Sierra Trip Reports

Dates: Wednesday, November 26 – Sunday, November 30, 2014

Location: Joshua Tree National Park

Photos: As noted

Synopsis: Over Thanksgiving week, Sarah and I headed down to Joshua Tree National Park with Jon, Alex, Andrew and Judit. Joshua Tree is located in Southeastern California and encompasses the intersections of the Mojave and Colorado deserts. The park is nearly 800,000 acres large (roughly the side of Rhode Island) and is well known as a climbing haven. You could literally spend a year in Joshua Tree and likely not climb all of the routes.

The benefit of car-camping in Joshua Tree is the abundance of gear you can take. The down-side of car-camping in Joshua Tree is also the abundance of gear you can take! The moniker of “well, we don’t have to carry it” tends to back-fire once you load up the car and realize how much you have. Jon and I were packing my car the Tuesday night before and ended up having to jerry-rig a double roof box set-up that was too wide for my base bars. Fortunately, extra climbing rope solved the trick! Photo: Nick

After unpacking camp on Wednesday, we headed over to Intersection Rock to try and squeeze in a route before the sunset. What is great about Joshua Tree is the routes are predominately single-pitched with essentially no approaches – in some cases you could literally belay from the car! On several days we went to zones that we could set up multiple ropes on ajoining routes so we could all top-rope a number of routes quickly. It was great to be able to sit and belay and hang out with Sarah.

We picked a nice route up Intersection Rock that had a rap off for Jon, Judit and me. Sarah got some great pictures! Picking our line. Photo: Sarah

Nick leading up. Photo: Sarah

Jon and Judit working up the cool crack system. The gigantic boulders of Joshua Tree are pretty surreal. Photo: Sarah

I had set a belay just below a traversing roof and then after Jon and Judit got up I took a cut and working around the roof. After flailing a bit, Jon took over and topped us out and Judit and I followed up without problem. Nothing like a butt kicking on a section of the 1st route of the week! We got to the top and rapped down just as the sun was setting. Photos: Sarah

That night we had a great campfire and linked up with Alex and Andrew to see how their day was. Alex, Andrew and I stayed up to get some shots of the Milky Way out in the dessert (with the iconic Joshua Tree in the foreground). Photo: Nick

On Thanksgiving Day, Sarah and I planned on just exploring the Park as this was our first trip to Joshua Tree. Jon, Judit, Alex and Andrew headed to go hike out to some climbs so we didn’t link up with them until the end of the day.

After a nice trail-run in the morning, Sarah and I first hiked up to the summit of Mt. Ryan, which provided awesome 360 decree views of the entire park. Along the hike up, you encounter some awesome desert vegetation, including the Joshua Tree Jumping-Cholla Cactus (the second “cacti” below). Photos: Nick

Up at the summit, there were pretty incredible views of the Park. Here is a multi-shot panorama I stitched together looking West towards Hidden Valley and beyond. Click for the full sized version. Photo: Nick

Some other shots from the summit. Photos: Nick

Meanwhile, Jon, Judit, Alex and Andrew were out approaching a climb that admittedly took them quite a bit of Type II Fun to get to. It was pretty funny in retrospect that 95% of the climbs in Joshua Tree are super accessible, but Alex convinced them all to go get on a couple of climbs that took several hours to get to. Over the campfire that night, the stories of the hike out off the climb in the dark were pretty funny. Nevertheless, from the pictures it looked pretty awesome. Jon leading up one climb. Photo: Judit

Alex following up another. Photo: Jon

After coming down off Mt. Ryan at lunch, Sarah and I drove down to the Eastern side of the Park towards the lower-elevation Colorado Desert. It was pretty cool as there is not much climbing down that way, but the views are wide-open, Big Country vastness. Reminded me of the old Western flicks. We stopped and climbed up a bluff for some shots. Click the panorama for the full-sized version. Photos: Nick

The Cholla Cactus grove is down that way as well. It was crazy, and unlike anything either of us had seen. You definitely need to watch out for the “Jumping Chollas” – if you were travelling cross-country to a climb and hit one the pods jump out and stick to everything. They are essentially hundreds of little toothpicks. Photos: Nick

On the way back, Sarah and I stopped to check out the Jumbo Rocks area, and generally scramble around. Photos: Sarah, Nick

That night we had a big pot-luck Thanksgiving feast around an awesome fire. Photos: Nick

The next morning we all headed over to the Real Hidden Valley for a great day of cragging. We went to a zone where it was easy for Jon to lead up one route and I scrambled around and set up a number of TRs on other routes. We ultimately had four ropes going on a variety of classic 5.10 crack climbs. It was great as the belay stations were in the shade and we were all able to hang out when not climbing. There was also a great formation right next to it that I could climb up on to get some shots with my big 400mm lens.

Jon leading up and belaying up Judit. Photos: Sarah

A nice belay zone for Nick while Andrew works up a great, classic crack climb. Photos: Sarah

Alex working up another route. Photo: Sarah

I scrambled across to another formation with a couple of lenses to get some shots from far away. Joshua Tree is pretty incredible. Photos: Nick

Back to the climbing up another fun route. Photos: Sarah

I once again headed back up to a further away formation with the big lens to get some more shots. Photos: Nick

Jon got a great shot of the full zone we had the ropes set up. Photo: Jon

After milking the area for all it was worth, Alex and I climbed up to clean all the anchors. It was a great time and the sun was going down. Sarah got some awesome shots of us setting up the rap and coming down. The first one is so sweet with the rope toss. Photos: Sarah

A great sunset capped the day off. Photo: Jon

Over the campfire and some beers and wine that night, we all decided the easy access and abundance of quality climbing in the Real Hidden Valley was tough to beat, so we would head back there the next day. Although Sarah doesn’t climb, it was also an awesome area for her as we were all hanging out at the base of climbs all day out of the sun and just relaxing and chilling out.

We headed over to an amazing fin feature that Jon lead up to set up a couple of ropes. It was a great climb and a great lead by Jon. Photo: Judit

Sarah got some great shots from another angle. Photos: Sarah

What an awesome feature! Photo: Nick

Sarah chilling out, watching the ropes get set up. Photo: Nick

I headed across the valley to grab some shots of them working up from far away. Photos: Nick

All in all, we were having a great time climbing and hanging out. Photo: Jon

We all headed over to another wall that had some longer routes, with a really good 5.10-ish climb. Photo: Sarah

After sessioning that route, Jon wanted to go climb a route by headlamp as the sun went down. I was done for the day, and Sarah wanted to get into the wine and beer, so we chilled out drinking while Jon, Judit, Alex and Andrew climbed through the sunset into the dark. It was really awesome. Photos: Jon, Nick

Alex looking up at Jon in the dark. Photo: Judit

All in all, it was an awesome Thanksgiving with Sarah and we all really had a good time. Good climbing with good friends.