Big Wall Climbing: How lucky am I?

Or, Big Wall Climbing: What am I doing with my life?

I don’t know that a blog about climbing is the place to address this, but it’s what I’m writing about now. I worry that my social media posts paint an overly rosy picture of my life. I don’t have pictures to show how often I ride the struggle bus, but I’m a frequent passenger. So how do I write a blog about how grateful I am to have climbed in Zion without bragging? Big wall climbing in Zion was amazing, but it was also stressful and hard work. Things aren’t good all the time, but when they’re good they’re really, really good. Does that fly?

Brent and I have been climbing together since 2010 and in that time we’ve visited some amazing places. I haven’t been dealing with anxiety well in the last two years and it has negatively impacted climbing in particular. It’s gotten to the point that I feel like a real turd any time I post a smiling climbing picture because it doesn’t even hint at the flip side: that I have cried on a lot of rocks. So know that, as I proceed with a glowing review of our weekend in Zion, climbing is a real mixed bag and things aren’t all adventure all the time.

From our very first tower trip - screaming and flailing up the Penguins. Technique has improved since then, fear has not subsided.

Big walls. They’re very tall (>1,000 feet) and technical, requiring specialized climbing gear and more than one day to climb. Think of the towering cliffs of Zion National Park, where this adventure occurred, or Yosemite National Park (it’s no coincidence so many big walls are in national parks, they are spectacular and inspired the first conservationists). We have climbed some tall stuff and some stuff in national parks, but acquiring the skills and gear to scale a big wall has taken years. 

Brent under Disco Inferno, not dying under the weight of the haul bag

That's a stuck haul bag

We’ve practiced these skills for the last year and my fate was sealed when Brent purchased a port-a-ledge this summer. Having no escape to the ground after several hours of climbing made me worry I’d implode from the stress, but who in their right mind would turn down the chance to sleep on a cliff in Zion? I did not sleep well in the week before our trip, and then I cried as we left my apartment complex and as we hiked to the cliff and as we racked up on Day 2 and when I was climbing…  But between the tears, truly wonderful things happened.

Can you believe this sunrise?

We climbed the Disco Inferno route (5.8, C2, Grade V) on the Desert Shield. It’s approximately 1,000 feet of climbing, broken into 8 sections (called pitches). Our plan was to climb at least three pitches the first day so we could spend the night on a part of the cliff with a natural ledge. Then we would climb as far as we could the second day before rappelling down and heading back to work. My Type-A personality has struggled to adapt to the fact that success is not guaranteed in the mountains. Plenty could disrupt a successful ascent, from weather to health. I figured we could easily get eight pitches in two days because we often get in 4-5 per day and once we climbed seven. But time passes differently when you’re aid climbing and we got four pitches in.

Getting our gear to the base of Disco Inferno was a challenge in itself. The Zion Shuttle Bus driver was kind enough to drop us off right where we needed to go, but the haul bag was packed to a crushing weight and the steep trail to the cliff was a little treacherous with the extra wobble our loaded packs gave us. Once we were climbing most of the route-finding was simple enough: follow the biggest, straightest crack. However, the route had some odd pendulum swings (just like it sounds), unexpected traverses (sideways climbing that is scary), and a brutal chimney to squeeze through. Anywhere we climbed we also had to get the haul bag up, which meant I got to karate kick the bag out of the chimney, a satisfying way to let some aggression out. It’s difficult to express in words the brutality of chimney climbing. Instead of pulling and stepping on rocks with your hands and feet like most climbing, or wedging your hands and feet in cracks like crack climbing, in chimneys you push out against the rocks with your feet, knees, butt, back, shoulders, elbows and helmet. Chimney climbing draws blood and leaves bruises. The skinnier the chimney (and this one got pretty skinny) the more body contact is required to climb it. Plus I kept running into that haul bag.

The beginning of a truly 'sustained chimney'

The climbing was physically difficult, but also reasonably fun. In between puzzling, it was easy to remember we were doing this because it’s fun. We were climbing on the Autumn Equinox and the fall light in the canyon was stunning. I watched a buck stroll down the Virgin River and a heron fishing. We had a great view of Angel’s Landing where I could watch hikers summit through the day and families bike down the canyon.

Seriously, this was our view for two days. It's awesome

We made the bivy ledge just in time to set up for dinner and sleep. Being leashed to a rope all night long took some getting used to, but I’m so happy previous climbers had set up all the ropes and bolts for us to move around on. We brought enough water and food to keep us happy and comfortable, but regret not bringing some hot dogs because someone hauled a grill and charcoal up there and we really should have used it. Eating dinner at dusk with our view of the canyon made me realize just how lucky I was that we had the opportunity to climb in a national park and the skill to make it happen. 

Not to get too mushy, but I'm pretty smitten

Sleeping on a port-a-ledge was not as stressful as I expected. The ledge was big enough for the both of us and stable. I woke up when the remarkably bright full moon came out, but otherwise slept pretty well. Peeing was the biggest complication of our overnight stay. I had to stay in my harness the whole time (thankfully there are buckles to disconnect the leg loops from the waist band), and pulling up the harness while pulling down my pants, a move that had to be made as I dangled my butt as far off the rock as possible, required exceptional coordination. It would have been easy to pee in the protected area we were camping and cooking in, but it would have also been wrong. Peeing in cracks and ledges on rock climbing routes makes them reek of urine and the stench would have remained after we left. So I got to lean, bare butt, off the cliff, where the rain would wash away my pee, hoping to complete my work before a shuttle bus rounded the bend.

Port-a-ledge is all packed up, bivy is much less inviting

Racking up on our second day was unexpectedly stressful and teary. We had put the ledge away and after a spending all night making sure everything was secure, I was scared about dropping a critical piece of gear off the cliff (I’m still having waking dreams about securing all my stuff with carabiners) and scared about everything else. My tears dried once I had belaying to focus on and with the tour buses stopping below to point us out, I could again appreciate just how cool it was. Climbing had lost some of its shiny, coolness. I’m not an adrenaline junky, but climbing is exhilarating in other ways. Getting to the top of a big route under your power is great and the views also tend to be rewarding. Since climbing has become so stressful for me, the moments of victory are broken up by long periods of anxiety about what could go wrong and insecurity about my skills. Lately it has felt like I couldn’t do anything cool and I seriously questioned why we climb. But those busloads of tourists stopping (and one cheering) were so great. Climbing is really cool and not everyone gets to do it and that’s both a reason to do it and cause to be grateful.

Ready to head down

I didn’t find true Zen though. A couple hours later, when I followed up the fourth pitch I cried my most ferocious tears. It’s possible I was just hot, dehydrated, and hungry, I was definitely furious. I couldn’t get the gear that Brent had used out of the crack in the rock and that was my only job. One piece of stuck gear is expected, but I left five pieces. Brent was trying to give me tips to free the gear and I yelled, “You’re wrong!” Not my best moment. By the time I was within speaking distance I was cursing and crying. A lot. Brent tried soothing me by telling me he wasn’t angry about leaving gear behind, and in true bonking fashion I said, “But I’M angry!” (It will be added after “Everything is terrible!” to my list of unhelpful, childish things to say while climbing.) Of course Brent was able to free four of the five pieces. Thankfully he waited until our drive home to suggest we practice freeing tricky gear before the next trip.

You can't see the tears, but they're there. It's clear, though, that I have trouble keeping my helmet on straight. Picture by Brent

Rappelling down is my least favorite part of climbing. It’s a simple process, but when you’re tired or going long distances there are several places where things could go wrong and small missteps can be fatal. I’ve adapted to this by triple-checking everything and telling my partners, “I love you, be safe” every time they rap. On this trip down one of the stopper knots got stuck in a crack, the rope almost didn’t come down because a knot got stuck on a ledge, I had trouble tying the rope off so I could fix the stuck knot, and I ended up with dozens of spines in my hand from pulling the rope through a cactus. But we got down safely and another kind shuttle bus driver picked us up from the middle of the road.

That time we woke up on Disco Inferno

And now I have the memory of having my morning coffee 400 feet above the canyon at sunrise and that’s enough to convince me we might do something like this again next year. 

Morning view. Picture by Brent.

The Salad Bonk

Gosh.  It's been quite a week.  I finally got over the flu, skied the best powder of the entire season, then found myself firmly in the bottom of the academic Valley of S*** .  Does any of this PhD nonsense even matter?  Condition is a ridiculous word to describe a wetland and it always reminds me of "Big Lebowski" (watch the video if you'd like to understand my angst - how can I make wetland condition seem that cool?).  There have been some tears at unhelpful times, which has me flashing  back to another ridiculous time I cried due to nothing but low blood sugar. 

The Time I Cried About Salad

January 2012 was busy.  I was transitioning from intern to graduate student.  I submitted my first paper for peer review.  My brother got married in San Diego.  The holidays happened.  Amidst all the stuff going on, it was critical that I fit in a climbing trip with my friends to Red Rocks, a massive climbing area outside Las Vegas.  The climbing in Red Rocks is great, even though its right outside a city I don't like to visit, but there are over 1700 routes at Red Rocks (the guidebook is about 400 pages long) so even choosing a crag was difficult. 

Red Rocks is great.  I should give in another chance.  

 During Day 1 at the Sandstone Quarry crag our four person climbing group was having a hard time.  Brent had been really sick prior to coming, sick enough I wasn't sure he'd make it.  Karina's fingertips came off on her first route (literally peeled off), then she stepped on a bee and we knocked her out with a heaping dose of Benadryl.  Emma was climbing like a champ, but had fit this trip in between working a real job and visiting friends in Vegas.  I was a disaster, tired from driving and working and family time; definitely in need of an introvert day.  The first and only route I tried to lead climb was a 5.9 sport route, well within my climbing ability.  However, I had no idea what slab climbing was until I was stuck on a slab shaking and confused.  I bailed, cried, and entered a shame spiral that would consume me the next day.

Seriously, what do you even do here?

The next day, very humbled, we chose to climb in the Willow Springs Area, a fun but tragically shady crag.  Going back through my pictures, it's clear there was a lot of fun to be had. 

Calm before the storm - enjoying the hammock on Day 2

Smiling and climbing

One of my favorite pictures, taken shortly before the Salad Bonk.  

The climbing was interesting and challenging, but I was cold and lost my Nutella somewhere in the bottom of my climbing pack.  By the end of the day I was barely hanging onto my sanity, I actually started crying watching Brent figure out a difficult route because I was convinced he would fall and die (I guess I had lost grip on my sanity by then).  I desperately wanted to feel the sunshine and eat something.  A new friend, Allison, joined us part way through the day and since she knew the area we let her lead us to dinner in the city.  The closest burger place was closed (the beginning of the tragedy), so one of us told Allison, "Follow your heart to a place for us to eat dinner."  And as she followed her heart through the twisty, turny Vegas roads I panicked.  Every time we passed an open restaurant that looked like it was serving something warm and meaty the weight of the tears in my eyes got heavier.  One thousand stop lights later we pulled into the parking lot of a Sweet Tomatoes and I died.  "This is where my heart led me," Allison said with humor I couldn't appreciate.  I was skeptical, because I don't think of tomatoes as a meal, but didn't completely reject the notion until I walked in and saw it was a salad place. 

Salad was the most devastating meal imaginable.  I was so cold and hungry, lettuce would just hasten my depth by actually making me colder and hungrier.  What is even in salad?  Just fiber, right?  After two days of showing no leadership in any of the decisions we made, I became the commander of dinner, declared my hatred of salad, and marched us over to the Appleby's for something like steak.  That move was sheer desperation, I know the food doesn't come quickly at places like that and I think those types of chain restaurants reek of awkward first dates.  The hostess told us it would be at least 30 minutes before we could sit down and I burst into tears.  As we wandered back to the Sweet Tomatoes I sobbed to my very confused friends, "I. Just. Hate. Salad."  Literal sobbing with copious crocodile tears, tomato face (the color my skin turns when I cry), and noises. 

The crying didn't stop inside the Sweet Tomatoes.  The salad bar attendants were confused at the adult woman sobbing like a toddler while I angrily threw spinach and croutons at my plate.  My friends were in a terrible bind: they were hungry too and had no way to console someone crying about salad (and they were caught in public with this baby-like adult person).  Every salad option made me cry more.  The UN brings hearty beans and grains to starving 3rd world countries, not radishes, blue cheese crumbles, and eight types of cold salad dressing.  Salad is stupid.  I was sure that moment was the saddest I had ever been in my life and that I would never be happy again because of the salad.  I cried all the way to my seat.  I ate that salad like any small, irrational child approaches a meal they don't like - begrudgingly and with tears of injustice falling down my face.  I just hate salad. 

I wish I could say this is all an exaggeration.  It is not.  I was miserable and crying about salad in public while my friends tried to enjoy their food.  I felt all alone in the world and desperately morose.  And hungry.

What a Salad Bonk looks and feels like.  

Then the glucose from my food made it into my blood stream and my whole life got infinitely better.  I was inside a restaurant with salad, soups and pasta.  There was even hot cocoa and the heating was on.  I was fine.  But also terrible because I had cried at a new friend about salad.  The relief brought by my rebounding blood sugar was accompanied by shame that I had been so upset about salad. 

The next day we went climbing at Calico Basin.  The sun was shining and there was abundant, challenging climbing.  It was a great way to end a stressful trip. 

Killing it at Calico Basin - clockwise from top left: Emma, me, Karina, Brent

There's an important lesson in this disaster: eat stuff when you are doing things outdoors.  Plummeting blood sugar sends the brain into survival mode - desperate for food, not willing to sacrifice any energy on maintaining rationality.  This phenomenon is known as bonking and  happens to climbers as well as endurance athletes.  Bonking is completely and easily preventable.  Eat food all day long, more on cold days when the body works harder to thermoregulate.   

   

So very grateful for my climbing friends, here at the end of our Red Rocks trip.

We still laugh about the Salad Bonk.  Well, I laugh.  My friends might still be uncomfortable about the whole thing, but they're willing to climb with me, so I'm OK with it.  I've met Allison a few times since then and she's been forgiving about the whole episode (I'd have never hung about with a salad crier again, but I'm working on being more forgiving).  In fact, I'm grateful we had her to ferry us through Vegas.  I still panic when there is a salad bar option with any meal and have flash backs to how angry the spinach made me (I love spinach, so the flashbacks are confusing), but I can usually recognize that salad is not the worst (unless there are water chestnuts).  

March 2016 - our lives have changed quite a bit since 2012, but we still climb a bit and I love it.  

Type II Fun - Tombstone Butte

I'm really struggling to get back into the swing of things at work.  I finished my field work for the season and feel like taking it easy, but there's still work to do.  There's also a lot of outdoor fun-having to be done in this beautiful autumn weather, which has put me in a bit of a panic.  In an effort to satisfy both of these feelings (need to work, need to play), I've decided to recount a vacation Brent and I took to Moab in April.  The plan was to climb Tombstone Butte and Lost World Butte, soak up the sun, maybe chill out in the hammock.  You know, an easy going rock climbing adventure.  What came about was less easy going, more hiding and suffering, but still fun.  You know, Type II fun.

According to outdoorsy types (i.e. Backcountry.com), there are three types of fun ranging from fun while it's happening and fun to remember (Type I) to miserable while it's happening and miserable to remember (Type III).  Type II fun lies in the middle, miserable while it's happening but good to recall; Type II activities include getting lost, rained out, blown away, or generally beaten by the elements.  Remembering Type II trips usually involves a pretty selective memory, but there are very real rewards like unexpected views or events that you'd never have seen if things had gone according to plan.  Our visit to Tombstone Butte falls into the Type II category, things did not go according to plan and there was some suffering, but no regret and it's been really fun to recall.

The desert southeast of Moab.  

I'd spent the weeks before our trip psyched to go climbing in the Southern Utah sunshine because I hadn't been on a vacation in two very busy months.  I needed a vacation.  I deserved it!  And it started out according to plan - we arrived before midnight, skies were clear and we found a flat area to pitch our tent free of cow poops.  Then we woke up to this view:

I do not like cows.  I believe they signal impending doom.  

Cows!  Thank goodness we decided to sleep on the other side of that fence.  Tombstone Butte lies on BLM land between Green River, Utah and Canyonlands National Park, where there's a bit of grazing and a fair amount of OHV use, but generally very few people.  I love it.  Tombstone Butte is a 300-foot tall, square block of sandstone, thus classified as a butte rather than a tower, but it begs to be climbed just as much as any other free-standing chunk of rock does.  The Rigor Mortis route is particularly eye catching.  Tombstone caught our attention a while back when Brent and I were aiming to climb Lost World Butte, and has been our camping area of choice when we're in that area (good views + free site = best!).  The butte is composed on Endtrada sandstone on top of a pedestal of Chinle sandstone.  I love sandstone, but honestly, this is the worst sandstone.  The size of the sand grains in the rock and the pressure the rock was formed under determine the strength of the rock itself.  While it's not the softest, Entrada sandstone is pretty dang soft and small ledges are prone to crumbling if you look at it wrong.  However, much of the climbing in the Moab area is on Entrada sandstone because it weathers into towers and buttes like this.

Tombstone Butte

The whole thing started out typically Type I.  I dawdled taking pictures while Brent racked up and it only took about 10 minutes to get to the start of the climb.  We did our best Bear Grylls run/jump/getting psyched approach.  Like many towers, the first pitch was a forgettable chimney, dirty and soft, but easily climbable.  Pitch 2 was real Type I stuff - a beautiful, sharp crack that was challenging to lead and fun to follow (and Brent got to the use a piton I got him for Christmas).  

Pitch 2 - Rigor Mortis - Tombstone Butte

I might call our feelings at the bottom of Pitch 3 confident.  We were about 200 feet off the ground, skies were clear, and the crack left to climb was quite striking to look at.  We were ready for the most picturesque and difficult part of the climb.  This is when we entered the Type II zone, delimited by the clear memory of the songs stuck in my head.  The rest of the narrative will follow the lyrics of "We Can't Stop" by Miley Cyrus and "Holy Diver" by Dio because they were stuck in my head and definitely affected the quality of the experience.  Miley lyrics will be in blue, Dio in red.  I highly recommend watching the linked video to "Holy Diver"; you can click the link to listen to the Miley song if you don't know what it sounds like, but having typed out all these lyrics, it already seems like an unfair comparison.  [Note: Brent does not support my knowledge of Miley Cyrus lyrics, if there was any music stuck in his head it was totally bad ass.]

The start of Pitch 3 was clear but difficult to execute as it required some stretching and there was a loose block at the top (and bless his heart, Brent doesn't want to kill me with a falling rock) [It's our party we can do what we want.  It's our party we can say what we want].  The next 30 feet were a huge challenge though.  I've mentioned before that aid climbing is slow (and repetitive, like Miley's lyrics).  Instead of climbing up the wall like you would climb a ladder, using your hands and feet to move you up and leaving protection as you go just in case you fall (i.e., free climbing), aid climbing is more like building a ladder as you go.  Gear is placed in the features of the rock and attached to 'aid ladders' (webbing sewn into steps), the climber moves up by pulling on and stepping up the ladders.  In this way you can climb cracks that are too thin and small to climb using the strength of your hands and feet alone.  Aid climbing can get you to lots of really cool, seemingly un-climbable places, but it requires lots of gear.  Climbing without all the gear you want is decidedly not Type I fun.  

Note the aid ladders and harness full of gear.  

As Brent moved past his first two pieces of gear he found the crack could take a #0.3 Black Diamond Camalot (12.4 - 21.2 mm in width) ('cam') perfectly... and only the #0.3... nothing smaller or larger... for at least another 20 feet.  He could continue to "walk" the #0.3 up the crack, but it would leave an increasingly longer span between himself and his last piece of protection.  [It's our party we can love who we want.]  This simple math, measured by the rope, quickly added up to a huge risk, but with a potential payoff.  A fall, caused by that one #0.3 cam slipping or blowing out of the crack would lead to 1) shocking another tiny cam; or 2) decking on the belay space below.  But if he succeeded the crack might get wider or more narrow and allow him to use rock protection ('gear') of different sizes.  But it might not.   Since he was literally 10 feet above my head we could talk through this dilemma easily, but the answer wasn't easy.  [We can sing what we want.]

Note how far away that bottom cam is, that's the #0.30.  

The question came down to this: is the risk of falling low enough to justify continuing and increasing that risk, given the work we'd already put in and the reward of topping out?  And he asked me what I thought he should do.  Brent almost never needs my help with risk assessment.  I question myself all the time and rely heavily on Brent to help me assess risk, but he's the wiser and more skilled of us.  Because it was his life at risk I just didn't feel like I could make the call.  [But I could sing "Red cups and sweaty bodies everywhere.  Hands in the air like we don't care."]  I was literally no help.  I couldn't see when the crack would change size, but neither could Brent.  I couldn't tell how well that critical cam would hold, but he couldn't tell how long it would be before he could use something else.  We could both see how far away from the deck he was, we both knew how far we'd come and how much we'd like to reach the top...  It was a really tense moment (for me, Brent doesn't seem to remember it this way).  ['Cause we came to have so much fun now.  Bet somebody might get some now.]  I didn't want to tell him to back down because I trusted his skill, but I didn't want to tell him to move up because I didn't want to push him to put himself at more risk than he wanted, so I said the least helpful thing: "I can't help at all with this.  If you move up I'll be really worried and I don't see a way to climb down.  But I won't be upset if you want to bail."  Guess what was happening while I was doing all of this worrying.  Brent was continuing to climb, which continued to change the arithmetic of the situation.  [If you're not ready to go home, can I get a hell no?]

Moving up.

Then something amazing happened: the crack, through eons of erosion, widened enough to begin using more gear, spaced at more reasonable intervals.  But that's not the end of the difficulty.  ['Cause we're gonna go all night, 'till we see sunlight, alright.]  The crack got varied but also really soft.  And it was a really long pitch, ~180 feet.  [So la da di da di.  We like to party.]  And the wind started blowing, and it never stopped.    It was a difficult climb that stayed difficulty.  [Dancing with Molly.  Doing whatever we want.]  Brent spent about three hours climbing the third pitch, mostly out of hearing distance, so I had hours to stand there and think (while also giving a competent belay). [This is our house.  This is our rules.]   I studied my anchors (solid, painted nicely) and my Cinch and wondered if I'd ever read the owners manual (no);  [And we can't stop.  And we won't stop.]  I enjoyed the views and practiced left-handed SLR camera selfies (never take that brake hand off the rope).  [Don't you see it's we who own the night?  Can't you see it's we who 'bout that life?]  During this musing a few people pulled up next to the butte in side-by-side ATVs to watch and, thank the Lord (!), someone was listening to Dio loudly on their stereo.  

The Cinch

The top half of the pitch continued at a regular aid climbing pace (even and slow), but I had a great song to ponder the lyrics of.  [Holy Diver.  You've been down too long in the midnight sea.  Oh what's becoming of me?]  I still don't know what "Holy Diver"is about, but the song structure is more pleasing than that other song I was playing in my brain and the lyrics are more aggressive.  [Ride the tiger, you can see his stripes but you know he's clean.  Oh don't you see what I mean?]  Fact: after this trip "Holy Diver" became my power song when I program because it makes me feel like I can make the computer do what I want.  [Gotta get away.  Holy Diver.]  Anyway, I was enjoying myself there, safe from the breeze in my favorite flannel.  If I played my cards right I could start climbing with my new "Ride the Tiger" mentality.  And then it was my turn to climb.  [Shiny diamonds.  Like the eyes of a cat in the black and blue.  Something is coming for you.]   

The view from the bottom of Pitch 3

The first 30 feet of the route that Brent had struggled with were literally heinous (utterly odious or wicked)!  That lower part of Pitch 3 was a pretty perfect sized crack to jam my fingers in but was too tight for my feet to get any traction on, so I could hang but I couldn't actually move up.  [Race for the morning.  You can hide in the sun 'till you see the light.  Oh we will pray it's all right.]  It was a mess to belay.  Brent was more than 150 feet away and the wind was blowing, but that didn't stop me from yelling "Pull the rope!" every time I thought I'd lifted my hips enough for there to be slack in the rope.  [Gotta get away.]  Even though there wasn't any rope to take in and it is difficult to winch someone up on a top belay, Brent gave it a shot. Brent told me I could aid off that critical #0.3 cam, but he'd used it for that full 30 foot stretch so it was too far above my head to reach and I didn't have any other gear to use.  [Between the velvet lies, there's a truth that's hard as steel.  The vision never dies.  Life's never ending wheel.]  I'm still not sure how I got up that section of rock (Brent probably pulled me up), but once I got my hands on that #0.3 cam and rested I was back to singing "La da di da di, We like to party." 

Brent at the top of Tombstone Butte

Most of the following 150 feet were perplexing but alright.  It took a lot of work to pull out the cams and stoppers that had been bounce tested.  There was lots of pulling and pushing and a good deal of tapping on gear, plus some strained prying with the nut tool.  [And we can't stop.  And we won't stop.]  The beautiful, brand new pink Tricam would not come out, even though I spent enough time on it that Brent had to question what I was doing.  Then it got torturous again: the crack widened and became more shallow.  [We run things, things don't run we.  Don't take nothing from nobody.  Yeah, yeah.]  It seems that at this particular section, about 50 feet from the top, a block of the cliff face had come off recently enough that the exposed rock didn't have any sort of hardened varnish, so it was just sand (read: NOT sandstone).  Everything I pushed and pulled on blew away because it was just sand.  [It's our party we can do what we want.  It's our party we can say what we want.]  How in the world had Brent protected this?  [Holy Diver.  You're the star of the masquerade.  No need to look so afraid.]

At this point in my complaining I must make a ridiculous confession: sandstone formations often look like genitals to me.  The towers make sense, descriptions of those often include the word "phallic"; but the cracks or canyon walls that are shaped like ovals with pointed tops and/or bottoms look like lady parts to me.  Thus, as I pushed my way up through this section I couldn't help but think that that must be what it looks like and feels like to be birthed as an adult.  [It's our party we can love who we want.  We can kiss who we want.  We can sing what we want.]  It felt just as silly and un-graceful as that admission sounds.  Once I got through this final difficulty I could see and hear Brent again, yay! [To my home girls here with the big butt.  Shaking it like we at a strip club.]   

Pitch 3

Getting to the top of things is usually a reason to celebrate, and it was nice to sit and catch my breathe, but it was actually quite unpleasant at the top.  It had taken me an hour to follow up the final pitch, and while I was bruising myself on the rock Brent felt like he was being punched in the back of the head by the wind.  [Remember only God can judge ya.  Forget the haters, 'cause somebody loves ya.]  On other towers we've explored the top a bit, looked for a summit register, and stretched a little before climbing down; none of that was happening there.  More than being unpleasant, the wind made exploring without a rope less safe and neither of us was interested in more wind or belaying.  [We all so turnt up here.  Getting turned up, yeah, yeah, yeahhh.]  

The top

Our choice to rappel immediately wasn't as easy as it would seem tough, because the bolts supporting the ropes we rappelled on weren't great, they weren't even OK.  All that wind (which is always stronger at the top of things than the bottom) and the soft, sandy sandstone made it so the rock the bolts were embedded in was literally blowing away.  Given time to think through things calmy we'd have probably searched for another set of anchors rumored to exist, but that didn't seem like a reasonable option.  [So la da di da di.  We like to party.]  So we rappelled very carefully, trying to keep an even speed and not bounce on the rope.  I wish I could say this was the first time we'd been left with this choice.  We arrived at the ground safely though.  

Of course there was one last selfie before we rappelled to our potential deaths

Once we were back safely on the ground you'd think the Type II fun would transition back to Type I, but it didn't.  That night a storm blew in, making climbing the next morning a no-go.  Not one to say 'quit' after driving for 6 hours to enjoy the desert, I decided to go to Canyonlands National Park for some sight seeing.  I'd never been to that park before and was definitely pleased with the views.  As an added bonus, we spent most of the day in the car with the radio, successfully dodging the stuck song issue.  

Upon returning home I looked at the Mountain Project description of the route and the first sentence stood out more clearly than on the first reading:  "Some interesting situations."  We were definitely faced with some interesting situations, even if the lyrics in my head were kind of inane.  Good times. 

Climbers are Like Lichens

Almost a month ago I finished another excellent trip to Saint George with my friends.  We spent the Valentine's Day weekend climbing and eating crepes; it was excellent.  Then came the punishment week(s) I might have deserved for having so much fun with my friends.  That's why the blog post about said fun is a little late.  But really, I had an excellent time.  St. George trips always make me nostalgic because it's where Karina and I really had a chance to climb and bond, and it's where I met the Emma-Brent half of our climbing group and it's also where I definitely figured out I was totally into Brent.  Great stuff has happened for me in St. George, just look at this progression of photos.

The southwestern corner of Utah (where St. George is located) is a peculiar place.  Here you can find sandstone, limestone, and basalt crags all within a few miles of town.   And even though you often drive through a subdivision or two before getting to the crag, the views are always excellent.  This trip we got the best of all the worlds, we climbed on a sandstone bluff with a view of the Virgin River Gorge (Zen Wall) and in a basalt canyon 3,000 feet above town (Pine Valley).  Plus we got to see one of the best sunsets ever.

I've got 20 pictures of this sunset because it just kept getting better.  The cherry on top was that I was hiking through the Zen Boulder Garden with my favorite friends.  

The desert is often characterized as a harsh, almost barren environment.  But really it's the best!  The plants and animals capable of surviving in the desert are the hardest of the hardcore.  The climbing guide we use has a list of objective hazards of desert climbing that include bugs, snakes, and cacti ("even the plants bite").  Unfortunately, there is no mention of lichens, not even when describing how excellent the rock is, but the desert is abundant in lichens and they're just fascinating.  Since I didn't take many pictures (due to the intensity of the climbing), and the pictures I did take were primarily of lichens, I've decided to tell this tale as a story about how climbers are like lichens: symbiotic, interesting and awesome.

Objective desert hazard - biting plants.  

A lichen is not a single organism, but an association between a fungus and an algae or cyanobacteria.  These two organisms form a symbiosis, the individual components do better working together, and in most cases cannot survive without the other.  The algae/cyanobacteria or "photobiont" component of the lichen performs photosynthesis, converting carbon dioxide and water into sugar that feeds both halves, while the fungal or "mycobiont" gathers water and minerals from the atmosphere that are used by both halves and anchors the entire lichen to a substrate.

Four species of lichen on basalt - what you see are the fungal parts, which encase the algae.

The belayer and the climber - the belayer feeds rope to the climber who "grows" up the wall.  Without the climber the belayer would just be standing around with a rope; without the belayer the climber is at risk of death.    

Lichens are estimated to cover 6-8% of the earth's surface and there are more than 15,000 identified species.  Capable of surviving and thriving in extreme environments, like the desert, tundra, and piles of toxic waste, lichens are often the first organisms to colonize a disturbed region and are long-lived enough to be used to determine the age of old growth forests.  Lichens are everywhere and they're awesome.

Pleopsidium chlorophanum - the lichen that makes all the awesome splashes of chartreuse on cliffs that can be seen from miles away.  This species is exceptionally tolerant of cold, dry, windy conditions and is quite common in Antarctica.

Much like lichens, climbers can be found attached to most available rock surfaces, favoring substrates with afternoon shade and short dispersal distances from parking areas.

About 80% of the lichen species in the desert southwest are crustose lichens: lichens that are thin and so tightly anchored to the rock they look like they're painted on.  Crustose lichens are actually capable of decomposing the rocks they are attached to, gradually turning stone into soil through both chemical and mechanical weathering.

Caloplaca trachyphylla - the common name for this species is the Desert Firedot Lichen.  

Much like the fungal hyphae that anchor lichens to rocks where plants could never survive, strong climber fingers can hold to the rock where it looks like they would never stick.  Brent on a slab route at Zen Wall.  

Lichens obtain water and mineral nutrients from the atmosphere or runoff through absoprtion.  Desert lichens are poikilohydric, this means they can tolerate severe desiccation by suspending most biological activity when there is no water, and then "resurrecting" when water is available.  Lichens can absorb 3-35 times their weight in water when it is available and they dry out slowly.  Obtaining most water and nutrients from the atmosphere makes lichens particularly sensitive to degraded air quality; the difference in pollution tolerance means that there are different lichens growing in polluted cities than in more pristine areas.

Xanthoria elegans - this lichen is particularly abundant around hunting perches and below rodent latrines because it is tolerant of nitrogenous compounds.  I'm going to start keeping my eye out for this one, because I hate touching rat scat. 

Some climbers live on a lichen-like starvation diet, but we don't.  Pictured here is the lovely Karina holding what turned out to be delicious climbing quesadillas with Jalapeno Cheetos and bean dip.  It doesn't get much better than that.  

Lichen's ability to gather water and nutrients from the atmosphere isn't their only adaptation to marginal environments, they also produce compounds (more than 600 have already been cataloged) that discourage herbivores and microbes from eating them and plants from growing nearby.  These compounds can also be used as pigments, antibiotics, perfumes, and as poisons for poison-tipped arrowheads. 

Lecanora garovaglli - a common sandstone lichen.   This genus of lichen is part of the group commonly called Viking dye-moss and was originally used to make litmus paper.

Climbers may not provide as many culturally valuable byproducts as lichens, but sometimes they make crags safer by removing dangerous rocks.  

Lichens are so hard core, they can live in the vacuum of space!  In 2005 the European Space Agency exposed two species of lichens to open space, where they were subject to huge fluctuations in temperature and bombarded with UV light and cosmic radiation for 14.6 days.  When the samples were returned to earth, analysis showed that not only did the lichens survive, their ability to photosynthesize was unchanged.  That's intense.

Xanthoparmelia coloradoensis - green parmelias like this are very abundant and responsible for greenish look most mountains have.  

Climbers too tend to prefer what might be called marginal environments - dry places with enough exposed rock to spend a whole day climbing.  Karina killin' it at Pine Valley. 

So, there you have it.  Lichens are awesome, and so are climbing friends.  Like the fungus/algae symbiosis that forms a lichen, climbers are a symbiosis between a climber and belayer.  Further, lichens and climbing friends prefer the same marginal environments where rock is plentiful and plants are rare.  Finally, climbing friends thrive on climbing opportunities when they are available, but are able to go relatively long periods of time without outdoor climbing (like the winters) living off the memory of good times past.  While climbers are not as extreme or ecologically valuable as lichens, they're still good to have in your life.  

Much like a lichen soaking up available water, my heart grew 30 sizes there in the warmth of St. George with my friends.  

Pine Valley - February 2013 - I love these people quite a lot.