Spring Adventures
Back country skiing in the Olympics and bouldering in Joshua Tree
Spring has sprung!
Two weeks ago I headed out to the Quilcene and tagged the summit of Mount Townsend. At 6,248’ it’s a good sized mountain, which offers some spectacular aspects loaded with snow.
The eastern Olympics gets much less snow than the western mountains, at least that’s what I’m told. I couldn’t tell though. On the second trip up I was post-holing up to my waist. It’s deep out there.
Then a week later I found myself in the desert of Southern California. In the interest of traveling light I had just brought my climbing shoes. I bought a chalk bag and rented a crash pad at Nomad Ventures in Joshua Tree and headed into the park.
I got my hopes up, maybe a little too much when I onsighted a V4 in the Psycho Boulders area on my first climb. The rest of the trip I was left wondering where my mojo went when I got my butt handed to me on V0s. Joshua Tree bouldering is hard - and scary!
Getting food poisoning on day two didn’t help. Took me over a week to fully heal from that. Thanks a lot Cross Roads Cafe for the riveting memories of the pit toilet that I became all to aquainted with the second night.
I did rally though on day three and manage to solo a super easy class five face out in the Lonesome Crowded West area of the park. Despite the dibilitating stomach issues it was a great trip. It was the first time in over eight years that I had more than twelve continuous hours to myself. The silence… and freedom took a while to get used to.
I’ll probably head out to Mount Townsend area again next week. There was some promising looking couliours around Silver Lake that I should be able to tag in a quick trip. Due to the stomach bug though I hardly ate for a week so I lost a lot of weight and as such I’m feeling a little weak. I think I’ll head out for some easy mountain bike rides in the meantime to help my body get back into the swing of things.