Jamed Packed Weekend In J-Tree

THE PREVIEW

So it had been a while since I had gone out for an entire weekend in J-Tree. Usually we would just make the 1 1/2 hour drive out and do some day climbing, but my buddy and I decided to take the girls out for a weekend in the desert. We had been planing on it for over a month and mid March finally snuck up on us and we were all real pumped to get out there, enjoy some good booze, food, fire, and climbing!

THE REALITY

I decided to take a half day, and basically left at about 1pm on Friday. My fiance teaches first grade and was out by 3pm, we were all packed, truck totally full with essentials for car camping and we were on our way.



Now I only work 15 minutes from my house, fiance less than 1 mile, so were not used to traffic and we both hate it, so naturally we were not very excited when we hit Riverside (60/215/91 crush) and it was dead stopped! FOR MILES! We were able to get up to the 10fwy but it still took us forever to get out there. Finally we pulled off the 10fwy onto the 62 and headed North. Wind is common back there but was mild this day. We pulled into J-Tree around 6ish, plenty of light still to set up camp and get settled. We made it to the main gate only for the ranger to "inform us" that all camp sites were full. NOw this is not the first time I've been told this so I said, thanks but we drove in. Well........ she wasn't kidding. It must have been family weekend because EVERY AND I MEAN EVERY SITE WAS DOUBLE, TRIPPLE AND QUADROUPLED UP ALREADY! We tried everywhere! Started at Ryan, then Hidden Valley, then we almost went all the way to Cottonwood, but was worthless. Nevertheless, my bud and his girl were about 2 hours behind us and didn't have reception. We were planing on meeting at Ryan. So we drove around for an hour and finally drove back to the gate where my fiance has reception. We decided......... we'll park at a Backpackers Post and hike in...

The Boyscout Trail

Boy Scout Trail is located between Quail Springs and Lost Horse, at the bend in the road. The Yellow Line shows where to Park. The Red Dot is about 1/2 mile in on the west side of the trail. Basically it's behind the first major rock formation you can see from the road.
The best part about going all the way back there was we were about 10 miles from anyone else, we built an awesome fire pit, and didn't have anyone else around to bother the four of us! Complete serenity... K, thats the good part, the bad part now, remember how I said we were ideal for car camping, you know, pull up, dump everything out? We'll we didn't exactly have the benefit this time. The only backpack I brough was my very small camelpack. Basically we drug everything back the 1/2 mile behind the rocks. By the time we got everything back there, we did 3 trips, 3 miles of walking, a 6pack of C- was gone, and we were ready for relaxing! The rest of the night was good time! Very quite, full moon, and peaceful.

The Climbing... right?

So we woke up at who knows when and it was one of the windy days in J-Tree, one of the worst I've ever been in. We decided to stay right local there in the Wonderland Area since neither of us had really done to much climbing there before. We found a random wall, couldn't really identify it in the guide book, but it looked fun, had bolts on top so we figured what the heck. It was about 50feet and some fun looking 5.7 - 5.9's on it.


Once ontop, the wind was even worse. We could barely see our tents in the foreground and we could tell it was not going to be good for them. We set up a system and had some fun climbing 5 or so different variations on the face. We then broke it down and we were going to set a system up right by camp, a fun looking 5.9ish crack. We got back to camp, or what was left of it. Both our tents had blown on their sides and crap was everywhere! In the distance we could see thundar clouds rolling in, so we decided maybe packing up was the best thing to do.





We were able to get everything back to the cars (an additional 3 miles of hiking!) and as soon as we drove out of the gate, it started pooring! We were glad we at least got out on time! All in all it was worth the hassle and this Trip Report is mostly to shed light, if you get in a bind and there are no campsites, BACKPACKERS POST and HIKE IN!


~CHEERS~

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