Climbing at Joshua Tree

Climbing at Joshua Tree

This article relates to Crux

In Gabriel Tallent's Crux, one of the novel's primary characters, Tamma, declares exuberantly, "Get up, get up! It's Saturday and the rocks are a-warming! … Arise and go now, to a park I know, that sits upon the joining of three deserts, each more blighted and lonely than the last! Arise and go!"

Avid rock climbers like Tamma and her best friend Dan would immediately recognize this injunction as a call to Joshua Tree National Park, located where the Mojave desert and the Colorado desert, part of the larger Sonoran desert, come together. The park's topography is characterized not only by these deserts and the park's namesake foliage but also by its many quartz monzonite rock formations. These, of course, are why the park has, over nearly a century, become a favorite destination for rock climbers.

Even before the Joshua Tree area was officially designated as a National Monument in 1936, members of the Southern California Sierra Club Chapter—credited with bringing many Alpine climbing techniques to North America—led an expedition to climb in the park's Wonderland section. Over the next few decades, the Sierra Club and Scouts led more formal, rigorous expeditions, and they were soon joined by others as the sport grew in popularity over the second half of the twentieth century.

The 1960s-era "Desert Rats Uninhibited" (as their name suggests) preferred a more free-spirited alternative to the Sierra Club's rigorous techniques—one of their members, John Wolfe, published the "Climber's Guide to Joshua Tree National Monument" in 1970, the first-ever guide of its kind. Beginning in 1972, a group called the Stonemasters also began popularizing free climbing techniques—developed at Yosemite and elsewhere—in Joshua Tree. Many of these early climbers focused their attention on the formations surrounding Hidden Valley Campground, which remains a climbers' mecca today.

The park's relative proximity to Los Angeles, along with its range of options for beginners to experts, has made it a prime destination for hobbyist climbers. Its first climbing school (Vertical Adventures) was established in 1983, and by the 1990s (when Joshua Tree received National Park designation), thousands of climbers were visiting the park each year.

John Wolfe's 1970 "Climber's Guide" outlined under a hundred climbing routes; today, there are more than 8,000 climbing routes and 2,000 boulder problems for recreational climbers to solve. Many of these have entertaining names like the Blob or Toe Jam. The Friends of Joshua Tree stewardship group holds weekly "Climber Coffees" to educate visitors about best practices and introduce climbers to the park (and one another). Many of the contributors to the several online oral histories of Joshua Tree climbing mention their shared sense of community as the real highlight of their time in the park.

Old Woman rock formation, near Hidden Valley Campground
Photo by Doug Dolde, via Wikimedia Commons

Filed under Places, Cultures & Identities

This article relates to Crux. It first ran in the February 11, 2026 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.