Until the mid-nineties, when Joshua Tree was known as "The Monument", a clever person could basically live up there year-round. I know I have spent well over 365 nights of my life in JT. In fact, when I bought my first home, it was in JT. I lived 5 minutes from Park Rd. and 40 minutes to "Gunsmoke". I have checked off over 500 different routes in my copy of Vogel's JT bible. I climbed many of those routes repeatedly. I used to climb Papa Woolsey (5.10b slab) by moonlight. I was a member of a richly vulgar climbing sect best described as "Dirt-Bag". I spent my early twenties up in the Monument, did chemistry homework on thursday nights under the light of the Coleman.
I have no way to convey to you the number of crazy, hilarious, insane, bizzare tales I could share from the seasons and years I spent living up there on beer and tortillas. Mucho insanity. My mom wouldn't want to hear most of it. And much of it could be construed as self-incriminating, in the pharmacopial sense. Perhaps I'll share something rich.
Anyway, it's too hot to hike, so I dug up these old pics, scanned and cleaned them up, and chose to share them with you all. I may do some other things like this in the future, if it suits you.
Top Picture:
After mangling my hands in JT cracks for several days, I lacerated my hand with a pair of scissors while cutting days old climbing tape from my hands.
Above:
Cave Man Boulder
Below:
Grit Roof
Below:
One of 2 Canadians I had some really good times with, Damien, severely hung over.
Below:
The bottom of "The Flake". I was 19.
The Life Is Good Camp, 1994
Above:
Clockwise from left: PBR for breakfast, me, Don, Chris, Andy, Chris, Mark. These guys would come over for a lazy morning fairly frequently.
Below:
The Life is Good Camp core. Furniture courtesy of yours truly, and Urs the Swede(which is a pretty funny story). We co-existed as a unit, sharing meals and tent space, gear and clothes, and climbed a bunch of stuff for about 5 weeks together. Good Times!
Left to Right: Urs (from Switzerland), "Newport" Mike (a very talented home-brewing lawyer), the Canadians Gentle (real name) and Damien (Damien was a real good climber and fun to hang with, Gentle lost 4 friends in snow-mobiling avalanches during the Christmas week and I helped him get completely wasted at the Joshua Tree Saloon on Christmas Eve. I took the picture.
Below:
Me, Dirt-Bag in full. Probably the 18th day since my last shower.
Above:
Figures on a Landscape, the JT classic.
Below:
"The Decrepitent", The original shelter was so abused and degraded that the only way to make it livable was to modify it. Rob Hamilton and I thought the blue would go nice with the backdrop. This "structure" hosted several days of infamy including "Coma Day" and the "Liver Trauma Jungle Juice" party.
Below:
Coarse & Buggy, 5.11b
Below:
Bouldering at sunset in the Hall of Horrors.
If things stay this hot I won't be doing too much in the local hills, so I'll endevour to continue posting new stuff.
Good shit, Maynard.
ReplyDeleteLiver trauma FTW, lol.
ReplyDeleteHJ