Shawn's World - Trad and Tuna in Joshua Tree

This is Shawn.  He keeps his keys on a full-size oval biner, along with a bottle opener and a hair tie.


Maybe that's all you need to know.

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"Take.  Take."  Shawn's weight hit the rope and sucked me towards the wall.  He roared, "Fuck.  FUUUCK!" He's 6' and 220 pounds.  When he gets behind a swear work, you feel it.  "Those ASSholes!  They probably put this one in the book so no one could get 'em all!"


Then, rearranging his gear, he dropped a #3.5.  "Um, you want me to grab that for you?" I asked.  He grumbled.


Our second day in J-Tree had started on a happier note: In his life, Shawn had done 57 of the climbs in the 60 Favorite Climbs guidebook, and today he planned to tick the last three.  Diagnostic (5.6) hadn't given him any trouble (okay, except for some cursing when he had his gear on the wrong side for the layback moves) and he was optimistic when he racked up for Music Box. "This thing looks easier," he'd said.


Now he dangled 10 feet off the deck and cursed.  I had to look down at my belay device to keep from laughing.





After snatching the cam from me and rearranging his rack some more, he pulled back on, narrating.   "Fuck.  I can't get this body position.  Ah shit it's all flared in here. Five eight my ass.  I can't get this body position!"  He hiked both legs up and placed the #3.5 high.  "Damn.  I don't even have the gear.  Look how it widens out up there.  I don't have the gear."  He carried another 3.5 and two #4s.  "Never bailed on a climb in J-Tree.  Fauuuck take.  Take.  Bring me down."

Note the bail cam on Music Box. Shawn wouldn't let me retrieve it when I toproped up to it.  

"You'd end up jumping, and that's how you break an ankle.  Someone'll be happy for the booty."

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I didn't know Shawn all that well.  We'd climbed outside a few times, but I mostly saw him around the gym with his monagamous climbing partner, Beth ("Her fingers are exactly the same size as Lynn Hill's," Shawn explained).  I was about to get to know him real well, though.


Shawn's been climbing on and off for 30 years, mostly in the Tetons and Canyonlands, where he'd worked for the park service. "Done the Grand 26 times by 20 different routes.  The guides don't want to hear about that, cause they haven't done it."  He'd only "discovered" J-Tree in the last decade, though, and had been every couple seasons since then.  This would be his last trip, he said.  His time here had run its course, he told me, waxing nostalgic.  "When we're done here, you can have my guidebooks."  So  I'd come to J-Tree expecting to follow Shawn's lead — literally.  I had a couple dozen trad leads under my belt,  but I was happy to clean lots of gear, get a feel for it.  I'm slow that way.


But that day on Music Box, the script flipped.  "You're the rope gun now," Shawn said, a heavy dose of fatherly, passing-the-baton sentiment in his voice.  "And you still can have my 60 Classics book.  I won't need it any more.  I'll take 58."

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J-Tree Lunch Menu:


Day 1: Tuna on pita with bell pepper, avocado, and mustard.


Day 2: Tuna on pita with bell pepper and mustard.


Day 3: Tuna on Weight Watchers flat bread with mustard.


Day 4: Tuna on Weight Watchers flat bread.


Day 5: Tuna.


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This wasn't my first time in J-Tree.  When I visited over a year ago for New Years, I could barely lead, let alone place gear.  The sandbagged grades, even steeper against the soft grades of New Mexico, didn't help, nor did the weather.  In a week's time I saw snow, rain, 50 mph winds, nights in the single digits, and not a single day over 40 degrees.


That was a year ago, and I was happy to put such foul weather behind me.  Shawn grumped over the wind, and I couldn't blame him: He's endured ski-resort-closing blizzards in the Alabama Hills before I arrived, so I could see why he was touchy.  "Damn this wind," he muttered into his morning coffee.  Me, I was just happy the rock wasn't wet and I could feel my fingers.  


So, with sensei Shawn's guidance and triple rack, I ticked a bundle of climbs.  They come back as moments.  The pleasant pain of hand jams, bite of rubber on granite, making the namesake moves on Toe Jam, bringing Shawn up Granny Goose as the bulbous rocks of the valley glowed gold in the setting sun.

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Sh#t Shawn Says:

"Oooh, this is pumpy!"

"I'm gonna bring triples on this climb."

"I went out to pee last night and I felt like my dick was gonna freeze!"

"Let's hang out, grab sandwich, wait til the climb's in the sun."


"Ooh, this rack's heavy.  Probably oughta leave a few of the triples behind."

"You're not ready for this climb."


"You're ready for this climb."

"I like a gal who know's when she's being hit on." 

"If Andrew's not hitting on that, I'm gonna give him hell."

"This 5.8+ would be solid 5.9 anywhere else!"

"I don't have the gear." 

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The wind was cold in the canyon as I racked up for Young Lust (5.9).  Shawn, who'd taken my relative inexperience and make himself climbing task master, had deemed me ready.  I launched, the vertical face offering features carved from varnish.  Amid the swirling air currents a calm came over me, and remained even as the moves got harder.  At a steep section my only recourse was a committing layback on thin feet.  If they blew, I'd be off.  What I did surprised me: Instead of chalking up, hemming and hawing, talking to myself, chalking up again like I normally would, I just began the sequence, performing the moves that put me at another stance where I could place a piece.  Then I kept climbing, a smooth phrase of movement up the crack.  No drama.  Little doubt.  Little confidence, either.  Just the rock, experienced directly.  I saw plainly what the climb demanded, and executed it.  I've never had such clarity.

Shawn rapping between Young Lust (left) and Smithereens (right).

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Our last day, Shawn didn't climb.  He headed to town for coffee, and I went out with a couple of his friends.  Teresa and her climbing partner Joe shepherded me through a gawky lead of Fote Hog (5.7).   If there's a prize for awkward climbing, I must be in the running for the non-moves I invented to get past the overhanging section on the first pitch.  Hands, knees, elbows — I used it all.  Afterwards, I was deeply grateful for T and J's patience.  I don't know if experienced climbers know much a little patience and a little respect can mean to us gumbies.  It's noticed.


As the sun sank, Shawn and I loaded up the Civic and drove east into the night.  As we sailed across the salt basins before hitting I-40, he said something that surprised me.   "I should move to Joshua Tree.  I should just do it.  Live out here, make enough money.  Climb my fuckin ass off."  Dude is old enough to be my dad, and still jonesing for the dirtbag life.  Nothing as inspiring as that — except maybe him actually doing it.