Chillin' in JTree

We tend to be pretty non-stop down here in SoCal - what with my school and ultimate frisbee, Luke's work, and our constant chasing of "The Right Season" at all our local climbing areas, we're pretty much busy every single weekend.

But we did have the weekdays to "rest" (haha, school=rest, yeah right...) after our Indian Creek trip, which if nothing else did help my knuckles heal a bit and stop oozing whenever I touched something.

The agenda for this weekend was to take my sister Maddy to do some fun outside rock climbing, as she was visiting for a couple days after her junior year college tour trip with my dad. She's stuck in the gym most of the time up there in Bremerton, so visiting SoCal at this time was a perfect opportunity to return to JTree, which she'd been to a couple years ago (3?).

We were going to drive out and camp on Friday night, but when we left at 7:30, traffic going out of Pasadena still seemed a little heavy and Luke and I were worried about reliving our previous Friday night experience - small campsite wedged between very noisy neighbors. So we went back home, watched a movie, and resolved to get up early (5:30am) the next morning.

We did manage to get up, so we arrived at the Split Rocks parking lot at around 8am. We walked out to the Future Games Wall to climb Bendix Claws (5.11a), which Luke and I had both done on TR before. Everyone toproped it - Luke and I were both thinking about going for the lead, which I didn't because I wasn't quite feeling my granite mojo after a week on IC sandstone. Luke, however, did go for the lead and got the redpoint! A cool route for sure - I still want to redpoint it some day.

Then we headed out to a boulder problem we'd seen walking back from Equinox last time - Slashface (V3) - a tall, nice-looking problem with a series of horizontal crimp rails (that look like slashes) running across it. Luke sent the problem, while Maddy and I struggled with the crux - a long reach off a pretty crappy crimp.

Maddy and Luke working Slashface:


After this we went over to the Rusty Wall so I could try to onsight Wangerbanger (5.11c). Unfortunately, there were a bunch of people already over there, with the route in question occupied for several more climbers. Luke and Maddy TRed O'Kelley's Crack (5.10c) and then we decided to go work on Gunsmoke since it seemed silly to waste Maddy's singular day in JTree waiting in line for a route I could come back and do any time.

So, to Gunsmoke we went. Luke did some laps, Maddy fought with the short person crux (she's a little shorter than me, so she was trying some different beta) and I got the closest to sending I've ever been. I got through the short person crux and to the corner (before jumping off to save energy) after starting not at the beginning, then linked the short person crux through the normal crux before falling - so close to the send! But by then I was getting tired, so the send will have to wait for another day.


On Sunday, I had to go play in a frisbee tournament with my team, so Luke and Maddy went to Stoney Point with Julie to do some more bouldering. I think they had a lot of fun and I hope Maddy enjoyed the taste of SoCal climbing that we were able to give her in the short time she was here.

Maddy and Julie bouldering at Stoney Point


Next weekend will probably find us in Tahquitz climbing some more granite cracks!

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.

Happy Holidays

2007 has been an amazing year for climbing and this will most likely be my last post of the year. Moving to a new place has allowed me to climb more often and at a whole bunch of amazing areas. I look forward to 2008 and many months of exploration and climbing! I thought I would add some photos to for a bit of spice, hope you enjoy!

Lizzy is already in Seattle for Christmas and I will be flying up there tomorrow. We will be in Seattle until the 28th visiting family and friends.

Climbing has been winding down recently as the temps have been a bit colder. Our only trip in the last three weeks was to Joshua Tree this past weekend. We had some really warm weather which was nice and unexpected! We did a bit of trad, sport, bouldering and multi-pitch. The mix of everything was nice and I even hopped on Iron Resolution (photo above/right) which was really cool despite the fact that it is way too hard! We also got to climb the Headstone at sunset which was fun(photo below). I had never lead before in my down jacket and it ended up being a good decision. It probably dropped 20 degrees in the hour and a half before sunset.

We are going to try to head to Arizona for a short New Years climbing trip. I will be posting up a trip report when we get back.

Thanks to everyone that reads our blog. It has been a great experience writing these blogs!

If anyone has questions or topics there are interested in let us know via comment or email. DreamInVertical at rockclimbing.com

Cheers!

- Luke