If it seems a bit out of character, it is! But just to prove this old dawg can do a few new tricks, we did the 13 hour drive from Colorado down to Joshua Tree National Park for a week of desert rock climbing to kick off the ski season. Louie said, “dad, this will be the first ski season in my life I didn’t hit the slopes on opening day.”
But, the idea of doing a rock climbing vacation was Louie’s anyhow, so he’ll just have to suffer through a few more days of sunny warm classics on J-Tree’s cool formations.
We’re not that radical of rock climbers. A few 5.6 leads and some 5.7 top ropes are about our speed. But you never know what’s next, we’re improving fast.
Truth be told, we needed to come down here for a family Thanksgiving dinner event, and figured we might as well do some rock climbing at JT since my brother-in-law lives only miles from the park. It’s working great – nice vacation and actually a good way to enter what’s going to be a LONG and excellent backcountry skiing season.
I’m excited about blog plans for when we return to Colorado. First thing is to switch to WordPress so this thing has a real RSS feed and is easier to maintain. I promise, it’ll get done.
Thanks goes out from here to all you folks who’ve been visiting this blog so much.
WildSnow.com publisher emeritus and founder Lou (Louis Dawson) has a 50+ years career in climbing, backcountry skiing and ski mountaineering. He was the first person in history to ski down all 54 Colorado 14,000-foot peaks, has authored numerous books about about backcountry skiing, and has skied from the summit of Denali in Alaska, North America’s highest mountain.
