Idyllwild is a pleasant if touristy town in the San Jacinto Mountains, a couple of hours east of Los Angeles. It sits nestled between two giant granite bastions: Tahquitz and Suicide Rocks. These lay claim to being “the premier multi-pitch traditional crags in southern California”, as well as the birthplace of the Yosemite Decimal System (YDS) grading (quite why it didn’t end up as the TDS is a mystery!) By dint of its place in history, it is notorious for sandbag grading (or, arguably as they invented them, everywhere else in the States is SOFT!) We were about to find out just how sandbaggy they are!

Attractive, if expensive, camping available in town (you’d be hard -pressed to guess you’re only a mile’s stroll from a microbrewery – more of which later…)

We picked Suicide Rocks as our first objective, mainly because it is considerably lower and a shorter walk.

Annoyingly you walk down the road some distance from the Humber Park car park (you need a pass to park here) before stone steps drop down into a drainage line – the helpful sign has fallen down…

… so here’s a trail. It’s a stiff 30mins on a generally good path.

Heading left from where the trail hits the rock, the first sector you encounter is Buttress of Cracks, and we soon spotted our objective, Captain Hook, 5.8+, obviously marked out by the unmistakable Yew tree growing halfway up the crag, and the narrow crack leading to a chimney.

An hour or so later, after much sweat (no blood, thankfully, almost tears though and much profanity), I finally decided to bail off a wire from about halfway up the first pitch. It was absolutely nails! I was all for calling it a day (I was briefly all for calling time on my climbing career!) – how could that conceivably have been a VS?

Helen’s wise counsel suggested a quick look further up the hill before putting the rack on ebay, and sure enough we found another thin crack leading to a chimney system which (from this angle) led up to the unmistakable tree. The route I’d been trying was Frustration (that much was right!) and a slightly more respectable 10a.

The actual Captain Hook wasn’t a whole lot easier, with a really thin and poorly protected first 15ft followed by an interesting chimney (if that’s your thing) which culminates in a wild layback around a roof on a huge horn of rock. Kind of fun in hindsight, I reckon HVS or maybe even E1 5b for the start, and we’d at least managed a route on Suicide Rocks (and retrieved my bail wire of shame).

Here’s Helen rapping the route as viewed from the base of Frustration.

… and a team on the adjacent The Hernia, 5.8.

Fine views up to Tahquitz on the walk back up to the car park, but that would be tomorrow’s problem.

First we had a microbrewery to check out!

It’s quite a schlep up to Tahquitz – take the suggested 30-60mins with a shovel of salt! It’s a decent path though, with fine views down to Suicide opposite.

If you head rightwards from the Lunch Rock arrival point, you soon arrive beneath the famous Open Book, the first 5.9 established in America (by Royal Robbins in 1952) and probably as celebrated as Cenotaph Corner.

Happily there was a queue, and we kept heading rightwards around onto the South Face. Scorchio, despite the 2,300m elevation. After the previous day’s sandbaggery, we’d recalibrated our ambitions and were aiming to do the area classic: Left Ski Track, 5.6. The line is well-named and really is unmistakable!

Fairly steady zigzagging to a tricky move past a long-gone peg, followed by a brilliant jug-fest (largely avoiding the actual ski track chimney). This pic of the start taken by a passing couple rapping down the buttress opposite…

There remains a sting in the tail if you want to take advantage of the 2 bolt belay and commodious ledge at the end of the first pitch. A really tricky and reachy traverse out leftwards. Hrmm, a tad harder than Severe!

Phew – a route at both Suicide and Tahquitz in the bag. Not the biggest ticks of the trip, but possibly the most historic. Anyway, time to relax back at the campground with our takeouts from the Idyllwild Brewery and research some roadside sport climbing options!