While other high schools suspend classes for midwinter break, every February CWA sends students and faculty out into the world to explore.  Winterim is a five-day experiential program that allows students and faculty to share concentrated exploration of themes and activities outside the regular curriculum.  Among this year’s offerings was a rock climbing trip to Joshua Tree National Park.  Teacher Ryan Johnson reports back on the experience:

For one week in mid February, ten students and two teachers from Charles Wright ventured to Joshua Tree National Park for a rock climbing winterim.   Joshua Tree lies in the high desert, straddling an ecological transition zone between the Mojave Desert and the Sonoran Desert.  Here, the desert plants employ a variety of strategies (thick waxy cuticles, spines and thorns, and long periods of dormancy) to survive the cooler  winter temperatures.  For human visitors however, the strategies to keep warm are different: multiple layers of fleece, polypro and wool and a conscious effort to find shelter from the driving wind.

The namesake trees of the park evoke memories of Dr. Seuss.  They are awkward desert figures with long fan like leaves spreading in all directions, and at every possible angle.   Adapted to surviving in an extreme climate, they face  frost and snow during the winter and a blazing sun during summer  (temperatures in July may top 110 F).  At night, they are peculiar in the headlights, evoking images of an alien landscape.

Over the next week, the students challenge themselves on rock faces ranging from 30 feet to almost one hundred feet off the ground.  The students quickly realize that this is no longer the climbing gym.  Mighty “jugs” (handholds) and plastic indoor pieces are replaced by a steep face, interspersed with cracks and pockmarked waves of various rock types. Handholds and footholds are difficult to see as climbing in Joshua Tree demands patience and perseverance. Fingertips are cut by the sharp rock, and falls against the gritty rock face result in scrapes and bruises.

“Stand up on your right leg! Stand up on your feet!  Put your heels down!” The guides repeatedly call out, offering encouragement and advice.

By the end of the trip the students will be familiar with J Tree rock climbing techniques such as smearing, smedging, edging, fist jamming, hand jamming (did Caitlin just do a body jam?), stemming and chimneying.  It’s a unique winterim experience and one, which the kids reflect, isn‘t limited to just one type of student.  “You don’t have to be super strong to climb.  There is so much more to the climbing -using your feet, being confident on the rock,” quoted one J-Tree student at the end of the trip.

Back at camp, a little laughter around a fire can go a long ways to keep people warm. Friendships are formed between students who may have not hung out at school together.   Students assume leadership roles prepping and cooking food for the group.  The guides teach the students about how to lessen their impact at climbing sites and at camp.  The lessons of mastering a difficult move on a climb after failing many times are transferred back home:  “You can take that impossible climb that you ended up finishing and tell yourself back at school, I can improve in this class,” said one student.

A setting sun casts the final shadows of day over the desert landscape.  A faint reddish glow gives the Joshua Tree an eerie quality, as they hardly move in the rising wind. The desert is a land of extremes and incredible beauty.   The students of the 2010 Winterim tree opened themselves to all that Joshua Tree had to offer, and they returned home with a remarkable experience and memories that will last forever.