naming

p says he wants me to call him, "the grip" or "the savant." i told him most people think "idiot" when you say "savant" but i'm happy to call him that. (hello, idiot!) i think i'll hold off on switching though in case he joins the blog and makes up his own username.

the best day

this post is a bit out of order. it belongs before colorado, 9/17/06. but it occurred to me that i hadn't posted about my favorite day.

the best day.


tonya, p and his girl a, bill and i got up early one sunday and drove to the red, to a crag called long wall. There was a range of multi- and single-pitch routes, but I was most excited about a 5.5-5.7 trad line called Big Country. it was supposed to be one of the funnest easy trad lines in the red. everybody said so, and so did the guide books.

some sites list this as a three-pitch route; some just one, but however you label things, you have to go up two pitches to be on the ledge where the last pitch starts. that's where we are in the picture above.

i don't usually lead things first -- p does. plus i had never led multiple pitches before, and there were a lot of people following so I was nervous about it. (Would we all fit on the ledges? What if there were no anchors? Would I be able to lead this at all? Would it take too long to get everyone up?) also, bill and tonya were long-time tradders so i was afraid they would find it boring. bill initially suggested that while the rest of us started up big country, he and tonya go off and climb something else.

i didn't want to do my first multi-pitch line without tonya, so they didn't go -- and they ended up with us newbies all day. they didn't seem to mind, and i felt much safer. who knew what could have happened two pitches up without them? i sure didn't.

we don't have any pics of the first or second pitch -- the first is more of a scramble between trees (which i comically insisted on protecting with tricams and cams). the second pitch gets you from a small sunny buttress almost straight up to a thin ledge and then past it almost straight up to another thin ledge, from which you can walk to the base of several climbs, including (the third pitch of?) Big Country.

that second pitch was a little scary. there was not much protection and the climbing was thin. i ended up zigging and zagging a bit to find easy routes with protection, and p laughed at my rope line, but it worked. this is me when i finished the second pitch.


i was pretty happy, as you can see.

the last pitch was a low-angle slab -- pretty easy climbing but with long gaps between protection, and no clear direction to follow to the next horizontal crack. it wasn't even clear where the top-out was -- there was an entire ridge above me. i aimed for a vertical crack which started just below the ridge. turns out this path is the 5.7 variant of Big Country, but the climbing never did get very difficult. fine with me.

from the top there was a god's eye view of a deep green section of the gorge, which carved a path to our right, and a cliff line on our left. there were huecos and perhaps even arches through the cliff face, and so much foliage on the cliff it was difficult to see clearly. A thought she saw a tent on a big ledge there. did she? the tent became a sort of legend of our trip. i saw the round shape myself, but i'm still not sure: was somebody sleeping way up there?

and as my dad always says, if not, why not?

i could have stayed there all day with the wind on my face. it really was the best day. so far, anyway.

Sometimes I feel like my family doesn't really understand why I climb outside every weekend. And it is hard to explain why I would want to spend so much time in the car and away from my comfortable home and friends, why i would want to have cuts and bruises and dirt in my fingernails.

It's hard to explain until you see it.

My brother visited the red to climb with me last weekend. it was fantastic to have a chance to really "explain." To show him what it's like to climb in nature. and here he is:

A friend named Tonya agreed to climb with us, and she had two friends with her. We went to a crag called Pebble Beach where I had never been before. Everybody but Dan and I seemed familiar with it. It was mostly a trad crag (with some fun-looking mixed and sport routes) and there was only one other party climbing there. We got to follow Scabies (sport), Big Money and Zambezi Plunge, and then I led Razorback, but not cleanly.



The next day my partner p and his girlfriend a came down. Dan had to go because there was ice in the mountains, so we three said goodbye and went to Fortress, where we climbed Calpyso II and then p climbed Bedtime for Bonzo.
It's gorgeous, as you can see. I'd like to climb it too, but we ran out of daylight.

colorado

my partners and i decided to visit patti in colorado for five or six days. we climbed at clear creek, where patti brought us one day before she had to be at work. this is how cool patti is:she put the first rope up in her work clothes. there was a move that involved a hanging leap across a crevice and then a roof pull -- it was close to the ground. if she hadn't put that first rope up i don't think any of us would have been bold enough to attempt that one move.

that night we had dinner in golden. here we are goofing off with handkerchiefs, which i have recently discovered are essential in spider web and crack funk removal. these handkerchiefs were the napkins at the pizza joint where we weren't even supposed to be eating -- my friend mark was our dinner date for two hours later.



the next day we hired guides and climbed at lumpy ridge, which was fantastic. i have almost no photos of that because i was afraid to bring my camera up -- but kerry may produce some eventually. this is the back of our car -- so full that i couldn't see out the rear view.



the last place we climbed was called shelf road. everyone we met was impressed that we were going there, and i must admit that the place was beyond beautiful. but the climbing wasn't that great, i thought. the rock was alternatingly putty-like, sharp and honeycombed. there were a few routes that i would like to try again at menses prow, but all in all, i'd prefer lumpy if we went again.

What it is

Hi all (/anybody!)

This is the first post on my climbing blog. I figure if I'm going to do this amazing thing every weekend until I'm dead or senile, it'll be nice to have a history to remember it by. For others, i hope it will be fun to read or at least look at the pictures. I hope you will come to understand why I think climbing such a um, crucial thing to do.

I'm a few years late starting this, so here's a short bio:

1. I was living in new jersey or connecticut when a friend told me about indoor climbing. i had been bemoaning the old-lady blubber that had replaced the skinny-but-muscular arms which, when i was younger, had carried me happily up trees and across rings and about anyplace i had a mind to go. (what was i doing when this replacement happened? why hadn't i been consulted?) i think she told me because i was threatening to climb trees in public places in new jersey, for which i'm sure one could be arrested. there are only two trees in new jersey, after all. i couldn't find a partner and was too scared to go by myself, so nothing happened except that a seed was planted.
   
2. I moved to ohio where i had a friend with an interest in climbing. (yay for robyn!) i started top-roping in a gym in the winter 2003 with her. i still don't hate gyms. oh, except the kind that make you belay with grigris. insurance be damned, i. detest. grigris.
   
3. Learnt to lead sport in spring of 2005 in the gym only. right around then my good friend/partner got pregnant and bailed. plus i broke up with my climber-boyfriend. luckily i made friends with a cool girl named patti who was new in town and fresh from a bad relationship (too) and we began to climb together.
   
4. It took a while, but i convinced patti to learn to lead. she was instantly better than i was. i didn't mind.
   
5. Patti and i had our first outdoor experiences at the red river gorge in the fall of 2005. it made me realize what i had been missing -- cardio, primarily. the hike in with the 20-somethings was HORRIBLE! (walk! slower! please!) i had never spent time in the woods, and i found it challenging (WHAT do you want me to do with this used tampon? and where is the sink?) and also breathtakingly beautiful. sport crags are too crowded to really be called nature, but even muir valley is a shock for a city girl. and there was a sense of real adventure -- not just in the climbing, which was definitely adventurous, but in just being there, far away from the rules of the city and the ideas other people have about behavior. i saw kids who were homeless except for a tent at miguel's -- god love miguel, camp for $2 a night -- and they came from all around the world. there were kids who didn't bathe as much as one had to in town, who made families out of their climbing partners, who swam naked in cold water to clean up. for these kids, climbing was the only thing. the only activity. it was a deep learning phase. i asked myself lots of questions about need versus want during that period. i think i appreciate my furnace now more, but i respect people who don't need that sort of thing much much more.
   
6. That winter i lost patti to a good job in colorado. i was really sad (so was her new, fabulous boyfriend) but i am also really happy for her -- she loves it there. before she left i found, somehow, two great partners. they don't replace patti, but they are fantastic in their own ways.
   
7. Began to learn trad in spring 2006 with both partners. one had some experience to begin with, but she wasn't able to stick to it. the other, who i guess we'll call p since he's kind of private, is an addict -- thank goodness. so am i.