Trip Report:

The Chimichanga Epic
(I bet you didn't think it was possible to have an epic at Joshua Tree. Okay, so it wasn't a real epic, just a delay of dinner, when we were starving for Santana's chimichangas.)

An anchor... stuck partway up a climb For those who climb Hemingway buttress in the future, remember to bring a second rope for the rappel! When we climbed Dung Fu (5.7), we only had one rope with us, so we had to rappel as far as we could (which was most of the way) and set an anchor in the lower part of White Lightning (5.7), then do a second rappel. Aaron then ran back to the car for a second rope while I took some pictures of the sunset. We then climbed White Lightning, trailing the second rope, so we could do a double-rope rappel. Of course, rather than Aaron trailing the rope on lead, he had me bring it up, and it snagged badly when I was about 20 feet from the top. By this time it was already completely dark, but fortunately I had my headlamp with me. Aaron lowered me, but not before warning me that “this could be dangerous if the rope is running over a sharp edge.” Great thing to tell a relative newbie like me. So I basically started downclimbing as fast as I could, as he lowered me. At the bottom, I quickly re-flaked the rope, and climbed back up as fast as I could. About half way up, I paused to catch my breath, wiped the sweat off my forehead, and realized that I was running laps on this route. When I reached the top we tied the ropes, and I rapped off first, clearing a few more minor snags on the way down. Though it was a minor epic, all in all it was a good learning experience for me, and there were a few really beautiful moments along the way. At one point, as I neared the top of the route, I came around a bulge in the rock only to be blinded by a bright light. It took me a second to realize that it wasn't Aaron's headlamp, but rather a full moon. On the way down, the moon treated me to one of the most beautiful sights I've had while climbing. I looked over and saw on the wall to my right a perfect moonlight shadow of myself rappelling, complete with ropes and the gear hanging from my harness. I wish I could have taken a picture of it, but no camera could have captured that sight so perfectly.