Sunfair Dry Lake Bed, California
Catching up the archive of journal reports... from December 2021
12/11/2021
Sunfair Dry Lake Bed, California
It was very cold last night but we were encased in sleeping bags and pillows and blankets and so were pretty well bundled. It got below freezing though since my water bottle became a slushie.
We drove into Joshua Tree National Park and bought our annual national parks pass for 2022. Then we drove to the Barker Dam pullout and did some warmup climbs in the morning. There's a 5.10c finger crack there that I've top-roped several times and always felt was exceedingly thin and difficult. This time I floated up it handily on my first try which felt good. The gear looks really fiddly though so it'll be another try before I go for the redpoint.
After lunch we hiked into the Wonderland of Rocks area with my sights set on a climb I spied there over a year ago on a feature called Foolproof Tower. We were hiking through last November to a different climb (Mental Physics) and I saw a striking crack that zigzagged up a tower and just had to know what it was. It turned out to be High Strung 5.9 but I didn't get the chance to climb it until today. And it was worth the wait!
The climb started on an imposing blank vertical face with a thin seam that widens to fingertips just past the point a 6 foot tall person could comfortably reach. I fiddled in a nut and my smallest BD #0.1 cam while on my tiptoes and then climbed back down to rest my calves. Then I went back up and went for it. The opening 20 feet was a leaning finger crack with good feet breaking up steep smearing. I placed 6 or 7 pieces of protection in this first section and was like "I gotta start putting more space between the gear or else I'll run out before I'm halfway up!" -- the climb being almost 100 feet tall.
The crack steadily widens from fingertips all the way through fists and BD #5 offwidth for the last 20 feet. This last section wasn't too hard, especially with my brand new ultra-light number 5 that replaced the old #5 I shamefully got stuck in Classic Crack of Calico two weeks ago outside Las Vegas. And then I was at the top of High Strung and I had flashed my first Joshua Tree 5.9 on lead!
Afterwards we had a nice 4pm dinner of gnocchi cooked on the side of the tailgate (because the bike rack inconveniently takes up the whole backside of the tailgate -- we're still working out the kinks in our truck-camping setup).
12/12/2021
We spent the night at the Sunfair Dry Lake Bed again and it was cold. When we woke up, the moisture in our breath had frozen to the rivets in the ceiling of the camper shell forming bunches of little icicles. However I discovered that the velcro I have with adhesive on the other side can be used to adhere my phone to the ceiling of the camper shell to allow me to watch Netflix with my phone suspended inches from my face.
Once the sun was out we went for a bike ride around the lake bed and up one of the 4x4 trails leading into the hills on the edge of the desert. We have no experience with mountain biking anything and it felt like re-inventing the wheel. We figured out that staying in a really low gear helps to keep you going through thick, slippery sand. Turns out those mountain bikers aren't pedaling away at 2 miles an hour for no reason.
Around lunch time we hung out for a bit and I marveled at the desert weather. I was hanging out in shorts and no shirt and Catherine was sitting with sweatpants and her puffy jacket and we were both perfectly comfortable!
Then we drove through the Mojave National Preserve to the Red Rock Canyon Campground where we met up with Michelle, Libby, and Jimmy.