Repose, however perfect, isn’t always restful.
This accounts, in large part, for the popularity of high-adrenaline vacations among professionals and executives.
It explains why Brad Short, chief financial officer of a Denver-area battery company, spends his leisure time rock climbing.
“When I’m challenged with something that involves me physically and mentally, it’s a lot easier to forget work,” Short says. “I’m not good at a beach-type vacation.”
But neither does the 39-year-old crave unremitting effort, discomfort and danger. His favorite escape is Southern California’s Joshua Tree National Park.
The park, 140 miles east of Los Angeles and deep in the Mojave Desert, is perfectly set up for days of vertical adventuring with the bonus of some of the most dramatic desert scenery in America.
“It’s a vacation, a climbing vacation,” says Bob Gaines. “It’s fun in the sun, as opposed to freezing off your nose and toes on the South Col of Mt. Everest.”
Gaines, who coached screen star Sylvester Stallone for the climbing action movie “Cliffhanger,” directs Vertical Adventures Rock Climbing School, one of more than a dozen companies licensed by the National Park Service to teach and guide climbers in Joshua Tree.
Ready availability of pros, to get beginners started and help the more experienced extend their abilities, is part of the Joshua Tree’s appeal.
The rest of the story is the park. We have here nature’s climbing gym, scattered with granite formations so gorgeously sculpted and split you sense an effort, on the part of the planet, to entertain rock jocks.
Joshua Tree has more than 5,000 established climbs, from elementary to ridiculously challenging. Most are relatively short, in height and duration, and most are close to roads.
No special permits are required for individuals to climb in the park.
Short, who has been to Joshua Tree seven times, has banged off 11 routes in one high-energy day. Other days he quit early, or didn’t climb at all.
“You can stop when you want, if it’s time for lunch, or it’s too hot, or you’re not having a good day,” he says.
Sometimes the rock says it’s time to quit. “If you can’t finish something at Joshua Tree, you can just back off and usually be back on the ground in a few seconds,” says Doug Skiba, program manager of the American Mountain Guides Association.
But some of Joshua Tree’s climbs are as beckoning to beginners as others are daunting, even to experts.
Mark Hunter, a 28-year-old landscape architect from New Jersey, took a one-day introduction to climbing in Joshua Tree.
“You can enjoy it from the get-go, absolutely,” he says. “It was by far the biggest adrenaline rush I’ve ever had, besides skydiving.”
Joshua Tree-style climbing does not involve high altitude, extreme cold or the sheer exhaustion brought on by multiweek slogs to distant summits.
It doesn’t involve Everest-size expense, either. Typical of programs’ prices is $285 for a four-day basic rockcraft course conducted by Vertical Adventures. The course is designed to take students from neophyte to intermediate-level, ready to practice climbing on his or her own. Joshua Tree Rock Climbing School has one-day group lessons for $75.
Add the price of a room, from $30 to $65 a night, rental car and food, and total costs might come to $175 a day.
Individual climbers can have one instructor/guide’s undivided attention for $150 to $200 a day.
Joshua Tree’s park headquarters has a list of all schools and companies licensed to teach and guide climbers in the park (74485 National Park Drive, Twentynine Palms, Calif. 92277, 760-367-5500; www.nps.gov/jotr ).
