Joshua Tree 7.4-6.03 Andrew Yue Greg Walker Sam Prentice So what were we thinking, going to Joshua Tree, the middle of the Mojave Desert on July 4th weekend, the hottest time of the year. Can’t be too hot I scoffed. Returning home from a relatives house in Irvine on the 4th I arrived back to Culver City around midnight to find a note Greg left me on the chair. “Yo Monkey. It’s gonna be 112° tomorrow. Still wanna go?” As I eyed the 3 gallons of water Greg left on the floor, I thought to myself – that ain’t so hot. The next morning we picked a bloodied Sam up from his dorm at Caltech in Pasedena and made a relatively short 2.5 hour drive out to Joshua Tree stopping only twice for gas (ie getting ripped off for fake Krispy Kreme’s) and groceries. The original plan was to get to the Rattlesnakes/Wonderland area for rock climbing around 10am. Given a late start, we stopped at the ranger station near Rattlesnakes to realize it was already 90 degrees. Given that we were already lazy and decide to continue to head east on 62 to the next entrance. Our first stop was at Skull Rock and we played around a bit climbing. The next few stops included Cap Rock, Jumbo Rocks, Barker Dam, and ending up at Hidden Valley Campground. The weather did reach an amazing 112 and we barely felt like sweating, despite going through nearly 3 gallons of water each. Our plans of hiking and climbing were eventually reduced to some technical scrambling, picture taking, and much sitting in the shade. Otherwise we enjoyed the AC of Greg’s VW Golf. The evening was beautiful at Hidden Valley as we found a nice campsite with great views as we watched the sun set and stars come out to a nearly ¾ moon. We had a casual dinner and camped out, with Sam daring the desert night life sleeping under the stars as we watched a lonely coyote try to scrap food from our friendly Mexican neighbor. Morning we awoke to find that the coyote had stolen one of our milk jugs of water to quench his thirst. We decided to head back to LA after a relaxing night.