{"id":715,"date":"2014-01-29T20:18:49","date_gmt":"2014-01-30T04:18:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fourchinnigan.com\/blog\/?p=715"},"modified":"2017-09-03T23:35:28","modified_gmt":"2017-09-04T06:35:28","slug":"jtree-januaries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fourchinnigan.com\/blog\/?p=715","title":{"rendered":"JTree Januaries"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"jtree-jan001\"Last January, I visited Joshua Tree and lead my first trad routes<\/a>. It was a harrowing experience\u00e2\u20ac\u201dat least my first route was\u00e2\u20ac\u201ddespite the low grades. Throughout the year, I lead a few more routes including some multi-pitches on Tahquitz<\/a>. It’s a new year, a new (exceptionally mild) winter, and the time had come to return to Joshua Tree.<\/p>\n

I left the last trip jonesing to climb “The Eye<\/a>” on Cyclops Rock. It’s rated in that low-grade zone where I feel comfortable and it looked really fun. It’s essentially a tall alcove that leads to a small tunnel near the summit of the rock around 100 feet above the ground.<\/p>\n

I rolled into Joshua Tree Saturday morning with Travis and Moreno. We were lucky enough to find a campsite at HIdden Valley directly across the street from Cyclops Rock. The fates had spoken. We set up camp, Moreno packed eight days of food into his day-pack along with his video camera, Travis grabbed his GoPro mounted quadcopter, and we hiked over to the rock. I lead it without incident, belayed the guys up, and we got a little video during the prep. It was a good warm-up and ego boost. It was time to pick a new route. “Penelope’s Walk<\/a>” just around the corner seemed like a good idea.<\/p>\n

“Penelope’s Walk” is 5.5ish with some slab-climbing, a bit of traversing, a little cave, and a short crack leading to the 80 foot summit. It looked fairly easy from the ground. \u00c2\u00a0I was surprised to find out how psychologically taxing it would be. Early on I noticed the rock was poor. I’ve climbed on worse choss (crumbly rock), but it was bad enough to make me question the reliability of some of my foot placements and a couple of my pro placements. Regardless, things were going well until I reached the traverse. I spent a large amount of time at this spot\u00e2\u20ac\u201dclimbing, down-climbing, weighing my options, looking for alternate routes (it’s where I’m perched in the first photo of the gallery). My dilemma was committing to one move roughly half-way across the traverse. The rock was poor and I couldn’t find any reliable foot placements I could trust to execute this one move linking both ends of the traverse. A fall would cause a pendulum swing possibly into a lower ledge. Chancing a fall was not an option. Thankfully, there were several rest spots nearby where I could cling to the wall comfortably and consider other options. After many retreats, I finally found a way to get me past that questionable spot. I climbed into the cave and rested for a bit. An older man had walked up earlier, stopped to watch, and chat with Travis. Thankfully, he would relay the small bit of reassurance I needed to top out on this route. Next to the cave is a thin crack that works left, then turns 90 degrees directly to the summit. It bulges out a bit, and looks quite intimidating. It was hard to protect, my last good piece was below in the cave, and a fall would have been ugly. The man on the ground assured me that it looked worse than it was, that as soon as I felt like I needed a hold, it would be there. I stood at the seam, placed a marginal cam primarily to appease me psychologically and committed. Hesitation would likely lead to a fall. Hesitation was not an option. I have rarely climbed a crack so smoothly and calmly. Although the crux of the route, I felt like I was dancing through it. My only option was to climb it well, that motivation made it so. I topped out, relief and satisfaction washed over me.<\/p>\n

Moreno followed and cleaned the route, pulling onto the summit as the Sun set. It had not been the quick, easy route I suspected. Not because the climbing was hard, but because it was just intimidating enough at the right spots to make me doubt myself. I did feel that I had progressed as a trad leader, although. The year before, “False Layback” (my first) had terrified me. “Penelope’s Walk” had made me uncomfortable and a bit frightened at parts. It even had me consider bailing a few times, but I was never truly scared and I was confident in my abilities when it counted.<\/p>\n

The next day I lead “The Eye” again, Travis shot some copter footage of it, and we gave him his turn on “Penelope’s Walk” by top-rope. Then, we climbed in the van and headed back West.<\/p>\n

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Last January, I visited Joshua Tree and lead my first trad routes. It was a harrowing experience\u00e2\u20ac\u201dat least my first route was\u00e2\u20ac\u201ddespite the low grades. Throughout the year, I lead a few more routes including some multi-pitches on Tahquitz. It’s a new year, a new (exceptionally mild) winter, and the time had come to return […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[244],"tags":[193,123,306,124,29,28,8,215],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fourchinnigan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fourchinnigan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fourchinnigan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fourchinnigan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fourchinnigan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=715"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.fourchinnigan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fourchinnigan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fourchinnigan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fourchinnigan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}