In early November I got a photo gig taking some climbing pics for a friend so I headed down to Joshua Tree. Friday I wandered around and took some pics and scouted some locations. Saturday I got up early for some sunrise pics and then met up w/ Skip and Craig to zip about taking pics. I won't post those here, but it was fun to catch up w/ those 2 and I even got a bit of climbing in. It was a little stressful because I needed to get good pics, but I think they turned out ok.
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I had heard that there would be a barbecue on the top of intersection rock - from the old woman rock it was obvious that something was up - you could see lots of people in various costumes from a guy in a sequined dress to wild 80's tights and various animal outfits. After Skip and Craig left I dug through my truck for my gold velvet pants and a wig. Then based on all the scrambling I had been doing and the beta from Craig and Skip I soloed up the upper right ski track. There was quite a collection on the top, although I missed most of the barbecue. I did get 1/2 a hot dog. It appeared to be mostly people from San Diego, some of whom I had met before. After it got dark and cold we rappelled down some fixed lines and eventually went to the BLM overflow camping for some more dinner and talk around a campfire (in a washing machine drum).
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The next morning I was meeting Pat at 7 am - luckily the time changed that evening so I still got some sleep and it wasn't totally dark. We decided to do "walk on the wild side" - a multipitch slab climb that I have never done despite heading out there to do it a few times in the past (there was always a party or 2 ahead of us). It was crisp but not actually cold when we headed out, and the approach hike warmed us up. It wasn't exactly obvious from the guide where the start was, but by picking a combination of the easiest looking and most traveled route we got the right start. Pat hasn't done very much climbing, in fact this was her first multipitch, but she didn't have much problem following. According to the guidebook there were 3 pitches, but I couldn't find the anchor at the top of the 3rd. It turns out that instead of cutting about 30 feet off to the side for the second anchor I just went up to the end of the 3rd - which means I never did find an anchor above that. In fact the descent was more difficult than the climb, but we scrambled around a bit scratching our heads and found a rap station that got us down.
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Then we went to Intersection rock where I led "the flake" and Pat followed. The problem here was one of my pieces walked a bit and then some cams turned sideways and it just got horribly stuck. Luckily there was another party up there, so I single rope rapped down the route and eventually cleaned my cam (with much wailing and gnashing of teeth) and Pat was able to double rope down the descent with the other party. Then she headed off home and I went to join some of the folks from the previous night at Coarse and Buggy. I got it cleanly on TR- but I only barely made the steep part at the top when my knuckles got stuck in the crack. Then we had dinner and I headed on towards Alhambra to visit with Geoff and Kim and Hazel.
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We stayed up later than I planned catching up and talking about all the excellent work he did on his house. This late bed time was compounded with an early start the next morning to head to the beach for some surf kayaking - actually I was on a surf ski - which is just as well as my roll was pathetic. Luckily I could just hop on mid-water and keep paddling. This worked well except the few times the boat got ripped away from me and I had to chase it into shore. At first the waves were disappointing for Geoff, but I think they picked up a bit. In any case I had a good time despite my lack of skill. Unfortunately I seemed to have filled my sinuses with a large amount of seawater and it kept pouring and leaking out over the next day. For the rest of the day we puttered around and watched Hazel (she is 14 months I think, and exceedingly cute). She also has learned some signs, which is pretty clever and sometimes makes things much easier.
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The next morning we went again. There were probably better waves this morning, but there were less of them. I got a lot more rides when I decided to not try for the biggest waves but instead ride the smoother ones that broke a little closer to shore. Once again I got a few good rides and got worked a few times. Unfortunately I was busy paddling and didn't get any pictures. In the afternoon we played with Hazel, ran errands, etc. etc. and then after dinner we watched the election returns coming in. It was nice to see Nate Silver's predictions come true - a triumph of evidence and reality based thinking over whatever the alternative is. We celebrated with root beer floats.
On Wednesday I packed up and headed to Evolv to get a new crash pad and some much needed approach shoes and some other climbing shoes. My truck was ridiculously packed with the extra crash pad, but I got everything in and headed back towards Bishop. I'll have to write about the new shoes and crashpad later - after I've had a chance to properly test them out.
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