Wilderness Travel Course Joshua Tree Weekend With Kaweah Group

  • Updated: February 18, 2018
  • Post By: Matthew Hengst

February 17th & 18th, 2018

Joshua Tree is the second of four outings that make up the Sierra Club Wilderness Travel Course.  Two weeks ago everyone joined us for a 15 mile -ish dayhike and now we had an entire weekend bus trip out to Indian Cove to focus on rock scrambling skills and navigation!

And since we're Kaweah Group (one of the three groups in the Orange County area of WTC) we like to throw a theme into the mix for our summit shot and potluck.  Themes are suggested and voted on by the class and previous years have run the gamut from simple to elaborate.  This year the winner was Medical Misadventure beating out Business Casual Murder Clowns by a very small margin.  The result is what you see above!

For more information on what WTC is and how to take the course see the official site here. More posts by me about WTC can be found here.



A few of us came out the night before and had a quiet morning while the students met the bus at 5 am in Orange County and arrived a little before 8 am.


Our group has a tight schedule since both we and Olancha scramble up to Peak 4377 and there's only so many hours before dark.  So we didn't even give people a chance to set up tents just hustled them off the bus, stuck helmets on them, and got moving.




We spent about 30 minutes in the rocks behind Group Site 4 demonstrating climbing techniques and letting the students try them under careful supervision.




By 9:15 am everyone had been through all stations and we were headed for the peak!


Meanwhile Olancha moved in behind us to do the same stations.


Our goal for the day was the highpoint of Indian Cove an unnamed peak with an altitude of 4,377'.  Our route is the canyon to the left which has some significantly fun 3rd class scrambling and leads around the back to a particular route up the peak.




The big one everyone looks forward to is a sequence of two chimneys.  Packs are handed up a crack and then you brace yourself off the sides of the slot and go up!



Above that is a second slightly more narrow chimney that can be a challenge for the taller folks.  We had everyone through both in about 30 minutes and continued up the canyon.






Eventually the canyon opens up and we cut a hard left to approach the peak from the southwest.



This is the crux aka the fun part which has a tendency to feel like you're scaling a vertical cliff face the first time through.



We had staff spread out along the route to offer support but everyone shot up like a champ and it was finally time to see what people had done for costumes.













They did rather well!  :)


The downclimb can make people nervous but it's actually fairly straightforward.  After all gravity is on you're side!



We ate lunch at the base and just as we were about to get moving we saw Olancha come around the corner.  We turned the peak over to them and headed for camp.




Here we demonstrate plunge stepping at the point where the trail rejoins the wash.  This usually leads to the friendly races and wipeouts though the amount of fake blood on everyone seems to have kept things a little more sedate than usual.




We could see Olancha on the summit above us around 3:25 pm.  We waved up to them as we divided up and headed for camp.





Firewood is a very important part of any Joshua Tree experience.

Kristen showing off her alcoholic gummy brain





We had an array of food items set up on bloodstained tablecloths befitting our theme.



Then when the sun went down Bill Payne pulled out his guitar and played while we sang along possibly with more enthusiasm than skill.



At some point our firewood ran out.  And then Olancha GL Garry McCoppin showed up with their extra and we burned that.  A few people went to visit the other groups who were in sites down the hill and reported we were the last ones up.  And at some point we all sacked out.


The next morning we woke everyone up before dawn.  Normally this wouldn't be the most popular move despite the glorious early morning musical rendition the staff sang wandering through the tents but we had a secret weapon!



Students were hustled out of bed to find staff sponsored egg and chorizo burritos being prepared.



We enjoyed a glorious sunrise and by 7:30 am everyone had their coffee and was ready to work on nav!



The first activity involved students being given graph paper and drawing a topographical map of a diorama we'd set up.



Here lies James Franco




Next we went out in the desert to a spot with a good vantage and ran through a series of exercises testing compass bearings and topographical landform recognition.









This led into the main event of the day where we divided everyone up into small groups and students had the opportunity to navigate to a series of points selected by the instructor.


Around 2 pm everyone wandered back into camp and we had a little time to relax before the bus arrived at 2:30 pm.



And with that another JTree outing was in the bag!  Next up we have two weeks to find a suitable location in the local mountains with enough snow for our snow travel day.  And then two weeks after that it's snow camp!

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