So this weekend proved to be fairly relaxing and such. Given I don't work I really don't need the "vacation" but hey so it goes. So long story short is I was down south in Palm Springs and while that area leaves a bit to be desired, Joshua Tree National Park has some great climbing. So of course logically I had to make a trip to the park to get some climbing on real rock in. So onwards to the story of climbing (and pics), as well as why I was in Palm Springs in the first place.
So the first question I've been getting is "why Palm Springs?" So my brother along with some other friends from school were going to be making a student presentation at the CUE conference (Computer-Using Educators), which was happening in Palm Springs. For the other three kids there their parents (mom's) came along, our mom opted to send me instead. I'm not gonna turn down a free trip. That said Palm Springs was one of those "What WERE they thinking?!" areas for me. Seriously, why would you develop out there, and why is it a popular spot? Really it's aimed at the older crowd, as in post-50's and such. Fair enough. So we were staying at this Vila or such, really nice place as long as you only looked towards the interior quad where the pool and spa was. Outside, not so interesting.
See the full album of pics.
Fortunately I realized that Joshua Tree National Park is a short drive from Palm Springs, and having heard a bit recently about the climbing opportunities there I figured we HAD to go. Given that we were flying in driving there posed a bit of an issue. Fortunately one of the mom's had rented a car and they were willing to go as well.
So right after they did their presentation we jumped in the car and headed out. So it was me, my brother, Tyler, Tyler (Aka TyeDye), and Tyler's mom. The park IS a desert but in the same way that it's bare it is quite beautiful. At this time of the year the weather was also quite pleasant. We had the advantage that we got there in the latter part of the afternoon so the sun was already at a low angle. We drove thru the park a bit and I spotted an area which looked to have some good boulders to climb on. We settled on the Hemmingway area which against the main face has the Hemmingway Cracks. (Which looked awesome.)
Now to my surprise the kids took immediately to scrambling over the giant stacks of equally large rocks. So for a bit we just walked/scrambled over these. The view from the top of the groupings was amazing, at least 60 feet from the ground. At this point I was getting a bit antsy so I headed over the boulders I has sighted out to start checking them out for problems. Most of of what I found were fairly simple or short (V1-ish.) My brother was having a field day between scrambling over the rocks and taking photos. (He's into photography if ya didn't know. He took all of the photos.) I actually had to grab him and tell him, "Take pictures of me climbing!" to actually get some.
So I got a few pics of me climbing at which point they took off to the big rock piles to scramble around more. I followed a bit just to keep an eye on them. After a while however I was getting bored so I left them to have fun and whanot and went back to my boulders to work on some problems. Fortunately I discovered a few great problems on one side of a boulder I had been climbing. They were right along the lines of what I was hoping for, something that would provide to be a decent challenge. Both of them were around V4 or so and I didn't finish either of them, so gonna project them.
The first one I tried was these really tiny crimps on face of the rock and a few on the arete. Aside from the super crimpy nature of it it provided even less as you went up. However on my last try I did find a decent hold which is actually in one of the pictures. Yet I lost my hold right after finding it and I forgot where it was. The other one right next to it was this great finger crack. It started out really narrow and shallow and opened up as it went up. The footing on that one was even less. Towards the end everyone else had their fill and we were loosing light really fast (it was around 5:30pm), so I had to call it a day.
While my time climbing at Joshua Tree was short it was damn good to climb some real boulders and work on some problems. I shall definitely be making a trip back to the park in the future to send these problems as well as finding more, and hopefully some top ropes as well.