A little climbing in Joshua Tree, along with a hike.

My friends Steve and Patti go climbing with me from time to time and Steve wanted to take his son Jesse out to experience climbing. We agreed to go to Joshua Tree and on December 10, 2012, off we went. Since the weather was on the cool side, we opted for Indian Cove and much to our surprise, we were the only people at the Short Wall when we arrived. Very unusual for there not to be a climbing class there on a weekend during the "season".

The Short Wall, Right Side

We did a few climbs and then a large group showed up and changed our desert solitude into more of a inner city experience. I decided that Jesse wasn't really enamored with the rock climbing and maybe he'd enjoy a hike. So I talked everyone into changing gears and heading up Rattlesnake Canyon, always one of my favorites.

The beginning of the hike is confusing for many folks, because you walk out into a wide open wash and it really doesn't look very interesting. Since the hike goes up the wash, it's the best way to start, but it appears you're going the wrong direction and not to where it looks as if it will be interesting. Soon you find yourself in the wash and it gets much better.

In the lower canyon

Once in the wash, it quickly gets rocky and in no time at all you find yourself in the canyon. All doubt is removed, you have reached the interesting place and it just gets better. After a a short distance and around a few corners, you come across the most amazing feature. The water has eroded a channel through the granitic rock and in the process created a must amazing series of natural sculpture of pools, cascades and waterfalls.

Checking out the nature's sculptures

The canyon soon opens up, straightens out and has a sandy bottom. In a short distance there is a notch off to the north that leads to the "Gunsight". This notch has some nice views towards the campgrounds and the desert, including 29 Palms Marine Base.

The wash opens up and straightens out

In that notch is a great viewpoint known as the "Gunsight"

As we continued up the canyon we stopped to check out what appears to be some pictographs, but they are so faint that it's difficult to make them out.

Possible pictographs

After checking out the rock art and little more exploring, it's time to head back. But as we are headed down the wash, the boys notice a boulder that while not too big, presents a challenge in that there is no easy way to get on top. Of course that quickly becomes a competition and soon everyone makes it to the top.

Conqueror's spying the next challenge

 We then proceeded to hike back out the canyon enjoying the many sights along the way.

Beautiful clouds

More of nature's sculptures

Some flowers

Natures rock paint, lichen

 All too soon we were back at the car and headed home, but everyone agreed, we had a great time.

Lazy Day, Joshua Tree

Roy and I have been avoiding climbing while Roy's wrist has been healing from a fall he took, he blames a dog... . We decided to try a little trip out to Joshua Tree to see how his wrist was improving. Being January, it was cold at night and there was plenty of reminders of the most recent storm. A quick explanation regarding the photos, since one of us was climbing, while the other was belaying. This is excellent for safety purposes, but really cuts back on the action shots.

Notice the channel from the recent rains and the frost from the cold the night before. It was very easy to decide that we wanted to be in the sun, since it was much more inviting.

Here is a view looking to our right, taken from the same location as the picture above. The sunny side was beautiful. For our first climb we did a short but steep 5.6 known as Jessica's Crack. The angle of the upper portion eases off but turns into an off width crack that can only be protected with monstrous sized protection, which of course we didn't have. This meant that we just needed to reach down inside and come up with a little more courage, or something and we managed to do the climb. Of course it's not known for being much of a challenge.

Roy on the rappel after climbing Jessica's Crack

Roy coiling the rope after the rappel

The necessary ingredients

Looking up at Lazy Day 5.7

We decided that in order to enjoy the most that the weather had to offer, we would do another south facing climb. The most obvious one that we thought would be within our capabilities was Lazy Day. We picked up our gear and headed over to the base of the climb. The weather was perfect and off we went. What I had forgotten was how unique the climbing was on this route. Instead of just straight forward crack or face, this started out with some nice crack, but soon led up to the diagonal crack, which turns out to be located on a steep section of the face. The feature making it particularly steep, being the overhang on the top side of this crack. Once I reached this location, the balmy weather became incredibly hot, oppressively hot, I was sweating buckets. Since the climb is only 5.7, I could see the move, but didn't seem to want to commit. The long I studied the rock, the more tired I got and I began to wonder if I was going to have the strength to finish. Finally I gave up on any attempt at style points and placed my knee on a ledge. This ledge had a nice sharp lip that caused me excruciating pain as I placed another piece of protection and then finally I was able to stand. The rest of the climb was actually enjoyable again, except for the residual pain to my knee. Of course Roy just scampered up and declared that it was a good route, to hard for him but good. I don't know if he says these things to try to make me feel good or make me angry and it doesn't do any good to ask.

Hey, I said I enjoyed the rest of the climb

Roy starting the rappel

Roy on rappel, just below my crux, he thought it was harder up higher.

Once back on the ground Roy declared that we had accomplished our "test" of his wrist and it was time to go home. Thinking about my knee and what another climb might do to me, I quietly agreed and we headed home, another day enjoying the beauty of Joshua Tree at an end.

Joshua Tree, Ryan Mountain

This was turning out to be one of the best winters we've had in terms of precipitation in a long time. I guess after a while you get used to the drought. With one of the recent January storms, we had snow on the mountains and hills surrounding Palm Springs on all sides. I decided it was time to take a hike and check out the conditions in Joshua Tree National Park.

For this little adventure, my partner was Calvin, always fun to have him along. As we left home we could see that the snow from a storm two days before was still down low on the San Bernardino Mountains.

After about an hour we were up in the park and started of hiking. Our goal for the day was the top of Ryan Mountain. We have just started up the trail in this picture. The parking lot is off to the left, behind the rock formations.

I wasn't too surprised to see so much snow on the north face of the mountain, but down on the flats, well that's unusual.

Since the storm had been a few days before, it was starting to melt, fortunately it was a mild day, almost warm. Very pleasant conditions for hiking.

As we gained altitude, the views were fantastic. The rock formations to the left of center include the Hall of Horrors area and in the background is Mt. San Gorgonio.

It was like walking through a winter wonderland and soon we had reached the top. The snow conditions were just right so that our regular hiking boots were adequate for the hike up. Here you can see me on the summit. Calvin took the picture while standing on the stack of rocks that people have been placing in a large pile on the summit for many many years.

Here is a view looking back down the trail leading to the summit. Queen Mountain is in the background.

This view is looking to the west, Mt. San Gorgonio is in the background and Cap Rock is just left of center.

Here is the view looking toward the east and the Pinto Basin.

Looking toward the south is a small volcano, it has been dormant for about 800 years. You can just make out the Geology Tour road in upper left corner of this picture.

Looking to the southwest we could see the most snow. The hiker in the bottom of the picture was brewing up a hot drink and was planning to stay on the summit for a while.

Looking at Mt. San Jacinto

Looking out towards Hidden Valley

Our illustrious photographer

Soon we were observing what appeared to be a never ending stream of hikers headed for the top and we made our way back down. With the warm temperatures, the footing became less secure and Calvin ended up taking a dive, with red badge of courage on his hand to show for it. I wondered what all the hikers heading up thought, that is if they noticed.

Snow along the road on the drive home, the Hall of Horrors is on the right.

Looking back up at Ryan Mountain, the trail goes up through the notch. The large rock formation on the right is Saddle Rocks.

Even as we passed through Morongo Valley there was till lots of snow on the mountains around us. It was a beautiful day and a great hike with great company.

Taking the kids to Joshua Tree

Jan. 2, 2010

You have to love holiday weekends, not only did I get to go out and play 2 days in a row, my youngest asked me to take her and her special friend, Andrew out to Joshua Tree for the day. Whenever any of my children ask to go with OLD Dad, I do whatever it takes to accommodate them. It's a rare treat for me and it's fun to embarrass them in public. Since Andrew had never been to Joshua Tree before, we started out with the hike to the Wall Street Mill, it has a lot of interesting things in a relatively short distance.

Here is Roy at the trail head, he has decided to be the official tour guide.

As we start out on the trail, Roy gives us some words of wisdom, I think he said something like don't pet the cactus. He might have also given us such pearls as "don't die" and "drink everyone else's water first". I don't remember them all.

Our first stop was an old ranch house, I suspect it may have belonged to Worth Bagley, but the rockclimbers call it Uncle Willy's Healthfood Store.
Here is a close up view of some of the home built bricks, a mix of adobe with a very minimal amount cement added. They just don't build them like they used to.

Next, we moseyed over to this old truck. Charlene really liked it, she said she could reach the pedals. I really don't think she liked it for it's ergonomics as much as for it's classic styling.

On down the trail, an old road we come upon this old windmill. It was used by the ranchers to provide water to the cattle. This little valley is somewhat round and has a solid basin of bedrock that has been filled in with sand. It has a nice little aquifer that the old ranchers took advantage of.

The turning of the windmill caused the pump handle to go up and down, pumping the water to the surface where it would fill a storage tank that feed a water trough for the cattle. Andrew and Roy are checking to see how much work it would take for them to fix it with the bailing wire and chewing gum they brought along.

We don't always understand what Roy is up to. We can see it's about three inches though. He claimed to be trying to remove trash from the park, something about a balloon in the tree or something.

As anyone familiar with the area knows, Worth Bagley moved to this location, thanks to an altercation with William Keyes. Just a word of advice, if you have a choice between a rifle and a revolver, choose the rifle unless you're very close.

Andrew and Charlene, looking at the grave site. I don't think they're taking this seriously enough.

The kids thought they might be in the market for an aluminum Caddy, there were only 6 built.

We finally made it over to the stamp mill. In the foreground you can see some stamps on the table. Behind them you can see the box where the ore was crushed. The ore was pulverized into a fine powder, then it was spread on the table in a thin layer and mixed with mercury. The mercury mixture was then heated in ceramic cups which caused the heavy metals to separate from the rest of the mixture. The gold, silver or whatever they were mining was then easy to collect. They would try to reclaim the mercury, although not nearly as well as the EPA would have liked and start all over again.

From the Wall Street Mill, we headed east to check out some of the mining areas. Even if we don't find gold in them thar hills, we get some great views.

Did I mention that I liked the views?

Towards the end of the day, we decided it was time for "something completely different". We headed over to Intersection Rock and were just in time to see a couple climbing Overhang Bypass. Of course we're not just looky loos, we were on our way up to introduce Andrew to rockclimbing. We went around the corner to the left for something a little less spectacular.

Charlene, always one to make the most of the situation found a great little escape from the wind.

I led the climb, Right Ski Track 5.3 and then brought up Andrew and Charlene. Here is Charlene on the finish to the climb. Since I was doing the belaying, credit for this shot goes to Andrew.

Note how close the road and parking lot are, needless to say it's easy to get spoiled by the approaches to the climbs in Joshua Tree.

Andrew is just starting the rappel back down to the start of the climb. By this time the sun is going down and the wind has picked up. I was getting cold, but not as cold as Andrew, he had suffered frostbite on his face and this smile was frozen in place. Soon we were all back down on the ground and headed for home in the nice warmth of the car. I don't know how soon the kids are going to want to go out with OLD Dad, because they had a full day this day. Hey kids, thanks for coming!