Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Apple Valley - 12/10/2011

On the 10th of December we decided to check out somewhere new. We had never been climbing in Apple Valley so we decided to see how it was out there. Now the only book that we have for the area is Troy Marr's Sport Climbing Southern California which isn't known for being the most accurate book, but we figured that directions and map in the book could at least get us to the area.

We headed out and made it to Apple Valley without any problems, but once we were to the general area we started having some issues. The book said to turn north from Highway 18 onto Joshua Road, then to turn right onto Yucca Loma Road and follow it for two miles until getting to a dirt road on the right that headed to the crags. Now the problem we had was that the directions didn't give a distance you had to go down Joshua Road before you got to Yucca Loma, but on the map when comparing it to the two miles you have to go down Yucca Loma, we figured it must be about a half mile. Of course we didn't expect the map to be 100% to scale, but you would figure that whoever drew it would at least try to get it somewhat right. Needless to say, we ended up driving back and forth on Joshua Road without finding Yucca Loma. We tried the GPS, but the road didn't come up in it, so finally as we were driving around looking for the road we saw a mail truck and stopped to ask the driver where the road was. Come to find out, Yucca Loma was the immediate right when you turned onto Joshua street, and I mean immediate as in like 5 feet after turning onto Joshua Street, so we had been driving back and forth on Joshua Street from one end of the street to the other, but we never saw yucca Loma because we would turn around just before getting to Highway 18 where Yucca Loma was.

So we didn't have the greatest start to the day, but we finally arrived at the trailhead to head up to the crag. We hiked up the trail (rather slowly I might add because Danny is now at the stage where he doesn't want to be carried so hiking takes a bit longer), but we did eventually get to the crag.

We decided to start by warming up on a 5.8 called "Cheer Me Up". The climb starts in a chimney then steps onto the face once you reach the first bolt. I ran up the route onsight, then Amy TR'd it.


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After our "warm up", the kids were being crazy and just wanted to go home, so our warm up ended up being the only climb of the day. We weren't all that fond of the route we did and the others in the area didn't look like they were any better, so we weren't too disappointed when we had to leave, and now we have one more area that we have visited (even if we don't plan on going back).

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