Hidden Valley

A long drive south in fading daylight took us to the famous Joshua Tree National Park. The park is best known for its namesake tree, a yucca palm, which is found here in abundance.
As it was dark when we arrived, we could only see the shadows of the trees to the left and right of the road as we wound our way through the landscape to get a site at the "first-come-first-serve"-Hidden Valley Campground. We were really lucky and probably got the last free site. It was quite small for two vans, but we made it work and had a great home for the next few days.

When we woke up the next morning, we were greeted by an overwhelming sight. We were surrounded by huge orange-brown granite rocks stacked on top of each other. As we did every morning, we made coffee and sat down to enjoy the sun, the view and life in general. As it got warmer, we decided to find a shady rock and start bouldering. Most of the routes, whether for trad climbing or bouldering, are in close proximity to the various campsites in the park. There are some sectors that are way out in the middle of nowhere, but I suspect these are mainly frequented by diehard locals.

We started off easy with a 1-minute walk to a tricky slab with a wicked stem start called Stem Gem, V4. Then it was on to Scatterbrain, V6, the standing start to a surprisingly hard arete that looks much easier than it is. There is a sit start, but we didn't have a chance to climb it. With our vans only a few meters away, we headed back to do some more enjoying life with a coffee in the sun. For the afternoon we had set our sights on Youth Body Explosion, V11, a technical route through a full roof with a little crack climbing, knee bars, toe hooks and a nasty barn door move leading into a slab mantle. Truly something special. While we were working on our beta, the sun was setting. At one point I looked up at the sky and thought: Where. Is. My. Camera! I didn't even have time to change my shoes or my lense. I just grabbed the camera and walked around the rocky hill to get a better view of the setting sun. The colors were changing everywhere. All parts of the sky were blue, orange, red, pink or purple. We were overwhelmed and took way too many photos...

Back at the boulder, it was very dark. We climbed for another half hour with headlamps and cell phone flashlights, but at some point we were too hungry to continue.
The next day we started in a different part of the campsite. Birte worked on a fun overhanging traverse, but slipped a couple of times just before the end. The sun was beating down relentlessly and we tried to find some shade, but were not very successful. In the afternoon we went back to Youth Body Explosion. The sun had already hidden behind the hill and we were adding the final pieces to the puzzle of the route. Soon enough, we started giving it burns from the start. Thanks to some clever resting positions Manu had found, I was able to climb the whole route, and Manu followed shortly after.
We ended the day with a campfire at our own fire pit, which we had found by chance in the morning when we walked to the first boulders. We burned the last pieces of wood we had collected on the journey. There were still some branches from Rocktown, Georgia, and a few pieces of desert pine from Cubero, New Mexico. This was to be the last of many campfires during our trip... which meant lots of marshmallows for everyone! It started raining like crazy that night and the next day was very cloudy with recurring rain. We had planned to go to the small town outside the national park anyway, which is also called Joshua Tree. There are a few small stores there selling handmade clothes, art and decorations. We had lunch at a diner and in the afternoon we headed back into the park for a little hike where we knew we would find petroglyphs.... and boulders. As the weather was already bad and got worse after the hike, we decided not to cook for ourselves and headed back into town for burgers and beer at the local brew pub.

Our last day started with thick fog. I went on a little picture hunt throughout the campsite to get a good view of the vast desert with all its Joshua Trees in the thick white haze. 

Later we went to another sector near the campsite to climb a classic called John Bachar Memorial Face Problem, V5. We were joined by a German man we had met with his son in the morning. He looked somehow familiar, but I couldn't really place him. He was very nice, had some good tries on the boulder and talked about expeditions and some wild free solo climbs he had done when he was younger after we had told him about our experiences in the Buttermilks with all those huge boulders. Days later I tried to find out who he was. It turned out that he was none other than Robert Jasper, a true legend in the mountaineering, mixed and ice climbing scene!

The climbing in Joshua Tree was fine. Youth Body Explosion was really good, but it couldn't compete with many of the areas we had visited before. But the scenery was beautiful. The colors, the plants, the birds and even the lone coyote that visited us at dawn on the last morning made it very hard to leave. It is a magical place and definitely worth a visit!Read more