Photo: Real Hidden Valley

Photo: This is the Rock Hudson formation. The crack on the right is Hot Rocks 5.11b -- while the climber on the left is Kevin Thaw attempting a new 5.12 sport route.

Photo: Good old Solid Gold 5.10a -- possibly the most painful face climb in JTree.

Wow, great pics!!!

How do you get such large-scale pics with halfway decent resolution at < 100k in size?

GO

Resize them with Photoshop. I actually drop a lot of resolution to get the size (from 2900dpi to 100dpi), but for monitor display you don't notice the drop in resolution that much.

Then again, you should see how they look at 2900dpi on a 21 inch flat panel monitor.

Lester, when we were there this spring, I think that line of bolts had been chopped. Pretty horribly too, quite messy.

Well ... originally there was a bolted route called Spanish Bombs 5.11c that went straight up the face just left of Hot Rocks. But then key thin flakes broke off on the start making it almost impossible. Later, someone came and used the large crack Looney Tunes 5.9 to climb halfway up and then extended a route that went out onto the blank face to the right protected by bolts. I first thought this was the abandoned finish of Spanish Bombs, but Thaw informed me it was 5.12 something. And that seemed reasonable as he got spanked by the route and had to bail off.

The bolt wars in JTree really got out of hand -- especially in the late 80s to early 90s. I found the whole thing infantile. No one would dare rip the bolts off of a rap-bolted Randy Leavitt 5.13, but dare place bolts on a 5.11a face and RIP -- out they come!

Then these same guys go and put up a route called Rap Bolters Are Weak and totally mess up the original run-out nature of a 5.10R route. Doh!

BTW -- here's my favorite route of all in JTree. This puppy's spanked me so many times, my hiney is red and raw. But I LOVE it! Leave It To Beaver 5.12b

i think i have to go to j-tree this winter. exfoliating granite face climbs? Tell me more please...

Umm, here's a J-Tree picture I took that speaks for itself.

Jannette

And if for whatever reason you're too innocent to understand that picture...see this version.