Airfare, hotel and daily expenses for a stressful 2 day meeting with new Corporate parent in Oakland California: $762

Hotel, expenses, and return airfare for a mind-numbing 4 day trade show in Las Vegas: $643

Spending the weekend between these two meetings, climbing at Joshua Tree: priceless

Yes, this is another "I got to go somewhere neat, while you stayed home" trip report. But take heart; it's the tale of a short trip, squeezed, as all my climbing trips are, around business obligations.

Mike finds another wide crack Rockalot, 5.7, at the Rock Garden Wall.

"OK, I'll go to California, if you insist"

I had known for a couple months that I would be going to Vegas at the end of October for a trade show. I made arrangements to fly out on the preceding Saturday, under the guise of getting cheaper airfare by staying a Saturday night, a pricing strategy that went out the window in the wake of all the travel cancellations following the 9/11 attack. This scheme, which I exploited whenever possible, would give me an extra day in Vegas, which I could use to climb either at Red Rocks (RR) or at Joshua Tree (JT). I had never been to RR before, and figured I would need to hook up with a local to avoid getting lost on either the confusing approaches or the long routes. This apparently is the worst thing about RR, and everyone I know who's climbed there loved it. I looked forward to my first visit.

Joshua Tree, on the other had, I knew fairly well. Over the past 6 years I have managed to tack on a quick visit there from most business trips to anywhere in SoCal. I even drove over from Phoenix once. Arguing in favor of JT was that the last weekend in October would be the annual Halloween Party. Readers are encouraged to refer to rec.climbing archives for details on this costumed climbing-drinking event.

Ultimately I decided to drive to JT for the party Sat. night and climbing Sunday, and then since my business there didn't really start until dinner Monday, see about hooking up with a Vegas local for a half day (Monday) of climbing at RR. That's when my boss stepped in with news that I had to join him for two days meeting our counterparts in Chevron, our new corporate parent, at their Bay Area lab. When? The Thursday and Friday immediately preceding my trip. That meant I had to re-ticket my flights (no problem) and I would have the whole weekend to kill in California. Woo Hoo!

(Fast forward through boring travel, meetings, more flying and driving to Saturday AM)

Saturday

I drove to the Indian Cove campsite that would be the epicenter for the Halloween party and immediately found Andy Gale. Andy is co-host for the party and I've climbed with him on a few previous occasions. Sharing coffee with him at the picnic table was Greg Sadowy, former Hudson Valley local and son of Gunks Pioneer Roman Sadowy. We quickly fell into conversation about our mutual Gunks background and ended up climbing together for the day.

We tagged along with Bob-from-Colorado since he knew the park really well, and he led us to Hemmingway Buttress. I didn't care where we went as long as there was a good assortment of quality routes to spread out on. The fact that Hemmingway is in the Lost Horse mini-guide that I brought along was a bonus, as it meant I could tick off whatever routes we did. To our surprise for an area 2 minutes off the road, the Buttress was empty when we got there. This would soon change of course, but it meant that we could take the pick of whatever line we wanted. I was struck by the straight-up crack of "White Lightning" 5.7, and quickly laid claim to it.

White Lightning (5.7) on the Hemmingway Buttress.

In my experience, few climbing areas are as different as the Gunks and Joshua Tree. The Gunks have horizontal cracks and edges; JT has vertical cracks and occasional face crimpers created by the breakage of thin exfoliation flakes. The Gunks rock is fine grained and hard; JT monzonite is extremely coarse and can be sandy and/or hollow. For these and other reasons, I need an attitude adjustment when climbing there. Each time I have to re-learn that every smear really is a useable foot placement, for example. The cracks give me trouble, not because I can't jam (I can) but because all too often they call for laybacking. I hate laybacking. In the Gunks I can usually face climb around a layback, but the rock in JT is pretty even, so a lipped crack up a blank spot often means layback. Period.

The bottom line is that I have never led at my normal grade in Joshua Tree. When I was breaking into 5.9 at home, I led 5.8 in JT. Some six years later, I'm now getting 5.10's under my belt at the Gunks, and generally lead 5.9 anywhere else. But I'm still leading 5.8 at JT. A typical JT visit goes something like this: I start the day with a 5.7 and it gives me some trouble. But that's because it's early in the day and I'm not really in the groove yet, I tell myself. So I get on a short 5.8 and BAM! I'm hit with a bad case of Elvis leg on some off-fist crack. I pull through by the skin of my teeth (option - substitute other body parts for "teeth") and forget about anything harder.

And that's pretty much what happened on Saturday. White Lightning felt hard for a 7, but hey, it was the first pitch of the day and I wasn't in the groove yet. Then "Feltonion Physics" 5.8 had this section of off-fist crack and I got screwed up looking for holds in all the wrong places. Yea, just another humbling day at Josh for me.

I sampled a 10a on top rope that weaved up between two of the buttress's cracks, and it felt like 10d. Hmm, I must have the wrong shoes on (note - I've tried every shoe I own at JT, and have decided that the best pair is a stiff edging shoe that smears like a slipper. If you ever find such a shoe...).

One fun route ("Funky Dung" 5.8) reminded me of "Farewell to Arms" at Near Trapps. A stemming corner to a roof, where a short and pumpy hand traverse left to a pointy knob to yard on. It was so similar to FTA that I was relaxed on it and did reasonably well. But there was a stretch of 5.7 off-fist crack (of course!) near the top that wigged me out.

I ended the day on a 10c/d (yea, right!) TR under one of the rap anchors. It looked spectacular as we had rapped down it earlier in the day and when I saw that it was only a 10 I had to try it. I was shut down all of 5 feet off the ground by a too-reachy move between fingertip locks over a bulge. Damn. Greg held me patiently as I flailed and wisely declined when I offered him a shot at it. Maybe it was a layback...

As for the Halloween party Saturday night, it wasn't the drunken, falling-into-the fire affair that I had expected. Maybe those reports of prior years were a bit exaggerated?? Naa, who would stretch the truth in a trip report??! I met many climbers who previously I'd only known as a sig line on their posts: Karl Baba, Maddog, Inez, Frank Stock, Russ Walling and countless others. Yes, there was alcohol in abundance, including a cooler full of Jello shots. But by midnight most folks had wandered off to their tents. Clearly these folks came here to climb first and party second. Well OK, maybe not everyone.

Dinner was a pot-luck affair, and I can safely say I've never seen food like I saw there. Karl made a something that looked like worms in seaweed. I asked what it was and I think he said it was called "Worms in Seaweed". But it was good, as was everything else I tried. Flying in as I did, it was hard for me to contribute anything very fancy. But no one complained about the beer and pecan pie I brought.

The costumes ranged from the subtle (a funny hat or clever T-shirt) to the elaborate e.g. Greg as a wizard; Andy as a Mammogram machine. With his wide, billowing wizard sleeves, the question of the evening wasn't "if" Greg was going to upset a cook pot or catch on fire, but "when". The night was unseasonably warm and I eschewed a loaned tent to sleep under the stars. A flattened cardboard wardrobe box that an hour earlier had been Jean's kissing booth served to supplement my thin foam pad. I fell asleep easily under bright stars, totally unaware that around the campfire I was now referred to as a homeless person, sleeping in a box.

Sunday

Euthyphro (5.9) is the long crack on the left. The "5.8/9" cracks are on either side of the ropes.

On Sunday I climbed with Marc-Andre Giasson, aka Marc-from-Quebec, at the Rock Garden Wall, which conveniently is also in my Lost Horse mini-guide. Once again we warmed up on a striking, one pitch 5.7 crack ("Rock-a-lot") described in the guide as a hand to fist crack. So I accepted Marc's offer of the #9-11 hexes and doubled up on gold Camelots. Thirty feet up the crack, with the wide gear already spent, I'm staring at a 12 foot stretch of crack that goes from 5 to maybe 9 inches wide. Recalling the guidebook's description, I'm thinking, "Who's got a nine inch fist?" I found some smaller pro inside the crack and bypassed it by laybacking. Did I mention I hate laybacking?

There was a slow party clogging the nearby rap anchor, something they managed to do all day. Whenever we were done with a route, there they were, holding what seemed to be a class on "Advanced Anchor Cluster...". So we scrambled left to another anchor and rapped down. This part of the wall has several really attractive thinner (finger-to-hand) cracks, and brimming with motivation after my one pitch warm-up, I jumped on "Euthyphro" for my first JT trad 5.9 onsight. Part of me reasoned that I'd better try it now, before I lost my nerve for the day on some off-fist 5.8.

Another part of me remembered Andy's advice that the 9's on this wall are easy for the grade.

The pitch went smoothly, with no trace of any 5.9 climbing at any point. Next to this route were a pair of cracks both graded a vague "5.8/9" in the book. One went at solid 8, maybe 8+, and the other was real 5.9. So the 5.9 was an 8, and the 8/9's are a crap-shoot. Go figure.

To complete our tour of this piece of wall we both TR'ed the 5.10 face directly under the rap anchor. The true crux was the thin face down low, but I managed to create a second, harder crux up above when I drifted off route. Then Marc did a nice job leading "Double Dogleg" 5.7, another fine crack pitch, and we called it a day.

No visit to Josh is complete without dinner at the Thai Food restaurant. That's not just a description of the cuisine, it's the name of the place. After maxing out the buffet we said our good byes and Marc and I pointed the rental towards Las Vegas. Although I know it was a boring drive, with 20 mile stretches as straight as an arrow, I regretted that it was dark. I think we drove across two dried lakebeds, and they would have been neat to see.

On to Vegas and Red Rocks

The impressive peaks of Red Rocks from the Pine Creek parking area. Mescalito is the small, red-tipped peak roughly in the middle. The impressive, curved Rainbow Wall lies mostly shadowed on the left. Click for larger picture.

Vegas announces itself as a glow in the sky visible from 80 miles away. As we crossed the low pass south of town, the sprawling city suddenly unrolled in front of us. The huge hotels of The Strip, as big as they are, are but a tiny part of this megalopolis. Without a map, we navigated a spiral path to the Luxor hotel, always turning towards the gagillion watt searchlight at the top of its pyramid. The rooms of the Luxor are in the "shell" of the pyramid, and the center of the pyramid is a 300 foot tall open atrium. We couldn't help but muse that a few thousand sheets of plywood would turn that lobby into the mother of all climbing gyms.

We were out at Red Rocks by 8 the next morning. Not too early a start by desert standards but we got turned around a few times on the roads leaving town. And we didn't have too ambitious an agenda anyway. It was the consensus around the campfire in Josh that we should climb "Dark Shadows", a 4 pitch 5.8. It met our requirements of having a straightforward approach and being not too long for a couple first-time visitors who needed to catch a bus to Yosemite (Marc) and get cleaned up for a working dinner (me).

We found the route easily near the mouth of Pine Creek Canyon. As we were walking in I commented that a one mile approach in the east would most likely be through deep woods with no view of the cliff until the last minute. By contrast, at Red Rocks you're treated to a full frontal view of the mountains and canyons as you walk into them. I liked this place already.

The striking inside corner of Dark Shadows (5.8). We rapped from the anchor above the glossy varnish of the right face.

The route itself featured a stunning 90 degree inside corner to a huge roof. While the route bypasses the roof on its right side, apparently the upper pitches are a bit of a chore, and the word we got from everyone including the Select guidebook is to rap after 4 pitches from the anchors just below the roof.

The sandstone here is covered with what they call "varnish", a hard, dark, and occasionally very slick surface layer. In other places I've seen this referred to as "patina", but I just think of it as skin. I've learned that sandstone climbers pay a lot of attention to the character of the rock. Whereas Gunks rock is pretty much all the same (I know, it isn't. There's that white marble that enhances the upper pitches of the Arrow wall and much of Millbrook), sandstone comes in lots of flavors. I hear that Red Rocks stone is pretty good as sandstones go. Well anyway, among sandstone-o-philes, apparently varnish is something special. All I can tell you is it makes for delightful, often surprising handholds, and vertical cracks such as the one we followed up the corner are so irregular that they are an absolute joy to load up with passive gear of all kinds.

The climbing went smoothly, we took a few pictures but not enough to capture the scope of the gorgeous wrap-around scenery, and all too soon it was over. There were a few other pitches which ended at the anchors we used, but I dismissed the suggestion that we do some more climbing by saying, "Let's not ruin a great climb with a good climb". Besides, this was just my first visit, and with any luck I'll be back with more time soon.

The rap features a free rope wash. While there's a resident tarp across the creek at the base of the Dark Shadows wall, our ropes missed it and landed with a splash. The walk out was even more impressive than the walk in. The massive corner that defined our route gradually shrunk under the looming bulk of Mescalito until it was insignificant against the flank of the latter's 1200 (?) foot height. Then as we walked away from the canyon, Mescalito shrunk until it was a pale sibling to the huge peaks that bracket it. I felt suitably humbled by the time we reached the car.