A little late in posting this!
About 3.5 weeks ago, there were news reports saying that some gnarly storm was coming into SoCal, and that we should prepare for the worst. Grocery stores starting running out of food, those in the east county started gathering supplies like
Burt and Reba from
Tremors , snow levels were going to drop to lower elevations, screams of "hide ya wife, hide ya kids" could be heard 'round the county, and so on. Ok, a little much, but it was the usual exaggerated SoCal-doomsday-weather-forecast-just-because-we're-getting-wind-and-rain.
Well, that weekend was our scheduled land navigation camping trip, and this time, we chose the back country of Joshua Tree. Friday night camping would be at 3300ft, and after navigating through some back country, we'd finally setup camp around 4200ft. The main attraction for the trip was the top notch bouldering we'd encounter, along with fine tuning my rusty navigation skills.
Knowing that the snow level was indeed dropping that weekend, along with lots of wind (up to 50mph gusts), rain and even snow, even I was a little concerned. Partly because my winter gear hadn't come in yet, leaving me with a long sleeve running jersey and a wind/water resistant cycling jacket to fend the elements with, and partly because I didn't want to be miserable all weekend. Fortunately, I learned later, my friend Erin was going to let me borrow some Gore-tex bad ass jacket to keep me warm.
Friday morning, an email came out from WBC saying that all camping trips were canceled. 15 minutes later, our group leader emails us all says: "I don't cancel my trips, game on!" Time to man up!
The drive out had a few highlights. The visual highlight was driving past the base on San Jacinto, which was covered in snow, and just after sunset, had a majestic feel to it. The audio highlight is another story. After passing by a local casino, they were advertising that both Huey Lewis and the news, and even Meatloaf were going to be playing there soon. This prompted an immediate need to hear things like
Paradise by the dashboard light , and
The Power of Love and
This is it . Go ahead, click those links, I dare you. Unfortunately,
this song also came on, and it stayed stuck in my head nearly all weekend. I highly advise that you not watch that video.
Anyhow, enough text, more pictures!
Saturday morning wake up view
The next 2 pictures are for when I was sitting in my car because some people wanted to leave a campsite to drive 20 minutes into town to go to starbucks, and then come back to the campsite. I thought that was a bit "much" in a Wilderness Basics Course, so I opted to stick around (but was completely OK with them bringing me coffee). So, I sat in my car, out of the rain, when it was 39 degrees...
About 3.5 weeks ago, there were news reports saying that some gnarly storm was coming into SoCal, and that we should prepare for the worst. Grocery stores starting running out of food, those in the east county started gathering supplies like Burt and Reba from Tremors , snow levels were going to drop to lower elevations, screams of "hide ya wife, hide ya kids" could be heard 'round the county, and so on. Ok, a little much, but it was the usual exaggerated SoCal-doomsday-weather-forecast-just-because-we're-getting-wind-and-rain.
Well, that weekend was our scheduled land navigation camping trip, and this time, we chose the back country of Joshua Tree. Friday night camping would be at 3300ft, and after navigating through some back country, we'd finally setup camp around 4200ft. The main attraction for the trip was the top notch bouldering we'd encounter, along with fine tuning my rusty navigation skills.
Knowing that the snow level was indeed dropping that weekend, along with lots of wind (up to 50mph gusts), rain and even snow, even I was a little concerned. Partly because my winter gear hadn't come in yet, leaving me with a long sleeve running jersey and a wind/water resistant cycling jacket to fend the elements with, and partly because I didn't want to be miserable all weekend. Fortunately, I learned later, my friend Erin was going to let me borrow some Gore-tex bad ass jacket to keep me warm.
Friday morning, an email came out from WBC saying that all camping trips were canceled. 15 minutes later, our group leader emails us all says: "I don't cancel my trips, game on!" Time to man up!
The drive out had a few highlights. The visual highlight was driving past the base on San Jacinto, which was covered in snow, and just after sunset, had a majestic feel to it. The audio highlight is another story. After passing by a local casino, they were advertising that both Huey Lewis and the news, and even Meatloaf were going to be playing there soon. This prompted an immediate need to hear things like Paradise by the dashboard light , and The Power of Love and This is it . Go ahead, click those links, I dare you. Unfortunately, this song also came on, and it stayed stuck in my head nearly all weekend. I highly advise that you not watch that video.
Anyhow, enough text, more pictures!
Saturday morning wake up view
The next 2 pictures are for when I was sitting in my car because some people wanted to leave a campsite to drive 20 minutes into town to go to starbucks, and then come back to the campsite. I thought that was a bit "much" in a Wilderness Basics Course, so I opted to stick around (but was completely OK with them bringing me coffee). So, I sat in my car, out of the rain, when it was 39 degrees...