I’ve started this blog entry four times already. The trouble is, it’s difficult to encapsulate experiences that leave you reeling in reflection long after the bags are (mostly) unpacked and regular life has resumed. Trying to write it down feels trite but at the same time you want to preserve it while it’s still vivid and fresh and tangible.

With all that being said, the 1st Annual Joshua Tree Tweetup was astoundingly memorable. What began as a half-serious conversation on Twitter some months ago eventually became an internationally attended event that left a solid impact on all those who attended. It’s a wonder our friends and family members and even our Twitter friends haven’t asked us to shush up about how amazing the trip was already.

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Thursday
I managed to get off work early to get home and take a shower and finish packing. Rick (@RikRay) and I had decided that it would be ideal to try and make camp that night instead of splitting the trip into two parts, which eventually meant we didn’t get to stop on the way and spend time with my little brother, who lives at about the halfway point between here and Joshua Tree. Rick is as pleasant a travel buddy as I could ask for–agreeable to a fault and he has great taste in music. He also doesn’t mind sitting in silence for long stretches of highway–I know, right? Me? Quiet? Believe it. When we finally pulled in to camp around 10:30 p.m., we wasted no time getting our tents set up and sleeping bags unrolled, thanks to help from our campsitemates, some of whom we were meeting for the first time, like @dloo and @jeremyshapiro (those guys give great beta…for dance breaks…“jump on it!”). Our friends regaled us with stories about how they had climbed Headstone earlier that day, a easy yet heady route on the edge of a rock shaped like–you guessed it–a headstone. We stayed up far too late, and then retired shivering to our respective tents.

Friday
Upon waking, my very first thought (besides “what’s up with all the coughing, lungs?”) was “where the heck is @adventuregrrl? I NEED to hug her as soon as possible.” I bounded out of my tent in my long underwear to find Ms. Katie, who greeted me just as warmly and introduced me to Dan & @daisie981, whose real name is Nina but got called Daisie rather often on account of her Twitter handle.
Once hugs had been sufficiently exchanged, with the exception of sweet Tiffany, who I could tell needed a little bit of waking up before being subject to what eventually came to be referred to as the tacklehug, it was time for breakfast (and pants). Somehow, we managed to get our entire group assembled for the day’s destination without much to-do. There was most definitely a spirit of cooperation and self-responsibility that I think had much to do with this.
We spent the day at Hemingway, where there was plenty to be had in the way of both trad and sport routes at what we felt was a good spectrum of difficulty for our group. For part of the morning, Tiffany (who by now I was hugging almost incessantly), Katie, Randy, and I established a sweet bouldering problem after spending some time just scrambling around on the warm rock, losing ourselves in crevices and sprouting out the top of the boulders triumphantly, enjoying the unmatched sensation of communicating with the rock, enjoying its nuances and textures. Our bouldering problem turned out to be a bit of a challenge, as Randy was the only of us to top out, but we had a great couple of hours rubbing our fingertips raw on the rough rock. And when Randy sent, you could hear the whoops and hollers clear across the valley to the Hemingway formation where our friends were all climbing.
After lunch, I hopped onto White Lightning for a go at the route. Tape turned out to have been a really excellent idea, as the rock in Joshua Tree is very…rough. Great for friction, not so good for skin. It ended up being the only route I climbed all day on account of the fact that I was starting to really feel zonked by whatever illness had decided to take over my body.
Once packed up at Hemingway, about half the group made a stop at Gunsmoke, which has become an iconic reference amongst the tripgoers. Challenging enough to warrant project status by all but the strongest climbers of us, but doable enough to demand each of us try, Gunsmoke proved to be something we could connect over. We were even lucky enough to be present to watch Lizzy send for the first time, after more than four years of projecting the route. She climbed it with such inspirational grace, and the excitement of achievement was shared and echoed by all who watched.
Dinner back at camp was characterized by happy exhaustion and as we sat around the campfire for what would be the first of several “round robin” discussions, it was evident that what was happening in our midst was something very special. As we each shared our favorite memories from 2009, the collective spirit was one of family–our individual achievements were something we could all celebrate.
Bedtime came quickly and sleep came easily.

Saturday
Saturday I woke up feeling like I had been run over by a bus. I hadn’t slept soundly and the racking cough that had been vibrating through my chest made me feel as though everything was in slow motion. I dragged through my morning routine–oatmeal, coffee, pack a lunch–and I do not envy anyone that had to put up with me that morning. Even with coffee, I was grouchy.
That day, we planned Echo cove for our excursion, with plenty of routes to be had by all. Nina wanted to lead Touch & Go, and I wanted to follow her. We had never roped up together before that! After watching the party ahead of us climb and clean it, we roped up for the (cold) climb. It was morning, so the climb was in the shade, and let me tell you…it was chilly. It’s so much harder to hand jam when your fingers ache from the cold! Nina climbed the line in her trademark gutsy style. Even her “watch me” at the crux of the route wasn’t uttered in panic, but rather confidently and assuredly. I hope to someday climb with that kind of boldness. She set up her anchor and belayed me up to clean the pitch. Unfortunately I had to rest about three times on the way up the short (and beautiful) crack just to catch my breath and cough up my lungs. Kind, patient Nina was as supportive as can be and met me with a ready smile as I topped out.
Then the fun part started. Actually, our down “climb” was one of the highlights of my weekend. The beta we had received from the guys before us was ambiguous at best, and we were left thinking maybe we had gotten it wrong. A ten-foot chimney to start the descent? This was not class 3 scrambling. After some deliberation, we made it work, and then executed some measure of route-scouting at each juncture of the descent. All told, it took us about an hour to pluck through the boulder field to the base of the climb to retrieve our gear.
Gear was assembled, and then we made our way over to the base of Heart and Sole, a tough face climb characterized by tiny flakes that our fingertips barely held to. About five of our friends were there, and more trickled by throughout the day. I think almost all of us gave the climb a try by the end of the day, and we were that much more astounded to consider that Rick had actually led the climb to set up the toprope. I let myself be convinced to try the route, not committing in my mind to actually finishing it. I figured by the time I got to the you-don’t-want-to-slip-here-since-you’re-above-the-anchor-making-a-traverse part I would just come down. Really, though, I don’t do that. I don’t know why I thought I would. I get to that moment and I just DO it, even if I’m sketched.
I slipped once along the lip of the roof headed for the lieback. After that, it was smooth sailing all the way to the anchors. It’s climbs like that that are near but not at my limit that I really enjoy. I don’t really know what my limit is, actually (I have a hard time committing to redpointing a route, even in the gym…but that’s fodder for another blog altogether), so it’s fun to play with difficulty. Once I was off belay, I felt loads better. My energy level was hovering somewhere much closer to normal, and I thoroughly enjoyed watching my new friends make successful attempt after successful attempt. A little bit of easy bouldering followed, and then it was back to camp for campfire.
By this time, our entire expected group had arrived. We all ate dinner and then assembled around the fire for what would be our only and last night all together. The evening was colored with discussion and photos and s’mores and laughter and snuggles and lots of sweet moments. I have a hard time really explaining what that campfire session was like other than that it will always hold great significance to me, especially with regards to this trip. I was one of the last to go to bed, as I didn’t want to miss a word or a hug. The goodbyes that night were really hard (I’m starting to get a little teary now just thinking about it) and the hugs were extra long.

Sunday
Morning came too quickly, and with it the chore of packing up camp. For Rick and I, packing my car was an interesting challenge, as it had been the first time since a Civic is not exactly a big car. We’re pretty much masters at 3D Tetris, by my calculations.
From there, most of the group headed for Gunsmoke to have one last go at our beloved problem. Much video was taken and many photos were shot, and as we all shuffled in and out before heading on our respective ways, there was a unique feeling of completing the route as a group that Eileen very accurately represented in the video she put together and posted on her website.
David and Rick and I were the last to leave, after having watched another group come and go on Gunsmoke, and we reluctantly settled into our cars after exchanging long hugs and “see you soon”. It was going to be a long drive home. I was sunburnt, covered in desert dust, tired, and heavy-hearted. Rick and I made good time getting home, spending much of the drive either talking about how amazing the weekend had been or sitting in introspective silence. Pulling into my driveway and unloading my car was almost painful, and I was glad it was nighttime so I could count on the heaviness of sleep to soften some of the disorientation of reentry.

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Here I am, more than a week later, and still Jtree occupies my attention. Every new blog post and video and photo gallery leaves me teary, and I’m finding that the geographic limitations to hugging my new friends is making me crazy. I miss them all more than I can express, and just writing this all down does nothing to take the heaviness of it off of my heart and brain. I simultaneously hope for it to fade off of my psyche just a little, but hope that it never does. The part of me that breathes climbing has been stirred back into life a little (I had spent a lot of mental energy on skydiving the last few months) and I want to get stronger and climb harder and heck…I want to lead next season!

My dear #jtreetweetup family, I love you all dearly and I hope our paths cross again–sooner rather than later.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 23rd, 2009 at 12:55 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.