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Best place and route to Trad Climb for Beginners
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My opinions are from someone also new to leading beginner trad routes like the OP. Saddle is really great for practice. There are multiple bolted routes where you can take away the runout with a cam placement or two. There are also 1-2 routes that you can climb without bolts as trad leads. The thing thats nice for someone new is you are on easy terrain, you have large comfy stances to place, and the placements aren't super obvious so it takes some fiddling around, which I found to be good practice. Stoney has good spots to practice slinging boulders and building trad anchors if you need something nearby. Also agree we are tremendously lucky to be so close to Tahquitz. There is route finding to contend with, which isnt ideal as a new leader trying to practice, but there is easy climbing to make up for that. Also tons of material you can study up on before you go. And like folks have been saying, I think thats all part of the experience. Something like the trough will eat stoppers all day and there are trees / shrubs to sling everywhere. I would say the crux for me was navigating the descent without a guide or more exp leader the first time. But that is also part of what makes it so great. Not as familiar with going to JTree as the most experienced climber in a party but I feel like if you like crack climbing and have a decent rack with you there are probably an insane amount of options for you, some of which have been mentioned in this thread. I was at thin wall a couple months back, and it was crowded but definitely seemed like a good spot for what you want to do. 1. Look Good 2. Have Fun 3. Be Safe |
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I agree with the general sentiment that Idyllwild is a fantastic place to come up as a trad leader. There is a great selection of moderate routes, and some harder ones too that you can work up to. The climbing is fairly involved - routefinding, long wandering pitches, runouts, anchor building, multipitches, and so on, so you can develop a solid base of trad skills even on the entry-level climbs. But I also agree with the idea that it isn't the best place for a day-1 beginner trying to self-teach trad climbing, without the benefit of a more experienced climber to show them the way. Again, the climbing in Idyllywild is fairly involved, and there are a lot of other factors to deal with. If you are trying to deal with the very basics for your first trad lead, it is nice to strip away some of the complexities of routefinding, etc. This isn't to day someone can't accomplish this in Idyllwild, it is certaintly possible, but J-Tree is a bit friendlier to this. J-Tree has more options for easy, short, easy-access, well protected, straightforward crack climbs that are good to initially get comfortable placing gear on lead. Again, Idyllwild is an amazing place to develop as a trad climber. But J-Tree is a bit more accesisble for that first step. If the OP were to spend some weekends during the rest of the winter going to J-Tree to learn the basics on single pitch climbs, he'd be well set up to step it up to some longer and more involved climbs in Idyllwild later in the spring and summer. And Ryan, when you first start climbing in Idyllwild, you did have the benefit of some more experienced climbers showing you the way, no? |
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I think that Idyllwild is a great place to learn trad but I’ll qualify that by saying that assumes you’re already familiar with placing gear, building anchors, etc. That seems to be something of a lost art for some. I first learned at Mt. Rubidoux. Lots of TRing, so it’s a great place for learning to build anchors in granite. You’ll also hone your jamming and footwork on the small edges and smears that granite requires, so it will transfer well to when you progress to some place like Tahquitz or Suicide. By that time, you’ll be stronger at placing and cleaning gear and have a much better of what’s a good placement and what’s marginal. |
JCM wrote: I didn't, at least not at first. My first partners were barely capable of leading 5.6, they just had the gear. I surpassed them in my willingness to lead within a few trips. I spent a year or so of doing Graham Crackers, Yours, Hernia, and the Plague many times, and with epics on the Uneventful (my first multipitch) and White Maiden, and occasional trips to Joshua Tree. After that, I off and on had some more advanced partners who helped me improve significantly, but probably didn't enjoy climbing with me. Before I ever climbed, I read "Climbing Anchors" cover to cover a few times and did some easy bouldering in Idyllwild County Park. Two years in, I had a consistent partner who was a better climber than me, but didn't know how to place pro. We both slowly worked our way up together by leading as many 5.6, 5.7, and 5.8s as we could in Idyllwild in Josh for about a year. I think it's worth noting that I've only climbed in a gym twice ever, and never on lead. I learned everything outside in Idyllwild and Joshua Tree. I found Joshua Tree to be much more scary than Idyllwild when I was a beginner. It seemed like all the easy climbs were terrifying, difficult, and had poor protection. I still say that 5.8 is the scariest grade to lead in Joshua Tree. |
Ryan Strickland wrote: I agree with this. I think the grainy and sharp monzogranite at JT is just flat out harsh and terrifying sometimes. As are the common weathered cracks than seem like dubious places to place protection. I enjoy J-Tree but I'll take the buttery granite and clean features of Tahquitz and Suicide any day. |
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Ryan's last post is why I think it's important to have a workable knowledge of placing gear and building anchors before leading or doing even short multipitch. People believe that the true difficulty of what they're doing is reflected in the grade of the climb they're doing, i.e., pick an easy climb and the difficulty is eliminated. But in reality the crux is doing the climb safely, which means placing good gear. No matter how easy the climb, you are soloing it if your gear is crap. Also, you don't want to find yourself at the top of a pitch with no sense of how to build a proper anchor. There's also the issue that there aren't a lot of easier climbs, especially at Suicide. You don't want to be that person taking 1.5 hours per pitch when others are waiting for that same climb. It's OK to be slow because you're slow. It's not OK to be slow because you have absolutely no idea what you're doing. That's just not safe. |
Guy Keesee wrote: my experience is that JT is the place to go to get good. That minimal exposure can kill you and that 30ft climb spanks your ass. looking down from belay you see you've placed more pro in that 35ft than you do on aid pitches... but damn, you get good at placing pro and moving on up... |
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Love this community |
alex carey wrote: I just went here for the first time yesterday with my middle-school daughter. She did her first outdoor lead. Having scoped it out I agree that it would be a good place for a beginning tradster to practice leading and placing gear. |
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You can always go up to the Holcomb pinnacles. There's a bunch of easy gear routes interspersed between all the sport lines. Lots of easy climbing on good quality rock. Probably a little cold right now but great once it warms up |
