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Joshua Tree TR with photos


chris_stolz

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An impressionistic TR from Joshua Tree Xmas 07-08. Photos at end of post.

 

 

Get on a plane. Get off a plane. Get lost in Palm Springs. Get lost where you have no idea where you got lost from. Get cold. Get warm, get cold again. Climb something. Climb nothing. Buy wine, buy beer, buy nothing, and cook it all together.

 

Lead something that scares you. Follow something that doesn't. Take a whipper. Fall on the approach. Onsight the impossible. Use a toprope, or don't. Close the guidebook, open your head, try a boulder, follow the light, go headfirst, move your feet up.

 

Put up a footbouldering problem, send it, and name it after something you can't have. Show it to people in sandals. Buy beer for your neighbours. Drink theirs. Steal soembody's coffee machien and fill it with whisky. Invent a competitive game using climbing equipment that doesn't involve climbing. Teach it to ten random strangers after they each shotgun beers. Practice sumo wrestling using boulder mats instead of big bellies. Wait for the shrooms to kick in. Teach four strangers to play Irish music and watch four others intepretive dance it. Grab somebody's ass. Get yours grabbed. Drunken freesolo the Chasm with the Moon as your only lamp. Take a girl with a broken ankle with you.

 

Make a pot of coffee, and then another. Go dirtbagging without a rope, a car, a plan. Sleep under boulders wake in sunlight. Order in Spanish if you don't speak it. Put your pack down and your feet up. Cook dinner in your breakfast dishes and breakfast in your dinners. Forget the dishes. Forget your keys, forget your camera, remember to salute the Moon. Watch the Moon shrink and the days grow and note how Orion's flipped since he was in Bolivia's sky. Lust after somebody who's taken, take somebody who's lusty.

 

Listen to a Russian sing English climbing songs to Brazillian beats. Change campsites. Stay in one spot. Tell a lesbian you love her, tell a gay guy he's hot, check out your partner's ass. During beers, offer to nude freesolo an offwidth for money, and then actually do it. See how many instruments you can gather around your fire and still not get busted by a Ranger. Do the same with dirtbags and consecutive weeks. Put "man!" on the end of every sentence, or "God willing."

 

Turn off your cell, get out of wireless, take a photo you think won't work, steal firewood, burn things, tell a pedophile joke, tell a dead baby joke, make up a whole new joke, add "if you know what I mean" to all statements to make them sexually suggestive. Lie about the last route. Tell the scary truth. Climb too many days in a row, don't climb at all, get gobies, lose tendinitis. Overdo something, forget something else, get something exactly right.

 

Drive too slowly on the freeway and smile at your tailgaters. Paint a heart in the dust on your rear window. Climb the wrong route and have a great day anyway. Get up with th boulderers, get up after the boulderers, don't get up at all. Get beta, give beta, fuck beta, take somebody's word for it, take nobody's word for it. Follow what scares your leader, lead what scares your second, scare yourself. Stop waiting for the wind to stop, wait for the wind, listen to the wind, get mad at the goddamned wind. Kiss the wrong person.

 

Spend one day speaking only literally, and another only in metaphors, like this: break open the head.

 

Sunset from Hidden Valley

sunset2.jpg

 

Another sunset.

sunset_climber2.jpg

 

Fern starts the Deli and Markus gets a preview of the 2008 Beijing Olympics

I_love_the_Environment.jpg

 

No photoshop.

sunset11.jpg

 

Markus seconding a nice 5.7

markus_on_crack_lots_of_crack.jpg

 

Sunset in Hidden Valley

sunset_climber_1.jpg

 

How does a dirtbag pay for his car rental?

Markus_nude_1.JPG

 

In case the monzonite doesn't trash your tips, the mandolin will finish them off nicely.

playing_mando_in_the_desert.jpg

Edited by chris_stolz
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jtree was a freaking riot this winter! were you there for the new years exstavaganza?!

 

Yea, listened to Dirtbag Vic's climbing songs, then went to the drum circle and played tunes. It was really good (from the musician's perspective) after the cops busted it-- only one djembe meant that the rest of us could hear ourselves play. Rad times.

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Nice TR! Loved the writing, nice touch. The new years party (drum circle) was awesome, wished I'd stayed up after the ranger busted it. I was dozing nearby and heard the live music start up again around one. I kind of felt bad for the rangers, everyone was so drunk and abusive to the poor guys, who were just doing their job.

 

Who was that chick with the shrooms anyway? I got my graduate degree in mind altering substances back in '74 and have never touched them since. I couldn't believe how many times I had to turn down that pipe going around the campfires. I was like, whatever, thanks, no. Beer is all this tired mind can handle these days. Loved making music though!

 

That was a life changing josh trip for some of us. I've started taking guitar lessons, first time ever though I've played (badly) for 40 years.

 

I'll be there with my blues harp for sure next year, same time, same place!

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Its to bad we didnt meet up! mark had a B-E-A-utiful blues harmonica as well as a couple mates that played guitar and violin. I think you might have played with a couple of them new years night??? next year hopefully if were not strapped for room I'll bring my banjo. That, the violin, and a mandolin would be one hell of a knee slappin time!

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I played with a couple of fun guitar players new year's eve. They seemd to like simplified Irish accompaniment; we got some good grooves going.

 

did you meet Trout Man? I don't know his real name. He plays old-time banjo and was there this year. He's an American from somewhere east of California. Quite a good player, who has no idea what he is doing (e.g. cannot tell you what tuning, key etc he is in).

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