Joshua Tree

How often do things go exactly as planned? How well do you roll with the punches?

For me, things generally go pretty close to the way that I expect. I’m typically in charge of my own plans, I make sure I can take care of myself and have everything I need. I’m not much of a worry wart(thank God) but I do tend to get too excited for things, which can lead to disappointment. I’ve taught myself to almost completely block something from my mind if I’m really looking forward to it so I don’t think about it at all. If I don’t think about it I don’t have time to create expectations. This way everything is new and exciting and when you hit that fork in the road its a lot easier to keep your shit together.

My first trip to Joshua Tree was supposed to be my first trip to Joes Valley, that was hiccup number two actually. A week before departure the weather changed and it was supposed to snow 4/7 days during the trip. POOP. The entire group I was meeting down there decided to bail. I had already requested time off and bought plane tickets. I am going on a climbing trip no matter what damnit. Back to hiccup number one, my climbing partner couldn’t get time off work for this trip. That means this would be my first time that I’ve gone out of state to climb and not had him with me, and I was extra bummed about that.

My plan now was to fly into Vegas, and have my friend Brandon pick me up. I met him climbing in Red Rocks when I was there for the first time last October, we clicked right off the bat and managed to stay in touch the last 6 months. He’s a lot closer to the full-time dirtbag, being self-employed and fully stoked. He was planning on meeting me and my crew up in Joes and climbing with us, but when everyone bailed and I was left without a partner at all he simply said “I’m down for anywhere, I’ve got you” and it was back on. I got really lucky that this person I’d only met twice was willing to take a chance on me and hit the road for a week.

I could be a murderer.

My plane landed around 08:30 Saturday, my sister and pseudo-brother (who happened to already be there)picked me up. We were to get breakfast and then send me off on my adventure. We ate breakfast, waffles. I got notice a little before noon that Brandon’s truck that we were supposed to be driving and sleeping in this week was broken down on the side of the highway, and needed to be towed. GAH!

I just kept telling myself, Brandon’s been a mechanic for 10+ years, he’s got this. Inside, I was freaking out. I could not come all this way to sit around for a week.. “Worst case” he says, “we can take the AMG” Oh, Geez.

24 hours later and we are in Joshua Tree, California dirtbagging in style. I have to admit, although it’s not ideal the Benz was sweet. Brandon and I are both relatively compact humans, and the back seats folded down flat and accessed the trunk nicely. We managed to sleep on the back seats of the car legs in the trunk surprisingly comfortably. When the stoke is super high, it’s really easy to go without. It’s also extremely refreshing having very little to concern yourself with. Everything I care about for this entire week is inside that car, or just beyond it. I love that feeling.

Day one was a serious learning curve! Any time you travel there is an adjustment period, I feel like it takes even a little bit longer to get adjusted to new rock in new environments. Joshua Tree has been a part of the climbing scene for a very long time. Its proximity to Yosemite Valley while remaining relatively snow-less year-round has attracted dirtbags for generations. The rock there is quartz-monzonite which while absolutely beautiful is COARSE. Holy cow guys, its rough. Brandon and I very quickly realized that we are not in Kansas anymore and would definitely need to man up in order to send this week. My home turf is granite, his is sandstone. We were both feeling slightly defeated before we even begin, but again the stoke is high so not to worry.

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We did manage to find a couple of boulders to humble us almost immediately. One of the things we learned fairly quickly is; Joshua Tree has a plethora of moderate boulder problems, anything V4 and above is real shit, and if its got stars in the guidebook you can bump it up a grade right there. It was confusing at first inside the park trying to orient ourselves, it almost seems like the guidebook was written from memory by someone who may, or may not want you to find what you’re looking for. After getting a taste of the rock and an idea of what we might be in for this week we decided to find camp and check the book and find an area to explore the next day.

Indian Cove! What a treat. I don’t believe this is technically inside the park but it’s in the area if not touching. We chose this spot because it seemed to be easy to get to, had quite a few moderate boulders and a bunch of campsites nestled in with the rocks. All true. The campground is woven throughout the boulders however, it is seemingly VERY popular and fills up quick, you would need to book ahead unless you’re extremely lucky. It was hard to say if there were many climbersthere , boulderers were scarce in this area (fine by me!). We fumbled around the campground for a bit until we found some rocks that had chalk on them and then climbed them. While getting our butts kicked in the group campsites we found a rock near by in the guidebook called Morbid Mound (that sounds like me). It had a 30ft 5.1 listed…? What the heck is a 5.1? We had to check it out. The route is called Brimstone Stairway, Mountainproject has it listed as 5.1R Trad. Not sure that I saw many places to place gear, although I wasn’t looking for any either. This thing was definitely taller than 30ft. Brandon is highball master, he loves that shit. He also often climbs alone, and practices down climbing. All good things for climbing higher than you would like to fall when you’re without a rope. I have a good head for doing scary things, I enjoy being scared. Being able to manage that fear is something I take pride in, it’s not easy at all. That factor about climbing is one of the things that draws me in, doing something that feels impossible is addicting. I just have not done any free soloing..

It took a tiny bit of convincing but I walked my ass up there! We climbed up a fault line in the rock that made as the title suggests, a stairway. It was quite literally hand-foot hand-foot the whole way, very little danger. This was still my first real free-solo and for me it was very exciting! I shouted at the top “Don’t tell my mom!” I don’t think she likes seeing me doing things like this, but I know she’s proud regardless. The fault line continued all the way up and over the mound ,obviously we had to follow it all the way back to the ground. There were some very beautiful crystals in the fault line, the rock was very obviously different than the rock surrounding it. It’s hard for me not to get distracted staring at the rocks on the ground trying to decide which ones get to come home with me.. Eventually we made it to the other side and back. We played around on the Morbid Mound for a while longer, soloing a few more routes, 5.7 being the toughest.

ADVENUTRE CLIMBING!

How much fun! It seems like for most climbers this is where it all started when we were kids. You see a big pile of rocks and tell yourself, I want to go up there. Well now that I’m a grown ass woman, I did exactly that! Brandon and I packed a backpack with snacks and water for the day, our climbing shoes, and headed for the hills. We chose one mound of rocks near where we parked the car and got to stepping. Once we reached the top of that one, on to the next one. After a few hours, and a bit of “quit being a weeny” we made it pretty stinking high!

Such an amazing feeling being up so tall. The fact that it takes hard work to get there is also appealing to me. I don’t want to find myself where everyone else is. The climbing to places like this is not technical, and not particularly strenuous but you need to be on your game. Pay attention to your surroundings and most importantly know your abilities. These places are not touched half as often as the “true trails” and that alone makes them more dangerous. You never know when your foot hold could crumble apart or if the boulder your resting on isn’t actually stable, definitely things you have to be aware of. After hours of crawling up and up it was finally time to come back down.

Day 3 Skimbles, my nemesis. For whatever reason I was feeling strong on this day. I think I had finally acclimated, and had a good amount of moving around but not a lot of hard work. I saved it for this stinkin rock. This is a V6, a bit above my known grade but there I was, sticking. My beta was not good. That knee bar(scum) is ridiculous, and the left hand pinch is barely enough for me. I started working this problem just for fun, Brandon was making decent links on it and we we’re figuring out the beta together. After what felt like hours, probably was, and 3 or 4 layers of skin later I was exhausted. I could not seem to get myself to actually set into the knee bar enough to get out of it, I wasn’t feeling super confident even though I really wanted it. Brandon and I were both ready to give up, he even changed his shoes and sat down and relaxed a bit when he saw something new in the route. He put his climbing shoes on, set up the camera and sent it. Watching his send made me the perfect combination of stoked and PISSED. Its pretty much every time I climb outside I get to watch someone send my project, but this time I was so close! It didn’t feel fair, he was done climbing! The next go, was the best go. I was so mad that I(for the first time) stuck that knee scum long enough to reach out and grab the right hand crimp, and pinch the fuck out of my left hand and ALMOST twisted out of the knee bar to reach up for the lip. It was very exciting, rage strength for sure. After that I was able to stick the knee bar almost every time although, increasingly painful. My hands were being shredded, my knee was being shredded, my ego was being shredded. I was beyond stoked though. I finally had to call it when I thought for sure that my knee would start bleeding through my pants, and 6/10 of my fingers were taped up. I still think about this problem a lot, I cant wait to go back. I wanted more than anything to nab a V6 while I was in JTree, I would have been extremely proud of that. Now I just have something to go back for(with a knee-bar pad).

Our last day was a bit of a blur. I was pretty tired, I think if my trip was any longer this would have been a rest day. We finished most of our business in Indian Cove and wanted to see some more of the actual park. We decided on the Hidden Valley Campground area, there was a really high concentration of boulders, classics, and parking. Getting oriented was again tricky. Not sure if it was actually as difficult as we made it, but we were seeing a lot of boulderers here which was refreshing. We also found pretty quickly that this area is where you find the hard hard. We finally found a V1-3 boulder that was recognizable and flopped around on that a while. There was a pack of seemingly JTree locals up the way, they were working on hard something in their approach shoes. I immediately gathered that if you’re climbing the classics in JTree you’re a badass, if youre climbing the hard hard in JTree you can levitate.

I’ll get there some day.