Adventures in Rock Climbing

 “We do not deceive ourselves that we are engaging in an activity that is anything but debilitating, dangerous, euphoric, kinesthetic, expensive, frivolously essential, economically useless and totally without redeeming social significance. One should not probe for deeper meanings.”  Allen Stock (1967)

As you may well be aware, I really enjoy rock climbing.  It's may favorite thing to do with Brent, it's my favorite thing to do on vacation, and lately its my favorite way to challenge my ego.  I've been climbing for a few years now, and the first year was so amazing.  I'd found this brand new thing that was so fun and made me feel good, and I was progressing with it really fast.  Then I started to get scared.  Then I actually started to become worse.  It turned climbing from this awesome way to decompress after a hard days computer work, to something that left me feeling like a loser 50% of the time.  So I've spent much of the last 6 months mulling over ways to bring rock climbing back to something that fun.  I've come up with three ways to do that:

1. Take up trad climbing (on lead): 
2. Lead climb more often sport climbing
3. Make small goals that are cause for frequent celebration.  

And it's kind of been working.  Last weekend I got to go with my awesome climbing friends (Brent, Karina, Emma) to St. George, where we spent three days just climbing.  There were some victories:

• lead three new trad routes
• reviewed 4 of the 5 papers I needed to
• had many laughs and there were many great pictures taken

There were also some defeats, which I'll not put in bulletted form, because they don't deserve to be highlighted.  However, I should note that I cried and that I purchased a frozen lasagna, thinking it would be awesome, but it took two hours to cook and that's not awesome.  Anyways, there were a number of really important lessons that I also learned on this trip:

• Don't over-protect the easy top portion of a climb, it will make it difficult to come down from, thereby making me feel silly by the time I finally make it to the ground.  
• Climbing routes without knowing the rating is an effective way to feel successful.  I don't go in expecting any more difficulty than the route presents and don't need to temper my success by saying "it's only 5.*."  
• Mongolian BBQ is awesome.  
• Keep setting goals, but try to meet them before the cold sets in.  
• Let Brent drive, I get cranky when I can't find something or must choose where to park.  

The first day we went to Black Rocks, it's a pretty short basalt crag, but there are a ton of climbs all in short succession, so we were able to get a lot of climbing done.  Getting there was mildly traumatic, while it is just outside of town, there was construction for like four miles, leaving the parking lot smack in the middle of a construction zone.  After much driving up and down, we finally decided to park about a mile away, and I decided I would let Brent drive more often when things get a little stressful, because I get irrational when I can't find exactly what I want (be it a parking lot or camp site or Emma's house).  I brought my clipboard along, thinking that because there were three climbers, I would have a lot of time to review papers.  I was wrong.  However, I did have a lot of time to lead things.  Which was good.  

Karina started the day off with a strong sport route lead.  One of my favorite things about watching her climb is that she's very graceful, she makes deliberate moves and the way she clips just looks so nice.  I also find it inspiring that even though she can be a little scared of leading, like me, she keeps doing it.  And she's doing well at it.  

This was my first trad lead of the day.  I chose this picture mostly because it was the least awkward position I was photographed in (and I enjoy having all those gears hanging off me).  I've got a weird one-legged stance when I clip.  I enjoyed this route, there were some ledges that were challenging for me to get past, but there were also plenty of great places to protect the route (read: over-protect).  The top was a bit challenging, as I had to monkey over to the chains, but all-in-all, it was my first success of the day.  

Here is Karina on her first trad-lead ever!  About 15 minutes prior to this she had declared she would be leading anything else that day.  Fortunately, she is a warrior, and just had to go up this route.  She looked so strong and protected the route so evenly, my heart nearly burst with pride.  

This was the most challenging route I did all day.  The route runs up from the left, so there was a little overhanging portion and I had to smear (push my feet against a blank face, rather than on a small hold) and do some other moves I haven't done before on lead.  This was one of those climbs I did a lot of learning on, and because I've learned that attitude is everything, I'll focus on the learning rather than the struggle: 1) keep moving, standing is exhausting; 2) bring slings (at the beginning, no need to have your friends throw them to you); 3) topping out is easy, don't make a placement that will drag the rope horizontally, it's difficult to remove).  

Then the sun set, we went home and waited a few hours for lasagna.  The next day I got up early to work on some homework at McDonalds.  For all the bad things I want to say about their food, I enjoyed my latte and the free interwebs.  Then Emma came!  And we went to Bluff Street Cracks.  This crag holds a special place in my heart.  I went there two years ago with Brent and Emma, and it was one of those times where I realized I had a pretty big crush on Brent.  It was also the first time I tried crack climbing, it's different enough from face climbing that I just flailed (literally, that is the only situation where I will accept that description).  

To illustrate my point, here are some pictures from our January 2011 visit: Brent lead like a champ, Emma following and utilizing the crack system appropriately, me following with my entire arm in the crack looking for a face hold in there.  That's not how it should work, instead of pulling off holds, a crack climber often jams their fingers/hand/foot into the crack and them uses the friction generated there to move up.  It took me about three months to figure that out.  

 Here is Emma leading that same route in 2012, looking awesome.  Emma climbs with a lot of confidence, it's great to watch.  She gets so excited to try new routes she can't suppress her grins, and that gets me excited to climb.

Here's Brent on the same route, with Emma photographing.  She took some really great photos, a lot of them showed that we were making some intense faces while we climbed, but they were really fun to see.  Brent also looked really good on this climb.  

This blurry picture is a sign of my defeat.  That thin seam to the left of Joseph Meeks engraving is where I tried to lead that day, and I only made it half way.  There were many things I could point to that added to my defeat, but I'll just say that I need to work on my confidence on routes that have mixed ways of climbing.  And trust myself when I see other routes that are probably more my style. 

Our last day there was my birthday!  We went out to the Woodburry Road crags in the Beaver Mountains.  I thought the area was pretty stunning, in a really lonely, windswept way.  The picture at the beginning on this post is the view from our crag.  This area is limestone climbing, and the way the rock has weathered makes it really pretty sharp, so our fingers and toes were pretty shredded by the time we got done.  But one of the coolest things about climbing in St. George is that we were easily able to climb on three different types of rock (basalt, sandstone, limestone) in three days.  

Emma charging up a long 5.11, displaying confidence and skill.  We talked about changes she made to life in general, including the way she climbs, after a trip up the Grand Teton, and it's inspired me to look more at how I assess risk myself and see where I can improve.  One of the things I love so much about climbing with these friends is the deeper conversations we invariably have.  My friends are great.  

Brent photographing Emma on the same climb.  I was also inspired to maybe someday get a fancier camera, but I'm not sure when that would happen.  Either way, it was a lot of fun to add photography to the day's adventures.  

And of course, this shot.  I must take a group shot at the end of our trips.  Just looking through these makes me grateful for my friends and look forward to more climbing trips.  

Here we all are in May of 2011, when we went down for Karina's birthday week.  

And here in March 2010, where we all actually met and climbed for the first time.  It was a great Spring Break!  I can't help but smile when I think about all the laughs Karina and I shared while trying to negotiate roads.  It also makes me incredibly happy to know that we're all still climbing together.  I love these people.  

And I'll leave this with Joshua Trees.  Because they're cool.  The transition from Juniper dominated hillslopes to Joshua trees marks the transition from the Great Basin desert to the Mohave.  An undoubtedly rough transition for the first settlers in the area, who thought the arms of these plants looked like the Biblical prophet Joshua, pointing to the promised land.