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Published: November 24th 2006
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Generic Joshua Tree Photo
Gotta love the place, i'm a new adict Those trees are indeed Joshua Trees. Just when i thought it was impossible for my trip to keep on getting better and better, it goes and does just that. For the last 3 glorious days i've been having a fantastic time in Joshua Tree National Park, 9 hours drive south from San Francisco (many many thanks to Uncle Nick for the driving - about 1100miles in all).
In short Joshua Tree is not just a slightly overrated U2 album (oooo risky comment), it's an area of desert east of Los Angleles 558,000 acres big. It's one of 380 US National Parks. It's littered with amazing granite rock formations, cacti, Joshua Trees, sand and general dryness.
After the mammoth drive down form San Fran on Monday we arrived at the Jumbo Rocks campground around midnight, pitched up camp and decided the best thing to do was to get a fire going and relax with a beer. The 'we' in all the blog changes greatly and it's probably best to read the picture captions to find out who's who and how they fit in. In this instance myself, uncle Nick and cousin Andrew had driven from San Fran, and we now
Climbing Hidden Valley
Granite + Fingers = non guitar met some of Nicks old climbing buddies from San Diego.
Suitably rested the next morning we made a reasonably early start and headed off to Hidden Valley climbing area which in days gone by had been the scene of many a cattle rustling operations. For our purposes it was the scene of some taxing, but managable climbs. Having been out of the game for what turned out to the nearly 2 years, it was definately slow to begin with, but little by little all present managed good stuff.
It's suprising how deserts can go from being jolly hot in the sun during the day to being darn cold as soon as you get in the shadow or the sun goes down. Hence by the time more of Nicks old climbing friends showed up we only had time for a couple more routes, before heading back to camp for another campfire and one or two congratualtory ales.
Wednesday involved more climbing. A large group of us (10 people and a dog) headed out to Echo Rock about 15 minutes drive from Jumbo Rocks, and spent another fine day friction climbing (or falling off as i managed to do
a fair bit). The highlight for me was finishing on a relatively modest but highly enjoyable jaunt up a route called 'Double Dip', finishing in the dark. Trying to buck the trend in the evening seemed to be tough, and so again there was a campfire, beer, animated talking, a brief and highly painful outing on the guitar from me, and also a night hike to the goulish sounding 'Skull Rock'.
Thursday. Thanksgiving Day over here in the states. for us, it meant more climbing, more meeting of Nicks old freinds, more trophies (see pictures), more finger pain, more aches and some more difficult routes. The setting for it all was an area called 'Hall Of Horrors'. In fact not too horroress at all an really pretty fantastic. Routes of note included 'Holds To Hollywood', 'Buckets to Burbank' and 'Pull Ups to Pasadena'. The final climb i did was a meaty 5.10c (what this means in English rating i've no idea), and without doubt it finished me off. Fingers were on fire after this one and most of my limbs had to some degree fallen off. ouch.
Sadly in the middle of the day myself, Nick and Andrew
Joshua Tree National Park
Blue skies, lots of J Trees, lots of granite lumps had to leave to go back to San Fran (good for halting pain, bad because we had 9 hours in the car). Sad to leave, but very very happy with the days we had there. Many many thanks must go to Uncle Nick for organising the trip. For doing the driving, and for making the whole thing totally memorable and awesome. I'd forgotten how good climbing is, and definately have the bug again. Also thanks to all that belayed me during the climbs.
good times continue
marc
p.s. Sorry for the shotness of the blog..in relation to the fun we had over the three days, if i were to account all that fun action i'd be here for hours. Safe to say..it was fantastically brilliantlly great.
p.p.s. And in case i dont manage to get in touch on the 26th November, very happy '21st' birthday to my Dad. Many happy returns and i'm looking forward to going to the football next weekend.
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Andrea
non-member comment
Nicely done...
Love the sunrise shots, black and white, and of course the one of my wonderdog!! Great climbing with you Marc. You're welcome on any of our trips to J-tree! Loved the guitar sessions at the campfire! Truely a good time all around. Climb on!!