We were 10 minutes into the hike through Malibu Creek State Park to go rock climbing last weekend when we saw all of the emergency vehicles.  Living in Southern California, my immediate thought was that there was a fire and we had driven almost 2 hours to Malibu to be sent home.  But there was none of the telltale black smoke rising from the trees, so we went with what we were hoping was the truth – emergency response training.

We continued along the tree-lined trail and passed two emergency response guys saying to another hiker, “we can’t get in there, but no problem, we have a helicopter.”  My first thought was, crap, someone is really hurt.

At this point in our hike, we had arrived at the Rock Pool.  They call it a pool, but I would call it a small lake.  It’s deep enough that there is a rope swing on one end.  The only way across is by a boat of some sort (which we obviously did not have) or by traversing a boulder that goes around the edge of the rock.  Mind you, the traverse itself is not too difficult, but the concern about falling into the water made me a little nervous.  But, it’s the only way, so we got on and starting moving along.

I took a deep breath and told myself to relax as I found the hand holds to be quite large (known as jugs in the climbing world), and I had my rubber-lined hiking shoes on so my feet were sticking, too.  Maybe it wasn’t that bad after all.

Then the helicopter came.

Helicopters are really loud.  And they kick up A LOT of wind, even when they are quite far above you.  Not a great combo when you’re (now) holding on to a rock for dear life while there are hurricane force winds, leaf and dirt particles flying at you, and “pool” water spraying at you.  The helicopter went around for another lap so I hauled it to get to the other side.

Turns out the person in question was on a cliff just up the hill from us, so whenever the helicopter came around, we had to hide behind a rock, or just duck and cover (like I did when I was trying to cross the creek by rock hopping and almost got blown over).  At one point we looked up and the helicopter came into view from the side of a cliff action-movie style, which was pretty exciting, except we couldn’t look for long with the debris flying all over the place.

Eric snapped a pic with his phone

We continued scrambling to get to the routes and out of the helicopter zone.  After awhile the helicopter noise subsided and it was finally peaceful.  Until some other climbers came with a stereo…

*We later found out that a climber had decked (fell and hit the ground), breaking her ankle and possibly hurting her back.*

The rest of the weekend was just as sweet. Eric and I left for Lake Tahoe Friday afternoon, picking up Jeff in Mammoth Lakes. We continued on to the Best Tahoe West Inn, which was okay. But I can’t complain, it was free

Saturday (ERIC’S BIRTHDAY)…After a pit stop to skip some rocks and take some special “geology” pictures,

we went up to Donner Summit and Eric did his first boulder problem in 2 months…
And holy crap I climbed some slab – must’ve been the Team Green influence.

Sunday… could only climb until 1, and it got f-ing hot.

Jeff on Asteroid until he decided he couldn’t climb on the face of the sun anymore.

Photo Credits- Abbie Mood & Eric Lang

Photo Credits: Abbie Mood