B² Productions | Climbing Blog

Right, sorry about that. Where was I?…

We snaked our way down through the desert back roads back into California. The stresses and strains of Nevada now far behind us we rolled into the small and understated town of Joshua Tree. Benny had been here by himself the previous year, and his tails of crazy arrangements of razor sharp rock were intriguing. We made it into town, and stopped for a while at a cafe on the main strip to grab a drink. Refreshed and relaxed, we nipped into the small climbing store next door which hired out J-Tree guide books. Armed with our temporary guide, the next mission was to find some where to stay. The ever organised Snoo was by now none too impressed by our frankly slap dash approach to accommodation booking since she’d left the first time, and to be fair, we weren’t really doing much to convince her that our current technique was really working. There are a few hotels available in J-Tree. First off, we tried the rather nice looking Best Western. Unfortunately, it was almost at full capacity, and the rooms that were left were out of our price range. None of these little inconveniences would stop us using their Wi-Fi from the car park in order to find somewhere else though, oh no. Our next stop at the Super 8 just up the road proved more successful, and the friendly Indian family running it checked us in without any worries and a smile. We dropped our stuff off, placed the three bottles of Budweiser which Benny and I had been hauling around since Hueco and which had since become our travelling companions, into the fridge and relaxed for a few minutes. It was getting quite late in the day, but we decided to get up into the park before it got dark.

Joshua Tree Landscape

We bundled ourselves back into the car and made the short but twisty drive up to the entrance of the park, bought our pass and continued in to try and find some easy problems on which to see out the day. Joshua Tree National Park is bizarre landscape, but in a really good way. It appears to be a mix of, as you might expect, Joshua Trees and random stacks of boulders strewn around. These odd formations make for a very interesting drive as we meandered slowly up through the park to our a parking lot which held, what we thought, would be an easy slabby warm up. It had been a scorcher of a day as we drove in, but as the sun began to drop and the wind picked up it got pretty damn chilly. We found ‘Intersection Boulder’ which was pretty much in the parking lot, and I have to say we were stumped. The thing was (or at least looked) blank. And tall. Benny and Snoo made a few tentative attempts at the first three or four feet of the problem, without much success while I shot some photos and tried to get warm. I decided to step up and have a crack. Since badly spraining my ankle in Fontainebleau in 2008, my slab climbing hasn’t been the strongest, but I had a go anyway. The thing was blank! It was a real mental battle to trust your feet on these nothing footholds with very little to pull on with your hands. I made some decent progress, and managed to get a little over half way up the slab which felt a whole lot taller when you were on it than when you were looking at it from the ground. My confidence was starting to improve until I hit a move which seemed to involve a very high foot rock over, again with poor handholds. I tried a few times to try and make myself trust my feet but it just wasn’t happening – after a while, the toe of my high left foot popped and I had an awkward fall, having to tap the rock to try and get out over the bulge at the base. After a couple more attempts ended the same way, we decided to move on to something else. Not far away was a nice, vertical crimp fest called ‘Dynamo Hum’ (V1). This was a nice break from the previous problem in so much that it actually had holds! Quite biggish moves between, sharp but positive crimps and flakes. I managed to nail it after a couple of attmepts and only the smallest of blood injuries on my leg. However, the descent turned out to be even scarier than than the ascent. Shuffling and sliding down the steep, slabby backside of the problem followed by an awkward jump onto the crash pad was one that I didn’t want to repeat too soon!

Benny on 'Dynamo Hum' (V1)

Snoo and Benny worked the problem for a while; Benny employing an incredibly elaborate and scary array of toe hooks and and the like, and managing to despatch it as the sun sank below the piles of boulders that littered the park and the long shadows were cast across the rocks. Before long, it was getting too dark to really try the problem safely. We wandered around to see if there was anything worth returning to the following day, before scrambling to the top of a small stack of boulders to bask in the incredible sunset on offer. As the sky went from orange to blue to black, we headed back to the car, and wound our way down through the park and back into the small main drag of Joshua Tree itself. Pizza and a few beers was in order before a well earned nights sleep, happy in the knowledge that we’d broken out of Vegas and were back on course…