Rock Guide Course - Joshua Tree

Hey all,

I'll be taking my RGC in Joshua Tree this spring and I was wondering if folks had some beta for it. Are there certain routes/areas that courses tend to spend a lot of time on? 

I'd like to make it clear, I do believe in the integrity of the onsight within this course. The movement standard of 5.9 is not a considerable challenge and one should be able to climb all routes within the course with no problem. I also believe, however, in setting one self up for the most success possible during these expensive courses. The possibility of previewing a route and therefore being able to expend greater mental bandwidth on digesting new information and implementing new techniques rather than focusing so much on the climbing is appealing to me. I appreciate any information y'all are willing to share on this. 

I don’t know what you mean by integrity of the onsight, when I’m at work I don’t want to be onsighting if I can help it, sometimes you don’t see the double fall line the first time on a route, or don’t know what pieces you need to protect a traverse and you may have already used them, etc. 

Since there’s not a lot of multipitch in JT, expect to be on the lost horse wall (dappled mare and bird on a wire probably) or saddle rock (right on, walk on the wild side). Maybe intersection rock too.

You’re mostly on easy terrain so you can inculcate any new information in a low stress environment. Routes and areas will likely be based upon conditions and crowds.

I found it helpful to have a few days to get used to the style of the park, however, the Rangers were very serious about camping time limitations.

Have a blast!

morning, when I did my guide class at JTree they let me pick the routes to do the test on. I found people who were willing to climb with me to work on all the skills that was going to be on the test. I liked going to Indian cove area to work on skills because less people are there and easy access to the park. I planned on only staying at JTree for a couple weeks to test out but ended up staying there for over 2 months. The company who I got may certs from, gave  me paperwork showing me all the was going to be on the test so that made things easier come testing time with no surprises but come testing time they did a a couple surprises things to see how I would react. If you work on your stills and take the time to get things  wired the test would be second nature, good luck happy climbing Mike A.

Lost Horse Wall and anything/everything around Hidden Valley Campground. A few days were spent on routes on Intersection Rock.

I think its absolutely prudent to preview and climb the routes. I have run into guides who were out climbing a route  simply because they had a client that wanted to do the route and the guide wanted to have  it dialed before he took a client up there.  Seemed smart to me...