Spend your weekend in Joshua Tree with Annenberg’s spunkiest professor! On this trip we will be car camping on Friday before backpacking on Saturday and Sunday - plenty of rock scrambling, star-gazing, and general desert boolin guaranteed. No backpacking experience needed, the Boy Scout Trail is pretty frickin flat and we aren’t even going all the way/end-to-end, but you must be in decent enough shape to carry h e l l a water ;)
ITINERARY:
Friday
Visitor center (time to buy m e r c h)
Some easy day-hiking, obligatory rock scrambling, general boolin around
Car camp for the night! Feast, hydrate, go to bed early so we’re rested for backpacking the next day
Saturday
Backpack the Boy Scout Trail, mileage dependent on how we feel but likely ~6 miles
Camp in the backcountry surrounded by rocks that rock and Joshua Trees, underneath a dark & starry night :’)
Sunday
Early start to the day, hike back to our cars (a gentle downhill the whole time!)
Head home! Aiming to be back at SC in time for the Super Bowl
PACKING LIST:
Hiking appropriate clothing & sturdy shoes
H2O. SO MUCH H2O. You MUST bring capacity for at least 4-5L of water (4+ big bottles), we are carrying all of our water while backpacking
General camping gear (toiletries, mess kits, headlamp if you have one, etc.)
I will send you a detailed packing list in the pre-trip email!
WE WILL PROVIDE:
Tents #geargeargear
Backpacks, sleeping pads, & sleeping bags if you need them
All meals & snaxx
Funky playlists for the car ride
Vibes idk
Basically whatever you need ;)
PROF: Jenn de la Fuente
DEPARTMENT: Annenberg
Jenn de la Fuente is a web designer and developer who runs her own design business on top of being an adjunct professor in Annenberg. She specializes in building custom WordPress sites and has been teaching code to all levels of learners (and many journalists) for the last eight years. Before running her own business, she spent 10 years in journalism – almost all of it in sports – as a reporter, copy editor, page designer, web producer, and unofficial IT guru and teacher of all things digital media.
She’s also a USC alum, a diehard Trojan football and LA Kings hockey fan, a semi-competitive curler, and a hockey player. If you find yourself at her office hours, you might just end up sitting in a beanbag chair with a cup of tea as you play the guitar together 👀👀👀
PEAK: Boy Scout Trail
Joshua TREEEEEEE
DIFFICULTY: 4/5
SCENERY: We’re starting in rocky, Mars-like terrain and hiking into a classic Joshua Tree forest.
FUN FACT: Humans have occupied the area we now know as Joshua Tree National Park for at least 5,000 years.
TRIP LEAD: WEEZY
She swears the desert is always trying to kill her but she keeps going back anyways. Pictured to the left NOT in the desert.
Contact Weezy: louisada@usc.edu
Read Weezy’s bio here.
Read Weezy’s spotlight here.
Joshua Treeeeeeee aka Mars (maybe) aka Peak’s most visited National Park