I haven't been doing a good job
climbing lately.
School is getting in the way. As you may or may not have known, I
hit my peak and then basically unintentionally abandoned the sport in favor of a late weeknight class.
That thing didn't stop me from accepting an invitation to
Joshua Tree, as much as that would have scared the pants out of in-shape Maria if she so much had skipped a work out. I just don't expect too much and I'll have fun.
My photos from the trip are included in this post. Scott and I went as a pair and were alone for a majority of the trip so I didn't get to take as many photos of actual climbing as I would have liked. Its difficult and straight up dangerous to be a photographer while belaying, don't you know. So forgive this post if it has more ambiance than adventure climbing.
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| Awesome Bathrooms at Black Rock Campsite |
We spent the first night camping in Black Rock Campsite. We did this because our friends had reservations at Indian Cove on Saturday night only. This was my first time at Black Rock and I liked it quite a bit. Yeah, there was no climbing available at the site, but there was running water with flushing toilets. Having running water with flushing toilets is like the
Ritz Carlton of camping. The only drawback was that the campsites were so close together. I was up all night from the chatter of the nearby campers. Its was bananas.
I set up my tent by myself. I did a great job and was really proud of myself. The ground was really hard and I had a hard time putting in my stakes. I worked too hard at it and accidentally jammed my right hand too hard against the stake. It resulted in a blood blister that really interfered with the climbing level I attempted during this trip.
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| My tent |
We drove back into Indian Cove after setting up came in Black Rock.
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| The light is hitting that cactus real nice |
Our first climb of the trip and the only one before nightfall was at Pixie Rock. It was pretty exciting to be able to get on this climb. Pixie rock is such a popular climb that I normally can't get on it.
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| Scott preparing for Rappel on Pixie Rock. |
We did some scouting at apparation rock but ultimately decided against it. I was feeling a bit too lazy to do all that scrambling.
Come Nightfall we drove back in.
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| Covert Selfie |
Camping that night was rough. The campground next to us was filled with chatty teenage scouts who stayed up well past midnight. Cars drove in all night, shining their high beams and illuminating my tent. People walked through our campsite to get to the luxury bathrooms. I didn't get much sleep that night. Not to mention my 0 degree sleeping back was far too warm for this time of year. I was sweating my butt off all throughout the night.
In the morning we had oatmeal with Scotts awesome Origami camping serving wear.
I got some awesome morning sun photos of our Joshua Tree filled Campsite.
I parked my tent too close to one of the Joshua Trees and kept running into it when exiting my tent. I am lucky I have both my eyes right now.
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| Morning Selfie! |
We broke down our camp and then headed out to Indian Cove.
I wanted to hit up short wall for some intense warmup climbing early on, but it was full on filled. It was like there was a Climbing Festival going on. They had a pretty permanent looking presence with their event tents. When I saw those I knew we wouldn't be able to get on Short Wall that day.
We went to the nearby adjacent Feudal Wall and got some pretty decent lines in, all things considering.
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| Feudal Wall |
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| View from Feudal Wall |
I stopped by Nomad Ventures on the way up and actually got a bit of gear while I was up there.
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| the Gear. |
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| Scott on Feudal Wall |
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| View from the Top -- Feudal Wall |
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| View from the Top -- Feudal Wall |
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| Beautiful Feudal Wall |
We went Over to Jamies Wall after a quick lunch. We were able to do the 5.9 again successfully, but it ripped the skin off the blood blister on my right hand. It was pretty nasty.
Our goal in making this trek to Jamies Wall fruitful was to also attempt the 5.5 and 5.7 crack on the same wall, but they started about 15 feet off the ground and felt to shady to protect. I think I would have given it a more honest go if one of my fingers wasn't oozy.
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| A Corridor near the bottom of Jamies Wall. |
Short wall was crowded on the way out as well so we decided to scout out Rattle Snake Canyon. I had never been there before.
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| Parking lot at Rattlesnake Canyon. |
The Rattlesnake Canyon Scouting trip didn't yield much. We couldn't orient ourselves to anything nor found the location of even a single route. It was a bit death defying as well (in a bad way). Scott had a brush with a rattle snake. I konw we shouldn't be surprised, seeing as we were trouncing around the aptly named Rattlesnake Canyon, but staring a rattling rattlesnake right in the face is terrifying despite how not surprising it is.
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| Rattlesnake Canyon climb? I'm not sure, we weren't able to identify anything. |
The next morning waking up in Indian Cove marked the third and last day in Joshua Tree.
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| View from My Tent |
These photos show how cramped our parking space + site was.
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| What a Cramped Site! |
The really neat part about our campsite was that the fire ring was right around the rocks. At night, the fire illuminated the walls around us. It was quite lovely.
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| The back side of the camp site |
My tent flapped around at night so I weighted it down with a heavy rock. I thought I was pretty clever keeping it down with a sling like that.
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| To keep the tent from flapping. |
We tried Short wall again thereafter, but the Boyscouts were breathing down our necks and being a menace in general so we moved to the more obscure wall: Willits Wall.
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| Our Last Chance of Climbing Short wall. |
Scott nor I had been to Willit's Wall before and it turned out to be quite a gem. Its not listed in my guide book so we know this will be a great place to go in the future when Indian Cove is being extra packed.
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| The Miramonte Guide Book does not list Willits Wall. |
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| Tony on Willits Wall. |
I tried a Honey Stinger Energy Snack in the morning time just to try it out, but I didn't like it much.
This was the last climb we did this trip.
In Summary...
Despite this being a very easy climbing trip, I managed to do quite a bit of climbing. I did 3 lines at Pixie Rock, 3 lines at Feudal Wall, a line at Jamie's Rock, and a line at Willit's. That is 8 climbs in a 3 day trip. Despite that not sounding like much by gym standards, that is more than twice as many as I did on my
first ever Joshua Tree Trip in 2013.
