Brett and Austin at Quail Springs picnic area
Our Edgeworks trip to Joshua Tree was conceived in November when I posted a "Christmas at Joshua Tree", note in the “climbing partners” sections of the www.EdgeworksClimbing.com forum. Brett responded immediately from Montana, and Austin not long after that.
I'd never met either climber but arranged to meet Austin that week at the gym. As soon as we shook hands, I realized I'd been seeing him around the gym for months. Austin has a bamboo tattoo running up his entire leg. Being an old school kind of guy, and a former figure painter, I normally don’t like tattoos, but Austin’s tattoo was done by a master of the craft and I couldn't help admiring the artwork.
We soon became regular leading partners at the gym and I began to believe the trip would take off. Because Brett was in regular communication on the forum from Montana I figured that even if someone dropped out I’d have a partner, still, we needed someone with a bigger car. I sent an email to Mindy from the Tacoma Mountaineers about the trip and she forwarded it out to all the Tacoma members. I soon heard from James, a very experienced climber, who had the required 1986 Dodge Caravan, which he called: "Flipper", because, as James said, "it's a dirty gray color, and it has a tendency to flip over".
We met a few times at the gym getting to know each other and had a great time. We met Brett on the evening of the 16th, loaded up Flipper and hit the road. We did the trip down in 26 hours, though it would have been faster had Flipper not blown a radiator.
I knew it was going to be an entertaining drive down when I noticed Flippers rear lift gate door had to be supported with a broom handle. All the side doors made ominous creaking and snapping sounds when opened, and both the gas gauge and speedometer were broken. It was a classical example of the dirt-bag climbers car.
I asked James how many miles it had, and he said he didn't know exactly as the speedometer hadn't worked in several years but it had to be over 170 K. By placing Austin's GPS on the dash and waiting 5 minutes, we could sort of establish our speed, and the gas gauge low fuel light would blink on when we had 40 miles left. We overheated once in the hills approaching LA, but at a gas station in Covina huge clouds of steam enveloped the hood and I thought we were sunk.
When we opened the hood, steam and coolant was spewing out of the entire top seam of the radiator and I was thinking dark thoughts about expensive rental vans. We bought a new radiator that night but did not install it until the day before we left,17 days later...climbing another route always seemed more important. Flipper was a pretty strong little minivan, even with a bad radiator.
We started our trip with a few moderate climbs around Hidden Valley campground. We taught Austin to lead trad on the first day and he was soon leading cracks with confidence. Joshua Tree ratings are what is known as "old school" ratings. A 5.8 crack can feel like a 5.10B face climb if your crack climbing skills are rusty. The bolts on most of the routes are disturbingly far apart. I remember leading a 5.9 on Echo Rock called "Stick to What" that had normal spacing of about 8 to 12 feet on the hard section, but up where it eased off to easier (though still tricky) 5.8 friction, the bolts were 30 feet apart. I got thoroughly gripped on that one and had to hang at the bolt until I could wrap my mind around the possibility of taking a 60 foot screamer.
Brett and Austin at Quail Springs picnic area
On our second day, we headed to a lovely little rock formation called Quail Springs. There are a bunch of easy 5.5 though 5.9 routes there and Austin polished off his trad leading skills there with ease, even setting up his own belay stations equalized with a cordalette. I knew Austin would be good at leading trad as he works on cars. If you are handy with tools, and have good common sense, as in: "a round peg won't fit in a square hole", you can learn to place gear. You do need to have a healthy sense of caution because gear, especially cams, can go bad if you don't observe certain rules, such as: always use a long sling on cams, never a quick draw...unless you are desperate. Movement of the rope as you climb past a cam can cause it to walk and go bad, hence the need for a long sling. Passive gear like stoppers and hexes have no springs, and generally won't walk, though they still benefit from a shoulder length sling.
We continued to climb around the Hidden Valley campground area for the next couple weeks, slowly working out the rust in our climbing skills. The gym is great for making friends and keeping your fingers strong, and the leading there is good for the head, but climbing outside is another ball game entirely. Still, we were loving every minute of it and gradually worked our way onto some harder climbing.
Before my kids were born, my wife Sue and I used to spend every Christmas at Joshua Tree, so I had a fairly good idea where all the nice routes were. I hadn't been to Joshua Tree in 18 years, and all my old standards seemed harder than I remembered. I tried to climb one of my old favorites called Loose Lady, which had been upgraded from a 5.9 to a 5.10a. I couldn't get past the second bolt, and after a couple falls, handed the lead over to James who did a beautiful job leading up the thin micro flake finger holds.
James on Loose Lady, 5.10b
We woke up to high winds one day and headed down to Indian Cove Campground which is a thousand feet lower and protected from the winds. There is some beautiful climbing down there, and even some multi pitch routes. My favorite lead at Indian Cove is a deceptively hard 5.7 called Duchess Right.
When you look at it from the bottom, it appears to be a straight forward 60 foot fist jam problem. James tried it first and had the good sense to back off after placing my number 2 Big Bro. I think of myself as an experienced off width climber but that crack was horrible. I found I could hold on well enough to not fall out of it, but there was no way to move up. I tried my entire bag of tricks including heel-toe jams, chicken wings and hip jams but nothing worked...I couldn't even move half an inch past the crux.
Finally I tried stacking two fist jams one on top of the other to span the seven inch crack. To my amazement, I was able to do a pull up on the stacked fist jams, wiggle my hips free, do a crunch, wedge my right hip back in and raise the double fist jam. There wasn't any pro of course as I only had the one Big Bro, but after 15 feet I got in a micro cam and was able to finish the route.
Brett belaying James on a scary 5.9 bolt route at Indian Cove.
The parties around the campfires in Joshua Tree are almost worth the drive all by themselves. During our second week we met a climber called Smith Curry who joined us at the campfire that night with his lovely wife. Smith enjoyed his beer, but tended to get a little noisy after a few rounds.
Still, something about the guy, and his obvious love for his beautiful wife kept me at the campfire talking with him. Finally Smith got up to take a leak and his wife mentioned that he was a working professional musician, making a good living as a session musician in Nashville, with two recent number one country hits. She also said he had toured for several years with Kid Rock as the dobro, steel guitar player. She said he was an awesome musician, but would never talk about it as it wasn't his nature. She told us to put a guitar in his hands and we would be stunned.
When Smith came back Brett got out his guitar and played for a while but Smith seemed like just another happy drinker around the campfire, listening to Brett play while he told more stories and drank beer. I was beginning to wonder if he would ever play for us. Brett had put his guitar away when Smiths wife asked him if he would play the guitar. He looked at her kind of strange, like, what?
"Play the guitar Smith," she said gently, as if to a child. "Play us some music."
"Oh, sure," he said. "Break that puppy out!"
As soon as he touched it he began doing some very advanced tuning, things I'd never even known were possible like strumming the b and e keys together and tuning them based on how they sound together.
In very short order his fingers were flying across the keyboard picking out fluid melodies faster than seemed humanly possible. The guy was definitely a working professional musician as advertised.
He played for a while and then I asked him if he knew how to play the three chord rhythm and blues progression that I specialize in. He asked me some complicated questions about keys, cross chord harmonics and music theory before I simply took the guitar and started playing the progression of chords I needed.
Smith instantly recognized it, picked up the guitar and played the best damn blues progression I'll probably ever hear outside of the Paramount Theatre. When I'm served up a smorgasbord of sound like that I can really take off and run with it.
His timing and progression was very creative, while simultaneously so reliable that I was able to take risks with my blues harmonica riff, knowing I could always find my way back if I got lost. He was a stunning guitarist, the best I've ever heard.
When I ran out of breath a few minutes later, everyone was on their feet around the campfire grooving to the music. Smith's wife was looking at me with huge eyes.
"Mark, you should come to Nashville," she said, "You could make a living with that harmonica!"
Smith left the next day to spend the holidays with relatives in LA. We climbed that day over at Peyote cracks where Austin took his first lead fall on a 5.9 trad route, after which he finished the route in fine style.
Several days later, we were sitting in camp over breakfast and bemoaning the fact that there were very few women climbers around. We felt like a bunch of gold miners up in the Yukon, starved for the site of a real, live woman. Almost as if in answer to our dreams, two lively young women walked up and asked if we knew Andrew, who was our neighbor.
They promised to come back that night with a guitar, a violin and another guitarist named Tucker who was traveling with them. They turned out to be very good musicians. So good in fact that we formed a band that night: two guitars, a violin and me on the blues harmonica. After a couple rehearsals around the next few campfires we took our band on the road down to site 16 where there was a huge campfire, a sweat lodge and 24 bundles of wood.
The crowd loved having a live band, and we enjoyed the heck out of entertaining them. During a break, we heard the sweat lodge was having a ladies only hour, and our two new friends (Amy and Jessica) left while Austin, Tucker and I took a break and enjoyed the fire and starlight.
An hour later, I noticed a commotion at the door to the sweat lodge and turned to see Austin, starkers except for a small towel held in his hand, turning in the light of 20 headlamps for the cheering crowd, showing off that marvelous tattoo.
I asked him later how he ended up in the sweat lodge during the ladies hour and he just smiled...the guy has all the luck.
After we met the girls and Tucker, we began climbing with them every day, they were a ton of fun to hang out with. We've stayed in touch with Jessica and her friends from Portland after we returned to Tacoma.
Jessica, Austin, Paul, Richard and I re-united down at Smith Rocks over Presidents day and had a great time. It's fun how we have built a little community of friends at Edgeworks and it gets bigger all the time. I used to go in there and know maybe one or two people, but now I see people I know in there all the time.
Kudos to Todd and all the employees at Edgeworks for running a great facility!
Jessica finishing Bat Crack. In the evening at the parties around the campfires, Jessica and I played duets; she on the violin, me on the harmonica. I'd never seriously played with a violinist before but Jessica converted me. We made beautiful music together.
Cars leaving at sunset from Intersection rock.
After rapping off in the dark, we posed for pictures. Amy, Jessica, Tucker and me. I believe the distortion in this photo is smoke from the campfire
Richard (from Edgeworks) pointing at something in the morning. Note the water bottles. There is no water or electricity at Joshua Tree, though town is just 14 miles away.
Morning mist over the campground
Me belaying Brett right before he took a big whipper.
Brett taking a 15 foot whipper off North Overhang on Intersection Rock 5.9 He hit the deck, or, at least the belay ledge but didn’t get hurt as I caught him right as he decked. Very scary fall on an exposed move 100 feet up. Photography by Austin who was standing on a ledge below.
Sunset on Intersection Rock walk off
Me following Brett up Pinched Rib.
Amy following a 5.7 at Quail Springs
Austin at Echo Rock
Me warming up for Bearded Cabbage, I need to do more pull ups before trying to repeat routes I did in my twenties.
Austin trying Bearded Cabbage.
Brett and Austin in the Iron Door cave near the hidden valley campground. A retarded son was locked in here back in the 1930’s.
This was a very strong door, and an erie place to hang out, full of bad vibes.
Me on the infamous Watershute route, 5.10b. The first 10 inches took 40 minutes of work and involved a double elbow lock and a 30 foot runout…what was I thinking?!
Brett on the gunsmoke traverse.
Brett leading Dappled Mare, 5.8 at lost horse wall.
Austin and Jessica trying out New Years eve party clothes in town.
Amy and Jessica writing down things they want to burn on the "burning man"
Amy writing writing something she wants to burn on the burning man
The burning man crowd, Austin’s idea turned into a crowd magnet.
Getting the Burning Man ready to burn. Not sure how I got these double exposures but it may have involved a slow exposure, a flash and a headlamp.
Once word got around that Austin had put up a real burning man, the crowds gathered fast. We even had two drummers show up for the festivities. The drummers were our next door neighbors. They had been drumming for 10 years and were awesome.
The gasoline starts to catch fire
I’m not sure at what point this burning thing got crazy, but suddenly the drums were throbbing in our brains and people started dancing around the burning man, whooping, hollering, and having a grand old time, Joshua Tree style.
It got louder and crazier until two rangers showed up and busted the party. They said our fire was too big, and no more than 6 people per site. What, did they think we were going to start a revolution?
This is new years eve, round 11:30. There were 5 drums, a guitarist, a flute and wooden spoons. I need to get out more, I had no idea people still partied this hard. Being one of, if not the oldest, guy there, I had trouble letting my hair down as much as these young people, but it was fun being there and taking pictures...lots of good vibes. Climbers are friendly people!
Party down.
Group shot before we started the 22 hour drive home. Not counting food, we spent $158 each for our 18 day trip, and that includes gas for the van ($477 round trip, 17mpg, $3.40 gal.) and camping fees.
The party goes on: Presidents day at Smith Rocks. Me, Jessica, Paul, Joe, Amy and Bear.
Jessica and I racking up for another crack, Joe in the background.