Davide was finally back in town, and we had a free weekend to do some chill tradding. This could only mean one thing: Idyllwild! Forecast looked autumnal: comfortably above freezing at night, but certainly breezy. Maybe a light drizzle at night. Daytime was gonna be in the 50’s. My trad gear was in Orange County with Andrew (this had almost ruined the previous week’s much less silly outing), so we invited him as a third for Saturday and for camping. Hopefully, this would provide sufficient incentive to give me back my cams. We posted in the chat, and Carrie happily joined us on the ride over — she had invited a few old friends to join us for camping. I booked a campsite, and we were off to the races. We, as always, met at Higher Grounds (now renamed ‘Pure Coffee’ — I refuse to use the new name). Andrew arrived, Carrie’s friends arrived. We handed them our guidebook, and headed on up! On the approach, the views were spectacular. The trees were above the clouds, and the typical socal desert was completely invisible. Fall colors were peeking through, and Idyllwild was as beautiful as ever.
The plan was to do Jensen’s Jaunt, 5.6, 4 pitches — Andrew is experienced in the backcountry and comfortable with exposure due to various third class adventures, so we felt comfortable taking him up despite his inexperience with ropes. The first three pitches were uneventful, save for the summoning of Cthulu on pitch 2 (someday I’ll have a tangle-free day with a party of three…) The only excitement was the clouds speeding by us at uncharacteristic rates. The climbing was cruiser, and due to the nature of the clouds, we were confident that when they slammed into the rock, we would be prepared. Worst came to worst, we’d just do the gully descent instead of the friction slabs.
As anticipated, the clouds finally crashed into Tahquitz rock, and wind started blasting up the face. The fog brought with it immense moisture, and a bunch of cold. Better yet, the rope had snagged onto some horn, and Dave could not feel the slack inside it. My fingers went numb, and I soon had a fun case of the screaming barfies. Thankfully, this was all pretty manageable and the pain went away quick.
As I was scrambling up the last pitch (thankfully, it went at class 3/4), it became totally obvious that no slack would get taken up until I got up to whatever the rope had snagged on. As I was approaching the rock that the rope had snagged on, I got hit with an absolutely insane gust of wind (explaining the snag…). Pressing myself close to the cliff, I waited till the wind subsided, and crawled on up to free up the snag. The rest of the pitch was smooth sailing.
We topped out soon, as the moisture began accumulating. No drizzle, but due to the high humidity and low temps, water was condensing on tree needles, so all the trees were dripping. We knew the descent well and were comfortable in shitty weather, so the way down presented no particular challenges. On our way, we picked up a pair of climbers who seemed kind of lost and concerned about the descent. In this arrangement, we gleefully headed on back to lunch rock.
We arrived at the car in short order, and drove back to town. After loading up on dinner for the night (chopped hawt dawgs in marinara sauce with protein spaghetti), we popped on down to our campsite. Carrie and her friends were enjoying themselves and we had a jolly time at the campsite. They’d had a much shorter and chiller day up at Suicide Rock.
The predicted drizzle rapidly turned into actual-factual rain, which I was ill-prepared for. However, one trashbag poncho later, I was in business. The rain subsided at 1AM or so, at which point the temps quickly dropped. Several of us woke up due to the cold before bundling up a bit more and going back to sleep.
When we woke up, there was actually ice around! Not a lot, but some… clearly, the above-freezing temps were a lie. Andrew departed, Carrie’s friends stayed in town. Dave and I planned to climb Jam Crack into Piton Pooper into Upper Royal’s Arches, for something like 5 pitches of 5.9/5.8. After saying goodbye to everyone, we hauled our crap up that lovely Tahquitz approach. We tied in, got started climbing. Dave was making good work of Jam Crack, when suddenly…. “TAKE TAKE MICHAEL TAKE TAKE Oh thank god” “Dude you ok?” “Dude there’s a rattlesnake inside the crack” “Seriously?” “Yeah man I placed a cam and it was rattling in front of my face”
We started deliberating what to do, when a free soloist walked by (it later turned out this was infamous internet troll tradiban — he posted on mountainproject in short order). He gave us some largely unhelpful advice and went on his merry way, muttering something about sketchiness. We stupidly tried to have Dave finish on Dave’s Deviation (presumably named after a different Dave), essentially causing a Z-clip. Quickly realizing the idiocy of this plan, we lowered Dave down (he was now quite far from the jam crack). I cleaned up the gear still in Jam Crack, led up Dave’s Deviation pitch 1, then Jam Crack pitch 2, and finally some moderate terrain up from Pine Tree Ledge.
The rest of the day was thankfully uneventful. Finished in the evening, picked up Carrie at Higher Grounds, ate at Manzanita Bar and Grill, and headed back to San Diego after an adventurous weekend!
Takeaways:
- Most of the time, if something (like a rattler….) stops you from getting up a pitch, just head down and go up a different route. As they say, ‘shortcuts are only a good idea if you’ve got time for them’.
- Trash bag ponchos kinda suck.
- Blankets in my car were awesome. Happy I had those, kept me toasty!