Sources of Tradition

Until the next real post...

2010-08-01T15:07:00.000-07:00

For those still paying attention, I'm going to write a big blog post soon about the recent places I've been such as Moab UT, Fisher Towers, Castleton Tower, Arches Nat'l Park, Bryce Canyon Nat'l Park, Zion Nat'l Park, Montana, Yellowstone and Glacier Nat'l Park, Seattle, the Oregon coast, Lover's Leap near South Lake Tahoe CA, San Francisco, Yosemite Nat'l Park, the San Diego Zoo, Albuquerque NM, the New River Gorge WV, and finally, Austin TX. I'm also going to upload some sick photos. Soon.

France, Gunks, Devil's Tower, Boulder, Indian Creek

2010-05-11T14:51:00.000-07:00

Others too, in far flung villages,
Will no doubt be gazing at this moon
That never asks which watcher claims the night...
Loud on the unseen mountain wind,
A stag's cry quivers in the heart,
And somewhere a twig lets one leaf fall.

Zeami, The Fulling Block

A week living in the desert rock climbing gives you a lot of time to sit and watch the stillness and listen to the breeze. Fellow dirtbag climbers, bold lizards, and open range cattle for company isn't so bad. Rikka and I just got finished with seven days at Indian Creek and we're at periscope depth in Moab. Our hands are full of gobies and we are covered in a fine film of red dust, and I couldn't think of anything better to do than send a trip report. Rumor has it there are $3 showers at a hostel in town.

I haven't posted in a while, and I suppose I should start with some ramblings on France for a few paragraphs and follow it with a description of the past few weeks on the raod. After I got back from the Red River Gorge, where I went with the HMC undergrads during their spring break, my parents took me to France. We flew to Paris and spent three days there. Highlights of Paris included the massive and disgustingly old Notre Dame cathedral in Paris; the Rodin museum--dag that guy was good-- I think he's my favorite artist of all time; the Musee D'Orsay, which has tons of impressionists including massive amounts of Van Gogh and Toulouse L'Autrec; L'Arc de Triomphe and Champs D'Elsee; the Louis Pasteur Museum which, for those of you not in the know, commemorates the bro who basically invented everything that supports the pillars of modern society; the dungeon where they kept people about to be guillotined in the revolution; Napoleon's tomb; and the Jardins De Luxembourg, which is the Paris equivalent of central park, though of course way inferior. Every morsel of food we ate was very high quality, high in saturated fat, and ultra delicious. We ate at restaurants a lot, which is hugely different from my life right now on the road. By the end of the trip I was quite ready for rice and beans and pasta cooked on a pocket rocket every day so that I could get break even in terms of personal luxury.

After Paris we went south to a town called Blois and did a big bike ride. My parents, strong despite their old age, pumped the pedals twenty miles on a circuit to the castle of Chambord and back. I prompted my dad to tell me about the existentialism and modernism movements and that sort of thing. The one thing I think I liked about the ideas of existentialism was the weight they gave to the spontaneous moment of decision making. At that one moment when we decide something that could change our life, there is so much build-up and thought and calculation, yet the moment takes only an instant and is gone, lost on an impassive world yet changing our lives. I don't know if that's quite the point of existentialism but I think that moment is pretty cool.

After Blois we went to the Palace of Versailles which was mobbed with tourists. I got really stressed out about the crowds and rushed through the palace, but the gardens outside were incredible-- they were massive! Then we went to the Picardy region of France where the British entrenched themselves for hundreds of miles to fight the Germans. On July 1st 1916 about a gajillion british infantrymen charged to their deaths in an offensive that was supposed to end the war with it's unparalleled success. It was strange that the old battlefields are just farms now. I walked through a recently-plowed field and picked up several pieces of shrapnel from shell casings and small lead balls that exploded everywhere when the shell ripped into the enemy entrenchment. All the British colonies fighting at that time are now their own nations, and so each of the hundreds of graveyards is owned and maintained by a separate country. We met a handful of Australians who have made the pilgrimage to the battlefield of the Australian regiment several times. New Zealand had a park dedicated to their soldiers which was well-preserved and we actually walked the trenches where British soldiers got hypothermia and trench foot while waiting to become machine-gun fodder. I saw the cratered battlefield and imagined running up out of the trench to be mowed down by bullets into lifeless heaps.

After this amazing trip to France with my parents, we started in the Gunks four weeks ago to do some send-off sending with Karen and Dunbar. Their car stuffed to the brim, they were doing a final climbing binge before heading down to virginia. Company that weekend included Eugene, Lauren, Will, and Dave, although the sending continued all the way until Tuesday. Highlights included several girl-only leads by Karen and Rikka, a fine performance by Dunbar on MF and Birdland, and some 5.10's off my tick-list.

After visiting people in NYC/boston, Rikka and I set out across the cragless climbing wastelands of mid-state NY, ontario, michigan, wisconsin, minnesota and south dakota. We finally reached some mountain-like terrain in the badlands and the beautiful needles of South Dakota.

Upon reaching Devil's Tower, WY without a guidebook, we sought out "the guy" who lives in a house in the park boundaries and, according to the parks service, "runs a climbing business." We rolled up the dirt road to this guy's house and got out to knock on his door. A lady came out from behind the house and, when we told her we were looking for climbing info on the tower, she invited us inside the guy's house. Though she was extremely talkative, it took us a while to find out that she was a friend of the owner of the house, a guide whose name was Frank, living in her car in the backyard, cooking and doing dishes for him in return for hospitality and friendship. An hour later, Frank comes home and finds us in his house and warmly welcomes us and introduces himself. We tell him that we're looking to climb at Devil's tower for the next few days and he takes us in his car and drives down to the tower and walks around and starts pointing out a bunch of different routes for us to do. He doesn't seem to want much more than to just talk to us and make sure we know what we're doing. After spending two hours pointing out routes (several of which he put up) and giving us detailed information on them, he invites us back to his house for dinner and invites us to pitch our tent in his backyard! Our massive meal consisted of two salads, stew, biscuits, and was shared with two other climber bums from British Columbia. He let us help do the dishes, but otherwise we got a delicious hot meal, a flat backyard, good company, and a nice house to hang out in simply because we were there. Such hospitality is rare, and while I doubt it would have been as plentiful as in the summer when his B&B business is booming and he's booked solid with clients, it made Devil's Tower a really friendly place to visit. I'd like to go back and really climb the crap out of that thing. We did Durrance, a seven pitch route that summits the tower and got down by 1:30 in the afternoon before it started raining. Due to the rain, we decided to leave Devil's Tower without climbing any more days.

We then headed to Denver where we stayed with Adam Traina and climbed at Boulder Canyon and Eldorado Canyon, and scrambled on the Flatirons. At Eldorado we did Ruper, 5.8, 6-7 pitches with a wild approach, airy traverses, abundant death slabs between pitches, and an endless descent which rode the death slab-paved highway to an epic in the dark

After Denver we headed straight to Indian Creek. Proud on-sights were mingled with abject flails for an experience that was humbling yet scintillating and addictive. Highlights included lightning-fast cam stuffing repeatedly in endless sandstone splitters that were about a gajillion feet long. Notables such as the Incredible Handcrack and Supercrack were ascended. The rough dirt roads out to the lone desert six-shooter spires proved too much for rikka's prius, and hopping on-board a pickup truck full of climbers going to a different spire found us dropped off in the middle of the desert with a vague sense of which direction to walk. After several mesas, a natural cave/tunnel upward through a cliff, and a big talus scramble I was cruising fingerlocks up the direct start (10b) to the 3-pitch south face of the south six-shooter. We made triumphant poses on top, enjoyed the clear 360-degree view of Canylonlands national park, and sighted out a general path of return to the paved road 6 miles away. Preparing ourselves for the slog back through the desert, we happened upon a gang of retiree ATV riders crusing the desert. They decided that among the fourteen of them they had room for us to cling for dear life, so they offered and we accepted. Their machines sailed over every ditch and bump and outcrop on the way back, allowing us to get back to camp in time for a nap before beers around the campfire with the bros in the next site.

Next up: the Kor-Ingalls route on Castleton Tower, the Ancient Art spire in the Fisher Towers, some soft-rock spires in Arches National Park. Then Zion. Then Montana. Then Squamish in the first week of June with Hannah Waight, Katie Faulkner, and Tyler, then Yosemite later in June. Jeff and Monica will be joining us in Yosemite for five days of cranking.

Chronological Summary:
-Paris was awesome. Great food, Rodin Museum, Musee D'Orsay, Notre Dame Cathedral, dungeons.
-Blois for some scenic countryside, chateaus and bike riding.
-Palace of Versailles. Louis XIV was way too into himself, the palace was way too crowded.
-Picardy, north of Paris: trench warfare was messed up.
-Gunks with Karen and Dunbar, met by Jeff and Monica.
-Chilling and packing in NYC, visiting friends in Boston, visiting Mat Tobacco in Ithaca (wooo!).
-Niagara Falls is mind-blowingly massive.
-Ontario, Michigan, Northern Michigan, Pictured Rocks National Seashore is beautiful and the great likes are clear blue-green like the tropics.
-Visiting Rikka's friend Jen in Minneapolis for a weekend.
-Badlands National Park: moonscape, barren, rugged, bighorn sheep, a landscape that tries to tell you no human is welcome there.
-Mt. Rushmore and the Needles. I have to go back and climb there sometime, it's a rock playground in the hills.
-Devil's Tower, WY, the dude took us into his house and fed us dinner and we summitted the next day.
-Denver, CO with Adam Traina: sport climbing in Boulder Canyon, scrambling on the flatirons, epic long trad climb with horrid descent called Ruper in Eldorado Canyon.
-Indian Creek!
-Stay tuned for pictures of all these things and stories from Castleton Tower, Fisher towers, Arches, Montana, Squamish, and Yosemite.

Old Mexico and El Potrero Chico

2010-02-28T08:17:00.000-08:00

Long time no post, but this post is crucial (feel free to skip to the end for a bullet-point summary). Pictures to come soon.

El Potrero Chico in Mexico is unlike other climbing destinations. After a month-long break in December to celebrate the birth of Christ our Lord and Savior and the beginning of the two thousand tenth Year of our Lord (which apparently has to do with the very same Christ our Lord and Savior) I was back and forth between family visits and relaxation on Cape Cod. I tried cross country skiing for the first time with Jeff, Monica, and Rikka, and played in the snow, but the rest of the time was spent indoors studying math textbooks.

On January 5th Will Skinner and I boarded a plane to San Antonio, where we met up with Hannah Waight, Eli Stein, and Sam Brotherton to get on a bus to Monterrey, Mexico. There, Hannah found us the bus to Hidalgo, which is the town at the foot of El Potrero Chico, which means "The Little Corral," and seems to refer to the massive corral-like hidden valley ringed by mountains, some of which have several-thousand-foot cliff faces on them. We arrived in Hidalgo at midnight, so I had no idea we were near mountains at all. At midnight in Hidalgo there were no cabs to take us and our big bags the four miles to the climber campground, and it seemed like we would be stranded for the night at the run-down bus station. We'd come so far to be stumped by the last four miles! But we finally succeeded at getting the manager of the bus station to drive us there. The five of us somehow packed our bodies and our packs into his tiny muscle car and tied the trunk down. The poor car bottomed out on every bump and couldn't achieve more than about 17mph. We rolled in at about 2am, pitched our tents, and rose in the morning to this view:

For the next three weeks we climbed nearly every day on well-bolted sport routes established mostly by Austin climbers in the past 30 years. I got sick for three days (there is a communal kitchen that is shared among 70 or so climbers at the campground and it helps colds circulate) and it rained a couple days, but otherwise the conditions were perfect. Dry, fairly warm, and not too windy most days.

Many days were spent cragging, systematically climbing several routes right next to each other, taking turns on much harder climbs and clocking mileage on 5.10's. But many days were spent doing multi-pitch. That's right, El Potrero has dozens of long bolted routes 5 pitches and longer. Most of them are much more than five pitches, the average is probably about 10 pitches. These make for some fantastic views at the top of pinnacles and the bolts and bolted anchors allow for really fast movement on the rock. We would climb a dozen pitches, half of which would be 5.10 or above, starting at 10am and be down at 3pm.

Sam and Eli climbed Timewave Zero two days before they left-- it is a 23-pitch climb with seven pitches of 5.10, two of them 5.10d, one pitch of 5.11b, and one pitch of 5.12a. Will and I climbed it two days later on a beautiful sunny day. In fact, it was so beautiful and sunny that the temperature climbed up to 84 degrees F and we ended up baking all day and getting dehydrated. The heat had us tired and weak and I had to pull on a couple draws through the 5.12 section, which is one pitch before the top. The whole thing took us about 13.5 hours-- we were at the top of the first pitch by dawn and we finished rapelling at about 8:15pm. What a great feeling.

Timewave zero was toward the end of the trip, and afterward Will and I were the only ones of our group left. We had a few more days of cragging, including a fingertip-tearing and forearm-pumping one where we cranked out three pitches of 5.12, one 5.11d, and one 5.10b. Three of these pitches were linked together on a three-pitch route in Estrellas Canyon called "The Devil's Tongue," and they were truly fantastic. Next time I'm in El Potrero I'm going to do all three pitches clean, with no falls. "Salty Dog" was another 5.12a we did that day, and I flashed it! Will tried it first, so I guess it's not technically an on-sight, but he went way off-route so maybe it sort of is? No matter-- I was proud. I'd gotten significantly stronger since the beginning of the trip.

One of the best parts about El Potrero is the people. It was so much more friendly and welcoming than the Red River Gorge, another popular world-class sport climbing area in North America with a centralized climbing community. In just three weeks I felt like I had really made some new friends and like I was really a part of the climbing world. There are a bunch of locals who actually live down there in Mexico and find various odd jobs to make money. Needless to say they are usually very strong and serious climbers, but they certainly do not have a chip on their shoulder. They're very interesting and friendly and excited to meet the new faces cycling through the place. I had the honor and privilege of being there are the same time as Matty McGovern and his pal Dudeman-- two of the sweetest bros I'd ever met. I have a strong feeling Matty and Dudeman will show up in my life several more times.

El Potrero is only about six hours of driving from Austin, TX, or maybe seven with the border crossing. That's weekend climbing trip status! I'll be going back.

I'm back on the Cape with Rikka now, studying math. Rikka works on weekends as a waitress, so we've been taking skiing and ice climbing trips during the week. You could say we're "weekday warriors!" This week we're going to Mount Washington in NH for the second time. Last time Dunbar and I climbed a sweet ice gully in Huntington Ravine-- it's such a gorgeous place and Karen and Dunbar are perfect caretakers.

Rikka and I may take a trip to the Red River Gorge in the next three weeks and try to overlap with some of the undergrads in the Harvard mountaineering club who are going there for spring break. Then, on March 28th my parents are taking me to France for 8 days! Cheese, wine, bicycling, and an expanded world-view-- w00t!

After France, Rikka and I are going on the road until it's time to move to Austin. Ithaca, NY (to see Mat Tobacco), Montana, Indian Creek, Yosemite Valley, Tuolomne, the High Sierras are on the list.

Stay tuned for a report from France.

Chronologically ordered summary:
-December in the Northeast with friends and family.
-Cross country skiing and playing in the snow.
-January at El Potrero Chico in Mexico, climbing my fingertips off.
-Back on the Cape with Rikka, working on my car, enjoying the solitude and calm.
-Maybe a short trip to Red River Gorge in the next three weeks.
-France with Mom and Dad!
-Heading west in April, on the road until moving to Austin.

New Mexico. Stuck in the Mud!

2010-01-01T11:06:00.000-08:00

A forecast of several days of rain, clouds, and cold at Joshua Tree meant it was time to move on. Tomorrow, world class bro Nicholas James Stucky-Mack is going to arrive in Carlsbad, NM for a short stay with his dad. I’d been hoping/planning to visit Stuck for a while, so we set Thursday as a time for me to meet him in Carlsbad. After I left Joshua Tree, that still left me with Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday to climb or otherwise occupy myself. The weather was uniformly terrible throughout the southwestern U.S., except perhaps for southern New Mexico, which, conveniently is where Carlsbad is. So I found a crag near Carlsbad (there are plenty) and fixated on it as my next destination. It’s called Last Chance Canyon and it’s a little over an hour outside Carlsbad, in the middle of the desert and the Guadalupe mountains. I drove late into Monday night and then slept in my car in a large open flat dirt area that I found a little ways off route 10.

I decided to break up my barren-desert-driving-full Tuesday by visiting Chiracahua National Park in eastern Arizona. It was about an hour off route 10, but I figured what the hell I’d give it a go. With Nic’s parks pass I got in for free and did a short hike (I ran) out to some sick grottoes. Chiracahua looks unimpressive as you approach it but as soon as you get into the valley nestled behind some mountains you see why it gets national monument status. I took a bunch of pictures that I will post soon, probably in slide-show form. The valley is full of thousands of small rhyolite spires poking up like worms from the trees. There was snow in the mountains and it was high enough that the trees were stunted. Altogether it was profoundly beautiful.

On the way out of Chiracahua I decided to take a “short-cut” through Pinery Canyon, which cuts through Coronado national forest to get back to route 10 considerably east of where I left it. Only problem is, the twenty mile road through Pinery Canyon is unpaved. I decided that even if my slow-going rough road “short-cut” would take three times as long as just going back to route 10 the way I came, it would be worth it for the sake of an adventure. So, as dusk rolled into the valley, I rolled into Pinery Canyon straight past signs saying things like “Unmaintained narrow winding mountain road ahead, enter canyon at your own risk” or, “rough road next 18 miles” or, “Gil, this is probably a bad idea in your little Jetta.” But the signs seemed more like a challenge to me than a warning. “How bad could it be?” I asked myself. After about five miles of pretty smooth, dry, and wide dirt road I was feeling pretty good. “This ain’t bad at all” I thought. After six miles I see a sign that say “Road Closed: Stop.” I certainly saw the sign and registered it, and I noticed that its tone was a little different than the previous warnings, but to me it still represented a challenge. Why was it closed? Was it really closed? Why were they telling me this after I’d already driven six miles in? I had to find out. I had the utmost confidence that whatever lay ahead, I could make it through. The road went up a mountain and got really narrow and windy. It got steeper as it went higher and wet melty snow started to appear on the road. I took curve after curve successfully and started to fish-tail now and then but was overall doing fine. My blood was pumping and as I got higher I got more and more convinced that I could make it all the way. All I had to do was keep going. Then it got a little steeper and the snow got a little deeper. My car stopped moving forward, even though I was pushing the go pedal. No go. So I carefully put the car in reverse and ever so slowly guided the car back down the road a hundred feet to where it was barely wide enough and dry enough to turn around. Then I coasted and skidded all the way back down to where it was flat. I was foiled. I don’t really know how far I was from the top but damn it I was close. I could feel it. After dark I got back to the paved road and went all the way back the way I came. Oh well. One day I’ll go back to Pinery Canyon and make it over that stupid pass. However it would seem in retrospect that these Pinery Canyon shenanigans angered the unpaved road gods, for I would soon have an epic that I wasn’t asking for. Read on because it gets more exciting.

After I got back to route 10 I drove for a long time in the dark. As time went on I decided that I wanted to get to Last Chance Canyon, my final destination near Carlsbad, before I went to bed so I didn’t have to drive before climbing the following morning. I underestimated how far it was to Last Chance Canyon, partially because google maps was incorrect and told me to take a road that wasn’t there. A combination of driving 55mph to get better gas mileage (I got 52 miles per gallon yesterday!), misadventures in Pinery Canyon, and the failure of google maps set me back enough so that I wound up finding the dirt road into Last Chance Canyon at 4:00am. I was committed. Relieved that my journey was finally over, I rolled into the three-mile-long stretch of dirt road. After 1.5 miles, things were looking and feeling good. It was rough, rocky, and wet from snow melt, but I had avoided getting stuck. Unlike the unrelenting uphill of Pinery Canyon, the Last Chance Canyon road had small dips and rises throughout. A combination of impatience, weariness, and daring had me taking the road probably 5mph faster than I should have and as I topped one small hump in the road it was just a moment too late that my headlights illuminated the horrible stinking mudpit from hell that was down the other side. I have posted pictures of this mud-pit: it pretty much consisted of two deep wheel ruts filled with water which get deeper and deeper and end up conjoining in a small pond after about 100 feet. Instinctively I aimed the right car wheel in-between the ruts and the left wheel up off the left side of the road. But the mud was so slipper and the ruts so deep and all-consuming that my car actually slid slideways and my wheels slotted down into the ruts. My momentum took me about twenty feet before the car slid to a halt. Much go pedal and go-backward pedal was pushed but the result was only a couple feet of movement forward and back. I was stuck in the mud-pit at 4:15am in the middle of nowhere by myself and freezing wind was howling through the shrubs. The adventure had found me.

Before trying any tricks, I decided to spend a few minutes trying to milk the car a few feet forward or back in the hopes of gathering up some kind of momentum either to get me backward up the hump or forward and up out of the ruts. Forty five minutes later I’d moved a little bit but only ended up more stuck. Next thing I tried was walking around gathering up sticks (they were sparse) and trying to wedge them under the front wheels so that the wheels would ride up on them and catch. This had no effect other than getting me muddy. I was worried about damaging the differential on my front wheels and getting mud everywhere and possibly in my air intake. At 5:30am I took the only sensible course of action: I laid down in the back of my car and went to sleep.

At 7:00 I woke up and found the wind stronger, the water in the ruts a slushy ice mixture, and the sun behind a giant cloud. It looked like the sun might gradually, with a lot of hard work, pop out from behind the massive cloud in a couple hours. I set about devising ways to extricate my car from the mud-pit before someone came down the road (if some climbers came down the road it would mean I’d have to accept help, which was a detestable idea to me). After trying to move back and forth a few inches at a time for about thirty minutes and finding it no more effective than the night before I tried to jack up the car thinking I might be able to get rocks or sticks all the way under the wheel. Placing the jack on a flat rock I started to raise the car but then the rock just slipped around in the mud. Jacking wouldn’t work. Then I decided to try and build a 5-to-1 haul system with my climbing ropes and carabiners to pull the car straight up out of the ruts. First I had to attach the towing eye-bolt to the front bumper, and this tiny task nearly foiled me because I did not know that the bolt screwed in counter-clockwise. What self-respecting bolt screws in counter-clockwise!? Any way, I made an anchor out of three large shrub/trees and set up the haul system from memory. I ended up making it a 7-to-1 haul system instead of 5-to-1, just to get some more mechanical advantage. I pulled and jerked and tugged and yanked and slipped and slid and pulled harder but it didn’t move the car. I pulled it taught, locked it off, then pushed the go pedal and then pulled again and locked it off and then pushed the go pedal again. Still the car did not want to move more than a foot or so, but I had at least gotten it back to the point it was at the night before where it could move back and forth. I disconnected the haul system and tried more forward-backward motion with the spinning tires. I got out of the car, ate some food, and slowly paced around in the mud thinking of other ways to get the car out. I figured that if I really couldn’t get it out I could jog the five miles or so back down the road to a set of buildings I remembered passing the night before to see if anyone might be available to help pull me out. But that was a last resort.

Finally I noticed that one of the bunches of sticks I’d put down the night before had gotten pressed down into the mud from some of the forward-backward motion. The sticks looked like they created a more frictionous surface in that one spot. I decided that I would try and fill in the mud-ruts for several feet behind my wheels so that if I were able to just get a little momentum, I would eventually catch the sticks and be able to gather more and more momentum. I made a real concerted effort to gather sticks and branches (only downed ones of course) and small pebbles and went about literally filling in the ruts behind my car. I did a thorough job of it and sure enough, when I got just a little bit of momentum backward, this time my car did not come to a halt as soon as it hit the hump behind it. The sticks were enough to give it momentum to get up on top of the hump. Back on the hump and out of mud-pit. It worked. I’d done it. I’d gotten out. I screamed to nobody in particular with glee and set about cleaning up my haul system and car jack and tools. I and my car were covered in mud. I backed up a bit more and did a sixteen-point turn in the narrow road to finally face the other way. Since the road ahead was impassable and I was feeling too spent to hike the rest of the way down the road to go climbing, I decided to drive back to the main road and gather my thoughts.

I decided to go visit Carlsbad Caverns National Park for some nice relaxing American tourism to let myself unwind a bit after my epic night. The Caverns were amazing: calming, astounding, awe-inspiring, massive, dank, impersonal. Tonight I’m going to back to the Last Chance Canyon road and sleep in my car nearby. Tomorrow I think I’ll hike into the canyon to finally check out the climbing!

I took tons of pictures of everything I’ve talked about in this post. I was very careful to document all the ups and downs of the mud-sticking experience. I will upload these photos very soon and point you to them. After I visit with Nick in Carlsbad I’m going to head back east and make my way back to New York City for Christmas time. This is my last stop in the west before New Years. It looks like I’m going to spend most of January climbing in El Potrero Chico in Hidalgo, Mexico. That’s all I’ve got for now. Thanks for reading.

Joshua Tree and Hermit Crabs

2009-12-05T10:37:00.000-08:00

"Someone will say: And are you not ashamed, Socrates, of a course of life which is likely to bring you to an untimely end? To him I may fairly answer: There you are mistaken: a man who is good for anything ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying; he ought only to consider whether in doing anything he is doing right or wrong - acting the part of a good man or of a bad."

-Plato (in Apology)

Sure rock climbing is dangerous. If I make decisions that put me at risk of meeting an "untimely end," I would not be ashamed of them, but I would be rather embarassed and angry with myself. Climbing might be "right" the same way it is "right" to go to Church or meditate or pray. The only reason an "untimely end" would ever come into the picture is if a serious and completely avoidable error were made, and that would be just stupid. A lapse of judgement is something to be ashamed of, but living a life of challenge and triumph is not.

I ended up going to Joshua Tree in Southern California. Two nights ago, on the trip here from Vegas, I slept in a parking lot in the town of Lucerne Valley and was awakened by the Sheriff knocking on my window. He's a really nice guy and just wanted to check on what my deal was. After checking my driver's license on his computer, he told me I could go back to sleep! Yesterday I bouldered in the afternoon after buying a guidebook and exploring the park. Nic lent me his national parks pass, so I can get in for free. Last night I camped on BLM land just outside the town of Joshua Tree, which was free and private and desolate. My car is a roving home, since I sleep in it, so I'm like a hermit crab. It's a liberating existence.

This morning I woke up to frost and clouds. When the sun is hidden behind thick clouds it stays cold all morning. So I read books and took cover in Joshua Tree Public Library to await warmer afternoon temperatures. If it gets warmer I will head into the park to do some toprope solo-ing. Joshua Tree is full of piles of large, rough boulders. The friction is enormous and it'll rip holes in your pants real quick, and when it's cold (like today) it hurts the hands.

If the weather doesn't get better and I don't find any cool people to climb with, I might drive back east for an early Christmas vacation. Being on vacation full time is rough sometimes and I think I could use a vacation from it soon. But joking aside... this hermit/desert thing might get a little lonely soon. I only have a couple minutes remaining on my library computer session. Pictures to come soon.

Ran Away to Vegas and Climbed the Mountains There

2009-12-03T14:22:00.000-08:00

"So ignorant are most landsmen of the plainest and most palpable wonders of the world, that without some hints touching the plain facts, historical and otherwise, of the fishery, they might scout at Moby Dick as a monstrous fable, or still worse and more detestable, a hideous and intolerable allegory."

-Herman Melville (in Moby Dick)

If non-climbers were the same to me as "landsmen" are to Ishmael, then maybe I would think that my life as a climber is inaccessible or somehow closed to those who do not climb. But I am not an Ahab of the climbing world, I am not a climbing monomaniac; at heart I am a non-climber. I will say more about this later in the post, after I've done some reporting on my past few weeks. I'm sitting in a Barnes and Noble in Las Vegas that has free Wi-Fi, typing on my decrepit old laptop with fingertips hardened from two weeks of living in the desert and climbing pitch after pitch of rough sandstone. Here's a summary of the events leading up to this:

After the Red River Gorge in Kentucky (which my last post was about), I wasn't ready to head west, so I went back to the Northeast, climbed at the Gunks in beautiful weather for a week, retreated to the Lovely household in Cape Cod to repair a coolant leak in my car, which I have named Agnes. At the Gunks I sent Fat City direct and Rikka led Yum-Yum and I sustained a wrist injury.
My aunt passed away. Instead of heading west, I went to Trenton, NJ to attend the funeral. I love my family and I'm sad I missed our yearly trip to the New Jersey shore this past August (I was climbing in Wyoming). Solemn circumstances, but I got rare kid-free time with my older cousins. A shout-out to my brother Greg who showed up to the funeral better-dressed than I will ever be in my life.
I stayed with my older cousin Megan in Washington D.C. after the funeral. I had exactly 2.5 days to make it to Las Vegas from here to pick up Nic at the airport. I hoped my car would make it across the country.
I visited Anna Madden Francis McCallie in Charlotte, NC on my way to Vegas.
I drove. For three days. I slept in my car in motel parking lots. I got up from my car in the morning, stretched, walked into the lobby and helped myself to the continental breakfast before heading on my way.
Arrived in Las Vegas just in time to pick up Nic from the airport. We went to sleep and climbed 12 pitches the next day before picking Dora up from the airport at 3:45pm. A very sick climbing day.
More and more Rensselaer Polytechnic engineers trickle into the Red Rocks campground every day. It was a great group. Katie roasted some turkey at home in Phoenix and brought it to Red Rocks. She also cooked stuffing and mashed potatoes, so we had thanksgiving dinner at the campground. A feast of feasts.
The day after Thanksgiving Rikka arrived to help us climb the crap out of the mountains.

Now everyone has gone home and I'm still here in Las Vegas, trying to decide what I will do next. I'm thinking I might head down to Arizona to find people to climb with this weekend. I'm heading home for Christmas, so I'll be back east in a couple of weeks. If I can find people to climb with out West, however, I plan to stay out here alone for another couple weeks. All the people who flew out to Red Rocks for their Thanksgiving vacations put their leftover food items in a "for-free" bin at the campsite entrance, so I am fully loaded with at least two weeks' worth of food. It would be nice if I could try and use up the food before Christmas.

Nic took some great pictures of Red Rocks. Below I've pasted the link to his slideshow. Red Rocks is truly a great climbing location. It can be a little crowded because of its proximity to Vegas, but as far as long multi-pitch trad climbing, it rivals the Wind Rivers for commitment and airiness. It's less remote, though, so there are a lot of bolts and fixed anchors at Red Rocks. That said, there is a ton of rock unclimbed in addition to the thousands of documented ascents here and we all had our share of routefinding and approach difficulties. If it weren't starting to get pretty cold here and if I still had people to climb with, I could spend months here. How different Red Rocks is from the Red River Gorge, despite the similar color themes in their names.

Here's the link to a group of "best of" photos that Nic compiled on the trip. Being a far more talented photographer than I, he captured the beauty of this barren yet dramatically mountainous terrain, as well as the hanging-out:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dominic_albanese/sets/72157622926055386/show/

When people needed to go back to the airport, me, Rikka, Jeff, and Monica took a rest day to walk along the Strip in Vegas. We dove into some sensory overload at the famous mega-casinos such as the Bellagio, the MGM Grand, etc. Live lions, indoor gandola canals, and 1-cent slot machines abounded. I gambled away a full ninety-five cents! Prostitution is legal in 8 out of the 16 counties in Nevada, and Las Vegas is in one of those counties. Despite this astonishing fact, I skipped the brothels this time around. Something like 95% of the land in Nevada belongs to the federal government, including Red Rocks, and basically everything except Las Vegas and Reno themselves is desert. It defies reason that such a booming and heavily-consuming city as Vegas exists smack in the middle of the desert here.

Back to the quotation. I meant it to be a reminder that the White Whale or, to me, the unclimbed mountainous challenge, has little significance in this blog. Just as I don't give a crap about whale anatomy while I'm reading Moby Dick, whoever's reading this blog shouldn't care about what climbs I've done or how hard they were or the technical obstacles that I dealt with along the way. The descriptions of climbs I write here are to add color to the blog, but the ideas here are for non-climbers, for that is what I am. One day I will not be physically able to climb, and will not want to anymore. I'll want to retire to someplace pretty and hang out on my porch with other retired old bros and bro-ettes. When climbing is stripped away, it's what is left that matters. To take climbing as more than it is, but one source of adventures and fun, is close-minded. I am not and will never be a professional climber, I am not driven to bag those first ascents, I am not a monomaniac, I am not captain Ahab. My encounters with airy climbing moves, success and failure, athletic accomplishment, and the high lonesome are not important. It is the people close to me that are important, and the ideas I can share with them, and what I can produce in this world with my intellect. This trip reminded me of that. Take a look at Nic's slideshow.

Still at the Red

2009-11-03T16:19:00.000-08:00

It was a high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, "Always do what you are afraid to do."

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

I'm still here at the Red River Gorge. I haven't gotten on any 5.12's yet but I've been getting great workouts. This place is like an outdoor climbing gym. Safe, very little approach, very little adventure, tons of people on the routes you want to do, and all the pump you can handle. I can gradually feel my forearm endurance increasing. Nothing special to write about except large quantities of 5.10's and 5.11's on bolts. Today we took an "active rest" day, which consisted of climbing easy on 7's, 8's, and 9's on trad and bolts.

Tomorrow is going to be my last day here and Thursday will be a half day. I think after that I'm going to head back to New York or Cape Cod for a week, possibly visiting the Gunks, before heading west until Christmas. I'd love to spend another few days in the Gunks, and that would really give me something to write about. Since tomorrow is my last full day here, I decided I would hop on some 5.12's and see what happened. I know I won't on-sight anything, which stinks (on-sight climbing is where it's at for me), but it will be good to really test my athletic limits and see what happens at the next grade up, since I've never tried any 12's except at the gym.

I've uploaded and labeled some pictures. Here's a slide show with pictures from Seneca Rocks and the Red River Gorge. As before, be sure to click the icon in the lower right corner which makes the slide show full screen, and then click "Show Info" in the upper right corner to see the captions I've written on the pictures.

VMC Direct Direct, Farley, Red River Gorge

2009-10-28T16:12:00.000-07:00

I don't have much time to craft a pithy and poetic post, and I don't have any books near me to look up sweet quotations. So this one's going to be more of an update. I'm sitting in Miguel's Pizza store in Slade, KY right now. This is the gathering and camping place of the climbing community at the Red River Gorge. If you haven't heard of it, it's world famous as a sport climbing mecca, and happens to have hundreds of sweet trad climbs too. Overall, it is best known for its hard sport climbs (12's, 13's, and 14's). The natural question you should have, then, is "then why is Gil there?" And it is a good question indeed. Miguel's is crowded with climbers, who all seem to know each other and are loud and strong personalities and who talk about what 12's and 13's they climbed today. It feels like everyone around me cranks on 13's. It's something I don't like about this place, and Joe Silver is a quiet a reserved guy who pretty much feels the same way. We've been sleeping in our cars away from Miguel's, in rest areas and public picnic areas. The solitude is nice. We've been climbing in the Muir valley, which has a couple areas that are primarily for trad, and we've found some seclusion here. There's tons of rock in the area and over 1600 routes, but we still managed to be vying for climbs yesterday. Nothing is greater than one pitch... it's all cragging and everybody carries a stick-clip to bag the first bolt. It's not an adventure.

That said, the rock here is quite beautiful. My mom bought me a camera, so I can finally take my own pictures and when I have some more time than I do right now I'll post some pictures of the rock here. Lots of sandstone pockets, lots of overhangs, lots of jugs. We climbed seven 5.10's in a row yesterday, all pumpy jug fests, and the day before that I one-hanged a 5.10 finger crack and slingshotted the second half of an 11b on sport. Charlie is on his way down here now, finally. After only a couple days of climbing in the past two months, he's finally ready to commit to at least a week of climbing. So I'll probably be here in the Red for next week too. The quality of the rock and the sheer primal fun of hauling on juggy overhangs barely outweighs how crowded, centralized, and social-oriented rather than adventure-oriented the atmosphere is here. I think the best way I can justify staying here for two weeks is that it's training. My endurance will get a lot better, and that's one of my weakest points-- I'm going to train and get stronger and become an overall better climber. I think this is something that's going to make climbing more fun for me, although there is a danger of making it less fun if I get too caught up in the success/failure game.

I'd like to tell about the few weeks before this that I haven't blogged about. Joe and I climbed at Seneca Rocks in West Virginia last sunday... it's all trad and it's as sandbagged as the gunks. A great way to get some last bit of adventure before committing to hard sport at the Red.

Climbing-wise, I went to Farley with Karen, Rikka, and Dunbar a week ago. It was a beautiful afternoon of climbing in the middle of Massachusetts right as it cleared up after the noreaster. Dunbar and I pulled ourselves up some tough cracks, one of them being a group effort (Dunbar slingshoted a hard crack that I accidentally blew off of after the crux-- good work Dunbar). It was a great day because of the climbing but I would say more so because of the people. Rikka, Karen, Dunbar and I are a great squad and I'd be pressed to think of a better group of people to climb and go on adventures with. I can't wait until we climb or hang out together again and I'm excited to see what happens in the spring.

That Sunday, during aforementioned noreaster, Karen, Dunbar, and I went to the Wellfleet Oysterfest on cape cod and watched Chopper Young, world champion oyster shucker (and neighbor to Karen and Rikka) destroy the competition in the semi-finals. We got cheap raw oysters and littleneck clams and they were delicious!

The Saturday before that, Dunbar, Jimmy, and I went up to Cannon to try and climb VMC Direct Direct, a very famous 5.10+ route. There are four 5.10 cruxes and a slabby 5.11 section protected by a bolt. Jimmy and I swung leads on the hard pitches. As we got to the cliff the temperature was rising above freezing and ice was raining down on our heads. Helmets on, we braved the showers of ice chunks as we moved up beautiful smooth arching dihedrals and roofs. The first crux fell to Jimmy... it was an undercling traverse on tiny fingertip-sized holds. Before moving into the crux he took out his ice tool and started scraping chunks of ice out of the undercling, and then water started coming out. The ice and water and freezing cold rock necessitated aiding but if it were dry I'm certain Jimmy could have sent it clean. I led the next pitch, a sustained 5.10 dihedral that was soaked. I hanged once before the crux, but pulled the sopping roof crux (amidst screams) and somehow finished out the sustained dihedral climbing. It was a proud moment. Jimmy slipped and slid on the soaking wet "5.9" slabby section on the next pitch, and the 5.11 slab move fell to me. My foot blew off right at the beginning, but then I got back on and sent it (again, screaming). The following pitch was a waterfall so we rapped off, but all three of us hardy adventurers are certain it will go clean next time, when it's dry!

Surrounding Cannon and Farley was some rest time. I hung out with Rikka on the cape and we went to NYC to see my parents. I also used this time to search for a new used car. Since my Dad needed his buick back, he offered to buy me a cheap car as a graduation present. Thanks parents! So I shopped furiously for a week on craigslist, ebay, and a bunch of other sites and finally found a great deal on a diesel Volkswagen Jetta. These cars get 50 miles to the gallon and run for several hundred thousand miles. So, with Rikka's help, I picked up the car from a friendly mechanic in Lowell, MA. The car is great and I love it. I've moved all my stuff into it (from the buick) and drove it down here. I can sleep in it, and drive forever without filling up the tank. I'm going to drive out west with it soon. Don't tell Charlie, but I like it more than the van, and I feel like it is my own. It is the best gift my parents could have given me. I have pictures of it that I will post soon.

One more thing I want to say is how happy it has made me that I've managed to spend so much time with Rikka this fall. This is something that I've been wanting to say for a while, but I also have been figuring out exactly how I want to separate my personal feelings and my public climbing blog updates. I apologize to any readers to whom I've been insensitive in navigating this distinction. For example, in my last post I didn't mention that we spent four days climbing together at the Gunks and she did her first trad lead, and it did not feel good to leave this out. This was a big moment for me (as well as Rikka) because it wasn't long ago when we went toproping in Quincy Quarries on the first day Rikka ever climbed. She did all three pitches of Three Pines, a gunks classic, the top pitch of which has some exposure and tricky route-finding. In fact, the picture in the guidebook was wrong and gave false directions to the bolts, but she figured it out. This is an accomplishment and she deserves a shout-out. Props.

I've gotta run now because Miguel's is making me feel uncomfortable and I don't want to keep Joe waiting. Hopefully, next time I post I will be a much stronger climber and can talk all about the 12's I've been on-sighting. Until then, I'll try and power through the crowds of stick-clippers.

Fat City and the Unimportance of Death

2009-10-15T12:38:00.000-07:00

Looking into Napoleon's eyes, Prince Andrei thought of the insignificance of greatness, the unimportance of life, which no one could understand, and of the still greater unimportance of death, the meaning of which no living person could understand and explain.

-Tolstoy in War and Peace

Someone wise once told me that greatness is insignificant if those around you don't like you very much. To love and be loved, to give, and to bring happiness to others is of the utmost importance. I tried to lead a 5.10 at the Gunks the other day and took a fall. It was clean and painless, leaving me unscathed, yet I was debilitated by a feeling of failure, frustration, and anger. I'd followed the climb, "Criss Cross," over four years ago, but I had no memory of it, so I was essentially shooting for an on-sight. It was rated at 5.10a, so I figured it would be strenuous, but an overall success. I was cocky, but I think a little bit of cocky is okay going into a challenging trad lead. My problem wasn't cockiness, it was that somewhere deep down I was aiming for greatness. I was aiming for a 5.12a on-sight down the line, or even 5.13a. So when my toe jam blew right after pulling the crux move on a 5.10a, I was pissed. It set me back, it blocked my path, and stopped me short.

For several days before that climb I’d been re-doing the classic 5.6’s at the Gunks that I’d done a few times back in high school. I think I’ve climbed the famous “High-Exposure” seven or eight times now. It’s fun every time. Then when I hopped on this 5.10a, it wasn’t about fun anymore. It was about bagging the ascent, getting the send, nailing the on-sight. But more and more I’m wondering where that leaves me. What does it get me besides a number to tell people how hard I’ve climbed. Is it an accomplishment? The people who care about me most probably don’t care too much about what climbs I did last week, and especially not the silly difficulty grade attached to them.

It makes me wonder what this blog is for. I keep posting about new climbs I’ve on-sighted. Pictures are great, but I don’t have a camera at the moment and most people don’t think to snap the photos. I love posting pictures because then I feel like my friends can get a sense of the places I am and the beauty of these cliffs and mountains and trees. I’ve got no pictures from my last 11 days in Gunks. All I’ve got is numbers and names of climbs and memories of pulling through hard roofs.

The autumn moments are what I want to write about. The whole sides of mountains in the Adirondacks that are ablaze with fiery yellows and oranges. Dunbar, Charlie, and I went up to the Adirondacks to try and climb Wallface mountain (the largest backcountry cliff in the Northeast) but we were repulsed by rain. We wanted to bag a climb on Poke-O-Moonshine mountain. Rained out. We eventually managed to find a dry streak on King Wall in Chapel Pond with a 25-foot-high crack. King Wall is rather beautiful: here’s a picture. You can't really tell from the picture that it's 300' tall and bulges outward.

After our rainy experience in the Dacks, Dunbar, Charlie, and I decided to head down to the Gunks to join the massive HMC contingent that was invading the cliffs. Beautiful weather on Columbus Day weekend at the Gunks means it’s a goddamn climbing gym. Literally. If you drop a rock, you’re probably going to hit someone. I hate the crowds and the loud-mouths and the old guys who act like they own the place. It was getting me really un-pumped to climb there, but my level of excitement was ultimately restored by the HMC folks: Karen, Dunbar, Lauren, Will, Jimmy, Hannah, Coz, and more. They’re great people even off the cliffs when you’re not sending next to them. Jimmy sent Fat City Direct (5.10d). Naturally, I had to try it, so I hopped on and on-sighted the 5.10d pitch. It wasn’t as technically difficult as that 5.10a I was talking about at the beginning of this post, but more exposed and pumpy. A great climb. Charlie hurt his wrist on the first pitch so we didn’t get to do the top, but I’ll go back and send it another day (I’ve got the crux pitch dialed now, so it won’t be hard). There I go, talking about grades and names of climbs. Basically, it’s my way of giving props to Jimmy Watts for hopping on it and tearing it up. I’m going to Cannon Cliff this weekend with Jimmy to attempt to lead VMC Direct Direct. I’ll let you know how it goes.

I'll leave you with these poorly chosen words. Bold and daring deeds help us assert the triumph of our existence in an un-caring universe. The course and broken kaleidoscope of a precipice gives brave adventurers a way to find the stuff of their species. We are soft and fleshy and full of love for one another and, bringing our banner into the cold and darkness, we fill a need. We fill it with ideas and theories and ultimately it is indescribable but we try.

Three Great Gorgeous Days of Daring Deeds in the Dacks

2009-09-27T21:03:00.000-07:00

Oh, seems to me, there should be two ceaseless steeds for a bold man to ride,-- the Land and the Sea; and like circus-men we should never dismount, but only be steadied and rested by leaping from one to the other, while still, side by side, they both race around the sun.

-Herman Melville

On Friday Will and I leaped from our kayaks on the bucking waters of windy Lake George onto a small strip of soil at the base of a 600-foot high cliff known as Roger’s slab. Here’s a picture

(note: more photos will come once I have a little more time and the various people who took them (namely Jeff and Monica) send them to me… check back because there are some really good ones!).

Will did his first trad lead ever on a three-pitch 5.5 that followed a crack all the way up the cliff. In the photo you can vaguely see the crack running all the way up the cliff—it starts to the right of the largest clump of trees that meets the water. It was a beautiful route and a beautiful day on a cliff that rises strikingly from a beautiful and massive lake, and I rather enjoyed sitting and belaying while Will calmly worked his way up. After we got down there was barely time for a one-pitch 5.6+ slab climb. The first bolt was high and they were generally spaced about 20 to 30 feet apart. The climb was all friction and there were barely any holds, but the slab was low-angled enough that you could keep moving up without slipping. But damn does it get scary running out that high above your last bolt. At the end of the day we paddled back to Will’s family’s lake house on Lake George to find that his mom had come up, had been watching us climb from a boat on the lake, and had dinner ready. Jeff and Monica showed up just in time for a delicious feast celebrating Will’s first trad lead, on a cliff he’d been eyeing since his childhood days paddling around the lake.

All in all, Friday’s climbing on lake George was pleasant and successful, and Will’s cabin and the easy climbing was a nice respite from our previous day, which was spent on Spider’s Web, this time with a partner. Here’s a photo of the cliff (that's not me on it):

Climbing with Will, I was bold enough to attempt to lead “On the Loose,” a 5.10a crack of about 120 feet. The crack was magnificent, with big solid hand jams and strenuous but manageable moves. However, the length proved too much for me and I found my forearms getting too pumped about halfway up. I ended up hanging on my gear a few times in order to get up it, but I eventually made it. What a tough 5.10a! I guess that’s Spider’s Web for you. The second pitch went at 5.9, but again, I got pumped out (and scared) and hung once. The crux moves were right at the beginning, as you traverse out left from the belay into a large corner with an off-width crack. A very stiff and very scary 5.9. But I made it up, and I was very proud! For the rest of the day we toproped some more wicked hard cracks and got ourselves majorly pumped out. Will also aid-toproped Dacker Cracker in preparation for his first trad lead on Roger’s slab the following day. All-in-all a fun day, and a great workout, although I got a good beat-down by “the Web.”

Saturday was fantastic. Jeff, Monica, Will, me, and Joe Silver, a long time friend of Jeff and Monica’s, all went to the Courthouse wall, which is in the High Peaks wilderness in the Adirondacks. From Keene Valley you hike about 50 minutes toward Johns Brook Lodge (I think the HMC might have gone here for their winter trip?) then turn off the trail and follow a poor and windy climbers path to a fantastic little crag in the middle of the woods. Naturally, nobody was there despite impeccable weather. As soon as we arrived I led a 5.10a, perfectly clean. Although it had a couple of bolts at the crux, I was proud. As we cragged for the rest of the day, I kept staring over at a 5.10c roof that Jeff reported having led several years earlier. Eventually Jeff announced that he wanted to try a different 10c, which also went through a roof at the top. It felt like old times as I belayed him and encouraged him as he pulled through what turned out to be a very difficult and exposed top-out crux through a big roof at the top. Good job brah.

Then, at the end of the day, I decided I was going to go for the other 10c on the cliff, which I’d been eyeing the whole time. The first 30 feet were probably 5.8ish at least, and didn’t have great pro, but everything worked out. After those first 30 feet it eased off for about 15 feet until the bottom of a roof. Under the roof I calmed my nerves for a second and then leaned out and felt around above for holds. I found a few, started to pull myself up, realized that the holds stopped, froze like a deer in headlights, and immediately started to get pumped in my forearms. I jerkily climbed back down to my awkward resting stance beneath the roof, caught my breath, and shook out my arms. I repeated this sequence of climbing up, getting stuck, and retreating a couple more times before I figured out different footwork for the sequence that made it just a little bit easier. That little bit was all I needed and when I finally went for it the next time, I reached up, shifted my feet, grabbed the hold just right and pulled through the crux. The next 30 feet of climbing were sustained and hard, but I had passed the crux and successfully topped out, having successfully on-sighted my first 5.10c on trad. Woohoo! During this process, Jeff walked to the top of the cliff and took photos of me from above. Here’s a slideshow of the pictures he took of me while I did this climb, starting from when I pull through the roof:

We went back to Will’s cabin on Lake George and slept there Saturday night as it started raining hard. It rained all Sunday and I went back to Albany with Jeff and Monica to hang out for the day. There I decided that, in light of the rain-every-day weather forecast for the Adirondacks this week I would stay with them for a couple days to help them re-do their kitchen. We already tore out the old cabinets and tomorrow I’m going to gut the dry-wall and insulation. They’ll pick new cabinets and a new countertop and hopefully (with as much help as I want to give them) have them installed by next week. We’ll see how far we get! Charlie didn’t come climbing this weekend, and he’s still in Boston. He’s going to stay there another week while he finishes a painting job Leah’s parents have given him. I hope he hasn’t lost the climbing bug after this long break because he’s a good partner.

Anyway, I’m totally hooked on climbing. Leading 10c trad tastes like improvement, and it’s left me wanting more. While I’m staying at Jeff’s house I’m going to do lots of dead-hang and pull up workouts. Those are the only highlights of the past week I wish to share right now. Thanks for reading, whoever you are. I wonder who still reads this blog besides my mom. I don’t think many of the people who are in it read it. At this point I’m falling asleep and should call it quits. Goodnight.

Dacker Cracker and Rain

2009-09-22T12:31:00.000-07:00

I meant to tell mankind to aspire to a new state about which I could tell them little or nothing, to teach them to tread a long and lonely path which might or might not lead thither, to bid them dare to encounter all possible perils of nature unknown, to abandon all their settled manners of living and cut themselves off from their past and their environment, and to attempt a quixotic adventure with no resources beyond their native strength and sagacity. I had done it myself and found not only that the pearl of great price was worth far more than I possesed, but that the very perils and privations of the quest were themselves my dearest memories. I was certain of this at least: that nothing in the world except this was worth doing.

-Aleister Crowley (a generally weird person, but a formidable mountaineer).

I'm not totally sure that nothing in the world is worth doing except mountaineering. In fact I highly doubt it. But I like quixotic adventure and abandoning my settled manners of living. I'm in the public library in Keene Valley, NY, in the Adirondacks right now, and I just spent several hours reading mountaineering books down in the "Alpine Room" downstairs. Now I'm taking a break to reconnect to the world with the internet: checking the weather, blogging, and e-mailing. I'm here at the library because it's been raining all day. A few minutes ago there was some brief sunshine but now the clouds, true to the forecast, are moving back in to start dumping again.

I got to Chapel Pond, 10 miles Southeast of here on Rte. 73, on Saturday with my older brothers Greg and Jeff, Jeff's girlfriend Monica, and Greg's kids Taylor and Thomas, aged 8 and 6. The six of us set off on a poor trail on Saturday morning and wandered around in the woods for a few hours with Taylor and Thomas, finding bugs, interesting leaves, and adventure. We camped out somewhere a couple miles from the road on Saturday night, and then on Sunday afternoon everyone left the Adirondacks except for me. I stayed to try and find things to do myself in one of the premier climbing locations on the East Coast. Sunday afternoon I found a campsite, cooked dinner and settled in early and planned to get up and toprope-solo all day at Spider's Web, a cliff with some great and extremely difficult crack climbs. It was hard getting out of bed but I hiked up to the cliff and climbed Dacker Cracker, 5.10c, five times to try and make myself a better crack climber. Out of laziness I took long rests between tries, so this, combined with my difficulty in dragging myself out of my sleeping bag, combined with thoroughly pumped forearms led to my calling it quits and driving 15 minutes to Elizabethtown, where there is cell phone service and a real supermarket (there is no service in Keene Valley).

There I made several phone calls. After one call I numbly bought ice cream. I went to bed ready to wake up early this morning to go aid-solo something on the King Wall, but when my eyes open I was greeted with the sound of rain on my tent so I slept in yet again and lay there until I got sick of counting the squares in the nylon of the ceiling of my tent, and then I came here to the library. For the next few hours I'm going to try and do math.

The forecast is rain tomorrow as well, so I might try and find something dry to screw around on, or just aid climb in the rain. Will Skinner's supposed to come climb with me on Thursday and Charlie's supposed to join me on Saturday. Jeff and Monica are going to come back up this weekend to climb. Until then I'm on my own. Just me, the rain, my tent, and the car.

Technical Advances

2009-09-18T07:25:00.001-07:00

This isn't a real post, it's just to let you know that I've embedded a slideshow in my post "Going Alpine," about climbing in the Wind Rivers this past August. The slideshow is in a little square down near the end of the post. If you click the button in the lower right section of the square, it makes the slideshow full-screen, and then if you click "Show Info" it will show you the captions I made for each picture. Sorry it took so long! There are a couple photos forthcoming from the Tetons, Wild Iris, and Cape Cod.

I've got a Flickr account now. Here's the link to see all my pictures (right now it's only the Winds pics):

http://www.flickr.com/photos/42663583@N06/

Breakdown

2009-09-17T22:41:00.000-07:00

"Hardly non of the guys ever travel together. I hardly never seen two guys travel together. You know how the hands are, they just come in and get their bunk and work a month, and then they quit and go out alone. Never seem to give a damn about nobody. It jus' seems kinda funny a cuckoo like him and a smart little guy like you travelin' together."

-Slim in Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

Yeah it's pretty funny: a smart little guy like me and a cuckoo like Charlie travelin' around together. Heh. Charlie and I agreed not to read each others' blogs so I'm allowed to make fun of him and he won't know until some indeterminate point in the future. Not sure he will ever read this. Should anyone?

I should continue telling the story of August before I forget it. So at the end of my last post we were pulling out of Pinedale, WY after two weeks in the profoundly beautiful Wind Rivers. I'd just had a delicious meal and beer and we were heading back across the Jackson Pass to Charlie's house to decide how we wanted to assault the Tetons. Rikka, Dunbar, and I were in the Prius and Charlie, Hannah, and Will were in the van. We'd had to push start it but we were hoping it was just a low battery, which the alternator would recharge on the road. A few miles later after we passed through a rainstorm, the engine died on the van and we Prius-goers watched with disappointment as the van slowed and pulled off onto the shoulder. Four attempts at push starting later we decided that there was a problem.

Initially we thought it had something to do with a problem Charlie’s dad had mentioned that the van used to have where if the undercarriage got wet, the engine shut off and wouldn’t start until it dried. We’d just driven through a rainstorm, so that seemed like it could have been it. But it didn’t really make sense since the battery problems had started before we went through the rainstorm. Turns out it was the alternator, which we had suspected, but dismissed since we had driven the van so far. The old one was 20 years old, so it had served its country well. Nonetheless, it left the six of us sitting there on the side of the road in West Bumbleton, WY. Fortunately, Charlie’s dad is a haas and was able to borrow a flatbed trailer for his tow-truck and drive out to us and tow the van home while the rest of us drove home in the Prius. We met up with Jimmy and Lauren and invaded Charlie’s house. A roof over our heads that night and bacon and eggs for breakfast the next morning, along with some playful goats and disgustingly cute kittens left us refreshed. We sat around reading Tetons and Lander guidebooks trying to decide whether we should go sport cragging down at Lander or do more alpine climbing in the Tetons. Dunbar desperately wanted to bag some gnarley ascents in the historical and imposing Teton range and Hannah desperately didn’t. Hannah desperately wanted to relax not far from a car between turns pulling on hard 11’s and 12’s at Wild Iris, a famous sport crag. Emotions and personalities clashed. I pored over maps, guidebooks, and online route descriptions trying to find the best option to satisfy everyone. We decided to go to the Tetons for three days and Lander for two, and it seemed like a compromise. In the meantime, Jimmy Watts’ insatiable appetite for climbing led us to a crag at the opening to the West side of the Tetons called Teton Canyon. With both bolted and unbolted lines about 60’ high, we drove the hour to the crag, rolled in around 3pm and tried to get in a few climbs. The type of rock was different from the winds and nobody was expecting any of the climbs we got on to be quite so hard. I walked up to something that looked like it might be a 5.6, thinking it could be a decent first trad lead for Lauren. Of course, I tried it first to test the difficulty and sure enough it turned out to be maybe a 5.9 PG. Suffice it to say Lauren didn’t get to do her first trad lead that day. We drove back to Charlie’s that night and slept and I dreamt I was on a belay ledge, worrying about the safety of my followers. I had a lot of those dream while in the Winds.

Next morning Jimmy and Lauren were gone… they’d gotten up early to drive to the Tetons to try and bag the Middle Teton before driving East to Devil’s Tower. Props to them for having the drive to go for it like that. We rolled out of bed, took our time, called the Jenny Lake Ranger station to get beta on the backcountry camping in the Tetons, then drove into the park with the Prius while Charlie remained at home to get some family time and replace the alternator. The climbing ranger encouraged us to hike up into Garnet canyon, beneath the Grand Teton and several dramatic buttresses on the south side of Disappointment Peak, holding some of the most classic climbs in the Teton range. We conquered indecision and Hannah’s trepidation and packed our packs in time for a 7pm departure from the trailhead. We ran into Jimmy and Lauren on their way out, after an epic day of hiking and wandering around looking for the Middle Teton. About 3.5 hours later we reached our campsite immediately after a difficult stream crossing (don’t want to think about what it would be like in the spring!).

The next morning we awoke to beautiful weather in a campsite hemmed in on both sides beneath the dramatic granite walls of Garnet canyon. Hannah announced she felt uncomfortable being in the mountains again, had no interest in climbing, and wanted to hike out on her own and wait for us at the car. Rikka and I persuaded her to stay and take a rest day. We hiked around, fooled around on a glacier, had a long leisurely lunch/nap, and hiked up to the Lower Saddle of the Grand Teton. At the lower saddle we realized how many people climb the Grand in a day, almost all of them guided by Exum Mountain Guides—there must be 20 parties that go up it every day with good weather. On our way down the section with a fixed, a guide tried to pressure us and came up right beneath Rikka as she descended. He instructed his clients to start climbing right near Rikka as she was coming down. They couldn’t wait for even five seconds! Rikka lost her balance and swung sideways on the rope. She deftly kept from slamming but not without some impact to her injured right ankle. It was a painful walk down the mountain for her and I cursed all mountain guides for their strong-arming tendencies in the name of their client’s pleasure or safety. I wish I’d yelled at him. I wish I’d spotted Rikka.

The next day Hannah was feeling up to some extreme backcountry adventure toproping. We went to a bluff we’d seen nearby the campsite and I led a sweet crack I’d been eyeing. I’d put it at 5.6 but it was really a great climb, and this was completely unexpected. After toproping it, Hannah reached down, found her balls, and led it on trad. Good job Hannah. Then we moved over to a sweet chimney I’d been drooling over. I had no idea how hard it was or what lay inside, but I entered to the dragon. Turned out there was very little pro. The hard section was tucked away back in the massive chimney and involved finger jamming up a razor sharp flake, crossing through to a scary hand jam, and swinging the legs out to the left. It was run out. Quite an experience. Since we’d slept in and these one-pitch wonders were long and time consuming, we called it quits at the nice reasonable hour of 5pm and returned to camp for an early dinner. Dunbar and Will did the Exum Ridge up the West side of the Grand Teton that day. Props.

Next day we hiked out, loaded up the Prius and drove to Lander. We arrived in time to do five short sport climbs at Wild Iris. It was all short, with nothing over 50’, and beautiful polished limestone dotted with pockets and dimples. It reminded me of Kamouraska in Quebec. Charlie joined us with the van, which he had repaired, rejuvenated after some rest at home and fam time. We climbed hard the next day and I cut open some fingers on the crux of a 11d/12a. This was demoralizing, and it started drizzling, so we cooked an early dinner, packed up the newly-fixed van and Prius, and ended our climbing trip out West by hitting the road. We were driving back to Boston. Begin the next phase of our adventure!

Charlie was on a mission, and refused to let anyone else drive the van despite constant offers, entreaties, and inquiries about his level of tiredness. I think it may have been because he wanted to boast later that he’d driven across the country all on his own. At any rate, Charlie was cracking the whip (I think he was pretty excited to meet up with Leah again) and we ate a lot of miles. The night after we left Lander and before we got to Denver we pulled off at a spot on the atlas that said there was camping. It turned out to be Vedauwoo, a world-class climbing destination. Dunbar and I woke up an hour earlier than everyone else to go explore. In the mist we climbed to the top of the most prominent feature. It was like City of Rocks, and the formations were about the same height, but their structure was different. It looked like Vedauwoo was built by a giant baby playing with huge granite blocks, and after he set those blocks down they got rounded out and eroded. Lots of wide, flaring, rounded cracks and tons of friction. The next night we stayed in a soccer field next to some houses (practically in someone’s backyard). The following night we were close enough to NYC that we decided to push through the night so we could get a few hours of sleep and breakfast at my parents house.

But the van didn’t like that idea. At 3:30am it got tired and broke down in East Bumbleton, PA. Charlie and Will were in the van and Hannah, me, and Rikka were in the Prius. Charlie hit a bump and all the dash lights went out, as well as the blinkers and tail lights. We stopped at a gas station and turned off the van and the ignition wouldn’t even click. We supposed a fuse had blown somewhere, but the van was still running fine, so we decided to try and push on sans tail lights. I took the wheel in the Prius and drove close behind the van, acting as a stand in for its tail lights, changing lanes with it and signaling. Soon enough, the van began to slow and we watched in the Prius, again disappointed, as Charlie rolled to a halt in the shoulder. We didn’t even attempt a push start (it would have had to be uphill anyway). This time we knew it was a dead battery because the power inverter alarm, which is designed to go off when the battery voltage gets low, had been ringing. We thought of recharging the battery with the Prius but then decided to just get a tow to the nearest town. It turned out to be a free tow to the garage. We pitched tents in a field nearby, which turned out to be right next to a graveyard! We woke up an hour later when the parts store opened to buy a new relay, since we had looked in the manual and decided that could the problem could have very well been a relay. We also checked tons of fuses and all the wiring connections under the dash. After replacing the relay (and recharging the battery), the damn thing still wouldn’t work. The garage suggested we go to a dealer because they would be better at diagnosing and repairing an electric problem like the one we had. So that afternoon we got a tow to a dealer in Wilkes-Barre and dropped the van off. After a tearful goodbye for the van for a couple days, we all loaded into the Prius and set off for NYC. Upon reaching NYC, Charlie and Hannah continued to Boston so that Hannah could start school and Charlie could meet Leah. We dropped Will off in Astoria and the next day, after a quick visit with my Grandma in the Bronx, Rikka and I drove back to Wilkes-Barre to get the van. Rikka drove the Prius from Wilkes to Boston and I drove the van. It was yet another long day of driving. After some bro time in Boston at Patrick’s house, I decided I wanted to go hang out with Stefan and Patrick in NYC that weekend, since they had already made plans to go there. A lot more driving later, we were having a picnic in central park. After that, Rikka and I drove back to Cape Cod where we hung out with Karen’s parents until Karen got there.

In Cape Cod, Rikka, Karen, and I hung out for a little more than a week. Karen’s parents have a house down there they go to every weekend. Karen and Rikka are going to live there this fall, working, exercising a ton, and generally having a good time. During my stay in Cape Cod with them, we had a lot of fun, bonding time, and a metric butt-ton of exercise. We went swimming every day, and biking most days. Our longest bike ride was 40 miles and my longest swim ended up being about 1.5 miles! It felt great to be active again after so many days of driving. Lots of pull ups, abs, and push ups too. They whipped me into shape. My time in Cape Cod is something I’m finding hard to write about further. The beauty of that place is profound, and the salt smell is always in the air. I will remember my time there fondly. It was truly happy.

Now I’m back in New York City at my parents’ place. Tomorrow I’m leaving for the Dacks. Without Charlie, without the van, in my Buick LeSabre. I’m going on a hiking trip there this weekend with two of my older brothers and my niece and nephew. Then I’ll stay up there and wait for someone to come climb with me. Will Skinner is apparently going to join me Wednesday-ish, and Charlie the following Saturday, after his stay in Boston. Next week will be an adventure for me, and even a few days of alone time. Aid-soloing epics await me. This is the part where the plan stops. No deadlines, no dates, nobody to answer to except Charlie and the mountain gods. The fray looms in front of me and I’m going in. Don’t know when I’ll have internet access again. I won’t be exactly backcountry in the Dacks in the sense that I won’t go more than a couple days without a car as home base, but that’s far from WI-FI. So there you have it folks. See you on the other side.

Going Alpine

2009-09-09T15:13:00.000-07:00

There, in its disgusting, stinking underground, our offended, crushed, and ridiculed mouse immediately plunges into cold, malicious, and, above all, everlasting spitefulness. For forty years on end it will recall its insult down to the last, most shameful detail; and each time it will add more shameful details of its own, spitefully teasing and irritating itself with its own fantasy. It will become ashamed of that fantasy, but it will still remember it, rehearse it again and again, fabricating all sorts of incredible stories about itself under the pretext that they too could have happened; it won’t forgive a thing.

-Dostoesvsky (from Notes from Underground)

As you may have noticed, I’ve been trying to start some of my posts with an attention-grabbing quotation or phrase. Some food for thought, a quick glance at good writing that I’m reading or have read lately. I read Notes from Underground twice in college and was drawn in. The mouse, the acutely aware, gnawing, inwardly deteriorating “man of consciousness,” in the depths of despair, in the underground. A healthy dose of dark to counteract the amazing month I’ve had since my last post. This is the first time I’ve had a couple hours to sit down and pound out some words, and it’s been non-stop since then. The Wind River Range was incredible and remote, and since leaving the winds on the 23rd I’ve only had a handful of days that did not include at least several hours of driving. In the absence of a strategy for reporting all that has happened, I’ll try and succinctly give a preview of what has happened. It could take several posts, but this one’s to start off.

DISCLAIMER: This post is unfinished. I still need to add in photos and proof-read. This will happen in the next couple of days, but I figured I would throw this up until then so you could start the long process of reading it. There are some great pictures... just wait!

I just figured out how to add a slideshow to my blog. At the middle of this post is a slideshow of some Winds pictures. If you push the button in the lower right corner of the slideshow, it makes the slideshow full screen and then you can click "Show Info" to see the captions I wrote for each picture.

It all started while driving from Charlie’s house to the Jackson, WY airport to pick up Hannah. As we barreled down the straight farmland roads in Idaho in our newly outfitted van, I wondered where the open road would lead. The van, despite its 150,000 miles, was starting its late-life crisis and ate the 1,500 foot Jackson pass into Wyoming with style. We rolled into the airport and beamed as Jonathan Barlev, Lukas Filler, and Hannah nodded their approval at the van. Shortly we’d be parking it rather anti-climactically at the Big Sandy trailhead for two weeks, but not after an inaugural mac-and-cheese dinner cooked in the rice cooker (powered by the van’s battery via the power inverted) on the side of the road in the middle of Jackson. Little did we know Lauren Onofrey’s parents would have treated us to expensive and delicious Thai food at a restaurant with all the other HMC (Harvard Mountaineering Club) people two blocks away. After dinner we greeted the other HMC members: Sam Brotherton, Jimmy Watts, Lauren Onofrey, and Oleg (don’t know his last name). Altogether it was nine of us. We did some last minute shopping, hopped in the cars headed south, and rumbled the 1.5 hours of decrepit dirt roads to Big Sandy in the dark. We were excited. Nervous. We could get hurt out there.

Next day Hannah, Charlie, and I woke up, divied up the food, divied up the climbing gear and the nine of us started out on the trail the eight miles to Deep Lake. Due to Jonathan’s confidence in an erroneous reading of the map, we hiked up onto a beautiful ridge that was way out of our way. It added a couple miles and about an extra thousand feet of uphill with extremely heavy packs. It felt great to be sweating and huffing, though I think some people were a little peeved. Charlie’s house is at about one mile high, and I’d been going on long runs, so I think that helped me with the altitude, at least psychologically. We found Deep Lake, and weakly slid our packs from our backs here: PHOTO

There were granite peaks all around with plenty of sheer exposed faces. We threw up tents, got water from the lake, cooked dinner, and I grabbed a guidebook and ran to a spot where I could stare at the west face of Haystack Mountain to choose a route for the next day. Jonathan and I settled on the same five-pitch 5.8 up the west face—he would climb with Sam and Lauren and I with Hannah and Charlie. Lukas and Jimmy and Oleg climbed the north ridge of Haystack (a 5.6). We rolled out of bed at 8 or 9am and mosied over to the base of the climb. We got there at about 10:30, just after Jonathan, Sam, and Lauren, and started climbing at 11:30. This was our mistake. The first pitch was very low-angle and had great pro so I put in a few pieces, got to the end of the rope, and had Charlie and Hannah simul-climb behind me to save time, linking the first and second pitch. Simul-climbing is when the rope is fixed at a certain length (in this case, the entire rope’s length was used) between the leader and the follower. The leader climbs and the follower stays this length behind the leader, taking out the leader’s pieces of protection as they climb. In this case there were two followers. Simul-climbing is dangerous since a fall often pulls both climbers off the wall and is not caught by an anchor but only the top piece of protection. Since the climbing was easy, it was unlikely we would be relying on the rope at all; it was mainly to prevent catastrophe. My decision to sacrifice the bombproof safety of a proper anchor and belay for the speed and ease of simul-climbing is an example of the type of decision I was making all sixteen days in the Winds. It was already noon and we had the whole mountain left to climb above us, so I decided that speed was safety. Unfortunately it wasn’t enough and eight pitches later (not five, you stupid guidebook!) we got close enough to the top that we could scramble to the summit with the last scraps of daylight. Jonathan and Sam and Lauren, initially just one pitch above us, were a bit quicker near the top, perhaps because they didn’t rope up as much as we did, and were already at the bottom by the time we reached the summit.

The threatening weather and darkness tested our nerves a little bit but between the three of us we stayed relaxed enough to scramble over to the descent “trail,” not sail over the edge into the dark void beside us on the way down the “trail,” and find the single rappel needed to get down to the base of the climb. We got back to camp at about 12:30am, cooked some much-needed food and got ready for day two. The following afternoon while Haystack Mountain wasn’t looking I quietly changed my nearly-dead headlamp batteries.

After that, we learned that you have to get up balls early to climb in the Winds. Charlie and I opted for the shorter North Ridge the following day, which was actually the number of pitches that the guidebook said. I stretched the rope to pull it off in three pitches. Tricky descent-finding and a long hard approach to Haystack got us back to camp at dinnertime nonetheless, but it was a very pleasant day of climbing.

In the days that followed, I took one rest day at Deep Lake but otherwise did long multipitch climbing with arduous approaches and tricky descent-finding every day for an additional three days. Steeple Mountain, looming just above our camp, was the winner of that week for climbing quality and awesome adventure. PHOTO.

After that, it was time to move to the Cirque of the Towers to set up shop for a second week of climbing. Charlie and Hannah hiked out to the car with light packs to grab a second week of food while I loaded about a hundred pounds of personal and group gear onto my back to haul the six miles uphill to the cirque. It was easily the most weight I’d ever hiked with. I think I was a beast of burden in a previous life. I ran into Lukas, Jonathan, and Angel on the way to the Cirque, since they were doing a similar thing amongst themselves. I was happy I didn’t have to search the Cirque for their camp on my own, but as it turns out, I would have a little adventure and end up having to do that anyway! Here’s how it happened: in order to avoid hiking over Jackass Pass to Lonesome Lake, we took the climber’s trail, which veers west around Arrowhead Lake to avoid the ridiculous elevation gain of the Pass. The four of us veered left together and began crossing a boulder field. Lukas and Angel, exhausted from their already-full day of hiking, were lagging behind a bit while Jonathan and I darted ahead over the boulders. Lacking any semblance of agility, I stumbled from boulder to boulder while Jonathan shot out in front. Once out of the boulder field, I went the way I had last glanced Jonathan walking, up a rather steep looking dirt trail. We later tried to figure out where I screwed up, since this was the correct trail, and determined that there was a fork that neither Jonathan nor I noticed, yet each fork of which was sufficiently obvious for us to take without noticing we had taken it. Jonathan took the left fork and I took the right fork and neither of us had any clue we had taken different paths. Suddenly the trail took a sharp turn, not left, not right, but up. Several thousand feet later of huffing and puffing with my head down, I managed to cross Jackass Pass, the whole time thinking “man, Jonathan is fit as hell if he’s so far ahead of me that I can’t see him!” Or “how did Jonathan get so far ahead of me… I better not take a break!” On the other side of the pass, at Lonesome Lake, a few hundred feet below the area we had decided to camp at the cirque, I dropped my pack and wandered around for an hour looking for Jonathan. “Lukas and Angel sure were a ways behind me,” I thought. Finally, after an extensive search of the area, I goaded my lazy Jackass self into putting down my 800 lb pack and getting out my map. I realized that, sure enough, I had managed against all odds to accidentally hike over the dreaded Jackass Pass, clocking an extra couple thousand feet in elevation change. Who knew? As the sun set, I shouldered my leviathan pack and bushwhacked a mile or so over boulders to the higher ground that I figured Jonathan, Lukas, and Angel had successfully reached. As I topped a rise I ran into a climber I had never seen before who said “are you Gil?” Surprised but relieved, I answered “yes.” He said “Wow dude. You really do have a monster pack. Your friends are right up that way.” And sure enough they had set up camp around the corner and had some onion soup ready. It’s official: I’m a Jackass.

Before bed we planned to climb the South Buttress of Pingora tower, the dramatic, intimidating, and irresistible-looking peak right in the middle of the Cirque. We were awakened shortly before our planned 4am reveille by hail. The hail turned into snow and sixteen hours hunkered down in a wet cave and six inches of accumulation later we were dealing with severely dimished spirits. The following day we braved the snow and hiked up Pingora’s south shoulder to investigate the buttress and see if it could be climbed despite the snow. And it worked! The beautiful blanket of snow covering the Cirque and the absence of other climbers made for quite a day. As the sun regained its footing in the sky over the next few days and the snow melted, the memory of the long hours in the cave with Lukas, Jonathan, and Angel seemed like a memory from a fantasy world a long way away. Even the following day, none of the dozen or so people who were scheduled to join us had decided to hike in. I will remember these three days of hanging out, just the four of us, rather fondly. I couldn’t have asked for better cave companions. I learned that (a) Lukas knows what boys waaa-aant. Lukas knows what boys nee-eed, (b) when Lukas goes down, he goes down in flames. Also, no arms no cookie.

After that, HMC people came pouring into the Cirque. At any point after those two days, you could have asked any of the half-dozen or so other climbers camped in various places around the Cirque, “have you seen a farily large group of climbers around?” and they would reply, “Oh the Harvard group. Yeah, right over there.” And indeed, that’s how Dunbar, Jim Mediatore, Jen Nan, Will Skinner, Paul Moorcroft, Jimmy, Sam, Lauren, Charlie, Hannah, Nadine, Kevin, and George Brewster found us. We got to be a pretty large group. It was like one of those HMC meetings where all the cool people show up (minus a couple), except it was for several days and it was in the Cirque of the Goddamn Towers in the Wind River Mountains. It was awesome! There were so many people to climb with and hang out with and share stories with at the end of the day when you were done climbing.

I climbed every day, except one when I just did fourth class to the top of Overhanging Tower. It was incredible and every single climb was memorable, in both quality of rock, quality of moves, and the overall experience. I’ll list them:

1. Pingora South Buttress with Jonathan: 5.8, 4 pitches.
2. Wolf’s Head East Ridge with Jonathan and Charlie: 5.6, 3 pitches, tons of roped class 4/5 and exposure (one of the 50 classic climbs of North America, and for good reason).
3. Pingora Northeast Face with Jonathan and Will: 5.9, 11 pitches (one of the 50 classic climbs of North America, and for good reason—every single pitch is sustained 5.8 with great finger and hand cracks and dihedrals.
4. Pingora South Face, left with Lauren Onofrey: 5.9, 4 pitches.
5. Overhanging Tower West side: scrambling.
6. Pingora East Face, Left-side Cracks with Jonathan and Nadine: 5.7, 10 pitches.
7. Wolf’s Head South Face, Right with Kevin Jones: 5.10a, 3 pitches (one of my proudest leads, since it was so remote).

All of these climbs were my favorite. I’d never tested myself on such committing, sustained routes so far from civilization. They all had big approach hikes and long descents with scrambling and several rappels. I gained a lot of experience as a leader since I was either leading every pitch or swinging leads with Jonathan, who is a great climber to learn from. Here are some pictures: PHOTO.

We hiked out on Sunday, August 23rd. It was a big hike with packs and I managed to end up in the middle of two groups, so I was solo most of the way. I ran a lot of it. We bumped into Rikka on the dirt road out of Big Sandy and splurged on buffalo burgers at the Wind River brewery in Pinedale, WY while we decided what our group would do next. Many had left the Winds early and a significantly younger group remained: Charlie, Hannah, Me, Dunbar, Will, Rikka, Jimmy and Lauren. There were three cars: Rikka’s prius, the van, and Jimmy’s pickup truck. As we ate we discussed what we wanted to do for the next week until driving back to the East Coast. Some personalities clashed at the table and emotions spilled over whether to do more committing alpine-style climbs, as in the Winds, or more comfortable and accessible sport cragging (or maybe something in between). The Grand Tetons and/or the Jackson area was targeted as possibly having something for everyone, and it had the added bonus of being close enough to Charlie’s house for a night under a roof and showers. So we finished up, and set off to cross back over the Jackson pass and return to Charlie’s for a night. The van had been a little finicky starting up out of Big Sandy, and we had to push start it. Same thing happened out of the restaurant in Pinedale. We pushed, Charlie popped the clutch, the van started, and everyone in the restaurant applauded. We should have known it was because of a low battery, but we figured if we started the van it should have been recharging—after all, we’d made it down the dirt road. But sure enough, a few miles down the road out of Pinedale, shortly after a rainstorm, I watched from the Prius as the van slowly stops and pulls off the road onto the shoulder, unable to be started. What was wrong? Could we push start it? If we could, would it get over the pass? How could we get ourselves and the van to Charlie’s to do necessary repairs? Was this the end of our intrepid group of adventurers, AKA the elite mountain adventure squad?

It is here that I must end this post, for sheer volume purposes. If you have actually read this far, then you are probably my mom. I’ll leave it at that for now and I’ll write about the following week of adventures another day. Thanks for reading folks. I’ll post more soon, hopefully before I head to the Adirondacks!

The Millenium Falcon

2009-08-06T23:56:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted lately because essentially all I've been doing is working on the van. We never made it to the sawtooths, thanks to the power steering, the radio, and the air conditioning. And shopping. Shopping is like getting hit in the face with a sledge hammer, except it happens for several hours straight. Perhaps worse is hearing about someone else's shopping. So I'll save you the details and just report that Charlie and I spent a lot of time making really good purchases. Food in particular has taken a lot of thought-- we've got recipes we want to make (among other sources, the NOLS cookbook is handy), so we've figured out what ingredients we want and how long they will keep and how much we can buy of them at one time. WINCO is a store out here that is essentially god in store form. It sells everything in bulk: there's a whole section that's just big bins filled with any kind of food that you can dry out and fit in a bin. It's all cheap, usually about $1 or $2 per pound. We bought a bunch of quinoa, gorp ingredients, powdered hummus, instant potatoes, that sort of thing. We managed to get a Sam's club membership through Charlie's mom's daycare business and those prices are even better if they have what you want. We bought a 20 lb. bag of rice, a large sack of powdered milk, a 25 lb. bag of flour, lots of sugar, and cornmeal. Now you might be saying "these kids don't know anything... they won't go through 25 pounds of flour in three years!" Well, ye have little faith. We've got a great pancake recipe that is essentially all flour. And cornbread and johnny cakes. Just mix in the flour, baking powder, powdered milk and screw the eggs. You've got yourself breakfast most days out of the year.

I spent all day measuring and packaging food for the Wind Rivers in Wyoming. We're going into the backcountry to do some climbing for a week on Saturday. We'll be with a handful of others from the Harvard Mountaineering Club. After a week, we'll hike back out to the van, grab another week's worth of food, and go back into the mountains for another week. Here's a picture of the Winds:
After the second week we'll hike out, do some more climbing in the area (maybe a few more days in the backcountry, but maybe some crags around Lander too... we'll see), and then hop in the van and drive straight to Boston to get undergraduates (e.g. Hannah Waight) back to school for shopping period. This will be the van's big debut. Rikka's going to drive her car back to Boston so if it breaks down, the undergraduates driving with us can hop in her car for the rest of the ride so that they're not late to class. I have complete faith in the van.

Speaking of the van, it accounts for almost all that I've been doing since City of Rocks. The AC wasn't working. The van was made in 1986 and in 1995 they banned the sale of freon. So when we took it to the mechanic, they told us they'd have to order the retrofit kit, which converts the system to run on r134a, the modern refrigerant, and then they'd have to flush out the old freon, then they'd have to buy several pounds of r134a, plus a labor cost. It would have come out to about $400, if there were no leaks. $43 later we walked out of the auto parts store with our own retrofit kit and two pounds of refrigerant. We retrofit the valves on the evacuated system and blasted a couple cans in. We bought refrigerant that had oil in it that was supposed to get rid of the freon residue. So we did everything the shop had wanted to do for one tenth the price. But there was a leak. The system wasn't holding pressure for more than a second. We were confounded! Were we foiled? Was $43 and personal triumph wasted for some anonymous leak floating in the nether regions of our compressor? After a few minutes, Charlie stormed into the garage and announced he was going to take out the compressor and rebuilt it in order to replace all of its o-rings. Eventually I convinced him that we needed to think of other solutions before possibly doing that as a last-ditch effort. Then I found on the interweb about dyes that help you detect leaks... you put them in the system and they come out of the leak and you shine a UV light around you see the dye when it leaks out. $22 later and we walked out of the auto parts store with the dye, leak stop, and a small UV pen light. We searched for the leak for a couple hours and found nothing. We put the leak stop in, and were about to put more refrigerant in and cross our fingers when Charlie spotted a hose fitting, glowing with dye, tucked up under the condensor. It was a triumphant moment. It was a little tricky to get to, but I was able to unscrew it with my fingers because the fitting was loose. And inside, to our delight, was an o-ring! O-rings notoriously get misshapen and hard with age, and they are the first things to go and cause leaks in a pressurized system like the AC. $1 later we walked out of the toyota dealer with a new o ring. A few hours later I tightened down that fitting as best I could (it was so hard to get to... the last mechanic who worked on the compressor probably couldn't get it tight because you can't fit a wrench in there, and just left it!), and we blasted some more refrigerant into the system. Sure enough, the pressure held, the compressor started clicking away, and cool air started blowing out of the vents. The sweet, crisp, chilly air of victory. We walked away from the whole thing having spent about $80. We literally knew nothing about air conditioners when we started. It was all from the internet, the instructions in the repair manual for AC maintenance, and the instructions on the back of the can. AC mechanics are either really covering their asses, ripping people off, or both.

Charlie spearheaded the project of repairing the power steering. We had gotten a new pump from a junkyard but there was still a leak in the system. Charlie found the leak on a hose (it was pretty large), and, with the help of a tractor mechanic friend-of-the-family, managed to rip the troublesome hose out of the van. This mechanic friend took the hose down to a hose company, where they replaced the leaky section of hose with new bendy stuff. The new hose came out to $80 because it was a weird metric fitting (thank you Japanese). Some muscle and finesse later, the hose was tightened down really good and the crimp formed enough of a pressure seal to stop the leak. Charlie and Gil, 1, Power Steering, 0.

The radio cost a lot more money. We ran around looking for ways to buy connectors and adaptors to make Charlie's old radios work but eventually realized it wouldn't cost too much more to just buy a new radio. We splurged and got one with an ipod connector. We found speakers on sale and about $200 later we walked home with a brand spanking new sound system that did everything we wanted it to. We took off the panels we'd put on in the van to chase around wires just to find that they'd been chewed through by mice 15 years ago. After a lot of rewiring and clipping and connecting things, we'd managed to install the radio to the old speakers. It worked, and music started playing, and I turned up the volume and it shut off and wouldn't turn back on. Confused, we put in the new speakers and tried again... still nothing. We called the people who sold us the radio to see if they had any advice but all they told us was that it was a $45 installation fee if we wanted to have them install it for us so we didn't short circuit anything. Screw them. We didn't short circuit anything, it turned out our powerful new radio had blown a fuse in our little old van. After racking our brains and testing wires with a volt-meter, we found a little 1A fuse that had blown on the continuous power supply to the radio. The radio was absolutely fine (it has its own fuse, which was intact), so we went and bought new fuses at the auto parts store ($5). It worked great when we replaced the fuse, but we gradually pumped the volume higher and higher and bam. It blew again. So we threw a 3A fuse in there, made sure the wires weren't getting hot, and now we can crank it up to our hearts content. We mounted the speakers really well and now we can hear Josh Ritter on the highway going 65 with the windows down. Although now that we've got AC, we can keep the windows up!

We also installed new cabinets up top, and mounted the power inverter, which works so good. The van is ready for us to move into. We can fill it with gear and food and warm bodies. That old bucket of bolts made the castle run in under twelve parsecs! It's a little anticlimactic that on Saturday we'll leave the van in a parking lot for two weeks while we backpack out and climb in the backcountry. But it will really feel like home when we get back to it, and the drive back to Boston will be exciting.

Sorry I don't have photos to show you, but Charlie put the "before" photos we took on a hard drive somewhere and couldn't find them, and we'll only be taking "after" photos as we load it up. We didn't paint flames or flowers on the outside because we just weren't inspired. I'll post again in about three weeks, when I get internet again, but until then, you'll have to do without pictures of the van. For now, here's a picture of me on the opposite of an adventure, with some facial hair.

John Grady Cole and City of Rocks

2009-07-26T22:00:00.000-07:00

"The sky was dark and a cold wind ran through the bajada and in the dying light a cold blue cast had turned the doe's eyes to but one thing more of things she lay among in that darkening landscape. Grass and blood. Blood and stone. Stone and the dark medallions that the first flat drops of rain caused upon them. He remembered Alejandra and the sadness he'd first seen in the slope of her shoulders which he presumed to understand and of which he knew nothing and he felt a loneliness he'd not known since he was a child and he felt wholly alien to the world although he loved it still. He thought that in the beauty of the world were hid a secret. He thought the world's heart beat at some terrible cost and that the world's pain and its beauty moved in a relationship of diverging equity and that in this headlong deficit the blood of multitudes might ultimately be exacted for the vision of a single flower."

-Cormack McCarthy (in All the Pretty Horses, which I just finished).

Between the Jackson Hole, WY airport and City of Rocks, ID, it was all a blur. John Grady Cole, the main character in All the Pretty Horses and a total haas, might have gotten really drunk and gotten in a fight and then stolen his horses back and ridden them across the northlands of

Mexico

back to Texas. But I drove with my pardner Charlie out into the desert and started climbing and we saw this flower

Wednesday morning we dropped Jenn off at the airport and Wednesday night we slept outside City of Rocks right here:

In the morning we got up and I tried to lead a 5.10a four-star crack climb called Bloody Fingers:

I was feeling emotionally drained and it was this that led to such boldness. I took four whippers on some cams through the crux near the bottom but eventually hauled myself to the top. I pulled it on toprope but it was damn hard and I think that the world of crack is something I’m still relatively unused to. After this climb, on which I tripled the number of whippers I’ve ever taken on trad, Charlie and I knew that taking a year off of life to rock climb was a good decision.

It’s free to camp on Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land immediately outside the park, so each night we drove out and pulled off on a dirt road in some valley/plain and crawled into the back of the van to the sleep on the collapsible bed which is now there due to our handiwork over the last couple weeks. Here are pictures of the inside of the van/our home:

It’s free to camp on BLM land just outside the park, so we’d drive out and just pull off on some dirt road into a field. One night we slept near some salt licks (Charlie even ran over one to see what effect it would have on the van) and were woken by cows surrounding the van and even bumping it. The next night we went closer to the road to avoid the salt licks and the county sheriff saw us as he was driving by on the road and woke us up and told us we couldn’t camp there, so we moved and found a different spot. I mean there are tons of choices, and no shortage of space:

We used the fire pits in the park’s campsites to cook our dinners, then drove elsewhere to sleep to avoid the overnight fee. There were bathrooms and recycling, so we got the following things free: waste removal (both human waste and trash), water (there was a pump near the cliffs), climbing, shelter, and combustion for our food. We used food from Charlie’s house, so the only thing we paid for the whole trip was gas to get there and back from Charlie’s house and sunscreen. Good deal if you ask me.

It’s the desert and it was either real sunny or real stormy. The three crags we frequented— the only ones we downloaded guidebooks for off of mountainproject.com— were sort of like fins sticking out of the ground and they had east and west faces. To avoid the sun after about 9am, we would climb on the west faces. We found shade for lunch between noon and 2pm and then climbed on the east faces. We had the park all to ourselves Thursday and Friday, and on Saturday there was a massive influx of climbers who all seemed to know each other and want to blast music. This was intimidating for me but it was mitigated when after lunch we decided to postpone our next climb until some threatening clouds went away. Go away they did not and we climbed into the van as it started to pour and hail for about two hours. While we were cozy and dry reading our books, about fifteen of the intimidating tape-gloved climber Utahrds were stuck on the cliff and came trotting back into the parking lot completely soaked. For the rest of the weekend we saw people hanging out their sleeping bags, clothes, ropes, and climbing gear to dry. This made me feel slightly less intimidated.

This is an example of one of the massive rock formations we were climbing on.

We climbed on four different walls, one of them a giant spire. After a beautiful and exposed 5.8 line to the tip-top of the spire, I couldn’t take my eyes off of the Crack of Dissent, 5.10a. Although the first 10a attempt was called Bloody Fingers, our fingers got significantly more bloody on this second one, and indeed this second one made the first feel soft:

What a battle— scraping, clawing, finger jams, knuckles, tips, stemming, scumming, smearing.

We both pushed ourselves a little on this trip. Besides diving into the full crack experience, I jumped on climbs and felt okay falling on or weighting my placements when they were good. Charlie did his first trad leads: three 5.6’s and a 5.7! I’m impressed with him and how rapidly he is growing comfortable making placements on the fly and keeping his head together a few feet above his last piece.

It’s been a long post, but I finally feel like I’ve got something to write about. In fact, I finally feel like I did some rock climbing. The van works, living cheaply out of it works, and last but not least, climbing works. In the next few days we’ll be back to the doldrums of driving around buying parts for the van: we need to fix the AC, there’s a power steering leak, pick up our power inverter, etc. But this time we know what it’s for. Stay tuned for some possible reports from the sawtooths next week.

John Wayne and the North Face of the Grand

2009-07-15T21:35:00.000-07:00

We arrived at Charlie's house near Ashton, ID on Sunday night, treated to a welcoming meal of beer and pizza. Charlie's family knows how to enjoy a good beer in the evening... I think it really helps you absorb the beauty of the place. And beautiful it is: the sun sets over a far-off mountain range to the northwest and it rises over the close-by Tetons just to the Southeast. The interweb tells me the mountain northeast of us might be the Tobacco Root Mountains of Montana/Idaho. The valley we're in is the land of milk and honey-- it's verdant and moist, with tons of beefy rivers, grassy fields, and rolling hills. The wind ripples through the fields of wheat, and farmhouses dot the landscape, but sparsely. Outside, on Charlie's property, there is a big old red tractor, which I have been told I will be allowed to drive around. There is also an even older tractor that's colored completely brown with rust and runs on propane. There is an even older one a bit further out but it's essentially fallen into pieces. There are also about four old trucks, some silos, a couple falling-apart barns, some huts, and a chicken coop. Each of these structures is filled with beautiful old junk. Some highlights of items we've found on the property in the last few days include:
-Tons of old glass soda bottles.
-Giant iron wrenches (like to be used on a locomotive).
-Kerosene lanterns from the wild west.
-5 rifles, 3 shotguns and a pistol the size of a cannon.
-Two of those rifles are winchesters (a 30-30 and a 32-40 as we found out when we noobishly brought them into a gun store today) and were probably used by John Wayne (or the characters he played).
-One of those rifles was picked up off a dead German soldier in world war 2.
-All of these guns are legit old.

We're trying to find ammunition for some of these old guns so that we can shoot them. But we're being real careful, and we're not going to do anything with them until we've talked to someone who is experienced with guns and knows how to work them and clean them. Charlie has a family friend who is a fish and game cop in Idaho and love guns. In general, gun-lovers aren't hard to find out here.

People in this area of the country seem pretty committed to the idea of being friendly to your neighbors. Everybody is excited to stop and chat, nobody's in a big rush, and greetings and eye-contact are encouraged. As far as diversity, cultural richness, and tolerance goes, maybe there's less of it here, but I would guess that's just from lack of exposure. It's not too easy to get out here, and in the big cities it's probably easier to fit in and find a job, especially if you're new to this country. I imagine that hispanic people, black people, asian people, gay people and other minorities could have a rougher time out in this part of the country than in coastal areas, but I think that's less a matter of the type of people who are out here and more on the fact that these people just haven't had much exposure. Minorities out here are pioneers of their race, staking out their claim to an equal opportunity at life where their ancestors weren't known, let alone fully accepted. I'd even be willing to bet that if minority populations here had existed in proportions equivalent to those in the cities during the great historical times of civil rights progress, those out here would have adjusted a lot faster than in cities. But who knows, maybe I'm full of crap. My point is that I love it out here.

We wake up every morning and look out at the North face of the Grand Teton. It's a face that invites you to go climb it and we've been planning an attack. There are many ways up it, some hard some easy. Late July and August is the ideal season for the Tetons, and we're so close by! We're going for it before we leave the West this summer it's just a matter of how and whether we do it before or after the Wind Rivers. We're also thinking we'll head down to City of Rocks (right at the Utah/Idaho border) this weekend for a couple days, just to make sure we don't forget what it's like to pull on rocks.

For the sake of training, we're building a wooden hangboard. It's inspired by typical hangboards, with some modifications and flare. I'll post pictures soon. We've basically been spending all day working on the van, which is coming along nicely. Everything's been scrubbed clean and we took out the starter to get it checked out. It goes without the starter, you just have to push it real fast and pop it into second gear. We're ready to put the starter back in and then start cutting wood and building our collapsible bed system.

Also, for those curious: I have lyme disease. I went in to the doctor right away on Monday and told him about my bulls-eye rash right where I got a tick bite and the fever I had two weeks ago. He just went ahead and diagnosed me and started me on doxycycline (an antibiotic). Together we decided that there was no need to get a $250 lyme disease test... that he would just start treating me anyway. So there you have it, I'll be cured in three weeks.

Summary:
-Charlie's family is awesome.
-Idaho is the land of milk and honey.
-Beautiful old junk on Charlie's property, and guns.
-We are going to be cowboys and shoot winchester rifles.
-Commitment to friendliness, no locked doors out here. Possible hard time for the pioneering minorities who come out here.
-North Face of the Grand Teton. Soon. Also City of Rocks.
-We're building a hangboard and the van is eye candy. Will post pictures soon.

Wronging the Ancientry

2009-07-12T08:16:00.000-07:00

“I would there were no age between ten and three-and-twenty, or that youth would sleep out the rest; for there is nothing in the between but getting wenches with child, wronging the ancientry, stealing, fighting” -'Speare

I have one year left to get wenches with child, wrong ancientry, and fight. But dammit I won't steal, because I have been the victim of stealing.... Three weeks ago I found a tick stealing my life blood. Then the next day I found another tick stealing my life blood. The second was in my shoulder, and now there is a bulls-eye rash on my shoulder. But I'll start at the beginning.

-Tuesday, last day of campaigning in god-forsaken tick-infested Westchester.
-Wednesday, drive to Boston, sesh with Patrick, Stefan, and Rikka, irritable bowel syndrome.
-Thursday, Rikka and I go to Quincy Quarries (right) and Rikka, who had never placed gear, top-rope clean aid-solos a 5.6 at night.
-Friday, get foiled trying to do psych studies, pay for gas with Business school study, eat dinner with Stefan, Patrick, Rikka, Patty-Owen of Montana, and Max Storto, drive to Maine.
-See four moose on the way to Maine.
-Skinny-dip upon arrival.
-Saturday, swim, find a bulls-eye rash on my shoulder, Kat, Rikka, and Max try to swim across lake Moosaluc(?), Joe Tobes and I try to keep up in a rowboat.
-Pat capcizes his wal-mart quality kayak amidst gale-force winds while helping tired swimmers, we help.
-Wind.
-Oar breaks. Joe Tobes is a haas. Kat Breeden is a haas.
-Napping, food.
-Midnight Sunday morning, begin driving from Maine to NYC.
-Bro-time with Patrick from Maine to Boston.
-Bro-time with Charlie from Boston to NYC. I get away with only doing one hour of driving. Thanks bros.
-Arrive in NYC, finishing touches on packing for Idaho. Leave for airport in 1 minute to go to Idaho.
-Tonight, arrive in Idaho (hopefully).
-Tomorrow, take Lyme Disease medicine (hopefully).

K. Bye.

Devolution

2009-07-07T07:07:00.000-07:00

The dishwashing job is out of shifts for us. We are quitting the campaign job early and heading to Boston to visit our friends. Today is our last day of going door-to-door trying to convince people to give us money for nothing in return.

A lot of our coworkers at the campaign job, and especially our supervisors, are not the brightest stars in the sky. The other day I got into a "debate" against four people who were trying to convince me that humans are "devolving." They were also trying to convince me that humans are essentially the same as "apes," and that our faculty of higher thought is nothing special in the animal kingdom. Last but not least, they were trying to convince me that a diet of "natural," raw foods is healthy and would stop war and cancer, citing the fact that Bonobos, a peaceful and cancer-free relative of the chimp, only eat natural, raw, vegetarian food. One of them even told me that Darwin's theory of evolution enjoyed popularity at first, but has been largely discredited among scientists.

I am not an evolutionary biologist, so I was limited to trying to convince them of what little I knew to be correct. Like, for example, that the theory of evolution enjoyed little popularity at first but is now widely accepted by the scientific community. I also tried to cite Richard Wrangham, who arguest that the development of the calorie-hungry human brain was driven largely by the advent of cooked food and meat. I couldn't recall this at the time, but one of his points is that, while calorie intake is roughly similar for humans and chimps, the actual number of calories absorbed in the digestive tract ends up being higher for humans because we cook our food. It is these extra calories that support the massive metabolic needs of our brains, which are 3.5 times larger and much more active than those of chimps.

After talking to Charlie, I felt a lot better. He IS an evolutionary biologist, and he reminded me that there is no direction to evolution. There is just change, and sometimes traits that aren't necessarily the most useful can still get selected for, simply because of an assortment of conditions. Saying something is devolving means that a species is changing and that it is changing for the worse. I think it is not accurate to say humans are "devolving."

Anyway, we're quitting and going to Boston for a few days. On Sunday we fly to Idaho!

Six-down, Bar of Pain, Core Sample, Bar of Pain, Push-ups

2009-06-27T09:33:00.000-07:00

Those of you not interested in Charlie and my workout regimen for our time in NYC, skip the next four paragraphs.

Six-down: n V-ups, n scissor kicks, n big leg circles, n left side-ups, n right side-ups. Let n range from 1 to 6 and then back down.

Bar of pain: (on a pull-up bar) n normal pull ups, n chin-ups, n hands together pull-ups, n hands wide pull ups. n is variable, we do n = 12 for the first Bar of Pain, then n = 9 for the second.

Core Sample: as the name implies, a sampling of different core exercises. 2n sit-ups, n left side sit-ups, n right side sit-ups, n navy seals, n leg raises, n side-to-sides, n atomics.

Finish the workout with whatever push-ups you like, e.g. 35 regular push-ups, 15 diamonds, 20 wide push-ups.

That workout is designed to keep us in some sort of climbing shape while we work our two jobs. One job is for the weekends, an on-call dishwasher at a fancy shmancy restaurant at Chelsea Piers. We usually work late at night after the parties have finished, scrubbing floors and counters, stoves. I washed Ed Norton's plate the other day. Tonight I'm working 8:30pm until 6:30am.

The second job is with "Citizen's Campaign for the Environment." Your response to that should be "what the hell is that?" Apparently it's a non-profit that lobbies for environmental issue. Right now we're campaigning for support for the HR-2454 Climate Change bill that's now before Congress. I guess I agree with what we're doing, but I never felt any particular need to campaign for it. We go door to door and ask people to sign our petition and then slyly ask them for money. We do some really rich neighborhoods and a lot of people are rude and snotty, a lot of people are friendly but unsupportive, a lot of people are friendly and supportive but unwilling to donate (that's probably where I'd fall), and a few people give money. We get 50% of the donations we bring in. It's pleasant walking around, but I'd take the physical exhaustion of dishwashing, scrubbing, and lifting for 10 hours over the psychologically taxing and demeaning work of approaching strangers door to door for 6 hours.

July 12th we hop on a plane for Idaho. Being home with my parents is nice because there is all-you-can-eat food and all-you-can-handle love, but I'm ready to ditch this city for some bigger sky. Thanks for reading this hasty and ill-written post. See you next time.

The Van Cortlandt Park Bouldering Scene

2009-06-07T19:06:00.000-07:00

Our second day in New York City (Riverdale, to be exact). We don't have jobs. The construction job we were banking on, which was going to be funded by a job-creating federal bailout grant, doesn't look like it will work out. The grant decision was supposed to be May 1st but it's kept getting pushed back and the expected date now is the "end of june." Whatever that means. And it would be a bit after that before we could actually start work.

Last night my older brother paid Charlie and I to be his taxi, and today we got a few bucks from my mom to grade all of her papers (she hates it, and rightly so). Tomorrow is a Monday so we might get more people answering our desperate phone calls about work. Our job right now is to find a job. And to stay in shape while stuck in the city not rock climbing.

This is the least exciting part of our year but maybe the most necessary. Even if we only make one thousand dollars, that will go a long way. Stay tuned to this blog to hear about how you can make only a couple thousand dollars fund wild adventures for over a year. Posts in June are going to be pretty mundane, so I will keep them brief.

Skeletor

2009-04-15T08:16:00.001-07:00

They're going to pay me to do math all day, for five years. I couldn't figure that one out if you paid me. And they're going to let me start in September 2010. So it looks like things are falling into place for me logistically for the trip next year.

It's nice thinking that I'll have a place to go and settle in after being in the sub-country for 15 months. The next piece of the puzzle is making enough money to pay for food and gasoline. We need jobs with overtime for June.

It's beautiful outside. Butterflies and all that crap. Two more weeks of class. Then reading period. Then finals period. Then graduation. Then loading the car. Then Charlie and I drive to New York City. Then...

Anticipation

2009-02-24T13:53:00.000-08:00

It's February 24th. That means a lot of things are right around the corner. I'm sitting at my desk in my dorm room working. My feet are cold in my socks, my nose is running, and the chaotic fray of bare branches outside my window is swaying in the stiff wind. The upper tips of the branches are orange where the low sun still catches them, and the bottoms are a shadowy grayish-brown, suggesting the darkness on the other side of twilight. The fiery-colored tips mingle with the gray roofs and red-brick architecture. But this scene is lost on the bundled pedestrians making their way along the cold sidewalks below. Winter's kiss chaps their lips and dries the pavement they walk on, leaving a whitish residue on the cracked asphalt. It's not yet five, but twilight already colors a cloudless sky.

To me, it sounds like December of my Freshman year, when there were endlessly many winters lying ahead. But the last full month of my last winter here has begun to end. March will turn into spring. I'll turn in my senior thesis and leave it behind, the snow outside will melt. Rain, cold at first, will soak the grassless dirt. The rock will warm, plants will grow, and mountain rivers will overflow. We are on the brink. Everything is beginning to end, and commencement is right around the corner.

I started this blog to share my experiences next year, but they've already begun to take shape in my anticipation. The blackish purple of night has crept in. The artificial orange of streetlights has taken over for the failing sunlight, whose attentions are elsewhere. Shame I didn't appreciate the sun while it was here today, but I'll do that plenty next year.