My friend Kenny and I had planned a trip to Josh a few months ago. We haven’t had a chance to really climb together since the late 80’s, so it was bound to be a really fun trip!
I flew into LAX on the evening of Nov 5 and Kenny picked me up in his pop up camper. We bolted straight for Joshua Tree National Park for 5 days of climbing. The first step was to escape the endless traffic and urban sprawl of the LA basin…
Once that was accomplished we arrived in the high desert region and then it was just a bit further to Joshua Tree. A quick stop in Yucca Valley for supplies and we were in Josh by 9pm or so. The campgrounds were pretty full, so we ended up snagging a site at Jumbo Rocks.
On day one we awoke to near perfect Josh weather and headed out to Hidden Valley for a tour de classics. After 7 really fun routes, we enjoyed a cold brew and the great views from the space station – another great day at Josh!! Kenny brought his pop up camper, so we “camped” in style – we even had freshly caught lobster tails for dinner (courtesy of Kenny the lobster catcher).
We also spent two days climbing out in the Wonderland, one of which required a long 2.5 hour thrashy hike to get to some supposedly great routes that turned out to be very lightly traveled and quite grainy…
Oh well, we got a lot of “fun” hiking in that day! Another day we climbed at the Hall of Horrors and the Oyster bar for some new routes. We also climbed with a couple of Kenny’s friends from Michigan as well as Peggy who came out from the coast. A good time was had by all!
The last day we climbed a few great routes over at the IRS wall before packing up, grabbing a shower and enjoying the relatively light traffic back to LAX… Back in Boulder late that evening, winter was rolling in again – it’s gonna be a long one this year me thinks!
My friend Kenny and I had planned a trip to Josh a few months ago. We haven’t had a chance to really climb together since the late 80’s, so it was bound to be a really fun trip!
I flew into LAX on the evening of Nov 5 and Kenny picked me up in his pop up camper. We bolted straight for Joshua Tree National Park for 5 days of climbing. The first step was to escape the endless traffic and urban sprawl of the LA basin… 
Once that was accomplished we arrived in the high desert region and then it was just a bit further to Joshua Tree. A quick stop in Yucca Valley for supplies and we were in Josh by 9pm or so. The campgrounds were pretty full, so we ended up snagging a site at Jumbo Rocks.
On day one we awoke to near perfect Josh weather and headed out to Hidden Valley for a tour de classics. After 7 really fun routes, we enjoyed a cold brew and the great views from the space station – another great day at Josh!! Kenny brought his pop up camper, so we “camped” in style – we even had freshly caught lobster tails for dinner (courtesy of Kenny the lobster catcher).
We also spent two days climbing out in the Wonderland, one of which required a long 2.5 hour thrashy hike to get to some supposedly great routes that turned out to be very lightly traveled and quite grainy… 
Oh well, we got a lot of “fun” hiking in that day! Another day we climbed at the Hall of Horrors and the Oyster bar for some new routes. We also climbed with a couple of Kenny’s friends from Michigan as well as Peggy who came out from the coast. A good time was had by all! 
The last day we climbed a few great routes over at the IRS wall before packing up, grabbing a shower and enjoying the relatively light traffic back to LAX… Back in Boulder late that evening, winter was rolling in again – it’s gonna be a long one this year me thinks!
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