This weekend I went rock climbing in Joshua Tree. A couple months ago, I went to Indian Cove with the 10th graders, so I thought that Indian Cove would be a good place to try out without the kids.
We left early Saturday morning and got to Indian Cove before noon. We started out by scoping out the rocks and were disappointed to discover very few bolts and very few bolted anchors.
Since it was hot, we went and explored a secret cave for a few hours. We made it all the way through the cave. We went in under one rock and came out a fair way away on the other end. Finding our way through took quite a bit of exploration and we took several wrong turns before finally making it out at the end. It was very exciting.
After the cave, we drove a few miles to the public library to look up “sport climbing in Joshua Tree” (sport climbing means with bolts). We discovered via the internet what we already saw ourselves: that there are very few bolted climbs in J-Tree. Undeterred, we returned to Indian Cove and scouted some possible climbs for Sunday.
We stayed at Motel 6 and headed back to Indian Cove early Sunday morning to try our first climb: Billboard Buttress, a 10.a with 5 bolts and chain anchors. Unfortunately, a large group beat us to the rock and were trad climbing our climb!
Rather than waiting for the group to clear, we decided to explore a large bolder clump called Morbid Mound. Morbid Mound has nary a bolt so we knew it would all be top-roping. We scrambled up the back and patched together some anchors by slinging long lengths of webbing around arm-chair sized boulders. I am ashamed to say that our anchors were not perfect as our webbing was inadequate for such a set-up. Among my immediate group of rock climbing friends, all together, we have just barely enough webbing and carabineers to set up safe top-ropes with decent bolted anchors. With nothing but nature, it was tough. Nevertheless, we did what we could and made sure we had two to three sources or protection for each top-rope. The climbing itself was fun but fairly easy.
After 4 or 5 climbs, we knew that it was time to go. We got back to L.A. tired and sore. It was a fun weekend!
// posted by Behavior Analyst @
11:51 AM 
