Chainsaw Love

The send approaches...a feeling somewhere between circling the date of having a wisdom tooth pulled, and that near-certain feeling you get halfway through the dinner you have made that is going to seduce the object of your affection. The Driller is madly studying for the next part of his Cunthoo-- err, I mean, accounting exams, and I am done work, and so free, for awhile, at least until the RCMP gets the warrant from the judge.

As you certainly know, Jeremy Frimer, aside from being a bad-assed Peruvian alpinist, PhD candidate (he is doing his dissertation on the psychology of using climbing as procrastination) and adopter of neurotic, anti-social cats, is a route cleaner. After dealing with the Mosquito area, putting up Optimus Prime (very cool) and cleaning up the Wire Tap area, Frimer turned his attention away from his charming (and majorly bad-- err, I mean, trad- assed) wife, cats, dissertation and photography habit, and cleaned up Milk Run, adding a few pitches. The thing at 10d now goes to the rim of Tantalus Wall and as Borat would say is liek my sister, easy to get onto, and very nice, and give great pleasure.

So I met up with my friend Lorreen. Now Lorreen is one of those awesome younger climber girls, in this case 15 years my junior (which makes her ten), who is super-organised and always on time. But not on Friday. I had spent the evening playing bluegrass on Psyche ledge with a bunch of Americans, including a double-bassist, a fiddler, and a singer-guitarist. The hoedown ended at midnight because the band was preparing for a Grand Wall ascent on their final day in BC, and so I drove out to the bivvy boulder, unrolled my bearskin rug, busted out the K-Y and the 12", and prepared myself for the evening. The night passed blissfully.

The next day I luxuriated in the sun at the coffeeshop and Lorreen let me know that she would unfortunately be late. When she showed up she was grinning ear to ear. That could only mean one thing, boys...you know what it means when a woman shows up in the morning with that special smile on her face.

Yes sirree, chainsaws. Lorreen had just driven out from Abbotsford, where her current lust interest has been working on chainsaws. And them chainsaws gotta be tested before them fallers get 'em back...so my young climbing partner spent our racking session gushing about 375s, oiling up and choke adjustments. Lorreen likes this guy, cos, well...bad narrator fast-flashback...she'd gone to Smith with another younger female climber, and reported that the sport-climber boys, on seeing these two nubile young ladies climbing together, would immediately find excuses for removing shirts.

"So were you psyched about that?" I asked Lorreen.

"Fuck NO! I need a man, not a bolt-clipper."

Not only does this apply to climbing-- where obviously we trad climbers outrank you sporting types, at least in this young lady's eyes-- but more so in real life, where a guy who can fix stuff outranks an iDork, a hipster or a yuppie cunt. Anyway, Lorreen had met Chainsaw Man at a logging camp, on his remarking that her power-spraying of the underside of her engine was un-femininely meticulous, and their romance bloomed around oil changes, cylinder adjustments and of course chainsaws. She was psyched that he could fix things, he let her go climbing, and most of all that, when he DID fix things, she was allowed to watch and ask questions.

By the time this was all revealed, we stood at the base of Milk Road and I had that wisdom-tooth pulling cum shot-of-heroin feeling as I stared up at this mass of awesomeness.

OK, climbing stories are boring, so we climbed it, I hung on the long 5.10d pitch, we had to pull on bolts since the first crux was totally wet and I was blown away by the amount of work that went into this (26 days for Frimer!) and by the final "5.10c" pitch (could have been 5.11c as far as I was concerned...but the onsight always feels harder). The thing that REALLY got us, though...was the chainsawing! Frimer has done some serious work on that route ands that includes chopping down some big trees. For which he initially caught shit from a few squamishclimbing.com blowhards, but whatever...it's not like the Chief is lacking in vegetation...i mean if it were 100 years ago, fair enough. But there were ramps, chimneys and cracks all made climbable by the Husqua-Varna's tough teethy love, and so we were both warm and fuzzy toward chainsaws when we arrived on top.

Afterward I ran into Napoleon in the Starbucks, and he told me all the Valley gossip. After sending Steph Davis, bailing off the Nose due to a snowstorm, dodging tools for six weeks (take THAT, Tony McLane!) and allegedly watching The Filth get in a fight, he found a girlfriend, got a job (in Montreal), bought an SUV (I actualy saw it...it's big and grey and will make a great road-tripping vehicle, at least until that 60 hour-a-week corporate job kicks in) and was doign what we all do best...sitting in Starbucks and talking shit about climbing.

Anyway, we go for the send next Sunday July 11. Until then, the Driller is in accounting recovery at Lake Tahoe, where he will spend some time with The Filth, I am going to Washington Pass with Lorreen, and the Rain Gods will hold off for seven days. Right? Right?