Giving Up Excuses

I reached for the edge, a full pad crimp. The pumpy, overhanging basalt of the Fugitive Extension weighed down my crooked left arm.  The anchors taunted me.   I failed in slow motion.  20 seconds later and 20 feet below, I hung dejected at the end of the rope.  I wanted to scream at Jailhouse, the steep sport crag in the Sierra foothills. The move was impossible.  I immediately made excuses for myself.  I settled on one quickly. I was handicapped.

Jailhouse

Seven years ago, I fell from the top of Intersection Rock in Joshua Tree.  I was onsight free soloing the North Overhang (5.9) when I made a grievous error.  I passed the crux of the climbed.  I stared at the summit, a few meters away.  I felt secure knowing I’d sent the crux, 100 feet of space swimming below me. Then I repositioned my feet, moving them underneath my body, a slight miscalculation. I started to barndoor, my balance suddenly gone. I fell. After 70 feet I hit a ledge.  I was ecstatic.  I had stuck it.  I was still alive.  Then I fell off the ledge and went another 30 feet to the ground.  

A few minutes before I fell in Joshua Tree

Other climbers, out for a mid December weekend at the National Park, saw my fall and helped facilitate a rescue. I had a stroke shortly after I hit.  My brain swelled inside my cracked skull, threatening to kill me.  A helicopter flew me to the ICU in Palm Springs. I barely made it to the hospital.    Spinal and ankle fusion, pin and rods in my elbow, a vana cavity filter to stop a blood clot from entering my heart, brain damage from hitting my head, a broken clavicle, nerve damage.  I spent 3 weeks in the ICU and 81 days in the hospital that year.  I laid prone in a hospital bed for over 2 months before I fought to sit up.  There’s nothing inspirational about learning how to walk again.  It’s a painful process.  To facilitate my recovery, I fixated on climbing.  I took the steps to get back to the crag.

In the hospital trying to figure it out

After the ICU, I went to a spine and physical rehabilitation center in Los Gatos, California, near where I was attending school at UC Santa Cruz.  I learned to stand, then to stumble, and finally to walk.  I focused on recovering, and returning to climbing.  Every step brought me closer to the crag.  I wanted to climb more than ever.

“Maybe you should take up something safer, like cycling,” Paul Dossick, a South Bay area orthopedist, told me in his office. Dossick tore through the scar tissue that had healed from my last surgery. “Or take up bowling.”

The geriatrics waiting outside for their knee and hip replacements heard my yell through the small office.  I nearly fainted from the pain.  

More painful than Dossick’s wrenching through the tender scars of my elbow was his bowling suggestion.  It was a recurring theme in my recovery.  Doctors and physical therapists told me that climbing led to injury.  I pretended not to notice.  I just wanted to climb again, it was crucial to my recovery.

Dossick removed two screws and a plate from my elbow during a second surgery on my elbow.  The orthopedist increased the range of motion in my arm.  He could do nothing about the metal in my ankle or the rods in my back. The bottom of my tricep would never return and I lost an inch of my reach. I went to physical therapy and worked the muscle out.   I push harder with my triceps when I mantle,  I stand harder on my feet, I open my hip to crack climb on my fused ankle, I smear my knee to make up for the rods in my back,  I learned to compensate for my various injuries.

“Super Pete” Chasse reached for the edge on the Fugitive extension. He grabbed the crimp, wavered a little hitting the undercling, and then clipped the anchors. Solid. The 40 year old sport climber lowered 30 meters down the overhanging 5.13b sport climb.  He hobbled to the base of the route on the right side of Jailhouse.  He unscrewed his urethane foam foot, replacing his custom fabricated climbing shoe with the foot he used to walk in.

Pete on Father's Day. John Vallejo Photo

Pete worked as a steel fabricator for a pier building company in Lake Tahoe and he often moved large dirt-sifting equipment. A week after sending a 5.14b at Jailhouse, Pete was lowering an enormous piece of machinery.  One of the hooks attached to the chains holding the equipment fell off. 6000 pounds of metal fell onto Pete and pinned his leg. The doctors gave Pete two choices: a dozen surgeries and maybe partial function of his leg or cut off the limb.  Pete didn’t give the options much thought, he let go of the dead limb. Pete bought two prosthetic feet to attach to his new “leg.”  The first foot he walked in.  The second he ground down into a little shoe, he made a stiff edge on it, pointed the toe a little, glued sticky rubber onto it, and created a climbing shoe.  Pete’s returned to the rocks four months after his accident.   

“I never see the use in making excuses,” Pete told me over the phone as he drove back from Bishop this spring.  Over the weekend he climbed High Plains Drifter, a high V7 at the Buttermilks that he had broken his heel on earlier that season.  “There are certain things you can’t do but there’s other things you can do to make up it for it.”  Because of the prosthetic, Pete is unable to kneebar but he can stand on his prosthetic forever; his artificial foot never gets pumped on slabby terrain.  For Pete the loss of his leg didn’t handicap his climbing, it just changed it.

Pete and his wife Lidija in the Red.

“Grab the sidepull and reach straight for that crimp.” Pete told me at the crag.  He had just hiked the route and I desperately wanted to do it too. I started to show Pete my arm, to give an excuse of why I couldn’t reach straight with a crooked arm.  I wanted to tell him about my handicap.  I looked at his prosthetic leg, and remembered how he didn’t use any of the dozen of kneebar rests that I used on the route. I could only nod in response.

This spring at Jailhouse, I pantomimed the beta to Jake Whittaker, a tall bespectacled Yosemite friend, as we sat at the pillar start of the Fugitive Extension. 

Jake, a master slab climber, once forgot his blown out shoes on his way to the Camp 4 boulders.  He climbed anyway, trying the notoriously difficult V5 slab Blue Suede Shoes.  Jake crimped his way up the problem barefoot, ignoring the extra difficulty. 

Jake Whittaker

I jumped in the air showing the dyno after the crux. I wobbled slightly showing the delicate traverse move.  I flapped my arms wildly pretending to fall going to the anchor.  I pointed to my elbow, indicating my six-year-old injury.

Jake smiled. “So, if you’d sent that 5.9, you could have sent this 13b?”

                                                                         

For a year, I thought the move was impossible.  I tried and I fell. I had a good excuse for not being able to do the route but Pete had a better excuse.  There are thousands of hard climbers who, like Pete, fight through adversity.  American aphorist Mason Cooley, wrote “Excuses change nothing, but make everyone feel better.”   As Jake suggested, if I had sent the North Overhang of Intersection Rock, it wouldn’t change whether or not I could climb my current sport project.  I decided to crimp harder on the side pull to compensate for my crooked elbow.  I fell.  But I was closer. 

Climbing on the Fugitive

This spring, my raw hands grated across the basalt for the third time of the day. As I approached the crux of the Fugitive Extension, I didn’t fixate on my broken elbow and I didn’t think about the moves ahead.    I breathed.  I stepped into the move, reached for the crimp, and latched it.  I fought a few more feet and clipped the anchors.

Love in the Border Country

In October of 2009, Katie Lambert, Ben Ditto,  a Slovenian climber named Luka, and I climbed on the north western face of Yosemite’s Middle Cathedral.  The route, Border Country, was named after a poem written by a well known climber. The night before the climber’s death in an avalanche in China, he wrote a poem about the climbing life, of living in the Border Country.

When we reached the base, I realized I had left my chalkbag in the car.  I ran down to get it.  Katie was waiting when she heard a voice cry.

“Heeey Katie.” Ben offered to tag our water up the first 200 feet.

This was the first time Ben saw his future wife

I’d told Katie that Ben was a Utah sport climber. She was sure he’d suck.  But the way he’d said hey, the way he’d said her name, she thought “whoa who is this person?”  

We climbed all day but hardly saw Luka and Ben.  They were too far ahead.  Every once in awhile, Katie caught glimpses of a flashing smile, weird long hair, and a bandanna.  Ben was climbing smoothly up the wall.  On the crux pitch, he broke a horn but caught himself on a hold below.  It was one of those days when Ben couldn’t fall.

At the top of the headwall, Katie led to the stance where Ben was taking pictures.  He first saw her through a camera lens. She arrived at the belay and went to lower down. She clipped a single biner and a mess of old webbing left by the first ascentionist.  Ben thought either she really knows what she’s doing or she’s kind of sketchy

When the shadow of the Nose hit the Zodiac, we rappelled.  We cramped into tiny belay stations. Katie and I were at the bottom. Luka and Ben, who had helmets, were on top.  We held out backpacks over our heads so we wouldn’t get pummeled by the rocks when we pulled our ropes.

At one ledge, while we waited for Luka to rappel, there was a conversation about relationships. “Well, what’s up? Any prospects?” Ben asked Katie.

“No.”   Katie replied

 “I’m sure they’re lined ten deep.”  Ben said, shaking his head.

I snapped this photo of Ben. He was charming even with long eccentric hair.

We continued down the route.  Ben talked about Keep the River on Your Right, the story of an artist and anthropologist who travels into the jungles of Peru.  Ben was being characteristically smooth, living up to his nick name The Coffee Shop Killer.

It was an adventure. Pretty exciting. Not like Katie Lambert getting lost inside her sleeping bag but exciting anyway. 

I read this story at Katie and Ben's wedding Summer Solstice 2012

When we got down, we parted ways.  Katie looked for Ben in Camp 4 a few days later but Ben was climbing on El Cap.  They stayed in touch while he went to Patagonia.  In the spring, Ben met Katie in Ridgecrest, when her car broke down. They climbed in Bishop and became partners.  These days, they live climbing together, defining intrepid, and living a life in the Border Country.

Congratulations Katie and Ben

The Professional and the Lifestyle Climbers

Imagine casually climbing splitter cracks, overhanging sport routes, and perfect boulder problems.  Picture hiking enormous granite formations without a rope.  This is who I want to be.
Alex Honnold fell on the hike up to the crag.  He stumbled on the walk to the base.  Alex Honnold climbs splitter cracks, steep sport routes, hard boulder problems, and free solos with ease.  He’s the type of climber I wanted to be.  

Alex on the Southwest Arete- this picture and a number of the other good ones are courtesy of Michael Pang

 “My skin,” he moaned as he taped every finger tip. Alex had climbed the past 22 consecutive days, wanting to send everything in Squamish in one summer.  He’d cut himself off from his love of sweets to eek more performance from his body. No candy. No cookies. No way. “My skin is weeping.”

Alex clipped the first bolt on Eurasian Eyes, a 5.13b arête above the Squamish Chief Campground.  Alex has climbed over 500 different 5.13 routes.  He’s mathematical about his climbing, keeping fastidious notes of his ascents, and constantly improving.  This arête climb, though a difficult warm-up, should have been easy for him.  It wasn’t. 

He was wobbling.  I tried to console him. Alex tries harder than anyone else I know.  “Stop bitching. You can do it.” 

Andrew Burr, a Salt Lake city climbing photographer, dangled nearby taking pictures on the aesthetic line for one of Alex’s many sponsors.  Alex climbed up to the arete’s crux and promptly punted. 

“Lower me,” he yelled.  I’d never heard Honnold so angry before.  He never gives up on a route.  His tenacity is one of his more admirable traits.  I dropped him to the ground where he untied and immediately began moping.

This time, I tried to be nice.

“It’s ok man.  You’re just tired from climbing so much.  Everyone sucks sometimes.” I grinned, and thought about showing solidarity. ‘Even I suck sometimes.”

“But I never suck,” he said. “You suck all the time.  You’re used to it.”

This guy is awesome at everything

I should have drop kicked him in the head but instead I focused on not looking hurt.  Point Alex Honnold.  Obviously the pain crossed my face because a moment later he added, “What? I’m just being honest.”   

We dropped Burr off, and drove to the grocery store.  Alex bought 2 pounds of smarties, 8 enormous cookies, and a fistful of chocolate.  He caved into his desire and abandoned his no sugar diet.  We’re all human and we all wobble.  

Alex on 5.13R at Owens

“Here, you can have the rest of my Canadian cash.” Honnold filled my pockets with a wad of beaver bucks and toonies. “And here’s a cookie.  I’m going to California.”  By the time he arrived in Yosemite, 36 hours later, his skin would be healed. 

Me belaying Alex on his 5.13R at Owens

 Alex climbed 22 consecutive days with every finger taped and bleeding. He wanted to succeed so much that he tried a no sugar diet.  I bit into a chocolate chip cookie and I suddenly thought of spitting it out. If I wanted to stop sucking all the time, I needed to try harder.  I swallowed the cookie anyway.
 

Most Bishop two bedroom rentals are either a meth lab or part of the barrio. While the former would provide a solid income with the clientele living next door, I have always lived by the adage- “Life Is Good. Don’t Meth it up.”  Two weeks before Christmas, Stacey Pearson, Alex Honnold, and I moved into the upstairs apartment of a four plex.  A couple of crash pads, four of Peter Croft’s half broken deck chairs, and an odd collection of Yosemite cafeteria silverware barely filled our sparse cell of a home in the Bishop barrio.

The life of a Lifestyle Climber

Across the street a chihuahua yapped relentlessly. On Wednesday nights, the downstairs neighbors held their weekly Mexican Pentecostal Bible study. Their chants of hallelujah and bloogitybloogityblah, their speaking in tongues or maybe their bad Spanish, vibrated through the floor.  At night they would exorcize the demons out of the town.  Most days after climbing, we would exercise our demons.  

Arm wrestling is not my forte. Seven years ago, I fell rock climbing. Two surgeries fixed the compound fracture in my elbow but it didn’t repair all the muscle. The lower part of my left tricep doesn’t exist.  It’s hard to mantle with my left arm.  It’s also hard to arm wrestle with that arm. Alex had already done his daily regimen of pushups, situps, and mirror flexing so we arm wrestled for exercise. We went left handed first. I promptly lost.  

 “That was pitiful dude,” Alex said. “Let’s try right handed.  My wrist is a little tweaked but I think I can beat you right handed.”

As we grabbed arms, I thought of Lincoln Hawk, played by Sylvester Stallonne in the amazing 1987 action drama Over The Top.  Hawk took on the bald headed, Bull Hurley in the finals of the World Arm Wrestling Championships in Las Vegas. Before the match, Hawk swiveled his hat backwards to prepare for battle.  I channeled Hawk, imagined myself putting my entire life’s worth, my big rig truck and the love of my son, on the line.  Things were about to be Over The Top.

Stacey put her hand over our clenched fists.  
“Go!” her yell echoed across the empty apartment.  The veins in Honnold’s ripped arm bulged.  My oversized bicep pushed against his.  I lost ground. I lost more. Then I pushed back. Trickles of blood filled my nostrils.  I could almost taste the iron on my lips as I pushed against him.  I wanted this.  I wanted to win.    His arm weakened. Then I slammed it against the table. I won.

“Dude, my right wrist hurts” Honnold said.   “Let’s go left arm again.”    Alex refused to lose.

New Years Eve excitement with Stacey, Kim, and Michael Pang

On New Year’s eve, Honnold stared at me from across the chess board.  The half dozen dirtbags cramming out apartment watched intently.  Honnold moved carefully.  I play a lot of chess, which doesn’t translate into skill it simply means that I play a lot.  Honnold barely plays chess, but he had a natural tack for the game. He he played the two knight’s defense, a style that isn’t a defense but more of an opening counter attack.  Cautious and aggressive.  We traded pieces. I sought to win by attrition.  The other climbers stared at the board.  I knew that didn’t want me to win.  They just wanted Alex to lose.  The end game was a slow battle of pushing pawns across the board. Alex stared intently at the locked pieces. I focused on the wall, apathetic.  We eventually declared it a draw.   

Everybody wants to be Bobby Fischer

I grabbed the strawberry Poptarts from above the fridge and than an IPA from inside of the fridge.  Nothing beats high fructose corn syrup, beer, after a near chess win.  I opened the package, offered one to Alex, and placed the other on the counter for a moment.  I sipped on my IPA and sprayed about countering the two knight’s defense to the nearest dirtbag climber. When I turned to grab my Poptart, I saw crumbs.  The crust, the top and the bottom, were broken off of my Poptart. The dejected ends sat on the counter. Nearby, Alex happily mashed on the red 40 food coloring and artificial strawberry flavoring of the middle of my poptart.  The middle of the poptart.  That's the best part.  He couldn’t take a draw.  Was this why he was such a good climber?  He refused to settle for less than success.

Every day, he asked me what I’d climbed.  He wanted me to say I had “sent everything.”  Alex wanted me to succeed like he did.  When we first arrived in Bishop, Alex provided a tick list of routes and boulder problems to prepare me for my spring Yosemite goals.  I climbed harder that winter because I didn’t want to come to a draw with the rock. 

working Excelsior in cold weather in Owens River Gorge

Living together means seeing your housemate stumble to the bathroom in the morning, hide under their sleeping bag watching True Blood all day, and sometimes brushing their teeth.   

“What time are you and Kim heading down to Owens tomorrow morning?” Alex asked in between sets of vigorous tooth brushing. Stacey, Kim, and I used electric sonic care toothbrushes.  Alex preferred a plastic Colgate. By striving for the same level of well scrubbed cleanliness as a sonic care, he could also get a serious forearm work out through vigorous scrubbing.  Translation- Dirtbag toothbrush = trying harder = bigger forearms = easier rock climbing.

Climbing on Flux Capicator in Owens River Gorge

“We’re gonna make breakfast, hang out, and then head down.” I responded through the whir of my mouth vibrator. I thought about sleeping in with my girlfriend, waiting for pleasant warm temperatures, and a relaxing day.

“We’ll be there around 10.”  Alex stared down at me with sudden disapproval. I thought of the tick list he had given me and my Yosemite goals.
“I mean 9,” I added quickly. "What are you gonna do?

“Well, I’m gonna get up at 7, run for an hour, make my egg scramble breakfast, and get down there early.” Alex spit into the sink

 “Wow, that’s motivated,” I walked towards my bedroom.

“That’s cause I’m a "professional climber,” he waved his fingers at me, “unlike you lifestyle climbers.”

I slammed my bedroom door in his face.  For five minutes I stared at the door knob trying to think of a witty retort.  Nothing came to mind, which made me almost madder. 

 I wanted to be a professional climber and get paid to be a climber.  My mind wandered away from snappy comebacks and towards Alex’s motivation behind the comment.  Alex never slept in. He never relaxed.  He couldn’t.  One day out of 30, he hid beneath his sleeping bag and watched 30 episodes of True Blood. It was his one respite from training, from climbing, from traveling, from answering hordes of emails from random fans, from interviews, from people wanting something for him.  Maybe he wanted to be a lifestyle climber and he said it out of jealousy.  Maybe he was just saying if I wanted to be a professional climber, I had to act like one.

Yosemite rematch this spring

To a large degree, I want to be the man who stumbles to the cliff, the man who climbs 22 days in a row with taped fingers, the one who mathematically improves on climbing.  I don’t want to be Alex Honnold though.  Oscar Wilde said, “Be yourself…everyone else is already taken.”  It’s taken a few months for that thought to settle in.  I don't have to be Alex Honnold, I should just follow some of his training advice.  I’ve  started waking up earlier, wanting it more, and not eating Poptarts.  But more than anything, I've embraced being a lifestyle climber.   

The Jackass and The Zebra

I stared into the mirror at the 4 x 6 inch tattoo on my neck. This wouldn’t have happened without Google.

My birthday is Tuesday Dec 6. I was born in 1981. This year, I will be thirty. I’ve always felt like a bit of a geriatric. For six months, I used a wheel chair, a walker, and a cane. Actually, I never used a cane; I used a nine iron to support my hobble. My limp got better and my short game improved a ton. I spent a significant amount of time around stroke victims while I was recovering from a climbing accident. My hospital room mate, an old Los Gatos school superintendent named John, was thirty years my senior. When they fused my back, and my ankle, I saw a Los Gatos orthopedist, whose waiting room was filled with geriatrics. The stiff ankle, the fused back, the wear on my body… I’ve felt old for 6 years now. It’s not a pleasant feeling.

The Phoenix climbs a technical corner to a difficult crack traverse. A pumping fingers section to overhanging hands follows the crux. I fell all over it this spring. During one lead attempt, I tried to stuff a red alien into a yellow alien spot. Think smashing a square peg into a round hole. Unable to fit the cam in and scared to fall, I threw the piece over my shoulder into the poison oak and waterfall far below. I grabbed the crack, made two moves, realized I could use the red alien but I had just thrown it, and promptly took a monster winger.



At Jailhouse, I punted off my mega proj staring at the anchor, 5 times. 5 times. It wore me down. On Washington’s Column, I tried to climb the Quantum Mechanic. Instead, I got scared, I aided, and I generally got worked. Morale was low low low.

Everybody’s nice to you on your birthday. It’s a fact. People get gifts on their birthdays, they get called up by long lost friends and distant relatives, and people constantly acquiesce to your demands. Hey, it’s your birthday! According to a Johnson & Johnson study, you are 68.5% more likely to have sex on your birthday. Yahoo! What better way to guarantee having a great day then having a birthday.

With a steady feeling of depression kicking in, I decided I needed to cheer myself up, at least for a day. I thought and I thought and I thought about what to do. I Googled how to cheer yourself up. Dance, Party, Smile. There had to be something. While Google searched the interweb for an answer to my depression I checked Facebook. I noticed that it was almost my friend, Alex Evans birthday. Everyone was wishing him happy birthday. He was gonna go on a Happy Birthday climb in Yosemite, have Happy Birthday cake with a group of Camp 4 climbers, and even have hot Happy Birthday sex with his girlfriend. Hundreds of people wished him happy birthday on his Facebook wall. That’s what I needed- a birthday. So I changed my birthday on Facebook.

The response was overwhelming. Over a hundred people wished me happy birthday. Alex came up to me and was so surprised- he’s known me for 6 years and never realized that his birthday was the day before mine! Then Casey McTaggart called me, “OMG! We have the same birthday!” It was all so awesome! I forgot about tossing that cam, about punting on the sport proj, and about getting worked on Washington’s Column. For one day, I felt good. What a great feeling. Why couldn’t I feel like this everyday? I decided it’d be a good idea to have another birthday. People would just forgot in a few months right? So, I changed my birthday on Facebook again to 3 months later. I could go for another PARTY!

Thirty is a milestone year. The twenties are done. The carefree days of my youth are behind. Think mortgage, marriage, making a career. My first facebook birthday in June was a celebration. My second Facebook birthday in September was a sudden realization of how old I actually was. A geriatric. If I had three birthdays every year, by the time I was 50, I’d be a hundred years old. Reality settled in. All the notes, the phone calls, even the gifts, from my second Facebook birthday just reiterated the fact that I was aging rapidly. I was getting old.

There’s hipsters everywhere at Smith Rocks. They come from Portland on the weekends. Tattoos, skinny jeans, and serious attitudes. I joked about all the bad tattoos that the hipsters had. Wouldn’t it be funny to see a hipster with a bad unicorn tattoo? I joked at the crag. Then I Googled bad unicorn tattoos and what did I find? Rambo riding a unicorn! It was so bad it was awesome. This was beyond hipster ironic- this was universally ironic.




Kate Rutherford, Greg Garretson, and I drank wine, hanging out after a day of climbing at Smith. I showed them the Rambo picture.

“I bet we could make that better,” Greg opened up Photoshop. “Enhance the background.”
The flames got replaced with a grassy flower filled field.

“Put a rainbow behind him,” Kate sipped some Merlot. “He should be shooting something. And a little burst from the end of his gun, like an explosion.”

“A laser?” I suggested. Greg clicked away at the image. Rambo had a laser.

“How about a rainbow?” Kate said. A few minutes later the image had reached perfection. The best picture of Rambo riding a unicorn shooting a rainbow crossbow ever.



I am in constant conflict with myself. I love climbing. Even when I’m throwing cams over my shoulder, punting on the sport proj, or jumaring, rapping, bolting, and hiking by myself. I love it. But there’s days when I don’t feel so young anymore. I look at my peers, the ones who are married, the ones with kids, jobs, and houses that aren’t station wagons. I get jealous. There’s times when I want to permanently remove myself. Destroy the possibility of ever living that lifestyle. Though I want it sometimes, it’s a hard one to move to. It’s easier for me to climb all the time, live on a budget, and travel. You get good at what you practice. Doing the things that make us grow, isn’t easy.
What’s more, I wanted to change myself. I wanted to be something more than I was. I didn’t want to blend in with the geriatrics I had spent so much time with. I wanted my youth back. I wanted to stop feeling 60 and start feeling 20 again. I wanted the perfect tattoo; the one that turned the jackass into the zebra.

I called a number of tattoo parlors around Smith. I even tried a few places in Portland; I figured the hipster capital would have someone who specialized in unicorn tattoos. I got the same answer from all of them. Expensive. Getting a little youth back doesn’t come cheap. I searched Google for an inexpensive way to get Rambo riding a unicorn on my neck. I found a viable option and I went for it.



I could hear their whispers from across the gym. I had stopped by the bay after my trip to Smith. A matching pair of hipsters adorned the Berkeley Ironworks lead cave. They had seen my neck tattoo. I could only imagine what they said to each other.

“That guy is way more punk than us,” a tat of a crying statue of liberty bounced up and down his skinny shoulder.

“Look at that neck ink. What a gangster,” she said. Roses marked the back of her hands and tattoed stars floated behind her ears. “I bet he totally passed the lead test.”

I felt bad ass. I stopped by Mortar Rock and tore my tips apart on Nat’s Traverse, falling at the end. Lucho, my long time climbing friend from San Francisco, came out with me. “That tattoo does make you look like a gangster.” Lucho never says stuff like that. Though, I kept falling off the end of the problem, I got a little more swagger.

The feelings lasted about a day, maybe a day and a half. Then I started to feel silly. I had a square 4 x 6 inch tattoo of Rambo riding a unicorn on my neck. What the fuck? What was I thinking? A neck tattoo in this recession economy, where the job market is tight, would squash my chances for future employment. Did I really want to eliminate the possibility of entering the rat race- a chance at a house and stability?

I stood staring in the mirror. I scratched at my neck hard, rubbing the skin red. Blue flakes fell into the sink. Google found my only affordable tattoo option. A company in China or Milwaukee or somewhere in between made temporary tattoos for a margin of the price. My nails tore at the flesh and the flakes floated into the sink. I thought of the ephemeralness of it all. Like the feeling of specialness from changing my Facebook birthday, the tattoo tough guy feelings wouldn’t last. I lacked the sincerity to be a true gangster. I couldn’t change my birthday every day. The feelings woud only last for so long. I'd need something more sustainable.

Part of growing older is learning to be comfortable with yourself, a challenge I feel on a regular basis. It’s 11pm on Dec 5. It’s almost my birthday. I’m gonna wake up tomorrow morning, have something to eat, and then go climbing. I’ll be 30. Maybe I’ll boulder at the Buttermilks, maybe I’ll climb some routes in Owens River Gorge. I’ll spend a little bit of time looking for a place to rent for the winter in Bishop. The house might happen, it might not. I’ll work a little, hang out with friends. I’ll try not to worry too much about growing up or staying young about changing my birthday on Facebook or getting a tattoo. I’ll just try to be something between a jackass and a zebra. I’ll just try and be myself for a little while.

Living the Dream

Cold gravel crunched beneath my feet. The air bit my lips. Smoke emerged when I exhaled. I used the bathroom and scrambled back to my sleeping bag, my car, my home. It wasn’t raining yet. Maybe there would be climbing when the sun rose and warmed the park.

An hour later, I heard the familiar tapping on the glass. Drip drip drop. I groaned. I tried to go back to sleep. By 8 all the rocks in Smith were wet. By 9, the ground under the trees was too. I sat up in the back of my Saturn station wagon and stared. There would be no climbing today. I would sit and stare out the car window all day, wishing it was nice outside, wishing I was climbing, maybe even wishing I had a normal job with a house, a girlfriend, and a real life. Drip drip drop. But that’s only wishing. Right now, I am living out of my car, traveling wherever I want with no responsibilities. I am living the dream. Drip drip drop. There were days when I wish the dream would end.

I should have known I was out of my element when I stopped just north of Shasta. I tried to pump my own gas. The attendant stopped me immediately, assuring me that it was his job to fill my gas tank. “That’s why they pay me the big bucks,” he said as put $38.00 of regular unleaded into the tank. I gave him a look of pure Californian suspicion. Why was the gas cheaper than in Cali? Why was he really filling my tank? Who were these sneaky sneaky Oregonians with their half truths?


Smith

“I love this climb. You can just scamper up it,” Darryn said as she lowered down from Wedding Day, a 5.10b arête at the Dihedrals. I crimped through the classic climb, grunting, thrutching and desperately fighting my way to the anchors. I pulled out every trick in the book. I didn’t come close to “scampering.” As I lowered, I looked at the route next to it, a short 5.12a called Flat Earth. “It’s a stroll,” said super local, Ian Caldwell as he sunk a mono and drop knee back stepped through the crux. It’s a local sandbag, I thought to myself.

The climbing in Smith is tuff. Alan Watts, established many of the routes on rappel. Bolting the chossy faces from the top down revolutionized American rock climbing. By climbing on preplaced gear, bolts, the climbing standards rose quickly. “Sport climbing” arrived in the United States. The standards of the 80s were far different than those of today. The bolts are miles apart by today’s standards. It’s not sport climbing in Smith. It’s 80s face climbing. And it’s SCARY.


10 Gallon buckets- a 35 meter 5.10c or a multi-pitch cluster fuck

I can’t crimp. I can’t high step. I get terrified when I’m ½ an inch off the ground and more than ¼ an inch away from a bolt. There were a hundred reasons why the climbing in Smith would be especially hard for me- I took everyone as a reason to go. It’s easy to get better at things you’re already good at but working your weaknesses- that will make you a better climber.

The Full Heinous climbs a steep gently overhanging section of the Dihedrals area at Smith. The route originally had 3 bolts and required widgets to protect. Watts retrobolted the route and placed twice as many bolts! Twice as many! That’s incredible- until you realize how far apart the bolts still are. To stick clip the first bolt, you need to stand on someone’s shoulders with a stick clip.



What's that guy doing? Stick clipping on a route? OMG!Smith Rocks!

I found an extendable pole in the boulders of Camp 4. Duct tape held two brushes to the metal telescoping pole. I ripped the tape off, grabbed some supplies, and with my own duct tape, created a Stick clip. This would surely get me up any route I wanted to try in Smith. That’s what I thought when I showed up.

Ian Yeardin getting out his thermal sensor.


Perfect temps for sending the mega slab To Bolt or Not to Be.

Perhaps it was his half Billy Ray Cyrus, half George Michaels good looks. Maybe it was the stained long underwear he wore under his filthy shorts. “It’s like you said James,” a cloud of dust hung around Portlandianer Alex Baker. “You got to look good to climb good.” The mullet, the dirty costume, the 5 day old beard, and the dirty costume, somehow got Alex a send of Vicious Fish, a difficult 5.13c arête at the Morning Glory Wall. It also got him a girlfriend. Weird. Baker was also on his way to get a job at Black Diamond in Salt Lake City. Oregon is a strange place with strange people. While Baker was an out of the ordinary bone crusher, the weirdest people were the “Super Locals.”

“Im glad I can climb harder so I can climb easier routes,” said Mark Postel, a tall, lanky Smith Rocks climber of over a decade. “A lot of the easier routes aren’t that well bolted and often are quite hard.”

Located directly across from the Smith Rocks campground, the Postel’s humble abode is as close as you can get to Smith Rocks without tripping. The small building Postel called home could barely contain the big man. Postel refuses to admit he’s six foot two inches. “I’m 5’14”. Postel works as a guide in Nepal or Patagonia or Anartica- wherever the yak riding Sherpas with Britney Spears ring tones on their fake iPhones live. He returned from dragging a couple clients to some mountain called ImmaDaBomb to hike all the routes on the front side of Smith Rocks. There’s people out there who are close to living the dream. They own houses and climb at the rocks outside their house. They are super locals, and Postel is one.


Postel service at the Dihedrals

Max shaved chocolate into a mug ¾ full of hot water. By the time he added the bourbon, the hot liquid almost boiled over. He played the new Chromeo album, placing his iPhone into a cup so that the sound was amplified through his home, a Toyota Previa vansion. Max had finally made it.

“When the dashboard battery light comes on, it might not be your battery,” Max called me from Goldendale Washington, a small town somewhere between Leavenworth and Smith. “It could be your alternator. Did you know that your car won’t drive without it?”

Max walked to the library and spent most of the day trying to find something to do while he waited for a new alternator to arrive in Goldendale. That’s called living the dream. After a day’s delay and a few hundred bucks, Max arrived in Smith. He spent most of his five day stint getting flash pumped and then leaving to find some boulders. Did you know that there are a number of boulder problems at Smith? I didn’t. Nor did I care. Max did. And he cared enough to climb them, dragging me out to a surprisingly cool chunk of rock below the campground. Though Max has climbed the Compressor Route on Cerro Torre, climbed El Capitan, established new free routes in Alaska, he is primarily a boulderer at heart. Not only did Max crush some V gnar, but he put on a rope and fought his way up the classic Chain Reaction, falling at the redpoint crux a number of times. On his last day before leaving for a business trip to Japan, Max stuck the dyno at the top of the route. Boom!




Max bouldering at 11pm on the tuff below the Campground Bivy at Smith Rocks

I climbed towards the first bolt. My legs shook for 15 minutes as I stared down the crimps to the first bolt. If I could only make it there, I could be safe. The exposure was overwhelming. Panic. Panic. Panic had set in. I over gripped then when I couldn’t hold on any longer, I fell. I plummeted a solid 12 inches to the ground. It was an enormous fall. I thought I was sport climbing. I tried to clip the first bolt but my stick wouldn’t reach. The bolt was too high for my stick clip. I didn’t need a stick clip- I needed a rope gun. Thank God Kate was around.


Kate Rutherford climbs good cause she looks good. Kate advises you to wear pastel puff jackets for winter 2012.

Kate Rutherford is quiet. I met her like 7 or 8 years ago in Indian Creek. She was atypically clean for Indian Creek. I didn’t know it then, but now I do. It wasn’t abnormal. Kate always manages to look put together. It’s impressive. I’m not sure how she pulls it off but she does. It probably comes from her well put together life. Kate works as a part time jeweler, part time Patagonia Ambassador, and full time bone crusher. She lives most of the year with her boyfriend, Mikey Schaefer, inside a black Sprinter, a regular McVansion. She’s living the dream. While at Smith, she totally took advantage of the look good climb good phenomenon. She hiked The Full Heinous, Darkness at Noon, Doritos, and a ton of other “moderate” 5.12 “warm-ups.” She wasn’t the only one hiking at the sport crag.

“Someone’s on the proj Kate,” from the Morning Glory Wall, I watched a pink shirt dance up the runout climbing of the Full Heinous, a 5.12cR route at the Dihedrals. When I walked over, I saw a bespectacled man and a couple of young kids. The dad seemed intent on toproping the Full Heinous all day. I groaned, wondering who had put the rope up for this dad. I looked around. Kid, kid, fat parent, kid. It wasn’t making sense. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a pink shirt bursting from beneath a skinny 12 year olds oversized down jacket.

I stared at him. A few minutes of conversation revealed the culprit. Drew Ruana onsighted Kate and I’s project as a warm up. My ego was the Hindenberg. Crashing. Burning. No Survivors.

“Tell that kid of yours to stop flashing my projects,” I said to his dad, hoping to salvage some of my destroyed dignity.

“He's been doing that to me since he was 9...” said Rudy, a bridge architect in Seattle who was well aware of the reality of having a young crusher around. “I took away his playstation, just to be a dick!”


This 12 year old Seattlelite will crush your proj and act like a gangster.

I tried to ignore my defeated attitude and went up the route. One move before
a bolt, high on the wall, I fell, whipping well past the first set of chains. Yup. Smith is scary. Yup. Little kids send your projects. Yup. Living the dreams means living with a constantly broken ego.

This summer I spent a month in Rifle, which was a fun place. The limestone there is ok. There’s a large concentration of good or okay routes, which makes the 2 mile canyon pretty good as a sport climbing destination. A few years ago, I went to the Red River Gorge for 23 days in November. The climbing was fun but robotic. I don’t remember any different routes there. There was a lot of sandstone, the south east culture is super fun, but that place- meh. Red Rocks, Mesquite, Sonora, Rumney, little crags like Little Si, Chekamus, Trinity Aretes…meh. Smith may be the best sport climbing in the United States. The style of climbing there, vertical, crimpy rock, isn’t in vogue though and even the locals don’t take advantage of the offensively large amount of basalt in the gorge.


An Upper Gorge classic Wardance- 5.12a. My ass hurt the next day from stemming so much.

“Chicken pot pie- my three favorite things.” Greg Garretson. I met Greg in the Red a few years ago. The brief encounter ended up turning into a lucrative opportunity when Garretson hooked me up with an amazing job.


The production poster for the upcoming movie. I get credit on it!

The movie closed the entire Morning Glory crag, 5 Gallon Buckets, and many of the best climbs on the front side of Smith Rocks. Disney productions hired Mario Lopez and Flipper’s grandson son, a dolphin named Flopper, to star in River Dolphin, the story of a retarded football player and his redemption with a smart alec river Dolphin. The movie gave me an opportunity to cash in on some costume designs. Mario Lopez got a nice Ducks shirt with a fake string of saliva on it. Boy, Lopez looked better than when he did the Slater Dance.



I put glitter around Flopper’s blow hole. That’s right. Lots and lots of glitter.

Disney will be releasing the movie later this spring. I’m looking forward to its arrival. Maybe I’ll get more costume designing jobs out of the production. That’d be sweet!

Five or maybe six years ago, Drew “The Iceman” Rollins set a toprope on Dreamin for me. The crux of the route is low and well protected but the run out 80 degree wall above keeps away the crowds. I tried for a minute to stick clip the first bolt. Then I tried the initial moves. Then I figured out how to clip the bolt. With a few weeks of tuff under my feet, I monoed and grab the pockets just right, surmounting the roof and heading up the long section technical section. I tried not to be scared but I was. The park was quiet. I felt alone between the bolts. It was a Wednesday or Friday or maybe even a Monday afternoon. I don’t know. I was just focusing on the rock climbing. I was living the dream.

My fingers numbed out below the roof. I fought through the stemming in the middle to the redpoint crux at the pen ultimate bolt. High on the red wall of Kings Of Rap, I crimped a hold and locked off to grab a small pocket. I couldn’t feel anything and fell.

My next try, I wore a buff, another shirt, I put hand warmers in my chalk bag, I ran to the bathroom and back to warm up, and I sprinted through the intial difficulties, ignoring the pump and fighting the biting cold. I was successful.


Even the deer look cold.

That night, it snowed three inches. Snow covered the car. I woke up two, three, maybe four times during the night because the cold froze my nose and lips, the parts of my body not buried into my sleeping bag. The sun rose eventually. The snow stayed. It was time for me to leave.


A few hours after I left

I began driving slowly, very slowly down the 97 south towards warmer and better weather. A semi, a chevy van, a pick-up, were all on the side of the road. I focused on the ice and keeping the Saturn on the road. Kate sent me a message that the crags were sunny by the afternoon. I wondered why I left. I wondered if I should just turn around. I wondered mostly what part of living the dream this was.