jtree trip report
March 22nd, 2004 stevel
The TSA security official’s eyebrows raised as he took out my Communist-red Chinese lighter from my backpack which had just gotten yanked unceremoniously from the X-ray machine. They went even higher when we flipped it open and it started playing the Chinese national anthem. Our Joshua Trip weekend was off to a great start… 
20 minutes later, after being told my lighter was a jet/torch lighter that was hot enough to melt metal, I found myself downstairs mailing the lighter (and Dan’s big friggin’ leatherman which he had left in his carry on accidentally) back home so we could get our trip on its way.
We predicted a 9:40pm arrival in LAX, back to Wendy’s by 10pm, and on the road by 10:20pm so we could get to Joshua Tree by around 12:30am. We didn’t leave Wendy’s until 11pm, but we figured it wasn’t a big deal… hahaha, how wrong we were.
See…LA, in all its shitty magnificance, has traffic at all fucking hours of the day. We hit a small patch of traffic right after getting onto the 10 when there was an accident, but the worst was when they closed 3 lanes of the 10 outside Cabazon. We didn’t get to JTree until 2:45am. And then we got to cruise around the Hidden Valley and Ryan campgrounds looking for a campsite. We didn’t get a campsite until 3am when we managed to get the very last one in Jumbo Rock. We pitched our tents in exhaustion and finally crashed at 3:30am.
We woke up at 8am the next day to the hot hot sun streaming into our tents making my 0 degree sleeping bag a tad warm. We went out to climb Loose Lady, a 120 foot 5.9+/5.10a face climb at the “House Buttress” in the Real Hidden Valley area. I led it, and had a great time… it was a really fun face with a lot of small edges and lots of smearing. Ah….climbing shoe rubber is a good thing.
Later that afternoon, after a lunch of Cranberry-Apple-Cherry Clif bars, we headed over to the Lost Horse Wall to climb The Swift, an “easy” multi-pitch 5.7 trad. This was going to be our first fully traditional lead, so Dan and I were psyched about it. We scrambled up to the base and left our packs at the base of the climb, and started up. Dan led the first pitch, an awkward traverse following an undercling of an arc. It was a bitch to protect, and made for a ton of rope drag. Dan setup an anchor and brought me up to lead pitch 2.
The second pitch was great…it was a bit tough getting over the initial hump into the crack, but then I was able to comfortably run out a lot of rope setting pro when I thought I needed, and running it out when I didn’t. This was a great pitch, a lot of fun to lead, and just some really fun relaxing 5.6/5.7 climbing. I set an anchor when I got to an obvious place, and, can I just humbly say, it was one of the best fucking anchors ever. Multi-directional with two nuts, a cam, and a hex. Fucking nuclear-BOMB proof, dare I say.
Dan started up the third pitch which started off continuing the easy 5.6/5.7 scrambling until he got to a split. At first he started up the left side of the split, which seems to be about a 5.10a difficulty. He set a piece of pro there before giving up and heading back right. He then attempted to tackle the right crack setting a piece of pro before giving up on that one due to the rope drag. The rope drag at this point was insane…I could see Dan straining to pull the rope through … I swear it looked like he was going to cut his body in half. Anyway, at this point he shouted down that he was going to go back and unclip the left pro. He worked his way back left, and it was all I could do to stop from laughing at the ridiculous rope positioning. Dan had basically drawn a trapezoid with the rope…he unclipped the left piece and got back to the right, before building an anchor and bringing me up. At this point, we were off-route…apparently we were supposed to go out and right and climb up the face, instead we stared dumbfounded at the inner corner crack scratching our heads and making intelligent sounds like “huh.” and “what the fuck.”
Anyway, by now the sun was setting and we started to get serious. It’s all fun and games till you turn around and see the valley getting dark. At this point, thoughts start running through your head mainly consisting of “we are so fucked.” Anyway, we looked at the climb, looked at the sun, looked at the valley, and decided we were going to unceremoniously aid-climb the crack. I plugged in a shitload of cams, sewing that crack up nice and tight, and then basically aid-walked my way up it. I flew up the remainder of the pitch running out some serious rope (would have made for a nice 30-40 foot fall I bet), before getting up to the top, setting a quick anchor and bringing Dan up to me. By the time Dan got up to me, the sun had completely set, and we were working by the ambient light of dusk. We cleaned up our gear, and started the “walk-off”.
Can I just say, whoever wrote the guidebook has a COMPLETELY FUCKING DIFFERENT interpretation of “walk-off” than I do. I envision a walk-off as a nice literal WALK OFF the climb. Maybe with a little scrambling involved, and hey, a Jamba Juice along the way wouldn’t be half bad either. Instead, Dan and I found ourselves downclimbing, scrambling, and sliding on our asses trying to get down before it got pitch black. Can I also mention at this point that having a cam shoved up your asshole when you’re trying to slide down a rock on your butt is most definitely not a good feeling? Oh yeah, by the way, I also had to wear my prescription sunglasses the entire time, cause I didn’t bring my regular glasses. Dan was basically leading me through most of the scrambling because I had trouble with little things like “depth perception” and “shadows”. 
Oh, and to top it off…guess which two dumbfuck climbers didn’t bring a light with them. One guess, and if it ain’t Dan & Steve, then quit reading this now, pick up a gun, save the human gene pool, and blow your brains out.
Maybe an hour and a half later, we found ourselves down at the “trail” and by trail, we mean more fucking knee-scraping, ankle-twisting, loose, shaky rocks and boulders we had to scramble over. We half-assed our way back to the shadow of a pine tree where we had left our stuff. I waited with our gear while Dan went up to try and retrieve our packs. I lay there leaning against a rock staring at the blinking lights of planes flying overhead, and the bright lights of the stars in the sky. Deep thoughts ran through my mind like “man, i’m so thirsty right now… i could go for a gatorade. and a double-double. a big fucking double-double, animal style…. awww yeah…. i wonder what i have back at camp? oh yeah, instant ramen. damn.”
I heard Dan grab our packs cursing and yelling something about “when I get back, I’m gonna buy a shitload of those small LED lights and keep one in every pack I own.” I thought to myself “damn…that’s a good idea…I should do that too.” Then I realised, shit…I did that before…I bought 20 LED lights and literally put one in each backpack….which means, there’s one in my pack that Dan just retrieved. I yelled out to him that there should be one in there, and then a few moments later I see the glorious light of a single white LED cutting through the darkness. I tell you this, there is no greater brighter, more hope-bringing light in the world than a single white LED when you’re stuck in the dark. I don’t care how bright the stars is, they didn’t have jack over my beautiful white LED.
He made his way back to my position and we reorganised our packs to walk out with our brand new light, and the confidence and hope that it brought. I turned around to Dan as I was packing, and I saw him fumble something, and then I saw the light tumbling out of his hands as he dropped it into the rock field below us. The world grew silent and all I heard was the metallic tinkle of the keychain as it fell to the ground, and the light turned off. I stood their stunned, and turned to Dan and asked a pleading question “the light didn’t just turn off did it?”. The silence screamed the affirmation that Dan didn’t have to say. He dove to the ground and fumbled around until I heard another familiar tinkle as Dan grasped it before it fell into a crevasse. My reaction? “Dude. I’ve got light duty now. Gimme that.” 
With the light in hand, I started to lead out with Dan behind me. The rest of the hike out was over the “trail” of broken boulders and rock fields still. One funny moment? I was walking and Dan said behind me “You know, I can actually see fairly okay in the dark.” A split second later, I hear a big “oof” and a slam as I turn around and see Dan trip and slam his knee into a rock. That was about the only moment of brevity until we finally found the main road and walked back to the car. As Dan summed it up perfectly “I have never in my life been so happy to see a Camry before.” Dan and I hugged the car, as we loaded it back up and headed into town in search of Bactine/Neosporin, and wet wipes.
All this, and that was only within the first 24 hours of our trip.
We ran our errands in town, and headed back to camp looking forward to a nice meal of instant ramen. We got back to our campsite to find two guys who had fucking squatted our campsite. wtf?? We confronted them, and they said they thought the campsite was empty. Oh, my mistake, I thought by our pitching TWO tents, we had kind of claimed it. Silly me…. they gave some crap about saying how there was nothing on the picnic table, so they took the campsite. What followed was about 2 minutes of awkward silence as we (Dan and I) stared down the two squatters across from the campfire they had built in OUR FUCKING firepit. Then, realisation struck me, as I said “well…we got here last night, and we paid our campsite fees, so I really think this is our campsite”. The moment the two squatters heard me say campsite fees, their faces turned, and Dan and I knew we had won. Their reaction was “Campsite fees?”, and that just solidified the win. Beeeyotches, the campsite was ours. As they started to take down their tent and relinquish the campsite to us, Dan and I walked back to our tents, and I muttered to Dan “hey, can you run over to the campsite fee stand and pay our campsite fee?” Yes, I made a bluff, but it was a bluff that won, and I got our campsite…. man, the poker champion of the world couldn’t have made a better bluff…
Dan went and paid the fee, and got back, and we setup our camp chairs, tossed a couple logs on the fire, and ate our cup of noodles. We sat back, and spent the night smoking pot, and having witty conversation about things like how few people realise that the brand is actually called “Cup Noodles” not “Cup A Noodles” or “Cup Of Noodles” or whatever. Truly, an intellectual conversation.
Wendy, Lisa, and Chris pulled up at 1am, and we passed out to start the weekend proper. We woke up the next day where I made blueberry pancakes, and we scouted through our guidebooks to find a place to climb. We decided to head over to the Atlantis Wall in the Lost Horse area again where we hoped to get on some easy 5.5-5.7 climbs since Wendy & Chris had never climbed before. We got there and it was seriously PACKED. We managed to find a 5.6 that was in the shade and unclaimed…the only problem was it was next to a big friggin group of loud annoying climbers. Jesus christ, do people have to be so fucking loud? I mean, we’re there to enjoy the outdoors… the peace and quiet, NOT some 70 year old guy espousing the wonders of doing a hip belay (”I’ve never dropped anybody before!”… okay grandpa, maybe you haven’t, but someday you will, and that day will snap your fucking spine in half because you didn’t want to spend $30 on a stupid harness).
Anyway, we played on Solar Technology, a 5.6 crackish-ridge climb for a few hours until we had all done it (with the exception of Wendy who was having fun just watching and alternately napping in the sun… I swear…somewhere in her is a cat just screaming to get out). We left after we were done with the climb and headed over to AFPA rock to try a 5.7 face climb I’d done a few times before. I scrambled up the backside, and proceeded to setup a top-rope. For the life of me, I couldn’t toss the rope down to Dan. After 5 or 6 aborted attempts, I was getting pissed off, hauled up the rope, tossed all the cams I had in the rope bag, and tied the rope bag to the rope and threw it off. Man…that thing flew. I could see the dust cloud come up as it hit the ground. We setup the climb, and I top-belayed Lisa up, and then Chris attempted it. The sun was setting, so he didn’t get to finish it, but Dan got up afterwards, lowered me down and then he took the climb down and walked off the backside. We met up and headed into town to grab some ice & milk. We got back to our campsite and head an AWESOME dinner of korean bbq (kalbi, and bulgogi), with all the requisite kimchi, seaweed, and bean sprouts. For dessert? Bananas and strawberries dipped in chocolate fondue. OH yeah….we were freaking roughing it, I tell ya.
We sat around with Dan, Chris, and Lisa smoking cigars, and Wendy and I smoking our bud, until we grew sleepy and retired for the night.
We woke up the next morning with determination in our eyes. We knew Atlantis would be packed again, so we headed out there and got out there by 8:20am. Only one group had beaten us there. We staked our claim on the 5.6/5.5 routes we wanted to climb, and then setup our stoves and cooked our breakfast right at the base of the climbs. Dan led up the trad 5.5 crack while I belayed. Chris had blueberry pancake duty, following it up with some eggs. Wendy took up her customary napping position. I went up and took some photos of Lisa & Chris climbing before teaching Chris how to rappel down. All in all, we had a great fun time. Wendy woke up to make me a killer ham and egg sandwich, and that was pretty much it for the day. We took down the climbs, and headed back to break down camp and head home.
All in all, Dan and I got to climbing some really fun routes. We did a tough 5.9+/5.10a, led our first truly pure trad route, got lost, got scared, and then led a bunch of easier 5.5-5.7 trad routes for the rest of the group. Good food, good company, and good climbing….a weekend doesn’t get much better than that. (oh wait, yeah it does…. good flashlights help too)
[tags: Climbing]
2 Comments Add your own
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1.
-=JeremyO=- | March 24th, 2004 at 05:19
An excellent read.
I am heading out right now to buy some LEDs.
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2.
Steve Chu | April 5th, 2004 at 10:32
Jesus Tiberius Christ… are u taking long weblog lessons from me?
Those LEDs are fucking life savers. Fucking fucking lifesavers. Lifefuckingsavers.
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