the north and west ends of the lake. I worried about wearing my hiking boots out on the water; they might be too bulky to swim in. The kid that checked us out said not to sweat it. At our extreme distance out on the water we approached the central island just to see what the shoreline was like. It was posted and was rocky right at the edge with the grass line a few feet above the waterline. It was obvious that the water level had once been much higher, perhaps ten to fifteen feet. The tree line was above that and the grasses up there were thicker. The land descended into the water, continuing at the same 20-30 degree angle and was lost in the brown-purple murk within a few feet. We bobbed around nearly within paddle’s reach of the rocks, studying them and the dirt for a few minutes.
Returning to the rental place, we turned in the canoe and retrieved my driver’s license, then walked back to the van and drove up 150 to Highway 33, through Ojai and up into the mountains. According to the map, one might go over the mountain ridge through the Lockwood Valley towards Frazier Park along this route. Just north of town the road narrowed and began to wind up a wash through some small agricultural and recreational properties. Not long after that, we came to a stoplight nowhere near any intersection. It was red. A short piece of the road, maybe half a mile, that included a tunnel and a bridge, was being reworked. Only one lane could be open. Cars came from the other way. After a while the light turned green for us and we proceeded with caution, at the posted five miles per hour.
Out of the ravine and past several mountain campgrounds, the route broadened into longer and longer switchbacks with views more and more vast. The coastline to the south was beneath gray clouds and haze. From some points we could see several ridges in each direction, I had no idea how far.
There had been a landslide along this route several years ago that had closed the road for around a year. The drive into town for the folks in the valley had increased from about twenty miles to more like two hundred. We passed a bare spot on the hillside that could have been the site of that slide. By now Katy had curled up and was sleeping through most of the sight seeing.
Up on the plane in Lockwood Valley, we found water flowing through the low water crossings, possibly melting snow runoff. The road paralleled the wash for about a mile before turning and spending about a hundred yards crossing it. The crossing was not much of an improvement over the wash bed itself and the warning signs around it said so. Even low places in the winding route further up the road had little trickles or at least damp places in them requiring any cautious driver to slow down.
Noticing the erosion, I talked to Katy about how it all appeared to scale. Over a wide range of sizes, water erosion in the hillside soil had the same basic patterns and appearance. This could probably be seen at even larger scales in views from space too. Katy acted a bit interested.
It was getting dark as we approached Frazier Park. The full moon was rising. We were home about seven.
Attempting to get back on a bi-weekly training schedule amidst other competing priorities, we took a short but fun trip April 2 to tour the Hahamongna Watershed area just south of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. About 2:30 p.m. we drove down and parked in the lot next to the baseball field and Frisbee golf course on the lower level and started off around the wash in clockwise fashion.
First we visited the broken settling basin dam just below the east bridge into JPL. A little water was coming out of the discharge pipe. A couple of boys were playing there while we explored around the places that had once held water. We climbed around the spillways and flow control infrastructure.
Apparently they had given up. When I had first worked here in the 80s, this had been an old, grass covered earthen dam. One day, an unusually high flood from upstream had broken the dam. After that there had been several attempts to re-build it. A man on a bulldozer would come out and re-fill the hole but never without seepage and soon the new dam would be broken again. For the last few tries, the bulldozer not only refilled the hole but also stacked up dirt for the next attempt. After a dozen or so of these tries, however, they had given up, leaving the stream unobstructed, awash in big dam-era boulders at the bottom.
A parallel stream above this was fed by a pipe from upstream and emptied into some holding tanks, which filled in series. I would later learn that these were placed there to re-introduce the captured runoff into local groundwater. Five of the acre-sized tanks had water standing in them and flowing into the one below. In one we saw a swan and in another a bunch of ducks. Beside one of the ponds was a snake. The lower seven were dry. In the space of a thirteenth tank was a baseball field. It too was dry, apparently always.
The dry series was adjacent to the east road going into the east parking lot at JPL. Next to this was a little grove where I’d brought baby Katy, age three, on our first little hike. We hadn’t gone far or done much, but I remembered it and mentioned it to her. She thought she remembered.
A trail proceeded along the east side of the basin on down to the Devil’s Gate Dam. We stopped to inspect. Walking out on the spillway we surveyed the edge, a hundred foot drop. Back on the mostly dry lake side of the dam, we went up in the lower-level runoff valve and peered around in the dark. At the base of the dam we found tennis balls. Did people throw them down from above or lose them from somewhere nearby? We tossed one around for a few minutes before hiking back to the car, then heading home.
Lake Casitas was too nice a place not to take the whole family. I took my “Personal Holiday” at work (the annual holiday for which I get to chose the date) on April 5 and mid morning the five of us drove out to the lake, stopping for a picnic at “Picnic Area 10”. Sharing with a bulldozer that was moving sand around, the kids went down to play at a little play equipment park. As Katy came back, her mother noticed blood on her pants.
“Have you started your period,” she asked.
“No!” Katy always began from a solid, antipodal bargaining position.
But she had in fact started her very first period, and we were not particularly prepared. Viann made temporary pads from towels we had and we visited the park store for additional supplies before going on around to the boat rental concession.
We paid $30 for two hours, I put my two way radio, for coordination, in a zip-lock bag, sealing it with enough air where I thought it might float, and we started out in pairs, Katy and I first. Viann drove back around beyond the lunch area to a boat ramp and waited there with the other kids at a gazebo with facilities. We used that as our base of operations for switching boat pilots.
Katy and I crossed to the floating porta-potties at the northeast end of the island, then after docking and undocking for practice and fun, hugged the shoreline around to the northwest point. We were very close to the island, nearly like walking along the base of a hill. Up in the meadow above, we saw a doe and two big fawns. The island was apparently large enough to support large, herbivorous animals! From the northwest point we went straight back across to the boat ramp where I waited while Katy got out of the canoe and John got in. At his choice, John and I started off to the west along the mainland shore. It was not far to an inlet where a creek emptied into the lake. Fishermen in boats and ashore here were trying their luck.
I wanted everybody to visit the island. We made a sharp left and headed toward the point from which Katy and I had returned. As before, John splashed the oar, paddled some and rode along but wasn’t as helpful as Katy. We plowed slowly across the light waves in the light wind adjusting our hats against the sunlight. We saw ducks and headed for them, but the two of us paddling a canoe were no match for ducks flapping up and running across the water to escape.
We got close enough to the shore to touch the rocks (still “Posted, No Trespassing!”) with our paddles, and then headed back across to the boat ramp, resting by slowing down in the middle on the way. Viann called on the radio while we were in the middle. She was ready to leave. It was decided that Viannah and I would return the boat to the rental place while Viann drove back around to pick us up.
We arrived back at the dock and climbed out without incident. I walked around to stretch my legs. Viann was not at all concerned that she was missing out on boating. Viannah and I got in and crossed to the north end of the island while heading east as well towards the destination. Nearing the island, we spotted a big gray bird with a black stripe on its bill sitting on a tree or piling near the island shore.
By five we were finished turning in the canoe (and retrieving my driver’s license). Everybody got in the van and we headed up to Ojai and into the mountains just as Katy and I had on the prior trip. She slept through most of the climb again. The tunnel and one-way road with stoplights were still there. There was still a little water running in the washes up in Lockwood Valley but less than before. About half way back to Frazier Park, I spotted what must have been an amateur radio contest station a half of a mile off the road to the left. The property wasn’t laid out to look inviting. Something that looked like a shack was near the bottom of a short cliff. Towers and antennas were at the top. Maybe it was a commercial radio site. We drove on.
In Gorman, we stopped at a place that said “Pizza” but inside claimed to be Mexican BBQ. We ate what they brought us and reviewed the sights, sounds and smells of the day. It was dark when we started back down the freeway towards home.
Along the main, mountain roads through the Angeles National Forest, there is a sign about every two miles that says, “Parked Vehicles Must Display an Adventure Pass.” Some years before, new rules had been made to charge what amounted to user fees in this fashion. You could buy a one-day pass for $5 or a one-year pass for $30. I always bought an annual pass whenever one was needed and tried to keep it where I could find it (and in the appropriate vehicle) for the rest of the year. We broke even if only because of the trouble saved trying to find a place to buy day passes every time we wanted to go north and park the car for half an hour.
That’s how we started our outing of the afternoon of April 16: by going to Sport’s Chalet at a quarter to four to pay our $30 for an Adventure Pass. Then it was west up Foothill to Tujunga and north into the National Forest. Several years ago, when both girls were still in car seats, I had brought my sister, Wilda up this loop going the other way. An impatient kid in a truck full of kids had passed us on the way down the gorge and wiped out near a bridge at the bottom. We had gotten tied up in traffic when the rescue helicopter landed in the middle of the road to fish them off of the embankment.
That bridge was our hiking destination for today.
We proceeded up the road with appropriate care and parked on the side just before reaching the bridge. I made my log entries and we got out and locked the van.
This was not particularly a place with trails, just some open space, some heavy tree growths, and some runoff streams below a dam. We started downhill. The area between the road cut and the streams was terraced at about 20 foot intervals. We went down three terraces and into a streambed that soon became a swampy heavy growth area. After wading into a small, well-hidden pond, I tired of this and cut across to the next streambed. It wasn’t any better. We cut across again. Katy was more delicate with the branches in her way and started to fall a little behind.
After a while we came out in a clear area facing the cliff on the opposite side of the streams. Water ran out of a hollow setback in the cliff. We climbed up the ever-steeper slope and came to a pond at the base of a waterfall. It looked like we could climb to the top of the falls without equipment, I asked Katy if she wanted to try it and, on her assent, went over some rules about kicking rocks down on people or slapping them with limbs in such a precarious place. We edged up the crack, grabbing plants and promoting erosion, finally reaching the pool feeding the waterfall.
After a rest, we had even more trouble getting down. Nearby was another elevation on which stood where the ruins of a cabin. We explored the foundation, the junk, and the old fireplace and wondered what the story behind such a structure might be. We then walked and climbed back down to the streambed and followed it back up under the road bridge. This area was more closely fenced, probably because it was nearer the dam. We could not see the dam upstream, but the terraces on both sides of the streamlets were more pronounced and some were paved as if they could be used for vehicle traffic. Near the east end of the bridge we climbed a steep outcropping of rock to get back up to road level, then circled around behind it to find a fenced culvert to the road with us on the wrong side of it.
Once again we were looking at the back of a sign which, on the front, said, “No Trespassing.”
We looked for a way to get past the fence without retracing our steps. It didn’t look promising. Traffic was not heavy, but cars went by often enough that it would be hard to sneak out, over or under. Finally, we swallowed our pride and just crawled under in a place where the fence had been damaged by debris.
It was only a hundred yards or so back up to the bridge on the road. We walked across on the south edge sidewalk. In the middle we stopped and timed a rock falling to the bottom. It took 9/4 of a second; that meant 81 feet. Distances could be deceiving in this dimension. Looking over the edge made us nervous.
Back at the van, we drove up the road to the dam overlook, the only publicly accessible place from which one could actually see it. This was a continuation up the road and not a return the way we had come. Further up we joined Highway 2 and stopped at a small parking area to scope out the trailhead of our next adventure, George’s Gap.
“Hiking is like Children’s Choir, I never want to go but once there, I’m proud of what I can do.” Katherine Duncan, 2000 April 22.
For once we got up fairly early for an adventure Saturday. Well, early if you consider 8 a.m. early. After Katy and I made lunches and packed day packs the whole family piled into the van and we drove clockwise around the Tujunga-La Canada loop in the Angeles National Forest, as we had done on our prior outing. This meant going west on Foothill Blvd. several miles into Tujunga, then turning right at the Jack in the Box at Oro Vista Avenue, driving a narrow road through a hilly neighborhood and then out onto the Big Tujunga Wash. The road followed the wash up into the National Forest. We stopped first at the Stoneyville Overlook and viewed the beautiful valley with a few cabins along the stream. The route then crossed the bridge where we had parked on our last outing and turned up hill to the dam overlook. We stopped to read on the kiosk about the dam and the flash floods that it was constructed to prevent.
Continuing up we joined Highway 59 from Acton at its junction and from there up further to the junction with Highway 2 near a ranger station. Driving through George’s Gap to the parking lot for Hoyt Mountain Trail, we encountered fog that reduced visibility to only a hundred feet in places. We stopped the van and got out for departure pictures. Other cars passed by on the road just a few feet away, barely visible. I worried about Viann’s remaining trip to La Canada with the other kids. She brushed this off, drove off into the fog, and we were alone at the trailhead.
The trail started immediately down into damp, wooded switchbacks. In only twenty minutes we reached a choice between Grizzly Flat Road and a path to Clear Creek Station. The latter probably led to a nearby campground then to the ranger station back up on the highway. We took the former that went west off around the ridge. Soon we descended out of the fog and, at another choice of trails, had views of the highways we had come up, even as far as the area of the dam. My sense of direction in this region was shot and the map perception revelations implied by these new views were often surprising.
After an hour we stopped to rest on a large flat rock beside the trail. A young woman in full pack and with a dog for a companion came from the other direction and asked how far to the campground. “About a mile,” I estimated, not even knowing for sure if a campground was even down there. Was she out backpacking to a campground and was already about to reach it this early? Perhaps, if she had left from town at sunup.
Back on the trail we next met two mountain bikers, one riding and one walking around the precipitous backside of Clear Creek Canyon. From there we ascended back into the fog, joining a fire road near two power line towers. This was road 2N81.
The rest of today’s trip would be on vehicle-capable gravel roads, although steep and winding. The fog varied from close-in where we could see only the next few minutes of road and little else to more open where we could begin to see the chaparral covered hillsides, above on our right and below on the left. The grayness in the air muted the spring colors into dull greens and browns.
Unlike the Gabrielino Trail across Highway 2, this trail closely paralleled the highway and had many views down to it, usually 200-300 feet below. We listened as many cars that we were unable to see passed, some of them sporting the honk and thump of highly amplified rock and roll.
After another hour of walking, we stopped to rest at a round water tank with a flat, overextended top. On a hot or sunny day, this would provide some shade. It was a bit off the road, out on a “peninsula.” As it turned out, there was a branch of the road leading to the highway and a fire gate below. The tank contents were probably just fire protection water. We sat down with our canteens.
Two mountain bikers and their dog came up. The man appeared to be in his sixties and was wearing a hearing aid. The woman could have been his daughter but acted like his wife. He struck up a conversation. This foggy weather, he said, was a “Catalina Eddy” fairly rare but something that happened a few times a year, often enough to have that special name. I supposed that you could see the “eddy” action in time sequence satellite pictures.
We continued on and entered a lengthy, winding section on the west side of the ridge. From here we could see across the valley the road on which we had driven up, another surprise to my map-sense. As we proceeded our talkative riders and their dog passed us. After about an hour, we, in turn, passed them at a west-viewing point. They were resting and snacking before continuing. We carried on and soon stopped for lunch.
I had brought along my blue-hooded jacket and had carried it most of the distance so far, but stopping in the cool, wet air out of direct sunlight, we were cold. I put it on for all of lunch and kept it on for the next hour after. From a previously unseen bed, a myriad of ants joined us for fragments of our peanut butter, jelly, juice, popcorn, and cut-up apple. Little pests. We saved our cookies for later.
Although we could still see the road a couple of miles away to the northwest, we were up against a dip in the ridge above us to the southeast. It was maybe 75 feet above. Fog poured over it continuously from the ocean (“Catalina Eddy”) side and dissipated into the wet air above us. An eddy indeed! From here the car sounds were faint. Listening carefully we could pick out at least six different types of birdcalls.
Half an hour after resuming from the half hour lunch stop, we were climbing the steepest grade yet. After a few auto-worthy switchbacks we reached a stretch where we could again see Highway 2 far below. Traffic was backed up due to some construction or obstruction in the “headed into town” direction. A VW bug was in the midst of the long line.
<Slug> “Slug Bug!”
“Dad! Where?”
I pointed down.
“Very clever….”
At length we reached the road leading from the fire station on the highway up to Mt. Lukens. Near the end of the “wilderness” part of the hike, this was a higher-class rest stop, that is, one where we would spend more than just five or ten minutes. During the last mile of the climb, we hosted Heidi, the mountain biker’s dog, in our party of two. Resting every two or three hundred yards, the man kept passing and being passed by us. His average biking speed was, therefore, our walking speed. The dog raced back and forth between us, but liked our steady pace better. She wanted to be in motion. Shortly before the top, the wife declared that she was done for the day and would wait for his return here.
We talked at the Luken's Road intersection about the Sierra Club’s 100 peaks. The guy who had written the guidebook for them had done the whole set eight times, so our friend claimed. Lukens itself was just a “party peak” something that nearly anybody with “a couple of hours” could do. I remembered our 10-hour days hiking from Tujunga to La Canada via Lukens. One person’s party was another’s nightmare. Some peaks were “remote.” I wondered how difficult they could be, ancillary transportation included. He thought our destinations were the same, Luken’s peak up the road. He and Heidi headed off to the west. Katy and I continued to rest. He passed on the way down, now wearing earphones, as we got up to finish our route down into town.
We were still in fog blowing over the ridge, this ridge topped by the Lukens Road. We could now hear the freeway and a light plane flying through the valley but could only see a few hundred yards in the gray. Like Moses on Mt. Sinai, I thought aloud.
We were nearly to town, but it was still a couple of miles of steep, winding, gravel road before we would reach the city streets. I turned the 440 MHz radio on. Some time later it popped. Katy asked about the noise. I explained at some length about frequencies in megahertz and heterodyning, modulation, intermodulation, and propagation. What we were hearing was intermodulation from various signals in the L. A. basin combining somewhere in or near my radio.
Two new mountain bikers passed us on their way up. Traffic had been light today.
After an hour and a half of descent, we arrived at Palm Crest, the elementary school where all three kids had gone through most of their early grades. We rested on one of the metal picnic benches and finished off our cookies with what was left of the water in our canteens. A little league game was in progress.
Katy made a second profound remark for the day, “High School is a lot better but they don’t have swings.”
Tired and sore, we continued down the trail between the school and the flood basin and in half an hour were slugging up the steep hill of Ahlin towards our house. Two minutes before we arrived, Viann called on the radio to see where we were. Home.
We had left the house about a quarter to noon on a sunny Saturday May 6th, but several chores stood between us and going anywhere. First we drove through Jack in the Box for lunch, then through Jiffy Lube to have the car serviced while we ate it out on their picnic table. Finally, we stopped by Sav-On near the house to pick up snacks and liquids for the day’s trip.
“Why is it ‘Root Beer’”, asked Katy.
I was speechless.
We had picked Leo Carillo State Beach from California Coastal Trails by John McKinney (Volume 1., Mexican Border to Big Sur) where it was identified as LA-7. As with our past uses of this book, the directions were thorough, if terse, and somewhat out of date, the 1983 Copyright date being 17 years past. I was going to try to reach the site the “quick” way by driving to Oxnard on freeways then backtracking on the Pacific Coast Highway barely back into Los Angeles County where the park was located.
This was easier conceived than executed. We proceeded normally down the 2 to the 134 then 101 west to Oxnard. As soon as we were in the valley beyond the mountain pass east of town, I started looking for a cutoff back to the coast highway and took the earliest exit.
Boxes of locally grown strawberries were on sale at roadside stands everywhere, $20 each. I recalled stories of wholesalers trucking their produce back out to the farm to obtain the appearance of freshness and of cutting out the middleman. Language barriers would prevent any non-serious investigations from getting very far.
My navigation approach had been a mistake. Our road dead-ended into a cemetery. We looked around, made a U-turn, backtracked, and tried another road that dead-ended into a sewage treatment plant. This wasn’t efficient. After another half hour of similar adventures, we found our way to Highway 1 and finally headed back east into Los Angeles County, parking up the beach from the official park in order to avoid the use fees. It was already late afternoon so we could only be here for a couple of hours at most.
There was a trail down through thick brush to the beach. People were flying two string kites in the wind while surfers waited out in the rocks. We walked in the direction of the campground. There was some kind of party going on, a shell was set up and a woman was singing with a band. Wailing, actually.
Turning up a small stream we went under the low highway bridge into the campground, passing sites 99 through 70. It was a fairly large campground. Behind one site we climbed the embankment up to the fire road mentioned in the book. It was more than the expected gravel road; it was a blacktopped two-lane highway with shoulders. Cars and trucks would occasionally pass at increasing speed, having just turned from the other highway. I concluded that the fire road had been improved considerably.
We proceeded half a mile north then started down a steep embankment back into the campground while half-interested campers watched.
“Steep trail there,” one of them commented as we passed.
“Yep.”
This was a group campsite occupied by some group. Many of the people were elsewhere at the moment. We tried out the facilities. They featured full flush, but pay showers and signs warning of a shortage of water.
I noticed that all the kids in the campgrounds were little like Katy's brother John (fourth grade or less). No teenagers.
Katy had been to “Shakespeareama” Friday as a school field trip. I asked about it.
“It was vignettes from various Shakespeare Plays,” she answered, “you know, like Romeo and Juliet and the one where the guy acts crazy because someone killed his father….”
“Hamlet?”
“Yeah! Hamlet!”
We saw a water tank but nothing that looked like a fire road. Back at the beach we took off our hiking boots and waded into the edge of the surf. The water was cold, as always. We walked out on the rocks a little, risking falling in and getting wetter than desired. I skipped a skipper into the surf and saved another skipper into my pocket.
“Am I getting a CD player for Christmas?”
“Maybe.”
We put our shoes back on and started up the trail. One kite pilot was working at getting his two-string kite out of the thick brush. It wasn’t clear that he would be able to even climb through the thicket to reach it. I thought of helping but the trail was already too thick for me. We left him in peace, strings reaching back to the beach.
Back in the car, we did a U-Turn and turned up the “fire road” to see where it went. Since the book was published in 1984, the road had apparently been improved as an extension of the Mulholland Highway. This was the far western end. We talked about ham radio as we passed three big satellite dishes, expensive hilltop houses made for parties, Paramount Ranch (the movie set), and other sites. It was a very winding stretch of road with a large, precipitous rock overhang in one hairpin turn. I explained about license classes: Technician, General. At Topanga Canyon road I was tired of the narrow, two-lane mountain road and it was getting late. We turned toward the freeway and home, but I made a mental note: One of these days, for an adventure, we would drive the Mulholland Highway from end to end.
On Friday, June 16, 2000, I snuck out of work early, 3 p.m., without even saying goodbye. I realized that this was bad for my professional reputation but also realized the much more serious trouble I’d be in if I delayed Viann’s carefully arranged pick up and departure plans by as much as ten minutes. (Anyway and as usual, it wasn’t like I didn’t already have 45 hours in at work that week by that time.)
Katy’s Girl Scout Troop, Mt. Wilson Vista Council Troop 90, was going rock climbing in the mountains near Big Bear! This time I was coming along.
We drove up to Big Bear and after miles of dirt roads were in Holcomb Valley at the Lithuanian Scout Property. We were warned about bees and mine shafts and told to turn the lights off and leave plastic stuff out of the fire. We all lined up to get our five pieces of climbing equipment: harness, shoes, helmet, safety tie, and gloves. An outfitter named Steve Boyd was in charge and he had several assistants or “guides.” I talked to Ralph, W0RPK on 20, 30, and 40 meter shortwave and to the group from work on 3810 KHz just before bedtime. My air mattress went flat in the night, but we slept anyway.
The grownup tents (John was with the grownups) were on the east side, the Girl Scouts were on the other side of the campfire pit and Steve was set up with his guides back in the back. Viann was in charge for the troop and had spent the whole prior week on the phone and shopping and cooking.
Saturday morning was bright. We got up at 5:45 and the adults started heating up water. The scouts came through the breakfast line and we cleaned up and packed and were on the way to the climb at 8:00 a.m.
The three and a half miles of road to the climbing site were very rough and took the line of city street vehicles half an hour to traverse. “Ground School,” where we learned the basics of the equipment and what to do took a couple of hours. Sally Boyd, Steve’s wife, taught while Steve and the other guides set up the “routes.” We then hiked around and started the various climbs in various groups according to our inclinations, and perceived abilities.
The five in our family went to the furthest route around the outcropping, one of the two “easiest” ones, and stayed there for the day. Katy went very first in the group, got stuck part way up and spent a long time being talked into going on. Steve had to shout down the crowd of helpful neophytes.
“Who is going to be in charge of this?”
All fell silent except for Steve.
Viannah belayed Katy then they swapped and Katy belayed Viannah whose climb went more smoothly. John was upset that lunchtime came before his turn but he was the first one hooked up right after lunch and had the hardest time of all the climbers. The rule is that you could choose whether or not to attempt a climb but once you are hooked in, the only way to get unhooked is to climb the route, ring the bell at the top, and return to the ground as instructed.
I studied the situation. You know, I thought, if the goal was to get up to that point on the rock, you could just walk around and up that trail over there. I guess that wasn’t the point today. I supposed that there were some places that couldn’t be reached any other way and that this particular setup was just practice. I noted the Angeles Crest Trail nearby and dreamed of hiking through here that way. Hiking was my sport.
John was stuck for a long time with Viannah on the belay, unable to go up and not permitted to come down until he’d rung that bell. Well, there had been one climber that was worse, a five year old that Steve had to go and get and help up, but John still required a lot of verbal help of his own and had a tough time trusting the shoes, and not his knees, the natural way to go on a more level surface.
Toward the end of the climbing day, after they had started asking “anybody else?” I nervously took my turn. I had never climbed before in a way that required equipment. The rock face was steep and smooth. The special shoes with their grip rubber held fast in situations that seemed impossible. The tiniest knob or crack might hold. Or might not…. Having watched all the other climbers, I had the intellectual advantage that I had heard Steve complain many times that we weren’t trained right about coming down. “Squat, lean back, the straighten.” I was the first to actually do that, though it went against every instinct. Viann belayed me. I yelled “Tension!” frightened, many times throughout the climb. My shoes, at least two sizes too small, were way too tight. They said make them tight. I had made them tight.
Viann took her turn last, the only belay that I would do. She was very brave about it. Laura Wulke (one of the Scouts) burst into tears when it got hard and everybody on the ropes and on the ground cried for five minutes.
Late in the day the climbs were broken down and we went off to another site in the same outcropping to do free repelling from a twenty or twenty five foot overhang. Viann went early in the group so as to be able to leave for the campsite and start dinner cooking. Viannah went soon after and, as soon as Viann brought my helmet back (which we had been sharing) I climbed up to the starting point and waited nearly an hour for my turn. Some of the guides’ kids were up there scaring everybody with their tales of death and injury. The Girl Scouts cowered at the images. If someone showed who Steve knew and who Steve knew was more experienced (people he’d brought up, guide’s children mostly, none of us) he would let them go on ahead with less supervision.
Sue Elftman, Jim Yeager and Brian Wilcox (all parents) took their turns. I was the last grownup down after all the Girl Scouts except Laura Wulke. Guide Laurie stayed up to talk her through it.
Steve was good, competent, and safe. I was amazed that the braking technique actually worked and at how hot the figure eight tool holding the rope got. It was over in only a few seconds, too quickly. This whole operation had been much more deterministic and disciplined than I was used to, more suited to military operations.
When everything was cleaned up and ready to go, Viannah and Katy and I rode back with the Male’s in their Suburban. When we got there Jim Yeager and Belinda Wulke and the kids with them had not yet arrived back at camp though they had left the rocks an hour before we had. Cindy Wilcox and I went out and, finding some of our direction signs turned the wrong way switched them along the road back like they were supposed to be. Then we drove up and down looking for the lost party, finding nothing. Similarly distressing, at least to me, my 2 meter radio broke and Viann couldn’t hear me calling from even a mile away. This only added to the feeling of crises.
Back at camp we consulted with Steve who told us not to increase the number of lost parties by going out looking for them not knowing our way around the area ourselves. This seemed reasonable advice and we started the evening meal. Half an hour later the lost party finally drove up, to everyone’s relief, particularly their own. They had in fact been led astray by our arrow signs that some other group had pointed differently for their own purposes and they had in fact been saved by the rearrangement of them that Cindy and I had done.
We turned in our climbing equipment, had a campfire consisting mostly of yarns by Steve and we all turned in, exhausted. My air mattress was still flat. This had been more fun than the church campout though that too had been enjoyable in its own way at times. Being with these other parents of Girl Scouts was more relaxing than taking the baggage and activity of church on a camping trip.
Sunday morning we were up early again and had Safety Training at 9:00 a.m. The sole point of the sermon amounted to “Don’t try this rock climbing stuff at home” with more yarns of disaster to support the assertion. Everybody broke camp and cleaned up. Morley Male mopped the kitchen and Men’s Room. Our family was the last out at 11:00 a.m. followed by the Boyd party who locked up the property.
Taking the tourist route down into Big Bear, we visited some of the old gold dig sites. After a weekend camping, everybody wanted pizza back in town. No chain fast food was to be found in Big Bear but there was a locally run Pizza Kitchen.” After lunch we started down the northeast slopes of the ridge, a 16% grade in places! We stopped to look over more old mines and to enjoy the panoramic views of the desert. John threw up in the narrow pass approaching Hesperia. We stopped and toweled everything down.
The route home passed through Apple Valley and Wrightwood along Highway 2 to La Canada. Viann had a terrible headache, having forgotten her blood pressure medicine on the trip, and tried to sleep mostly without success. The drive, though circuitous and slow seeming at times, took about the same time as the freeway would have, particularly with end-of-weekend return traffic.
Back home around five and unloaded by six, we all took our first showers since the prior Thursday. Over leftovers we discussed our weekend experiences, reliving the excitement. Katy and John didn’t want to say much but everybody encouraged and congratulated them on their success.
All spent the next days in post-adrenalin depression.
On June 20 at 7:55 p.m., I drew up a calendar for the remainder.
The kayaking trips were paid, scheduled, catered affairs. The visit to Catalina was for Family Camp at Campus by the Sea. The trip to Santa Rosa was the Big Event.
6/24 Aquatic Center
7/1-4 Mt. Wilson (4 day weekend)
7/8 Mandatory Girl Scouts
7/15 Test Campout, Oakwilde
7/22 Contingency (row around Lake Casitas)
7/29 Maiden Voyage kayaking
8/5 Kayak Santa Cruz E.
8/6 go to Catalina
8/12 return from Catalina
8/19 Santa Rosa
“Planning is everything but the plan itself is
nothing.” -- Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower.