Tar Creek Daytrip

Had another nice day at Tar Creek yesterday. Took Dave Rivas and his son, Ruby the dog and Zero. Zero crashed, falling down a chimney of rock. He's pretty banged up, with abrasions to his face and paws. You never would have thought he got hurt from the way he acted, but in the evening he was walking around like an old man. Was a nice day though.

The Joshua Tree Years

During the 1990's I spent most of my time rock climbing, and the majority of that was done in Joshua Tree. I have climbed over 600 routes there that I know of, and many of them I repeated because of their obvious quality. I even bought my first house in the town of Joshua Tree adjacent to the park. I could just drive up and boulder most evenings. I know most of that park better than I know my own neighborhood.

One might ask what is so great about climbing in JTree that I would spend so much time there. The obvious answers are in the environment. A temperate climate and incredibly scenic expanse of desert spreads in all directions, full of weird wildlife and Dr. Seuss-like trees, is punctuated by epic blobs of mishappen granite sticking up at the most unusual angles. Nothing beats walking the desert on a full-moon night in Josh. Also, the place just has a positive vibe, a good energy.

Of course, it's the quality and quantity of stellar climbs that really makes the place special. JTree has climbs of every difficulty for every range of climber. I found that the best quality climbs in the park were in the 5.10-5.11 range. I mostly stuck to crack climbing and plugging in my own gear, but I climbed almost an equal number of dicey face-climbs. The cracks in JTree have a well deserved reputation for being man-eaters on account of the crystal nature of the rock. These same crystals form the friction slabs and micro-edges that make the face-climbs in JTree climbable.

Having spent a majority of my climbing experience in Joshua Tree wasn't very good for furthering my development as a climber of really difficult routes. That's where I became hard-wired with an unreasonable fear of falling. I say "unreasonable" because one can't really progress as a climber without taking some big falls. To fall while lead climbing in JTree is to almost certainly get injured in some way. This is because ofthe low angle of many climbs (the falling climber hits and/or skids down the slab below him), features that protrude from the climbs (humps, horns, lips, and rope-shearing edges that the falling climber smashes into on the way down), or, more rarely, ground-falls (the falling climber craters into the ground, mostly due to poor technique but exacerbated by the short length of most JTree climbs). I personally experienced all these types of falls and I became a "Falling is not an option." climber, which undoubtedly hindered my advancement in friendlier climbing locales.

This "no fall" ethic was reinforced by numerous epic falls I witnessed or responded to in JTree. I saw a fatal ground-fall, several serious head injuries, guys with no skin on their limbs from skipping off of slabs, and many, many fractures. If you are thinking of lead climbing in JTree, do not be disuaded by me, just understand your risk/reward tolerance.

I don't rock climb much anymore and I haven't gone to Joshua Tree in years but I have a trip to JTree coming up. I look foreward to it, and am already planning my climbing tick-list. Needless to say, the climbs I do will be a walk on the mild side in light of my advanced age and delicate condition. As Clint Eastwood said in Magnum Force, "A man's got to know his limitations.".

All pictures were taken, of me, back in the day.

The Magnificent Bastards

In the winter season of '93/'94 there existsted as motley a tribe of dirtbag miscreants as Joshua Tree's Hidden Valley Campground had ever hosted. Most of the post-climbing nightlife centered on campsite #10, known forever more as "The Life is Good Camp". The denizens of that camp became the unwitting parents of the nightly social scene for the semi-permanant residents of JTree. Folks were attracted like moths to a candle by the unusually large campfires of site #10, and stayed to enjoy the anthropologically diverse specimins who basked by their fire like over-fed lions. Ah, life was good.

The Life is Good Camp started with humble beginnings. It's founders were three young men of very different backgrounds who seemed to bump into each other at dusk one evening. Damien was from Squamish, British Columbia. He had no car, and little else but climbing gear and a cup. He was the youngest of the three and a very likable guy who had nothing on his immediate mind but climbing in JTree until he was forced to return home. He was speaking to the primary occupent about sharing the campsite. That man was a cabinet-maker from Switzerland named Urs, and true to his namesake he did look a bit like a shaggy bear. He had started his trip several months prior in Central America, and being held at gunpoint by Sandanista rebels as trucks of civilian bodies rolled by was enough to persuade him that Alaska was, indeed, the last frontier. He arrived in JTree sometime later in a P.O.S. Chevy Citation that lacked most of it's windows due to Urs rolling his car off the trans-Alaskan Hwy while sleeping. He was a very friendly man with thickly accented English and I liked him immensely. The third young man was myself, outgoing, cock-sure, and probably insufferably arrogant. We all wound up sharing the site for several weeks, and what weeks they became.

Urs, Damien, and myself climbed together most days, and we shared meals, pooling our food resources. Since I was the American I had the most food, which was good for them. Damien being the Canadian, always had pot, which was good for Urs and myself. Urs could make a great meal out of anything, which was good for all of us. The Life is Good Camp earned it's namesake less than a week into our stay. We had gone to town to fill up water and buy cases of Pabst when it occured to us that we needed firewood, and that pallets were free. After a successful pallet theft, and with beer stocks in surpluss territory we could look foreward to several nights of luxurious and comfortable self-indulgence. The next day, Urs and I were tramping back to site #10 when, almost a mile from the campsite, I spotted a chair leg sticking out of a dumpster. On closer inspection, the chair leg turned into an intact but worn sofa chair, and damn-all if there wasn't a second one underneath it. Urs and I must have looked exotic indeed, with ropes and gear hanging all off us and sofa chairs being carried on our heads. Damien's was an exuberant response, "Hell yes! We'll get chicks for sure!". Urs sat down on one of new chairs, and with a sly old look in his eye said, "Life is good.".

Between the novelty of sofa chairs and the abundant firewood, the Life is Good Camp was born. There were people in our camp even when we weren't. Every evening a dozen or more folks would bring their grub and some intoxicant to share and hang out next to a big fire in good company. Most of the time we managed to keep the chairs to ourselves, however Damien, being on the smaller side would try to coax any female in the neighborhood into one of those chairs with him. On any given evening we would host such JTree luminaries as Chongo Chuck, Tucker Tech, or Monkeyman Brian. In all, I don't remember one bad evening.

Before long, our lazy morning starts had attracted a small gathering of like-minded individuals. The Life is Good Camp was, we found out, blessed with direct morning sunlight, which was a godsend on cold mornings. Andy, Gentle, Steve, The Orange County Mikes and others would sit around well into the morning shooting the breeze, discussing climbs, poring over the guidbook for the days plans, drinking coffe and smoking cigarettes. It became a kind of social ritual and since nothing in JTree requires an alpine start, those late mornings became a modus-operandi.

Nothing lasts forever, and the demise of the Life is Good Camp took some time to unfold, but it did end. I had to retreat to the spring semester of college even though I was back out there every Thursday night through Sunday. With a kind of sadness I watched my creation dwindle. By that time, Urs had suffered a terribly sprained ankle, and later a concussion falling off caveman boulder while drunk. Damien had so many hideous hand injuries that he couldn't put his hands near a crack. I had hurt my back, torn a finger tendon, and had stitches in my palm. It was time for everyone to move on, and the Life is Good Camp became a memory.

Above are some archival photos of the Life is Good Camp. I ran into Urs a few years later, he and his fiance were visiting California and looked me up. He is just a great individual. I never did find out what happened to those sofa chairs.

The Land of the Lost

One of my favorite day hikes in the Los Padres Nat'l Forest starts above Fillmore and descends into a small watershed called Tar Creek. I hiked down there today just to relax in the sun and be by myself.

The hike isn't all that difficult and the scenery isn't very spectacular, at least not until you get to the area I call the "Land of the Lost". This stretch of canyon is unique in my So. Cal. wanderings and I've gone there at least twenty-five times.

The main highlight of Tar Creek is the four-tiered swimming holes that remain cold and clear through early summer. Some of these holes are deep enough to dive into head first from 20 ft up. The first hole has it's own 8 ft waterslide. The second hole has a waterfall that doubles as a shiatsu massager. The third is actually several small tubs and the bottom pool is a 80x30 ft swimming pool.

In the spring, especially, one can catch water-snakes and turtles. Other wildlife I have spotted from the trail include deer, snakes, swallows, wrens, ravens, hawks, a fox, a bobcat, a coyote, an owl, California condors, and even a ringtail cat. He was a cute little guy with huge eyes and ears, and a tail that was longer than his body. One time I was filling up on some water and a couple of seconds went by before I realized I'd parked within an arm length of a healthy pacific diamond-back. You want to see a man jump...

The trail is all uphill on the way out, and after leaving the creek, is waterless chapparel. There are very few trees and little shade. Spring and summer temps routinely surpass 100 degrees. I look at that hill as a kind of time-trial, to gauge my fitness. About halfway back to the trail-head lives an otherwise uninteresting scrub-oak tree that I've pruned over the years in order to cultivate one last shady stop for those really hot days. I've trimmed away all the branches up to head height on the NNW side of the tree. The results are quite satisfactory. I think I'll build a stone bench there.

Numerous other and greater discoveries abound in Tar Creek Canyon and I think I know most of them, but I won't share unless you go with me. Sometimes the inquisitive mind reaps the greatest rewards.

Lost Arrow Spire, Yosemite, 1994

There are climbing routes in Yosemite that are unique, their like not to be found anywhere else. From the massive monoliths of El Capitan and Half Dome to the desperate overhangs of the Rostrum and Astroman, climbing in Yosemite is adventurous, scary, and big. By 1994 I had done a number of routes in Yos, but there was one climb that I had always wanted, Lost Arrow Spire. The Lost Arrow isn't technically that difficult or long, it's the novelty of it that got to me.

Lost Arrow Spire is a pinacle of rock that stands alone, detached by 70 feet from the Yosemite Falls headwall, it's pointed summit looking down almost 2,000 vertical feet to the valley floor. Standing on it's summit is as airy a place as any in the U.S., but that's only the halfway point, you still have to get back to the headwall and terra firma. Enter the Tyrolian Traverse. Named for the pinnacles of rock in Italy where alpinists first devised it, this is an ingenious technique for getting from one hard place to another. The Tyrolian involves lots of rope and is only possible when another peak of equal or greater elevation is in relatively close proximity.

For the Lost Arrow, the climbers must rappel over 200 feet from a tree on the Yosemite Falls headwall down to a notch that connects the headwall to the Lost Arrow Spire. From there, the climbers have to ascend the Spire while dragging the rope still attached to the tree. Once on the summit, the rope from the tree is pulled tight and fixed to the summit of the Spire, connecting the headwall to the summit. Then the less intelligent of the climbers traverses that rope across almost 2,000 feet of air to the headwall while draging a second length of rope, which is then tied to the first, creating a loop, which can then be pulled from the headwall to retrieve all the rope. The second climber to cross the Tyrolian invariably feels a bit more secure because he is attached to two ropes instead of just one, though the difference is mostly psychological. It is advisable to do the Traverse in sunny and mild conditions, which is, of course, not the way we chose to do it.

The day we climbed Lost Arrow, we got a late start and didn't rapell to the notch until late afternoon, and the climb to the summit took us longer that the guidbook implied it would. The wind got worse through the evening. The sun set and the temperature plunged. We were in shorts, and I was the only one with a headlamp. We were hungry and cold, and the wind was so loud that we could barely hear each other. Naturally, we didn't reach the summit until the night was pitch black.

One of the guys I was with suggested we rapell back the way we had come and ascennd the ropes back up to the tree. Between the cold and the wind I had gotten pretty frustrated, and that just pissed me off. All I knew was that my last cigarette was in my pack at the base of that damn tree just 70 feet away, and I tied into the rope, left the only headlamp with those two, and stepped into space. By the time my weight had really settled onto the rope I was bouncing around in the wind, working my ass off to get across in a hurry. No sir, I was was pissed off, cold and scared. I felt like I was tied to the mast of a little boat being bounced around in a sea of blackness. My only points of reference were the lights of Curry Village in the valley below and the headlamp on the summit behind me. I felt really alone and struggled to overcome my fear and keep going across. Sometimes I closed my eyes, and when I did I imagined sitting under that nice old tree happily smoking my last coffin-nail. And before too long that's exactly where I was.

The other two guys had left a whole rack of gear on top of the Spire and in the morning somebody had to go across to the summit, get the gear, and come back. Those two guys displayed a distinct lack of interest so it fell to me, again. I thought, "Hell if I'm going to go through what I did last night without pictures to prove I was there!". I handed the other guys the camera. The Tyrolian was actually fun in daylight. I kind of enjoyed myself.

A Thanksgiving memory

Today is Thanksgiving 2008, well, not for millions of turkeys, but that's beside the point. Turkeys taste good and are not intelligent enough to organize a revolt against tradition.

I have a favorite Thanksgiving memory. For several consecutive years I spent Thanksgiving at Joshua Tree National Monument, usually taking a friend along for the weekend. In 1993, Scott Cattanach and I arrived at Hidden Valley late wednesday night and planted our tent in the brush behind some guys' suburban. We took a midnight jaunt in the desert, marveling at the night sky, the crisp air, and our high-grade smoke.

The next day, Thanksgiving, we climbed a little. It turned out that Scott didn't seem to think that clinging to a cliff by his fingernails wasall that much fun. I did not know this about him. Got to hand it to him though, not only was he open-minded enough to try, but he knew how to assert himself. So we hiked about and saw lots of cool desert stuff. I don't recall what we made for Thanksgiving dinner. Maybe it had mushrooms in it. I don't know. It was crystal clear and frosty when we sacked out.

I woke up slowly, warmly. I gradually became aware that the morning was absolutely silent. Scott was stirring next to me when I noticed that the roof of the tent was more dark than usual, and that it sagged a bit, as if weighted down. A little confused, I unzipped the tent, rolled onto my belly and, looking outside, saw almost a foot of gorgeous champagne powder blanketing everything. I was stunned. I had seen snow in the desert, but this took my breath away. I know Scott felt the same.

Well we got up. Neither of us had brought real cold weather clothes, but that didn't keep us from sliding around in the snow like little kids. The rock formations of Hidden Valley look even more surreal under a blanket of white. Under grey skies, with snow still falling, the joshua trees and chollas looked like spiky snow puffs protruding from a white plane.

We couldn't resist the urge to drive around and see more of the park. We piled into my little crap car and went slipping and sliding out to Barker Dam. The sight of all that snow on the desert blew me away. We pulled a couple of donuts in the Barker parking lot, in front of a ranger, before zipping over to Real Hidden Valley for more fun.

That was a really special memory, never mind that it happened to be Thanksgiving. Maybe at Christmas I'll describe the moose-meat spagetti that was the yule supper of 2004, dished up in the Life Is Good Camp.

The American Southwest in 1997

The American Southwest has always been a playground for rock climbers. I spent much of the 1990s tramping around the deserts of southern California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico and even spent two seasons climbing outside of El Paso. The allure of desert climbing isn't just in the many types of stone, nor is it entirely explained by the fantastic formations to be found there. I think it's about space, mystery, and the absence of distraction. Those elements were the real reasons I, and people like me, went to the deserts to climb instead of somewhere else.

The desert uncomplicates a complicated existence. The clear skies with miles of unobstructed views, the inky-black night skies, the silence of morning, the capricious winds scouring jagged sandstone monoliths in an ageless desert force one to contemplate something bigger than themselves. I treasure those times. They got me through the turmoil of my twenties and clarified my priorities.

Most of those adventures I shared with a true friend-for-life, Robert Hamilton. I should also mention his dog, Buddy, who I hold in higher regard than many of the people I know. Now, I could launch into some hilarious and alarming stories about guns, strippers and alcohol-feuled misogeny but I don't think either of our wives would appreciate that. Suffice it to say that we didn't just climb. But mostly that's all we did.

We had numerous adventures in so many places, but one location stands out. Hueco Tanks in the great nation of Texas. 1997 was the last year that Hueco Pete still personally ran his shabby store. It was the year that the Texas Parks law-enforcement started to drop the nightstick on climbers, and the showers in the park failed. I recall being irritated because for several days I could barely climb the silly boulder problems I attempted, being so unfamiliar with the gymnastic style of bouldering required for even modest success at Hueco. But I learned.

Before a couple of weeks had passed, we were climbing stuff that neither of us had considered to be in our range. Hell, we got ambitious! We could scarcely abide the boredom of rest days, but they were a neccessary evil to prevent injury. I got my first tattoo at a shop outside the army base on one such day. I look back on that season with absolutely first-rate fondness. Rob, Buddy, and I made a hell of a team.

Rob, if you think I should write about the drive-in theater, or the Las Vegas incident, or the Kingman detour or other acts of mischief let me know.

The above Hueco Tanks photos in order:

Robert on "Creamy"

Dave on "Hobbit in a Blender"

Robert exiting "Beer, Pizza,..."

Dave on "Starpower"

Dave on "The Norwegian Wall"