Escaping a rare rainy day in Las Vegas, Laura and I proceeded south through Mojave National Preserve to meet up with Adam, Cheryl, and Nina at a dry lakebed north of Joshua Tree where we set up the camper before heading into the park to do some bouldering. Driving across a wide open lakebed can bring out the Mad Max in anybody.
Following our time in JTree we left Adam, Cheryl, and Nina to head for Death Valley and spent the night at another of my old haunts: Trona Pinnacles, a series of giant tufa towers leftover from when this area was deep underwater.
The next day we made it to the ghost town at Ballarat to drop the trailer and head up to the Wildrose Charcoal Kilns in Death Valley National Park. Our eventual plans to proceed in to the Saline Valley warm springs was derailed by a combination of a blown tire and a rare Death Valley snowstorm so we bailed back down to Barstow and then back to Vegas.

Tags: Climbing, Death Valley National Park, Airstream, Joshua Tree National Park, Mojave National Preserve, Mojave Desert