Joshua Tree

For the second week of July, we were supposed to have a brief break in the heat. We decided to go to Joshua Tree on Monday, which is supposed to be the coolest day. Or at least it would possibly be cool enough to go to Joshua Tree. Unfortunately, we were not ready to go when Monday came around and we decided to put it off one more day and go on Tuesday. Of course, it was supposed to be a few degrees hotter still.

We drove out Tuesday morning to the Echo Cove area. We climbed Chute Up (5.2) to warm up. The actual climb was pretty fun and not very difficult. Unfortunately, the anchor for the climb was not at the top of the so called climb. There was no way to anchor and get back down from the climb without going up to the anchor for the climb next to it. It was not trivial by any means. It was actually pretty scary. Christian left some runners for us to help us get up to the actual anchor but that didn't help us traverse over to the rock next to us where the anchor was.

Unfortunately, when Caitlyn came down, she did not fix the runners so that the next person could reach them, so when Christian went back up to clean the anchor and rappel back down, he could not reach them to secure himself and had to climb the top of the 5.8 slab without protection. It was a bit stressful to say the least.

By the time we were done, we stopped for lunch and were seriously hot and tired. There was no shade at the bottom of the climb but the kids found some across the way for us to rest at.

I think we decided at this point that it would be stupid to continue until it cooled down. We decided to go for a drive to some of the other areas of the park that we had not been to yet. The girls got to take turns driving a bit on the dirt roads. By the time we were done, we were dismayed that the temperature hardly dropped at all.

We went around to investigate where some other climbs were but could not find what we were looking for.

We did find some other climbs but they looked kind of sketchy for one reason or another. We ended up just scrambling around on the rocks for a bit. Christian and Caitlyn went all the way to the top of one rock formation. Emily and I went up about halfway, when Christian started moving off, from one spot, we thought he was heading down but instead he went to find another way to get up higher. Emily and I went down to the restroom to wait for them.

As the sun was going down and still not significantly cooler, we decided to call it a day and go home.