The Hazard Chronicles

Allow me to begin with a couple of disclaimers. First, this is a somewhat rambling post and parts of it might not make a lot of sense if you are not a climber, but I do think that the lessons I learned and the emotions I express here are universal. But really, I am writing this for me, as a journal entry, rather than for you, as a reader. Sorry/not sorry.

Second, I am about to describe a climbing trip I went on, which might raise the hackles of some in this wretched environment of Covid-19. If this is you, then you can either get over it or else just don't read it. If it makes you sleep better at night, know that I lived out of my car for four days straight, with only 3 instances of human contact the whole time. All three of these were subtle fist bumps with my climbing partner after particularly good pitches. I'm not too worried, and personally, I think it's a little silly that I even feel the need to include this, as it taints an otherwise amazing trip report.

Anyway...

Before I get into the trip itself, I want to go back in time to last summer. That is when I made a decision to do something I had never done before. I was going to train. Specifically, I was going to train for rock climbing. Even though this sport has been a significant part of my life since I was a child, believe it or not, I had never actually made a concerted effort to get better at it. I have always been physically active with running and weightlifting, and with my lifestyle overall, but my strategy with climbing had always been to just go out and climb a bunch of stuff. In doing so, I got to be relatively good, and even ticked off a few hard routes along the way.

As a quick aside, this is a good place to describe climbing grades to those who aren't too familiar. Also, it is said that there are two types of climbers: Those who care about grades, and those who pretend they don't. Fact is, this is how we measure our progress, even if it is a little bit subjective. It's a brief rundown, but it might be important to understanding the rest of this post. Here is my attempt at breaking it down:

5.0-5.6; V0-V1    Beginner

5.7-5.9; V2-V4    Semi-experienced climber or fit beginner

5.10a-5.11b/c; V5-V6  The level most people will plateau at if they stay committed to the sport over several years.

5.11d-5.12b; V7-V8  Requires a significant amount of investment for most people. Some may never reach the upper end of this range due to factors beyond their control (body composition, strength limitations, mobility/injury issues, etc.)

5.12c-5.13b; V9-V10 The highest levels I've personally seen in non-professionals. For most people, they are putting in hours akin to a part-time job to maintain this degree of proficiency.

5.13c-5.14a/b; V11-V13 Climbing related activities probably take up the majority of their time. Either that, or else they are just very, very blessed in the genetics department. Many climbers begin to see professional sponsorships at this level.

5.14c-5.15d; V12-V16 Elite. The best of the best. These people aren't actually humans. They are a rare form of half-breed between man and god who are some of the most gifted athletes on the planet.

The grades, as describes above, would be for climbers in a very controlled environment like a gym or on toprope (meaning that if they fall, the rope catches them immediately). Things like leading, availability of protection, weather conditions, duration of the climb, rock quality, etc. can all have a major effects on the overall difficulty level of a climb. I could go on for hours about this stuff, but I think I've already strayed far enough away from my main topic.

...And I can already tell this is going to be a long post.

Back to my training. 

I have loved climbing my whole life, but something clicked and I decided to actually try to get good. There were a few motives for this, but if I'm honest, the main one was that I have reached an age where I am forced to acknowledge the ever-present toll that time is taking on my body. If I can stay healthy, I figure I have about ten more years before I plateau. After that, if I am lucky, I might be able to maintain another ten. Fact is though, that I know of very few people who can do, at the age of 60, the same things they were doing at 40, even if they are fit. That clock is ticking, and it only gives me about 20 more years to do some of the more difficult trips that are on my bucket list.

The bucket list, incidentally, that started with these two books:

What you are looking at are two guidebooks, both published in the 80s, of the two greatest areas in the country for long, serious rock climbs. They belonged to my dad, and both books contain several black and white pictures that I would pour over as a teenager, mentally putting myself in the remarkable positions depicted therein. At the time, these climbs were way, way beyond my ability, but I was hooked. It could be argued that these two books, more than any other influence, are responsible for my ongoing love for the sport. Although the list has been added to as I have discovered new areas, this is where it all started.

The most important, classic, and historic routes in these books are moderate by the standards of today's top climbers, but still present formidable challenges to us mere mortals with families and day-jobs. But I was, and still am, convinced that with the benefit of modern gear and training tactics, I too, could do these routes and experience a least a shadow (or even the reflection of a shadow) of what it must have been like for the early pioneers of rock climbing. And thus, the bucket list was born.

The thing is, it was clear that many of these routes required that I reach a level of climbing fitness that I had never before even aspired to. As of last summer, the hardest thing I had ever led, sight unseen and without falling, was a 5.11b. I have made it up harder stuff, sure, but on those more challenging routes I had to work the moves over and over again before leading the route "clean." 

This would not do, as there was not enough time in the day, on a 20+ pitch (rope length) climb, to rehearse each individual move. That would take an eternity! Also, due to the position of some of these moves, rehearsal was sometimes impossible without accepting a degree of risk that I simply didn't wan't to take. Fact is that even in the best of circumstances, falling is sometimes not an option. You either do the moves on the first try, or you face severe, trip-ending (or season-ending) injuries.

And so, the answer was clear. I would train. I would get strong, and get my climbing to the level where I could confidently pull things off that, before now, I had done only in my head. And I did. But (because I am me) I first I broke the climbs down and sorted them according to their particular styles. Some required long, powerful moves. Some, a subtle delicate feel for the rock underfoot. Some, a knack for specialized techniques of jamming or twisting body parts into cracks. Some were endurance oriented, and others required short, focused efforts on very difficult terrain. Some were simply head games, doing relatively easy moves but in very high-consequence situations. Each climb was special, and I had a particular order that made sense to me.

The way I figured it, I was most likely to succeed in my list if I got the ones out of the way early that required a lot of strength or endurance. These two attributes can be trained, especially by someone who is already in pretty good shape. They can also make up, in many cases, for a lack of perfect technique- something that would buy me precious time as I sharpened my skills. Finally, they are the first things to go when training takes a break due to injury or other life circumstances, and are sometimes hard to get back once they are gone.

I got a hang-board and a gym membership and started bouldering. At first, I could send pretty easily in the V4-V5 range (indoor), but beyond that would give me issues. I kept at it though, and I think the years of climbing in addition to the hang-board routines at home helped me to progress fairly quickly into the higher grades. Also, with this increased bouldering strength came an increase in endurance and route-reading skills. Looking back, I don't think I have put this amount of focused dedication into a single activity since I was studying for the DAT to get into dental school. Thus, I was happy to see, once this spring rolled around, that many of the outdoor routes that had previously given me problems seemed easy, and that I was able to start working regularly at a level that I had never been at before in my life.

My plan was working, and I was stoked for my first big bucket-list trip: A ten day affair at Red Rocks that I had coordinated with 4 different partners to climb with at different times. The routes I would do all included powerful moves with finger strength and upper-body endurance playing key roles. I was ready. As of a couple weeks ago, I was bouldering V9, climbing up to 5.11 in my tennis shoes, onsighting regularly at 12b, and working harder climbs outdoors into the 5.13 range. In other words, this trip was going to be a cake walk.

But then then Covid-19 happened and the world closed down. Along with it, came this headline:

Yep. The trip was shot. All of that hard work, for nothing. Well...not for nothing. I have really enjoyed the process, and I think some of the gains will be carried over into subsequent seasons, but the thing about Red Rocks is that it gets really freaking hot in the summer, so I definitely won't be climbing there anytime soon, and I don't know if I can keep my fitness at this level indefinitely. It's a bummer.

Refusing to be totally skunked, my cousin Jon (one of my original partners for Red Rocks) and I decided to make the best of things and do some local cragging at Little Cottonwood Canyon in Utah. Though there isn't anything there that I had been itching to do, I looked up some of the best routes in the guidebook and we set out to do them.

The thing is, the climbing there is completely different than what I had been getting ready for. To make an analogy, if I had been studying for the DAT, it felt as if I had walked into the testing center full of confidence, only to be given the LSAT along with a sly smile and a "good luck" from the test takers. It was the wrong test!

To make things worse, the climbs at Little Cottonwood are notoriously difficult and technique intensive for their grade, making it so that I didn't feel prepared for even simple routes. Friction slab? Yeah, I don't do those. At least not yet. They are described in one article as an attempt to "turn your hands and feet into suction cups on the smooth underbelly of fear." Yeah, that seems about right. But that fear sometimes turns over and rears it's ugly head right in your face. Taking a 25 foot whipper onto that tiny nut you placed? No thank you.

Oh, and offwidth cracks- described by Alex Honnold as "a wrestling match to the death with a cheese grater?" Tons of fun when you have never done them before. Notorious British climber, Ed Drummond, writes of his first experience with these nasty features: "My puffed and bloody knees, ripe from the night, softly exploded in crimson berries on my dirty trouserless legs." He is as poetic as he is accurate.

I think Lynn Hill, one of the best climbers of all time, does the best job of describing the intricacies of climbing polished granite. In an interview with Chris Kalouse, she makes the following observations:

"It’s a style of climbing that is not that popular in today’s world. People are into really hard routes, but they’re not into routes with no holds. They’re routes with holds that are steep and continuous.

               

So it’s  just a style I knew would be challenging. Just having the ability to climb at a high level and be proficient at all the technical, you know, placing gear…because a lot of the people I was climbing with were Europeans who didn’t know how to jam.  At all. Like, they climbed 5.14 [at home], but here they couldn’t do a 5.9!"

Alright, so hearing this from Lynn Hill helped me a little bit to piece back together an ego that was being systematically broken down by the beautiful yet ultimately cold and uncaring faces we were climbing on. What I would have given for something- anything, no matter how small- to hang onto. It just didn't exist though. We were constantly pushing, squeezing, tip-toeing, and twisting...but never actually hanging onto or pulling on any holds. I honestly don't think it would have made a lot of difference had I been wearing mittens. My newfound strength, especially in my fingers and hands, was useless. I was more than ready for Red Rocks- but these featureless lumps of white sparkling stone, grossly over-sized and dried up marshmallows?  Not a chance.

And so, we did a LOT of the most classic routes in the canyon, most of which are pretty moderate anyway, but we never did anything harder than 5.10d (even though a lot of people put some of the climbs closer to the 11b range). Truth is, it was rough. It reminded me of yet another quote, this time by granite legend Steve Roper, regarding hotshots (like me) approaching these climbs:

"Some would arrive with grandiose plans- and announce these to anyone within earshot. More often than not, these fellows would literally sneak out after a failure, not wishing to endure the smirking faces back in camp."

So, at least it's not just me. Right?

Anyway, the last few paragraphs pretty adequately describe my first day of this trip, and I went to bed in my car that night questioning all of my life's decisions and wondering if I would ever be up to actually doing the climbs on my list. Many of them, after all, would require that I not just learn, but master some of the techniques that I had been flailing on just a few hours earlier. It would be like training a rhinoceros, strong as he may be, to do ballet. Was it possible?

But then another thing happened. Because the climbing was so ridiculously different than what I was prepared for, and possibly because I had to mentally protect my own ego from collapsing under the literal weight of the stone, I was brought back to a place I haven't been to for a while. A place where grades don't matter any more. A place where climbing happens simply out of pure enjoyment and passion for the sport. 

There were no lists, no tests, no training. Just the feel of your own body moving in a vertical world. The camaraderie with a good partner who was sharing in this singular experience. The ability to stop and look around, even on something that was just a 5.10 (or even a 5.7), and consciously think about how cool and amazingly intricate the features were that you were on. The flow. I don't want to sound overly cliche or philosophical here, but the experience of climbing, just for the sake of climbing and nothing else, borders on the spiritual. Those who get it, get it. Those who don't...I hope you have something in your life that is to you what climbing is to me. 

Suffice it to say, the weekend hit a turning point, and went from something that could have been a huge disappointment and turned into something else that was maybe better than the original trip would have been in the first place. After all that training, I think I needed to be reminded of the real reasons I climb. Perspective, you know? 

As for the list...it will remain. I have a lot of years and I will be strong for a good long time. I can continue to push grades and limits even if it isn't on notorious routes. They will still be there next year...or the year after that. If anything, I now know where some of my weaknesses are that I hadn't seen before. This rhinoceros can learn to dance. One day. Soon.

And a word to that cheese grater...you're going down!

Here are some photos:

Jon on The Schoolhouse

Me leading The Coffin.

Me with a helmet and Jon without? I mean, we're standing on solid ground, so I get it, but this has to be a first :)

Cool thing about technology- kids can send you handwritten letters even on short trips! Thanks, Addy-O.