Relaxing in JT

Luke and I recently realized that before this last weekend, we had traveled at least 5 hours away for 4 weekends in a row. Needless to say, this has been pretty exhausting and we agreed that a relaxing weekend (including some rock climbing) was in order.

So we headed out to JT on Friday night. We got in a little late, around 10pm, to find that Hidden Valley and Ryan campgrounds were already full. So we kept driving on to Jumbo Rocks and cruised around until we spotted an unoccupied campsite wedged between several other filled campsites. It wasn't exactly ideal. We were near 2 groups of people who found it necessary to have loud conversations while most likely high and drunk, so it was hard to sleep, even though we were both exhausted. Then, in the morning, our other neighbors watched TV at 7am. TV while camping?!?! We really didn't get that.

But we got up anyways and headed out to go climbing. I'd forgotten the guidebook in Pasadena, so we went to Intersection Rock to find someone with a guidebook to get directions to Perpetual Motion, which was our first goal of the day. We headed out Geology Tour Road and hiked off in search of the route with a little map scratched onto a scrap of paper. But we went the wrong way, apparently.

After wandering around for a while, we decided we should just go to our real objective of the day, Equinox (which, in case you didn't read my last post about it, is the the most beautiful crack in Joshua Tree). So we headed over there. It was just as beautiful and striking as I remembered it.


We climbed it on toprope since we're still not awesome enough to try to lead it. We both worked on figuring out the right sequences and jams and I think we both made some good progress. We both managed to climb from the ground up into the steep section without falling!

On Sunday, after a late start, we went to climb Coarse and Buggy (5.11b), although we had to wait for a party that was toproping it to finish. Luke onsighted the route and we both followed it. I thought the steep exit moves were the hardest part, mostly because they were very awkward. Also, the climb and belay had gone into the shade by the time we got to start, so the belay was really cold!


Since the weekend was about relaxing, we decided to head home for dinner and a movie. We ended up watching a movie called Brick, which was very good.

Next weekend we'll be headed to Mt. Woodson to do some more jamming before our big Indian Creek trip.