Day 13

I didn't think one bit about possible bad luck this morning as I raced up to Squamish to meet-- wait for it-- Napoleon! The man has finally learned a few things about priorities. He spent yesterday pos-- err, I mean, climbing, on The Opal, which would be a great route to pose on except only people climbing Rock On can see you, and they are usually busy doing things like fighting with their significant other who is also (unfortunately) their climbing partner, or dealing with serious rope drag, or freaking out cos the end of the crux pitch is wet. (I have been involved in all of these activities and a few more). So Napoleon's posing strategy failed. Well, not quite, his buddy Neil saw him take a big one...raising the question of what exactly Neil was doing on Rock On, he having neither climbing-partner-girlfriend, rope-drag issues or fear of water...was he perhaps having a thoroughly enjoyable time of it? Hmmm...

Really you want to pose at, say, Zombie Roof (5.13a) which has become the new must-do route in Squamish, now that hard gear climbing, thanks to Sonny T and Will S and that Scottish cunt, is cool again after taking a 20-year bolt-induced vacation. It must suck to be a sport climber these days (who is Dave Graham again?) cos seriously, what is cooler-- 5.14 with 50 foot whippers onto ripping stacks of shaky blue Aliens, or 5.14 with "take" hissed at the camera? See, at Zombie Roof, you can breathe in the vapour trail of Peter Croft (50 this year and still putting up 12+ routes ground up), shred your fingers, grunt massively as you try to be a combination of Dean Potter, Spiderman and Captain Kirk from Star Trek 3 (?) with the free-solo-El-Cap-safely-in-gravity-boots, and, best of all, YOU CAN TRY TO IMPRRESS ALL THE GUMBIE CHICKS ON THEIR WAY TO BELAY THEIR BOYFRIENDS ON MOSQUITO. Or you could be Katy Holm and impress all the gumbie boys going to belay/impress their girlfriends on Mosquito (and you could do this either with your mad climbing skillz, or your amazing arms...but only if you were Katy). You sit there, suck-- err, I mean, massaging bloody knuckles, saying "yea feels soft for 13a" or perhaps "I used too much gear on that burn, maybe I'll just use the one fixed nut when I send." And the women, well, "da bitches go nutz when I walk in da room" or on the Roof as the case may be.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yea, Napoleon. So Napoleon got the first part of his posing out of the way Friday, the same day that I did some posing, err, climbing of my own at Nightmare Rock, with Jewels the Chick, of the famous Jewelz and Fergie, uhh, fame. Anyway I WANTED to pose but I was so soft, weak and timid-- like a plastic fork in piping hot pie, or icecream on a baking summer day-- that I couldn't manage anything like a decent pose, especially after watching some hardman throw himself at a 13c while being videotaped. No, I was a model climber-- scared, shaky and hanging off every piece and bolt I could find; you couldn't have taken a decent photo of me doing anything other than attentively belaying Jewels.

(Speaking of filming climbing, has anybody noticed how people being filmed while climbing don't swear? The work is all "sh*t!f*ck!c*unt-*ssed motherf*cker!" then on video it's all "ujm, urgh, HUNH! gosh, I really need to, you know, focus my fifth chakra's energy" Hindu yadda yadda rama rama harihari...at least Chris Sharma is smrt, oops, I mean, SMART enough to include himself cracking up while making one of his Mystical Reflections On Climbing in the DVD extras section of "King Lines") So like I said, I was a green toy made of Plasticene that you could have (and Squamish did) drape over a chair like a blanket or one of those idiotic Dali watches.

So anyway, where was I? Oh yes, Napoleon. Napoleon has arrangments to Take A Girl CLimbing on Sunday, so today he deigned to help do some gardening. So we hung off P1, and of course everything fucked up. Napoleon fucked up one bolt, so we now have a total of FOUR of our own bolts we need to chop on this route. You know you're a gumbie when... Then I nearly killed Napoleon with a rock. Then at day's end we discovered that jugging on my rope had worn through the sheath: bye bye, oddly bland blue-grey 70. At day's end, thanks to Napoleon, and Tony McLane in May, we have 90% of P1 cleaned, 1.5 bolts drilled, and plans to go and work on the top of the Chief-- we will try to hang that 200m static line off the right end of the High Ledge and then connect to Driller and my high point. If we do a really good job, we should have a spectacular place to pose near the tourist chicks...and a good view of Zombie Roof.