I remember we were driving in the desert late at night for hours in a panel van. No back seats, just shag carpet and two big stereo speaker boxes that we slid around on with all our gear. We were on our first trip to Joshua Tree to climb. We stopped in some place with lots of lights and all the fast food eateries and went into Jack in the Box where we unexpectedly found Ron Carson, a legend rock climber to us and great guy.
We knew Ron already from one of our first trips to Dome Rock where he set up TR’s for us to try. We also knew he was doing FA’s out at the Needles and other areas. After we told him where we were headed he said that we should join him and check out the Mt. Rubidoux Bouldering Contest on our way. We changed our plans right then and we were off to spend the night drinking wine from our Bota bags by some lonely desert highway pullout and talking about Rubidoux.
Next day we arrive and it’s October 1984 and it’s a Bouldering Event with all the sponsors’. Maybe one of the first contests ever; I guess Bouldering contests aren’t as popular today? Top Ropes were on all the boulders, put up by a crew from the event and each problem had a point score. People were starting to arrive and pretty soon there were groups around every boulder set.
Climbing as we know it now was still young then. Nobody was on a cell phone, tweeting, texting or calling anywhere. No digital cameras and only a few even had cameras at all. And no spotting……….

We didn’t really know the who’s who of climbing then and looking back, we were very lucky to be hanging with the legends right off in Rubidoux. We met up with Ron who introduced us to Tony Yaniro. Tony mentioned that he had EB’s for sale. The sticky shoe rubber that changed climbing was just now happening.

Several groups of European climbers were around trying their skills for the top point’s prize. They were all staying in Joshua Tree. There were faces we had seen in ‘Mountain’ and ‘Climbing’ magazines.

We watched as a film crew was mounting a Video Camera the size of a Pinto motor to a tripod. They were getting ready to film several famous looking climbers sitting up along the edge for a Video about climbing. Everyone was smoking. It looked like a Hollywood movie set with directors and camera crew.
At the end of the day everyone gathered at the top in the parking area and waited while they counted the points and then prizes were handed out. Everyone got something and it was a success for Climbing as we saw it.

So you can imagine when we left we were full of climbing at its best and ready for J Tree! We had our 150’ rope; (only one of us had a pair of “fee-ray” shoes) a rack of Hex’s and Stoppers and our new secret weapon…..a # 7 Tri Cam! Good Memories!

*I’ve been following the Old Rubidoux photos thread and feeling guilty for not putting some pics up. The problem is that all the pictures I have are in 2 1/4 by 2 ¼ slides. Finally figured a way that I could take digital pictures of them and here we are. I decided to get this out as a Trip Report because it changed my climbing life in the early days……now 27 years ago.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!