Climbing at Joshua Tree

I met my friend Jay in Joshua Tree national park over the Christmas break for some climbing. Climbs: Jumbo Rocks, Conan's Corridor - Fool's Gold (5.8R, TR) Intersection Rock of Hidden Valley - Some easy handcracks and chimney's Indian Cove - Feudal Wall Court Jester (5.7, Trad led) Duchess Right (5.7, offwidth, TR) Duchess (5.6, TR)

Jay midway up the elusive off-width.

Jay and I met up at the north entrance to the park. We set off just after sunset to look for camping -- all full until we rolled up into Jumbo Rocks, pretty deep into the park. We found a spot, dropped off my car and then drove back into the town for some Crossroads! I threw down a giant, dripping cheeseburger and some iced tea, assuming it would be my last decent meal of the trip. We drove back to the campsite, forgetting firewood. We weren't worried, since, but found a more important task -- scoping routes.

We wandered across the street from the campground to look for routes in the Jumbo rocks area. Our route of interest is located in a narrow slot canyon. We wandered up and over every possible pile of rocks searching for this thing in the dark. After about an hour and a half of re-reading the approach beta and mistaking shadows for features of interest, we finally spotted the narrow slot canyon from afar. Another 20 minutes of bushwacking and we finally squeezed into the narrows that led to the climbing routes, known as Conan's Corridor. We retreated back to the campsite, had a beer and retired for the night.

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The next morning, we retraced our steps back to the narrow slot canyon. We debated about leading the route, but the first bolt was just high enough that we each didn't feel comfortable using this 5.8 as our warmup -- it was about 20' off the deck, with some thin hands and high steps on a face. We traversed up canyon and topped out in a windy blast of cold air. We each made our way with our heavy packs up and over to the top of the climb and Jay made quick work of setting up a top-rope anchor. Great work, brotha.

A couple of cams and a pinch-point, pre-equalized with some extension for the master point.

It's a pretty long pitch at 100'. The first half is thin face moves with small pockets placed just far enough apart. The second half is a shallow chimney with two parallel cracks on both sides, making for enjoyable lieback with hand jams, finger locks before the low angle ramp to the anchor up top.

We both sent the route twice, exiting out the top to retrieve our anchor.

Nearing the top with the two hand crack options within fun stemming moves on the sides of the shallow chimney

The area began to get populated with climbers fairly quickly and we didn't want to wait for the other crack routes to open up. We decided to bail and head to another set of boulders. We landed at intersection rock, one of the major campsites and hubs within JT. We approached the rock and quickly found we weren't the first group of climbers to arrive for the day.

We hopped in the cars and set out for Indian Cove

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