For those of you that put up with my writing, and consistently read my blog, I've been trying to post but for some reason the 'publish' button isn't working...
Well I wish that was the case, but I'm actually just having a very difficult time translating my thoughts into real words.
I've had 10 drafts, and only 2 actual posts in the last two months, I apologize. I guess you might call that writers block?
Stay tuned... It's coming
Tom Evans photo, this is art. Zodiac (C3+)
My friend Scott Bennett soloing The Zodiac on the glorious 'nipple pitch', on El Capitan from his blog The Big Wide West.
I can't get this picture out of my head. It's one of the things that is keeping me motivated and SUPER psyched to keep training and getting in gear for my trip to Yosemite in May. Read up on his latest adventures in South America. Holy shit, makes me insanely excited.
A series of events have recently occurred that i can't help but be excited about. Things are looking up.
In the past week I've been successful sending a few trad routes, some of which I have tried multiple times and others my first attempt. I seem to be climbing better than ever. I finally feel like I'm pulling out of the mental funk that I have stuck in for a while.
I'm sending again, finally.
9 Lives (5.11+) Indian Creek, UT - onsight
Johnny Cat (5.11+) Indian Creek, UT - onsight
Country Club Crack (5.11c) Boulder Canyon - red point
Athletes Feet (5.11) Boulder Canyon - red point
The Gill Crack (5.12a) Boulder Canyon - red point My first 5.12 trad send. Even though it's short, it's super hard and painful. (The Beta)
I also just got a brand new apple macbook pro for free (no.. this is not spam). My old computer crashed and somehow apple messed up and didn't fix it, so they just gave me a new one. Happy birthday me!!!
I'm getting ready to head out to Zion in less than a week with my friend Greg. It will be fun to climb with him on his first wall, and climb enormous sandstone! It looks like we are going to be climbing Moonlight Buttress, Touchstone, and Spaceshot, all in 4 days. Psyched!!!
I turn 20 tomorrow. I feel happy where I'm heading in life.
18: In a very unhealthy relationship with a girlfriend, climbed a decent amount, graduated high school and started college
19: Climbed 7 big walls, starting to figure life, spent over 3 months out of the year collectively on climbing trips
20: I don't know what's going to happen yet.. a few plans are starting to formulate. I'm dropping out of CU to become a firefighter, and possibly eventually get into mountain rescue. I'm also looking into becoming a climbing guide. I'm going to try to make this year better than the last.
I have to choose wisely which trips I go on because of my monetary situation. It's rare that the Alpine Club doesn't have an organized group to go to some epic location every single weekend. Because I am saving up to go to Zion for spring break (get excited), this was one of the trips that I would have to opt out of. My friend Steve offered to give me a ride both ways for only $20, I couldn't refuse.
The second I got out of class friday, I quickly packed my bags and started the 7-8 hour trek out to Indian Creek just outside of Moab, Utah.
Making my way up 9 Lives (5.11+) at the Cat wall after inadequately warming up, getting the onsight.
Photo by Natasha Bowman
Jess giving 9 Lives a run for its money. I sported her extra small patagonia jacket and designer sunglasses while I belayed.
Photo by Natasha Bowman
Sending food. Super food. 5 eggs. Whatever you want to call it.
Bummed I didn't send King Cat (5.11+) because of the lactic acid build up in my forearms and the 4 foot roof that kept spitting me out, the red white and blue was still there for me. I think I've unlocked the beta for the route and can get it clean next time.
The same exact cut on the back of my hand from crack climbing keeps opening up over and over again. Unless I give it two weeks to heal (highly unlikely) is it going to just keep doing this?? I put neosporin on it almost daily to prevent infection and try to make it heal faster. Any tips?
This was earlier in the week...
Changing subjects.... I am in serious need of some new, looser fitting climbing shoes. I try to make the best of my tightly fitting La Sportiva TC Pro's. I messed up big time and got one of the most expensive shoes on the market too small, oops. Because of their small size, it causes my toes to be more than just a little bit curled. It is really painful when crack climbing... and all of the time now that I think about it. I've figured out a way to turn off the pain and keep climbing.
I don't know.. maybe I'll get lucky and get a new pair of better fitting shoes for my 20th birthday instead of a birthday cake.
While I sat in my intro to geology class (appropriately learning about the formation of sedimentary rock) my friend Kurt learned something far more valuable than my lifeless monotone teacher could ever mumble. It had rained the day before, and apparently that rock hadn't had enough time to dry out. Though it seemed that the 60 degree perfect weather had evaporated the residual moisture... the small fall onto well placed gear proved this to be wrong.
Kurt posted this video up on mountainproject.com, and people immediately blamed the gear failure to be human error, and suggested that he is to get proper instruction how to place gear. Not only does this kid climb harder than most of the people I know, but I'm not totally positive that the people who hawk the internet forums actually climb. I am suspecting that their eyes stayed glued to their computer screens and never actually get out..
Bad weather, icy, wet, cold... many more words could describe why we shouldn't be climbing. Arriving in yosemite with a fresh 8 inches of snow, I'm psyched as hell.
28 hours of driving led to a 3 minute installation of a four season mountain hardware tent in camp 4 at midnight. You can read here why it took us an extra 8 hours.
Conditions worsened, it got colder, and I got more psyched. Colin's parents treated me to breakfast at the buffet in curry village the next morning. Chains on Colin's old civic allowed me to drive as quickly as I could to el cap meadow.
I could barely make out the outline of the granite monolith. It was snowing too hard to even see el capitan. I put my mountaineering boots and gaiters on to go check out the condition of our route.
I hiked up the trail starting at the nose, passing mescalito, and briefly stopping at the alcove swing area. This was the only rock that I had seen so far that wasn't actively running with water. My rain shell was completely saturated, I was soaked. Things started looking better as I got to the base of tangerine trip. Shiny rivets marked the base of ZM. Dry. The first glimmer of hope. "Wow, we might actually be able to climb this thing," I thought to myself.
I knew before we even left on our trip that it was a crazy idea... doing a hard route on the captain, in winter. What was funny was that we even knew that the weather had been bad for a few weeks, and didn't look like it was going to be getting any better. I didn't care, I was too psyched.
Our strategy was to fix our ropes as high as we could from the ground. Inaccurate weather forecasts and the insane amount of ice fall surrounding us at the base of el cap urged us to spend as little time as possible on the wall.
We were also going to be climbing as a team of 3. It ends up being more efficient so we could climb faster. The description in supertopo says that most parties fix to pitch 2, and then spend 5-6 nights on the wall. We wanted to fix to pitch 5 or 6, and spend 2 nights on the wall.
First sun in days. Day 1 of fixing.
Pitch 1. Just getting warmed up on one of the 'easier' pitches of A3 on the route.
After a heavy snow storm, perfect blue skies and beautiful weather welcomed us.. it wasn't as glorious as I hoped it would be. The ice and snow that had accumulated over the past week quickly thawed. Insane amounts of ice would shower down every few minutes only 100 feet to our right at the base of zodiac. It sounded like bombs were going off. We were targets in a war zone, maybe el cap was trying to spit us off...
I got my first taste of nailing, clipping multiple fixed copper heads in a row, and what more difficult aid climbing is like (even though the first pitch is one of the easiest on the route). Pitches 8,14,16 are the only pitches that aren't A3 or harder. Pitch 16 is the only C1 pitch.
Another day of fixing. Jugging up to our high point at the top of pitch 2. Words cannot describe how much I love jugging :)
Leading pitch 3. I was psyched that I kept a good lead head the whole time as I hooked and hooked and hooked.
Colin getting on his first lead of the route on pitch 4. The 3 pieces that are clipped in the picture are all shitty copper heads. None of which would have held a fall. He didn't get a good solid piece of gear for another 10-15 feet. You know the climbing is hard/scary when you get scared belaying, he would have fallen straight onto the anchor if the heads popped.
Just as the light began to fade on our second and last day of fixing, for some reason I got psyched to lead another pitch. I don't know if it was the 'A3R hooks' off of the small 4x2 ledge that got me excited, or the '5.8 hands'.
This was by far the scariest pitch I had ever climbed. It started with simple C1 aiding, into the real business. Hook, after hook, after hook, I traversed farther out to my right. A fall would almost certainly result in injury. There is absolutely no doubt that any mistake would have a consequence...
I had to keep moving, trust that my hooks would hold, and that the wet edges of rock, that were sometimes only a few millimeters thick, wouldn't break away. I got high enough above my last piece of protection that I might as well not be on belay anymore. Hell, I didn't even need to be roped in, I would just slam into the ledge below me anyways.
I finished the pitch, disappointed by the god awful chossy '5.8 hands', I yelled down "OFF BE-FUCKING-LAY!"
That is a term that Colin and I coined.. after a hard or scary pitch that you are unbelievably happy to be done with.
Psyched, 5 pitches done. I fixed the rope, cleaned the pitch, and rapped back to the ground. We decided that we had fixed high enough to start climbing the route in full force.
We utilized the laundry room in the house keeping camp where we packed our haul bags, and dried out all of our gear. No, we couldn't just rack up our gear in el cap meadow in t-shirts.
Too psyched to remember the correct date, 1/3-1/6.
We hiked up the night before to bivy at the base to blast off at 4am. Just as it got dark we got to the base of t-trip, made a fire and cooked dinner. I could feel the energy from all of us being so psyched. We knew it was going to be a total adventure.
ZM is sheltered from water and ice projectiles because of how overhanging it is. It bulges out around pitch 5 and we were exposed. This was the only place that we thought we might be in range of ice fall until the very end of the route. Our alpine start would let us get to our high point with all of our gear (portaledges, haul bags, and all) and get out of the danger zone.
We were ready. I got all of my worries and 'what ifs' out of my head before I got on the wall.
I could then be free from the thoughts of: What if this is the last climb I ever do? What if we get caught in a really bad storm? What if I die on an A4 pitch? Why do I even do this shit?
I couldn't help but think about those things. I left all of that on the ground, and kicked ass on the wall.
Colin killing it! The lightning bolt roofs, pitch 7. We had all of el cap all to ourselves. We were the only people (idiots) crazy enough to climb at this time of year with the current conditions.
Asa cleaning. Sometimes it took up to an hour. The traversing nature of the route and cleaning pins is time consuming.
Me leading up to the 9 o'clock roof
The first night ended in frustration. As I lead my first A4 pitch (9 o'clock roof), finishing in the dark, I was disappointed to see that the topo was wrong. Instead of passing the roof, and ending with what looked like it would be a small ledge with 3 bolts, there were 3 old (2 old, 1 ancient) bolts and no ledge. I thought I was either off route, or wasn't completely finished with the pitch. Brain fried, I called it good, fixed the haul and lead line and rapped back down to the belay below. It was not sufficient to sleep 3 with all of our gear.
We spent at least an hour trying to set up our portaledges. It was a complete clusterfuck. I had set up each ledge once, and trying to do so at an overhanging belay hanging in our harnesses was very difficult (remember it is also dark out).
Me leading pitch 11.
Colin cleaning
I apologize, not many pictures turned out on day 2. We still climbed though, I promise.
Chillin on the double portaledge, loving life on our second night. Bivies on the wall are some of the best times. At the end of a very long, hard day of climbing you finally get to relax. Stuff your face with food and then pass out as soon as you zip up your sleeping bag.
Day 3 on the wall, push for the summit. Colin getting ready to send!
Colin leading up pitch 12. Killed it.
As I get higher and higher on a route I feel like the scary exposure loosens it's grip. It seems to peak out, and get easier on your head.
The second person who would speed jug up the haul line would have to lower out themselves from the belay into space. Every damn pitch was overhanging.
Loving life, laying and belaying on the ledge as Colin got worked on his last pitch of the day.
Then it was my turn to take over.
I jugged up the haul line as fast as I could, the sun was setting. I knew that every second of light would help me move faster to finish up the last 3 pitches of the route. It doesn't get less safe when it's dark, you just move slower, and it's hard to see small edges and features by headlamp. Out of the 8 pitches I led, 3 ended in the dark, and the other 2 were completely void of sunlight.
My last lead was a significant mental crux. It totaled out to be around 4 hours long. We were all so ready to get off the wall. The route's sustained overhanging characteristic tilted back, and let the melting snow covering el cap saturate the climbing. Because of how wet the last pitches were I couldn't get through the easier terrain by free climbing. Instead I had to nail because the dirty wet cracks started to freeze and cams in perfect placements would pop out under body weight.
I got to take us to the summit, that's always cool. I don't really care about 'getting to the top'. I get psyched that I get to finish what we all had worked so hard for.
Our summit bivy in a few feet of snow. Glory.
The post-holing begins!! Sometimes even up to our chests in snow. The descent took around 5 hours. It normally takes about 2 with all of your gear when conditions are normal.
This climb felt like a full on expedition.
Day 1: organize rack, hike gear and 300 meters of rope to the base
Day 2: fix to top of pitch 2
Day 3: fix to top of pitch 5
Day 4: Dry out all clothes, boots, and sleeping bags. Pack the haul bags. Hike to the base of t-trip
Day 5: Blast off, 4am. Bivy at pitch 7, pitch 8 fixed.
Day 6: Bivy at pitch 11
Day 7: Summit push! Top out 12am. Bivy on summit.
Day 8: Slowly, painfully wake up. Hike down, sometimes post-holing up to our waists. Party.
I would like to give a huge thank you to a few people for literally making this possible for us to climb. Most of them loaned us gear, and I am so grateful for how encouraging they all were.
Scott Bennett, Shawn Mitchell, Greg Howland, Eric Sloan, David Stalman and his girlfriend Annaliese. Mom and Dad I also can't thank enough for being so supportive with my passion.
It was so awesome climbing with my partners, Asa Firestone and Colin Simon. It wasn't just climbing another big wall, it was an experience that I'll remember forever. You get really close with the people you climb with. Relying on them so much to get you psyched, and literally letting them hold your life in their hands.
For every one of us, this was the hardest big wall route we had ever climbed. Every pitch took nearly 3 hours to lead. All of us are fairly quick and competent aid climbers, but it was seriously hard. To put it in perspective, the Nose speed record is 2 hours and 36 minutes. The ZM speed record is 22 hours and 56 minutes. Even though the nose gets WAY more ascents, that is still a significant time gap.
No, Colin and I will not be doing ZM in a day. Ever.
It was definitely a sweet route, but I don't think I'll ever climb it again.
Before this route, the hardest aid I had done was only C2. Jumping from clean aid C2 to nailing aid A4 was definitely intimidating. Because of my previous big wall ascents, I knew I would be able to do it. Not because of their technical difficulty, but because of how much I had to step up to be able to do it. For those of you that have read my other trip reports you have read how I have learned that being psyched is much more important than anything.
I wasn't ready for the nose when I got on it, but determination got us to the top in 4 days.
Colin and I weren't totally ready for climbing the nose in a day, but we were so psyched that we climbed it in only 15 hours.
I wasn't ready for this route either...
I had to climb ZM with the mindset of "I have no idea what the hell I'm doing, but I know I'll figure it out."
I'm trying something new to show the technical side of the climbing that I didn't include in the trip report.
Look HERE to check out what gear, clothing, food, etc... we used
Out of class for the week, I quickly drove into golden where there are a few easy flows. It's the closest ice on the front range. I grabbed my pack, helmet cam, and got psyched!
Many pictures and a sick video of our winter ascent of Zenyatta Mondatta on El Capitan are coming. I've been working on the trip report for a while. I want it to accurately represent our adventure, and it's not quite there yet.
Stay tuned! I should hopefully have it up within the next week.
Sometimes, climbing trips and plans fall perfectly into place. Everything in perfect order, nothing to ever stress about.
I'm just going to rattle off most of the things that have slowed us down so far:
My mom had to drive me to boulder because I didn't have my car.. I woke up late for that (add 1 hour)
I put some bananas on the roof of our car for my breakfast and drove away (ok not that big of a deal..)
We forgot a bag of aid climbing gear that was in colorado springs (add 2 hours)
Took a 'detour' to get to i-70 from the springs (add 3 hours)
Colin got a speeding ticket (add 5 minutes and $169, the cop was unreasonably quick)
Ran out of gas in Nevada 1 mile from a gas station
Colin ran the mile to the gas station, the gas station was out of gas. Ok... what is going on here (add 1 hour)
Colin and I synchronized our sleeping schedules. We had to stop twice to pass out (add 3 hours) Normally we can make it the entire way without stopping
I realized I packed absolutely everything except climbing pants... we had to stop at an REI that didn't carry a SINGLE pair of pants suitable for climbing.
We finally got here, and it's snowing, hard. Have to set up a tent at 1am with 8 inches of snow on the ground.
Ok now it eases up now.
I slept great, only waking up once to put socks on and to go into mummy mode in my sleeping bag.
Colin woke me up with a nalgene full of hot chocolate, and gave me a ride to eat at the buffet in curry village with his parents.
After breakfast I dug Colin's car out of the snow with a mountaineering axe, and put his chains on. While Colin and his family went skiing for the day, I checked out the reason we came to this place, El Capitan.
I put my mountaineering boots and gaiters on. My rain jacket immediately got soaked from the wet, heavy snow, my glasses kept fogging up, and the fresh bear tracks made me turn off my ipod.
I hate being wet. I kept on hiking up the talus starting at the nose, all the way to zodiac.
I realized that being on the ground (even though I was nearly soaking), is going to be the most comfortable I am going to be for a while... assuming that everything goes accordingly and we can actually climb el cap.
Fresh tracks at the base of the captain. They're lurking.
Dry and beautiful
I seem a little more negative than I mean to be in the video. I'm just really exhausted. I am very happy to be here.
It's funny... feeling miserable makes me feel better. To be honest, I didn't come on this trip to climb el cap. I didn't come on this trip to get better at rock climbing. I came because I'm able to catch a break from of all of my mental garbage.
zenyatta mondatta: Grade VI A4
This is one of two possible routes on el cap right now with the weather. We are planning to fix our ropes as high as we can and then blast off.
Kurt (aka 'Bubbles') leading Rigid Designator (WI 5) in Vail
My first lead on some WI3. Psyched!
I later led the first pitch of skylight. I placed two screws in bad ice, and slung two ice features.. none of which would have held a fall. Still psyched though!
Making my way up pic o the vic
One evidence of one of the many curtains of ice that fell.
Kurt in action. Falling.
Our little cabin that we stayed in for $38 a night. For a few nights we had seven people crammed in here. This obviously is good because we all have to pay less money.
Me on Troglodyte at the posers lounge off of camp bird road. This trip was my first time ever mixed climbing or dry tooling. Mixed climbing is where you are using your tools on both rock and ice. In the video, it is considered dry tooling, only rock.
It feels like climbing again for the first time.. weird!
Just getting home from a week long ice climbing trip in Ouray, CO, I know am about to leave again.
I'm leaving my house; safe place, comfort. Finely polished wood floors. Perfectly furnished and heated. Fridge and pantry full of food. Family of love and care.
I don't know if what I need right now is to stay home, rest, and recover. Rejuvenating my mind.
What I feel like I need is to go and live as simple as possible, push my body to its limit, and strengthen my everything.
Plans are slowly solidifying for yosemite. It looks like we are going to be climbing a steep route on el cap as a team of three with this cool guy Asa (spelling?). Pretty psyched.
My mind orbits around relentless obsession. The never ending beating, pounding, excruciating firing of wrong chemicals and neurons. Again, and again, and again it races. It's as if I have am being crushed under the world; the world and life in which I am being dragged through.
I contain the tarnished beauty that cannot be seen no matter how loud I scream.
I'm right here, crying.
I count on tomorrow happening, the day after that happening, the day after that happening.
As I turn the page into a new chapter of my life, good times are going to come. I'm a hidden wreck on the inside. I've cried every single day this past week.
As unbelievably embarrassing it is, my blog is a documentation of my journey.
School is over.
I can't celebrate because nothing matters.
Hope is transparent.
I've lost myself to this sickness. This heart break. This pain.
My bags are packed.
Tomorrow will be a brighter day.
5:00 AM, I woke up with an extremely swollen lip, and hives covering my entire body. Perfect, it's not like I don't have an insane amount of school work to do for the entire day..
A quick call to my Mom (who is a nurse), and I'm off to the ER, just to be safe. I switched to a different anxiety medication and it caused an allergic reaction. I guess it's extremely rare to have an allergy to valium, so I guess I'm special.
I looked in the mirror and laughed how ridiculous I looked. I had to get a few pics.
I know this really has nothing do with climbing, but it was definitely an experience.
Anyone that is a serious climber has had to deal with the problematic obsession with family and friends that don't really 'get it'. The reality is that climbing is more of lifestyle instead of just a sport... Personally it has aggravated the ending of two serious relationships, dropped my grades, and caused me to 'miss out' on various social gatherings.
Once in a while someone will ask me why I climb.... I pause, and can't give a legitimate answer. The only thing that runs through my head is... why would I do anything besides climb?
I don't fully understand how or why climbing inspires me.
My christmas break is coming up, which means a 3-4 week opportunity to do what I love most.
Loose plans with Colin quickly solidified. My relentless searching for used and 'cheap' gear has left me with everything necessary to climb ice. It has also left me with a large dent in my bank account.
First stop: Ouray, CO 17th-24th
Unlimited manufactured ice flows to get my feet wet with the upcoming ice/alpine climbing season.
That leaves about 3 days around christmas to be home with my family and wonderful girlfriend.
Second stop: Yosemite, CA 27th-whenever
From here.. it depends on the conditions. If they're good we'll be climbing, probably something very large. If the weather is not so good, we'll still probably be climbing.
If the weather is shit, we'll climb somewhere else, wherever the hell we want, maybe joshua tree. Then we might drive back, and climb ice up in Cody, WY.
Before yesterday, there were only two people that weren't informed of my plans. My Mom had driven down to boulder to take me out to dinner. Nervous about telling her, I flinched, and did it.
"So... I'm going to be climbing most of christmas break, and will only be home the 24th and 25th..."
"Well, this is your life, and it's what you want to do, and I'm not going to stop you."
Wait... I thought.. so she's not mad? My parents are awesome. I'm lucky, their past of being surf-bums and traveling all over definitely helps them understand my ambition with climbing.
The second person I had to tell was my girlfriend, Jill. Again, I flinched, and told her.
"So.. I think I'm going to be gone most of break... are you mad?"
"Why would I be mad at you for doing something you love?"
So... not only are my parents ok with it, but I have a supportive girlfriend. I love my life.
I am PSYCHED! If you have been following my blog you obviously know that being not being psyched has been a pretty big issue lately.
I just have to make it through one more week of school. I'm hopeful, I'm excited, I'm finally feeling some sort of relief.
I'm going to try some new things. Next semester I'm going to go to school part time, and get a part time job. I am also going to start alpine climbing. I'm about to get gear for ice, I'm so psyched.
I'm going to start playing guitar for my brothers band. This kid is so talented. You can download some of his songs for free here.
Everything is hard right now, sorry for the lack of words.
