As told by Jon Owen

We left Salt Lake a little after 5:00 on a Thursday. John Rose and Dave were in John's p/u truck and Al and I were in the Jeep. Rush hour traffic was particularly bad and I was still fuming over having discovered a leak in the bottom of my collapsible 5 gallon water cube.

The drive down wasn't too bad. Rose was an iron man and drove the whole way. I swapped off with Al after about 5 or 6 hours. My hackles rose as we passed through Vegas - that city always gives me the creeps. About 50 miles past the City of the Beast, we turned off on a short cut through the desert that entailed about a hundred miles of no gas stations and no assistance. It was kind of fun actually, although I was surprised to find out that Al has a soft spot for bunny rabbits and will go to extreme measures to avoid hitting them. We exitted the short cut about 4:30 or 5:00 a.m.

By 6:30 we were in Joshua Tree and discovered that two of the campgrounds we wanted were completely full. We wound up at Jumbo Rocks and flopped down in what we thought was an unoccupied site (the last one) about 7:00. It wasn't exactly unoccupied, but no blows were struck and we eventually wound up with it.

After a couple of hours of sleep, we began moving around a bit. We were approached by Bill, a neighboring camper, who asked if we were climbers. This turned out to be very fortuitous. Bill is from San Diego and is an experienced J-Tree climber. He and his friends hung with us the whole weekend and since they had quite a bit of firewood and several guitars, our camping experience was made much more pleasant. Bill had come in Thursday night to reserve a site for his friends who were coming in Friday night. He had no one with whom to climb on Friday, so he asked if he could join us.

First, Bill, Dave, Al, and I went in to Yucca Valley to gas up and get firewood and firewater. Bill's a bio-engineering grad student at UCSD, so he and Al talked about cells and other little stuff quite a bit. We got back around 2:00 and all piled into Bill's Bronco to climb at Trash Can Rock.

After a bit of bouldering, I started off leading a 5.7+ called Tip Toe. I was pretty shaky, not having led or climbed outdoors since last year. It took me quite a while to set the top anchors. I think everyone except Dave climbed this one. Dave did an adjacent 5.1- thing, but hadn't climbed for about 2 years and he made up for it in a big way in the following days. John set a top on a vicious 5.10 something, which he and Bill proceeded to do quite handily. Al and I flailed on it.

That night we ate a nasty vegetarian chili meal and sampled Bill's homebrew and drank quite a bit of Miller and box o' wine. John brought out some wicked cheese and I think we had some heated cranberry/rum concoction (but I'm not sure). The fireside conversation was really fun and Bill suggested we all sleep out under the stars. I (who hadn't brought a tent anyway) agreed as did Al and Dave. When the rain hit, Bill stumbled off to his tent and Al said "Wake up, it's raining." I was too paralyzed by devil water to move and I guess Dave was too. Al slogged off to the tent and God or somebody wrapped Dave and me up in a tarp (kind of like a taco - Dave was the meat, I was the lettuce). The next morning, I woke in the rain to find that I'd left my clothes duffel open and everything was soaked. Fortunately the clothes I had on were dry.

The rain kept up off and on all day. The non-raining parts were rather warm and things would start drying rapidly. Dave helped me pitch my tarp, which would prove to be a fairly decent shelter for me for the rest of our stay. The only down side was a heavy dew on its underside each morning. Oh, yeah, I also put the top back up on the Jeep (it still smells bad...).

Bill's friends had arrived in the middle of the night and were pretty bummed that it was raining on their first day. They were:

Trent - kind of a short Michael "American Ninja" Dudikoff-looking guy, who majors in international business. Intense climber, gets pissed when he screws up.

Trent's brother Jason - very quiet, was sick part of the time

Christian - funny, easy-going, excellent climber. Comp. sci. undergrad, "taking a semester off", working in a cafe. Looks like Chris Elliot, but with no beard and long hair.

John went on a hike with them that afternoon and Dave, Al, and I hung out drying things.

That night we had a fun story-telling session around the campfire, eating red beans and rice and finishing off the box o' wine. Bill's girlfriend Buffy (really) showed up along with her drop-kick dog, Dana.

The next morning, I woke to the sound of coyotes howling. It went on for quite some time, but I kind of liked it. Bill and some others had gone off to do some climbing, but I needed coffee first. We hung out in camp for a while and around noon, everyone headed off to Echo Cove.

Christian led a 5.9 friction thing and those guys started top-roping. John led a very run-out 5.8 friction thing that proved to be about 15' longer than top-rope length. Al and I TR'd it and then DAVE did it. With nary a wobble, Dave scooted right up it, impressing the hell out of me. Al and John both did the 5.9, but it was down before I got to do it. Christian set up a 5.9/5.10 top-rope which John and I did (I buttered off a couple of times, but had fun), then Christian did a really hairy 5.10 crack thing next to it.

There was also disk-tossing and scorpion-finding and sun-glasses hunting going on. A pit bull/rottweiler kept coming over and eyeing Dana. Buffy topped us all by finding a bobcat and observing it at close range for a half hour.

That night, Trent and our crew jammed into the Jeep and went into YV for some so-so Mexican food and to stock up on Captain Morgan's and Coke. When we returned, John and Al crashed while Dave and I joined the social scene around the campfire. Bill was trying to compose a climbing song (I'm still trying to forget it), and some more good conversation was had. Bill was thrilled, 'cause The Good Captain is his favorite liquor.

The next morning, John got all spruced up, putting on a heinous tropical shirt to go pick up Cresta in San Diego. We traded phone numbers with Bill and Trent and packed up to go do Split Rock before heading back to SLC. We found a climb and hiked thru the desert to it, discovering that the final approach was kind of a nasty scramble. We started eyeing other things and decided to top-rope something else when we noticed some other climbers had just completed the approach and were about to climb it anyway.

We selected a 40' high outcropping, and I went up to set the anchor. The coolest part was a little crack section which definitely required taping hands. The rock in J-Tree is really vicious and caused lots of micro-cuts and such. I'm sure that if we hadn't taped up for the crack we'd have lost enough blood to pass out. We took several pictures of each other, although we failed to immortalize a super-cool belly flop move by Dave.

As we were all pretty toasty by this time, we decided to head back to the Jeep. Strangely enough, we decided to take a different route back and thanks to Al's leadership, did so with little error. Being the leader is fraught with peril, though, as Al discovered when he had a close brush with a cactus. He got about three spines stuck in his shin which took quite a bit of prying and manly grimacing to extract.

The drive back was kind of a blur. Since John was staying behind to vacation with his wife and kinfolk, three of us had to jam into the Jeep with our gear (though John graciously agreed to transport the cooler and some misc. gear for us). I drove to Vegas (at an agonizingly law-abiding rate of speed) where Al took over. I finished Ed Abbey's "One Life at a Time, Please", and slept through the rest of the trip.

Speaking for myself, I really enjoyed this trip. I never climb as much as I plan when we go on road trips, but that's okay. We saw some different and beautiful country, made some new friends, spent time with "old" ones, and did some climbing in the warm sunshine.

Miscellaneous stuff:

Dave read "On the Road" by Kerouac, and kept saying "Hey Man" the whole weekend.

Al provided the road music, surprising me with Hendrix and Steve Miller. One of the high points of the trip for me was at 4:00 a.m., pissing by the side of that forsaken road with Hendrix blaring from the Jeep.

I returned home to find that Alyosha Efros is back from Russia with my requested "Friendas" - the Russian SLCD. These things look like the original friends from 10 years ago, but are red and made from titanium (I think). He brought me a set of 5 for the astounding price of TEN DOLLARS!!! I'm anxious to try them out.

Lessons learned:

- always bring your tent

- always bring your rain gear

- put the sun block on your ears and behind your armpits

- set the tarp up before you start drinking

- pallets make good firewood

- check your coffee supply before you head out

- wet aspirin is very very nasty

- it rains in the desert even when the weather report says it won't