Return to Climbing Joshua Tree: 20+ Years Later.

Year 2: Joshua Tree 2002-03

It has been a little over 20 years since the insta-stick rock of Joshua Tree drew its first blood from my young, inexperienced Midwestern climbing skin. I left a lot of blood there, but that cost was well worth the leveling up that J-Tree forces upon the willing.

Morning

Jumping back in time, when college emptied out for a winter holiday break and many of us Duluth climbers were left bored, grand plans of cheaply caravaning to J-tree were hatched. Uniting after family holiday obligations were marginally fulfilled, we packed our vehicles with climbing gear, camping equipment, and lots of stupid other things that my old man brain now looks back on with fond ridicule but will not detail here because... yeah... you know.

We timed our departure from MN to arrive in J-tree during daylight hours, hoping to snag a campsite in Hidden Valley- where legend held to be the "place" to be for climbers, where the Yosemite crew could possibly be found wintering amongst the commoners like us. This was before the National Park Service really started locking down the park. No reservations, minimal oversight, a camp host maybe was around, and toilet paper was something you should plan on bringing yourself.

Our crew fluctuated in size as people came and went; from 5 or 6 to 12 or more. Some of us, like myself, were still newbies to the world of climbing, while others were much more experienced and kindly willing to let us tag along, attempting to siphon off their wisdom while nursing our novice wounds.

High ballin'

We filled our days with a driven inefficiency that perfectly captures the ignorant bliss of freedom found in your wee 20s while camping in the desert, surrounded by jumbled rock towers that feel like walls of a home while beckoning you to stand on top and see across the Joshua Tree filled, snow-free winter landscape. From their tops we likened the massive, scattered piles of rock to dinosaur eggs left by giants of the past; a stark contrast to Minnesota's wintery state.

Waking when the sun's winter rays turned our sleeping bags, crappy tents, and vehicles into hot boxes, melting the thin layer of ice off the tops of our water bottles and half-washed dishes, sometimes we greeted the day with some slacklining, or trying to clean up the mess made by coyotes in camp because we did a piss poor job of taking care of our dinner mess, or with a route in mind and a list of gear to be scrounged to tackle it. Few of us had enough gear to properly lead a trad route, but with our mini-racks combined there wasn't much we couldn't tackle.

Karl on Papa Woosley

It was a productive day when we tackled two routes. Sport or trad... leading was still a challenging, new experience for many of us. Each route was filled with adventure, the kind that largely exists in your mind because you just don't know what the hecks is going on. But with a crew who adopted an oddly supportive yet hard-driving ethos characterized by encouragement, sarcasm, and don't be a whiner-ness, what we lacked in experience we made up for in collective bravado. This ethos still exists to this day, 20+ years later, and I am grateful for it, although I think we've become a little softer in some ways and harder in others.

We climbed and napped and bouldered and nursed our bloody fresh wounds while trying to protect our weeping old ones. We flowed with the days and the people who we found around us, living similar moments in J-tree, coming from all over the world.

Nights were a funny mix of revelry, burning things, finding ways to cook over fire or finicky stoves, while trying to not spend money on food so we could resupply our stash of hydrating, canned, adult water. We lived cheap. We burned pallets.  We slept hard, lost track of the days of the week, budgeted our gas and food.

One 3 week winter in J-tree wasn't enough. We returned next year. Some of the same people, now a year wiser, and a few new.

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March 2025

Time goes fast.  I’m fortunate to still be connected to many of these folks 20+ years down the road.  We move slower.  We’ve become more intentional, longer visioned in our actions, tied to our homes and a community of people, family, and work.  Disappearing to J-tree isn’t on our radar, leaning towards doing more than the minimum family time as kids of our own deserve our commitment, and PTO and finances are a constant variable in balancing our time. 

But, we have largely passed the time of being tethered to home, our kids older and life a bit calmer relative to those early years of trying to start that post-college life and family. 

The drive is still there, and I can hear rumblings of desire to get back out onto the rock.  Once in a while someone does, gets their hands to feel real rock, earns the shaky leg on lead while the cobwebs are blown aside by the firing of those long-dormant neural pathways firing again.  Knowing, the energy spreads between us, and injects a burst of fuel into our imaginations, planting the seed of possibility that might grow into a future adventure.  “What about the Bugaboos?” someone said.  “Let's do a trip next summer.” another adds.  It seems out of reach at the moment, but you can see the mental calculations happening as the equation is shifted, tested, evaluated for validity.

After 19 years of teaching high school, I decided to try something different.  A new pattern of work, changing the equation in new ways.  While I’ve lost and miss much from this past, there are new opportunities now that didn’t exist.  One being that I get to travel, which is not all that exciting when it's for work. 

But this March I was able to add an extra 2 days to a trip to Los Angeles and convince some pretty amazing people who I’d never climbed with to take me on an adventure to J-Tree.  I smashed everything I needed to camp and climb for 2 nights into a suitcase, my work clothes on top of my bare-bones rack and stinky climbing shoes.  After 3 days of work, Alyssa and Jim connected with me in a coffee shop in Palm Springs, where my coworkers dropped me on their way to the airport. 

Morning: Joshua Tree Lake Campground

After finishing up some work, we drove the hour north to Joshua Tree and a private campground (Joshua Tree Lake Campground).  Lots has changed over 20 years.  Joshua Tree the town was just a crossroads as I remember it, with just a few stores and no groceries to be had.  And the whole park has campsites that are reservable, which sadly, but understandably, means the shenanigans of simply showing up are no longer valid.  Hence, the private campground we stayed at- which did the job, but comes nowhere near providing the experience of camping in the park proper.

The nose that keeps growing.

Morning: Pack, coffee, breakfast sandwiches (and lunch for later) to eat on the go and we begin the drive into the park.  It is a Friday, and we are early enough that the line to get through the gate is short.  Alyssa and Jim have adopted me for these few days- welcoming me into their routines and shuttling me around like a visiting nephew.  Not being in dad mode, existing as a participant, is pretty wonderful!

Our first day of climbing was wonderful.  I convinced Alyssa and Jim to let me take the sharp end and led a fun 5.7 trad.  The rock’s insta-stick was instantly wonderful to feel on my fingers and under my rubber-soled shoes, bringing me back to that familiar bite of J-tree’s rock, of which Minnesota has nothing like. 

Alyssa getting into those nickel edges.

That first lead felt good and solid, but shaky and nervous.  So, we set up a 5.10c off the same anchors and top roped this beautiful, classic J-tree slab.  With nothing but nickel edges to work with, this was great in that it forced you to trust that insane friction, dispelling the notion that a hold must be an identifiable feature and building the necessary understanding that any slightly off vertical dip can be a bomber foot or hand-hold. 

With the slab’s gifted confidence, I raised the bar and tackled a 5.9 trad lead route that followed a fun slabby start to a vertical crack and a standard J-tree dome slab finish.  It was great.  Belaying from up top, basking in the view that inspires memories that flood back, I watch the lines of cars flying down the paved park road.  I think to myself, it’s just like Edward Abbey said.  But who am I to judge.  People are here, enjoying and valuing this place.  Maybe not in the way I would, but that's ok.  And it would be hypocritical to judge, as I’ve been one of those cars, filled with yelling children, zooming through a National Park.

Piton!

Itching for one more, but starting to feel the day’s efforts, I led one last 5.10a sport.  I admit to not mentally engaging in the leader’s mindset early enough and took a nice little slip on an old piton that I had clipped 15 feet up, more as a “why not” than as a legitimate piece.  But it held, and my brain re-focused itself on puzzling out the 10 above, which was super fun and a great way to end the day.  Baked by sun and dry air, despite being in the shade most of the day, we hiked out, each feeling as if a desert patina had formed on our skin.

We ate Thai, which is a welcome addition to the town of Joshua Tree.  Sleeping in a private campground is always dumb, and this was too.

Morning:  Repeat, but pack up camp.  The park feels busier, it’s a Saturday, but we are making good time.  We head to Reggie Rock, and have it to ourselves to start, sharing it later with one other couple.  I lead a 5.8 with thin trad, my foot pulling out my first nut placement, and a few bolts, going off route as I follow the good crack to the top.  Today Alyssa and Jim fly up the route, a newfound confidence and speed that comes from repetition and calm.  We strip the route and I select a 5.7 that follows a super neat rib, but with sparse pro it makes for some exposed moments progressing through cool moves that are unprotected.  Belaying from the top, my phone grabs service and informs me that my flight is delayed by an hour and I breathe a sigh of relaxation, welcoming the extra time to climb and just be there, sitting on top of a J-tree dinosaur egg.

Alyssa and Jim were the best, allowing me to take the reins in selecting climbs and leading over and over.  It felt deliciously selfish.  Flying home now as I draft this, my triceps are sore in a way that my climber brain remembers distantly, and I find myself enjoying the dirty, worn climber’s tape wrapping my torn pinky finger, and as I squirm in my tiny airplane seat I can feel the tape wrapping my big toe rubbing uncomfortably.  I feel that warmth, soreness, and weariness that coalesces into a sense of joyful contentment, an urge to smile constant.  As age continues its ceaseless progression, I find comfort in knowing that a day, or two, of climbing is still something that my body and mind have hardwired still.  Moving across the rock, crimping the nickel edges, laybacking a solid edge, slotting a fist into a slightly painful but bomber hand jam… knowing that my physical self can still do this and my brain can still see and read the rock… is deeply comforting.  I may not be leading 5.12s, and that’s darn ok.  I don’t need that. 

Well, the fuel has been dumped onto those newly refreshed memories and pathways… so I guess the best step is to start planning that next climbing trip…

But there is more! Keep going!

Below is a collection of memories, and scrounged together, scanned photos that connect somehow:

Fisticuffs:  A short climb, starting with hands and slowly widening over a vertical 30’.  I’m a little guy.  My arms and shoulders don’t take up a large space, excelling at squirreling into small, narrow volumes, cracks, and pockets.  They did not excel here.  20 ‘ up, trad lead, pumped out, leg wedged precariously into the crack, other leg awkwardly flailing to find positive purchase in the wide, smooth symmetrical crack sides, left arm barred deep with outer wrist taking the brunt of the outward force, friction, and blood gushing.  My right arm is free, but my body is turned and prevents me from purposefully guiding the #4 BD Cam into the crack above my head, and panic directs me to smoosh the cam up and in to give me something, anything to anchor calm against the fear of taking a lead fall onto the cam below my feet and a likely ground contact.  I totally f’ed that #4.  Squeezed that trigger fully and jammed it in nice and secure. 

One could argue that I did a great job placing a really secure piece.  Above, the climb continued to widen, but not enough for me to get my body into, and too wide to arm or knee bar effectively with my lack of off-width skills.  I struggled, continued to destroy my left arm on that insta-stick Jtree rock, and finally, with no vertical progress to show, gave up after many minutes of hanging on that wonderfully place #4.  A few others followed, with their big meaty arms and hands, using the #4 as a piece, but unable to retract it.  That sucker was stuck.  The next day it took a hammer and crowbar found in a vehicle’s toolbox to extract that #4.  To the victor go the spoils, and given how hard they worked for that #4, it seemed fair.  And it was destroyed beyond use.

Warchild: With an eye for capturing people and moments that I am constantly impressed with, Gabe passed along this collection of Jtree photos. See more of his phenomenal work and collection of wild adventures here.

Exit via mountain bike and longboard.

From MN, Karl brought a longboard.  I brought a mtn bike.  For the most part we didn’t use them- the roads rough, the trails sandy.  But that road into the park from 29 Palms was paved, and had a pretty wonderful gradient on the way out.   I biked.  Karl longboarded.  We chased the truck, video camera rolling out the back.  Karl wore Carhart, leather gloves, and cutting boards glued to them.  He crashed.  And I think he had more fun.  It was cold.

Pony  Boy:

Bonfire.  Elmers Glue.  Shaver.  Mohawks.  Boredom of night brings richness.

The Space Station:

If you know, you know. Hidden Valley Campground

The Sunset:

During our 2nd J-tree winter, there were wildfires somewhere nearby that filled the air with a haze during the daylight, shrouding the normally present everlasting views that we sought from our earned high point vantages.  One late afternoon a group of us were climbing on the Blob, near Hidden Valley Campground and Intersection Rock, enjoying an easy, chill climb that faced West, keeping us in the gentle warm sunlight.  As the sun crept lower and lower, the hazy, smoke-filled atmosphere blocked out all those cold wavelengths of sunlight, leaving an ever increasingly orange and red sky.  The closer the sun neared the horizon on its path to setting, the more golden the sky became, and the rocks seemed to change their own color to match.  The world turned golden, peaking as we belayed the last climber to our top anchor, allowing us to watch the campground empty itself from below as people began to notice the glow surrounding them.  Dozens and dozens of people poured out of the shadows, scrambling for high points.  People cheered.  Our faces were plastered with smiles of awe.  Across the landscape, there was a shared connection of wonder at the evening’s sky as it lit on fire.  The closest I can relate to, and yet still not equivalent, is to the shared moment at the end of a phenomenal concert encore, where everyone is high from the performance.

Bouldering: Saturday Night Live, White Rasta, Streetcar Named Desire, Gunsmoke Traverse, etc.

We weren't the best climbers. And sometimes leading just felt like too much, so bouldering was often our favorite daytime adventure.

The OG 5.10: Redlands

Around this time a new climbing shoe company appeared on our Midwestern radar, whose base was outside of LA in Redlands. Needing food and hoping for good deals on some 5.10 climbing shoes, we piled "safely" into Karl's mini-large-van for a citrusey adventure.