Head Games

So I am a little short of regular partners right now.

The Filth has a baby and lives in Chiliwack, where, when not wiping up poo or banging away at either the wife's ass or his keyboard (he is writing a novel), he strokes himself while staring at the likes of either Slesse or the Internets full of bouldering pictures.

The Driller has become a full-on corporate whore, much like Napoleon, the main differences between these two being that the Driller had a soul before he went over to the Dark (well-paying) Side, and he gets laid regularly.

The Brewer has been ski-touring. Before that, he was swamped in Minion Training. This is when your previous Minion-- a.k.a. Brew Bitch-- gets fired, and you get a new Minion, who must be brought up to speed with things like degrees Plato, sparging rates, and why not to connect the brown ale hose to the I.P.A. tap. Which adds up to not much climbing, but The Brewer generally has kegs and kegs of beer at home to compensate him.

So Butch has been bouldering and is pleased to provide free advertising for The Hive a new bouldering gym right beside Cliffhanger. Now using my sexy new used longboard and chugging a few beers, I've been riding (and falling)down there and cranking a few V19s to stay in shape. After all, this is the summer when my long-awaited project, a nude freesolo of The Nose, goes down.

The attentive reader will have noted the massive blatant lie in the former sentence. That's right, folks-- The Hive does not give its boulder problems V grades. Really!

I talked to a setter there who told me that the deal was this: when you put a grade on a problem, people typically have several set reactions:

a) "it's soft for the grade"

b) "it's hard for the grade"

c) "I can't do that, it's too hard"

d) "I can't be fucked to do that-- it's too easy, and I am training for my nude freesolo of The Nose"

I heard this and I thought back to two of my former limits-- getting into 5.10s and then 5.11s on trad. I had a trad rack for a whole year, was climbing 11+ on bolts, but lacked the sack (what women call ovaries) for 5.10. This, I thought, was the realm of HardPeople. Well, I would eventually break through this barrier at the Malamute, back when the thrill of climbing there had more to do with the routes and less with breaking the law. I sent a 10a or maybe 10b with some nice scary wet moves at the end. Anyway it turned out to be really cool, but not hard at all, leading me back to the old saw: walls are made of thoughts.

My 5.11 moment came one year later. Bones and Eamonn slept on my floor en route to Alaska one spring morning, and I was jealous as I drove them to the airport. Then The Lawyer called. We had climbing plans. He said "I'll be two hours late, and I am bringing my wife, who is getting a massage."
Argh Jesus fuck, I thought, the dumb bitch got it backwards-- massage AFTER climbing-- and anyways she was one of those people who climbed so that she and Her Husband! could "spend time together." This is another way of saying it was as much an act of masochism to watch her climb as it was for her to actually climb-- she just didn't want to be there, but she had to keep a steady eye on Her Husband!'s other girlfriend, Rock. Goodbye HardPeople, hello Puss-fest.


So we ended up at the Bluffs on the world's nicest Saturday at 1:00 and The Lawyer led up that 5.9 corner up and left of Penny Lane while The Wife belayed him. When The Wife got on the rope it became obvious that this was going to be one of those two-hour pitches. An urge seized me and I walked over to Penny Lane. I put on my shoes, and jumped onto Penny Lane. The couple racking up for it said "NO! DON'T SOLO IT! WE'LL BELAY YOU! PLEASE COME DOWN" but I went on and did my first freesolo without really thinking about it. The route's crux is a one-move wonder ten feet off the deck and I barely noticed it. On top, I slid down the other end of The Lawyer's rope while The Wife made noises about having brought the wrong shoes.

Now I am not spraying here. I have gone back to that route with a rope, and been scared. I have backed off of solos. I have felt like-- and been-- a total pussycat, and if you don't believe me, ask The Driller or The Filth. But back on the ground I realised that I'd just gone through another wall. I ran around the Bluffs and soloed every easy route I could find, then roped up for Partners in Crime, and onsighted my first 5.11 on gear. Walls are indeed made partly of thoughts, and that day I had the single best climbing day until then of my life.

So back to the gym.

Apparently they decided on this "grade cluster" system. Routes (problems) are "graded" colours, and each colour roughly corresponds to a set of grades. EG yellow is V3-V5, orange or whatever V1-V3 etc. What this does is, it gets people to

a) try a variety of moves within a colour group (grade)
b) not worry about the grade so much
c) not argue about grades' hardness or softness
d) appreciate the moves and difficulty, not the grade

This reminded me of a Croft line, where he talks about how the other Bishops bouldering adventure is-- no, not V19 highballs a la Sharma-- but the smell of sage underfoot, a sunride, and the wonder of finding and climbing something nobody's seen.

Anyway I have had a marvellous few sessions there and am very much enjoying it. No, the bastards didn't pay me to write this, though they should. Some free passes are in order. The OTHER thing I like is that they make all the holds on the prob the same colour, so, if you are a dumm giy like mee, you don't have to expend valuable energy trying to find your graying islands of purchase in a sea of dusted wall and peeling tape.

Knight to king's fourth, Cliffhanger.

The Greatest Climbers I've Ever Met

Alex Lowe once famously answered "Who is the greatest climber in the world?" with "the person habing the most fun.

I was thinking about this at about 5 a.m. one cool dark July morning at Whitney Portal. I'd been in the Sierras for a week with my dear friend Loreen, and our grand total of successful climbs was zero. Loreen had had altitude sickness and serious cramps on the Hulk. On Conness, the altitude had kicked her ass, and I'd scared myself shitless with a tiny, five-cam rack on fifty meter 10+ pitches in swirling fog and wind, 10 km and a 12,000 foot pass from any help. And at Whitney Portal, she'd developed giardia.

I felt for her but mostly I was being a self-indulgent jerk (internally). Here I was in the land of visionaries like Galen Rowell, Chris Sharma and Peter Croft, climbing fuck all. Loreen wanted a couple of days to scarf antibiotics, so I'd put up an ad for a partner and the response came froma guy camped at Upper Boyscout Lake. He had a rack and gear-- all I had to do was show up with a harness and suoes, and we'd go climb some Russell routes.

Well, I made my way up to Boy Scout and found the tent but not the climber. Now what? I wandered along the shore of the lake, a loopy green-blue eye, snowcrusted, staring at the purple morning sky. I had shoes, chalk, a shell, a headlamp, my MP3 player, and food. I walked over to the base of The Fishhook on Mt Russell, put rock shoes on, and sat quietly, waiting for the free-soloist's "nay" signal. This for me has always been the sine qua non of free-soloing: waiting for the inner voice that says "today is not the day." I can never feel a for-sure "yes" from that voice...cos, let's face it, soloing is insane...but I've most defs gotten some loud NOs. The no wAs not forthcoming, so up I went.

I'd done the Fishook before, on a rope, and wasn't worried. Croft's guide, a copied page in my pocket, also had exactly the richt amount of beta: "climb the arête" . So I did, past the obligatory rattly three-move 5.8 sequence and then fired into endless blocky cracks and bomber jams

On top I read summit register posts by people who climbed for their wife, despite their wife, in memory of so-and-so, and because, well, they could. It was 11 am and Whitney loomed. I grabbed my binocs and, thisbeing Saturday, saw ten parties at least on the East Buttress. I descended the scree slope back to my pack, and walked back to Boy Scout. It was 2 pm. A party just off the Mountaineer's Route was talking dinner. Loreen had steaks planned. But somethig drew me up and I soloed the East Face. This route has a few major air-under-your-ass sections, but your weight is on your feet, and the holds and rock are bomber. At 4pm I arrived on Whitney's summit in sunlight golden with firesmoke and empty-- no tourist screaming "GUESS WHERE I AM!" into cellphones-- except for some sociable crows.

I had an ice ax and thought about the Mountaineer's descent, but I'd heard there was a fine walking path-- the hiker's-- and toom that. Well, the first 4 miles or so, dropping along a ridge, trail threaded through quartzite and granite towers glowing orange in sunset and smoke, was wonderful. Then there was the snowfield, steep and frozen. At the first campground, somebody told me I had only 14 more miles to go. By the time I got back to camp I had been moving for 21 hours, climbedn 10,000 vertical feet, and walked about 45 km. I know, somebody like Croft would do this in like 3 hours. But I felt great: new route soloed, new trail walked, beautiful views, etc.

The next morning I awoke to Loreen making coffee and talking to a guy whonhad seen my partner-wanted ad, and who wS trying to pick her up in time-honoured tradition: by offering help for her truck, 1200 miles away but right there in her thoughts. When they heard about my day, they both said "holy shit!" and the stupid part of me was all gratified. Fuck, was I ever awesome!

Then our neighbours came over. These were two wiry, wizened Korean-Canadian women in their late 40s. They had summited Whitney via the hiking route the day before. They saw my gear and were full of questions. "You crime a rock? How a much you pay for gym?" Tea and time eventually revealed that these two were grannies, and that their families basically thought they were insane. Traditional Korean women according to them were supposes to cook for men, care for babies, and decorate the house. These two were due to take a climbing course tomorrow. "I rike to crime Moun Russer" said the elder, then asked if I wanted to go to the Vancouver gym with them.

How would YOU like to be domestic, subservient to husband and tradition, and physically inactive for 50 years of your life, and then start something so different that your family basically thinks you're insane? You ready to stick with it?
Well there you have it. Peter Croft can do it in 5 hours. Me in 21. The Korean ladies, probably never. But who's the best climber? The person facing the biggest set of challenges and going for it, full on: the Koreans b

Vancouver hipsters

The other day I was cycling down Main Street on my 18-speed racing bike, which has brakes. (See? I'm uncool, or however you say that nowadays). I passed a hipster on his bike, one of these single-speed, five-spoke-wheeled, impeccably colour-coordinated affairs. The guy had the tight pants, underwear showing, full beard, T-shirt with band logo, mid-'80s glasses, etc.

We were both headed for the liquor store, me for my daily bottle of Jack Daniel's, hipster for his twelve-pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon. I bought my bottle, stepped outside, sat down outside McDonald's, and took a massive swig. Suddenly 10:00 AM felt good. Hipster emerged, un U-locked his "whip," stuffed his U-lock into his tight pants pocket, and rode off. I wondered how he was going to skid-stop his fixie with a case of beer under one arm.

At this point I thought of a conversation a friend had with her bike mechanic:
Sheena: How do hipsters stop if their bikes have no brakes?
Mechanic: They don't-- they just keep on being hipsters

Then I realised, he wasn't riding a fixie-- it was a single-speed bike with f+b brakes. I went home and on a whim googled the band name on the guy's T-shirt. (I am always on the make for cool bands to download and then not listen to). The band in question was, it seems, an alt-music (whatever that is) parody act.

So...let me get this straight. He rides something that looks like a fixie, but isn't. He buys PBR-- the cheapest of American beers-- which isn't the cheapest of Canadian cheap beers (that honour, at least at my local liquor store, goes to Cariboo). He dresses hipster, presumably to show how cool he is (or is not, which of course is even cooler). The guy, I thought, is like a copy of a hipster, signalling membership in the tribe via proper purchases.

Then I thought about his T-shirt, and got lost in the many levels of irony involved in advertising your love of a band that made fun of you...and realised, OK, this is meta-hipsterdom. I am no longer smart enough to figure out-- or to even determine whether or not it is WORTH figuring out-- whether or not this is real hipsterdom, or a copy, or a lame imitation, or majorly meta. Hipsters, you win.

Beware the Brit

This entry should basically be a warning: beware of old-school Brit trad climbers.

I have been trying to "get on the hill" with Squamish hardman Kevin McLane for years. His son, former hair model and now rock-climbing guide, Tony, and I have had a few days, but I've always wanted to see what McLane pére was all about.

While I like making assumptions and generalisations, I LOVE stereotypes, so I went right ahead and assumed that McLane Sr. would be a bad-assed and fearless gear-minimalist with more black humour than shiny new cams. And, after years of are ya free Sunday?s, we finally met up in Squamish at Napoleon's Favorite, where we began the day as all good climbers do, by getting stupidly overcaffeinated while the once-dry pavement outside became slowly darker with invisible mist, and people of every sporting persuasion dropped by to avoid the...mist? rain? cool?

McLane and I spent three hours avoiding the rain, then finally said "well fuck it!" and headed toward the Squaw, or whatever it is now Natively Correct to call it/her. Loaded with a ridiculously small rack, a few bieners and 5 slings, plus a Barley topo that looked like black spaghetti drooled by a retarded abstract artist onto a crag picture taken by a blind photographer, we ambled up.

At the base of The Sleeping Native Woman, we found a plethora of black bolts heading up into some oddly-bleached-looking fine cracks. We were in the general area of Straight Outta Squampton, White Feather etc, but since Barley's topo looked like a schizophrenic's Cubist rendition of the Squ-- oops, I mean, the Nobly Reclining Native Goddess-- we hopped on the easiest-looking thing there.

A mere five minutes after roping up with McLane Sr., who has nailed the Grand, done early FAs in Yosemite, climbed grit when there were only pins, hammers and balls for gear, and most recently celebrated his 60th birthday by doing both the Grand Wall and the Test of Metal in one day, sucky me was whining like a puppy as I crammed a left leg into a 5" offwidth and pawed with my right at rain-greased granite.

McLane Sr.'s largest cam, one of those Wild Cunt blue things, rattled around inside the off-wdith flake. The cam was like monogamy for a Mormon sex addict (and they are legion...Utah has the highest rate of porn downloads per capita in the U.S.): it impressed Mom wen you told her about it, but it wasn't nearly enough once you got into action. I whimpered and grunted and then mantled to something safer.

McLane Sr., it turned out, was doing a Buddhist thing and reducing his gear-stash. No draws, long slings, or chalk...oddly like back in 1970, when his roadie self discovered the joys of fear, pain and near-death and abandoned the world of Spandex, speed and speed. His climbing partner-- with whom young McLane was to do some hairy shit in the Alps and the Valley, back when hemp ropes, Whillans harnesses, glass wine-jugs and headbands were de rigeur-- had one rule about gear: one brought six pins, six slings and twelve bieners on a route. Period.

Kevin did the 6th ascent of the Becky Chouinard in 1971 or so. This being early in the game, beta came from Fred Beckey, who they found in a bar in Jasper, waiting out the rains and seducing the waitresses, one per night. Beckey's beta-- written on a napkin-- included three sentences. One each on how to get to the Bugaboos, how to find the Howsers, and what the route looked like. It took them 1.5 days and they had 6 pins, 6 slings and 12 bieners. 30 years later to the week, McLane repeated the route with Mark Piche, who at the time of the FA had been a swimmer in Papa Piche's nut-sack, in 9 hours...but with a rack that weighed three times as much.

(The most remarkable part of this story is not the climbing, which was balls-out for its time, nor the micro-rack, nor the fact that Fred had by this time slept with half of the waitresses in Jasper, but rather that all the waitresses were still keen on serving him beer, much of it free, and none appeared to be fighting about their conquest.)

Hardman set off up our second pitch and styled the wet slab, and then the no-gear wide crack, with only the occasional huff and puff. When I followed I noticed an enormous gap between his second piece and his third-- like 10 meters-- and again shuddered. We rapped off this pitch and into the neighbouring route, and I led a fine 10- pitch, and then, darkness approaching, we rapped.

OK the man is a full-on hardman...but the ultimate evidence for this had come to me some years ago, when young Tony told me that his Dad and Mom, even after a divorce, got along splendidly.

"That's cool," I said, happy to hear that young McLane wasn't in the midst of custody battles or arguments over finances.

"Yeah," said Tony, "they get along great! Actually my Mom is getting re-married and my Dad is going to the wedding. Err, no, wait, he's not. He WAS going to go, but he got invited to go to the Bugs." You can take the man away from climbing...

So! McLane Sr is a bad-assed and largely fearless gear minimalist. Be careful if you get the invite to climb with Kevin...he'll want half the gear and twice the runout you do...at age 62.

Ed Spatt 1963-2010

Ed Spatt died in August, of lung cancer. That a guy who'd spent his whole life in the mountains, and probably smoked less than ten cigarettes in his lifetime, should die of lung cancer, is one of those fucked-up things that nobody can really explain.

I climbed once with Ed, a slab route on the Apron. I don't remember the route, but I do remember that it was incredibly hard (but Ed, who'd said "I'm in pretty lousy shape, onsighted the 11+ pitches), and that Ed's enormous climbing shoes stunk like sun-warmed dumpster when he peeled them off on Broadway. He was my physio. I last saw him in February, in the gym, revving up to train after finishing radiation therapy.

So I drove yesterday in the rain to Squamish for the celebration of Ed's life and I'll pass on a few of the stories that brothers, parents and friends passed on.

Ed was born in Bolivia. Red-haired and gangly, he wold respond to locals' stares by saying "Soy boliviano, pues!" and smiling. On arriving in Canada at age two, he quickly figured out that when he couldn't get what he wanted (usually more food), he could say "you're discriminating against me because I'm Bolivian!"

Ed grew up with two brothers and, well before he was old enough, he was doing adult stuff. One day a horrid stench came from his closet. On investigation, it turned out that young Ed was brewing beer in secret, having asked his mother, who'd said "absolutely not!" He was in the mountains early, hiking and skiing with family and climbing Slesse by age 16. Ed's teen climbing adventures also included beer-fuelled night-time ascents of the Lion's Gate Bridge towers and various UBC buildings.

Friends and family remembered Ed as somebody with a serious cholcolate habit, an infinite appetite for both food and the outdoors, and as somebody who, no matter how bad things got-- and they get pretty bad in the alpine sometimes-- never complained.

One day in the late 1970s after a first ascent in Squamish, Ed and the two first ascentionists were sitting around the top of the cliff. They were thining what the route should be called. A Beatles tune? A Carlos Castaneda character? Ed, staring across the channel at the fast food on the 99, said "man, all I can think about is burgers and fries!"

Greg Foweraker told about Ed's appetite. At a popular local place in the late 1970s, it was all you could eat for $5. Ed would eat a head of lettuce the night before to try to expand his stomach, and often managed to get down four or five platefuls. Years later, when Peter Croft (another guy with a legendary appetite) returned to give a slide show, Ed put his hand up and asked Croft "Hey, is it really true that you only ever got two plates of food at the all you can eat place?"

Ed qualified as a teacher, and, after teaching physics and math for five years, quit, because he was bored, and became a physio. He often wondered why people retired at the end of their lives, since that was when you'd be old and worn out, and unable to do fun stuff like ice-climbing and bike-racing. Ed wore red pants and red jackets. Ed needed food and would go hypoglycemic. More than one climber said it was dangerous to climb with a sans-breakfast Ed.

Rachel Stenberg told about kayaking with Ed and a group of people in the Charlottes years ago. One of them was into the Zen of rudderless kayaking, and when one day injuries prompted kayak-shuffling, superfit and superconfident Ed ended up in the rudderless kayak. And, on the trip's calmest day, in the middle of the sunny ocean, with nary a wave in sight, Ed managed to dump the kayak! After a letter-perfect ocean rescue, Ed was reinstalled in the rudderless, and instead of cussing the kayak, told the rescuers that he was happy -- after years in boats-- to have been shown how to pull off rescues properly.

One partner told of Ed's first attempt at Penny Lane. Ed whipped, ripped a piece, and stopped, a few feet above the ground, hanging upside-down, an ear-to-ear grin splitting his face. "Pretty intense, huh?" he said, and got back on the horse. Lots of people, including Ed's girlfriend Nica, told about how, last summer before his death, even when he could no longer walk or talk, Ed's enormous smile brightened his hospital room.

Food, food, food, beer, wine, food, mountains, food, biking, oceans, his friends, food, math, his brothers, food, his parents and relatives: Ed loved 'em all and made all of us smile. We'll miss you, tall man.

May there be a fucking MASSIVE chocolate buffet wherever you now are.

Into the Great Wide Open...

I knew exactly what was coming up, and I was stoked. Tomorrow, Oz and Hobbit Book: perfect Tuolomne granite, six pitches, a super mix of bolts and bomber gear climbing. The day after, we would climb the Harding Route on Mt Conness: ten pitches of 5.9 in a spectaclar position, ending at 13,000 feet. The good Peter Croft gives both the maximum number of stars.

We pulled otu of town, loaded with food, booze and gas, and would our way up to the Sawmill Campground, where we hauled our tents to the site and swatted bugs. My partner, The Captain, was however oddly quiet. As we finished set-up, I asked him what was up, and he said that his Mom had gone to hospital with some as-of-yet undiagnosed ailment. He was worried.

The next day The Captain led us through the first two pitches of Oz, and I launched into the coolest-looking crack I'd ever seen, outside of the Split Pillar: 40 meters of overhanging dihedral, perfetc hands, and feet to take the edge off. And as I placed my third cam, it hit me.

Suddenly, I couldn't move. My right arm, jammed into the smooth clean crack, stiffened. My legs felt frozen, and yet my feet stuttered and skated on the knobby stance. My left palm dripped with sweat.

"What's up?" yelled the Captain.

"I, uhh--" came out before I realised, I had no idea. I had bomber gear, loads of it. I had no chance of hitting anything like the deck, a cam at eye-level, loads more gear, a bomber stance, and seven years experience climbing exactly this sort of route, mostly at harder grades. I was fed, rested, fit and psyched. And I was totally fucked.

Long story short, I downclimbed and down-aided back to the Captain, and could not explain what had happened. I was paralysed, scared shitless, and what was worse was, there was no reason for this.

We bailed. At the ungodly hour of 10 AM, we arrived back in the campground, and I sunk into my chair, dazed, a sick hollowed-out emptiness inside me, and yet I was oddly glad that here I sat, on a perfect climbing day.

The Captain went to town to use the phone, and I self-examined. It bugged me. WHAT was going on? I had FREESOLOED the grade I'd bailed off, for Christ's sake! Don't get me wrong-- I am as chickenshit as the next guy. I have bailed off alpine routes, ski tours, boulder problems and all kinds of climbs because I was worred about either objective hazard or my own skill. I am no stranger to wussiness! But this one...this one didn't provide me with an answer. WHY?

The Captain returned and said "bad news."

His Mom in Vancouver had been diagnosed with cancer. He might have to bail from our Sierras trip and go home. I told him I'd drive him wherever he needed to geta bus or a plane. He said "let's see how I feel in the morning, but I gotta warn ya, I might not be into this."

At 4 AM, the Captain said, "might as well" as I shook his tent, and later we trudged through mint-scented pine forest and crunched up onto a snowfield, and won the ridge crest as the sun dawned, pale and clear, into an icy still blue sky. We made our way down to the start of the Harding route. The Captain geared up and led. After placing two nuts, he stopped, hung, and said "I can't do it," before backing off.

Now if you are going to bail, the base of Conness is a great place to do it. Below us stretched a talus field, trees, and Tuolmne, and way out West in the haze was what might have been The Valley. The Captain sat, totally still, eyes closed, sweating. I drank in the still and the quiet, and my mind returned to yesterday. Still no answer.

It being obvious that we were not gonna get up the Harding Route, I wondered about the West Ridge. Croft gives it four stars and says that, outside of the first ascent of an 8,000 foot 5.11 route he did, in one day, with Conrad Anker in Pakistan, it is his favorite route. The Captain and I loaded the gear into the packs, and ambled off to the west. I wanted to see the ridge.

And beautiful it was...a low-angle start, then a cleaner and cleaner, and steeper and steeper line, on beautiful golden granite.


We sat on a lovely clean boulder and munched lunch. And suddenly the Captain stood up.

"Fuck THIS," he said.

"Wha?"

"Let's climb this."

"Are you--"

"Yeah."

I didn't ask any questions. We put on rock shoes and chalk bags, and started soloing on perfect cracks, with endless incuts everywhere. After the arch-bridge-- the part where Croft writes how he tried to make himself feel light-- we figured we'd done about a third of the route, and roped up. I handed the Captain my Tiblocs, and when he'd installed the first started climbing. Cussing not having brought the gri-gri, I decided, what the hell, u8ntied from the rope, and attached myself to the rope using only a prussik.


Here's a pic I scavenged online...what the route felt like.

With 20 meters of rope trailing below me, I followed the Captain as the rope snaked up into the sky. We did the last two-thirds of the route in three long simul-pitches. The rock flowed, the air was warm, the entire Sierra spread out below us, and at times I waved my right arm over hundreds of meters of still air off the side of the ridge. On top, I found myself high-fiving the Captain with a shit-eating grin on both our faces. The whole route must have taken an hour.

Wordlessly, we picked our way down the descent, glimpses of El Capitan and Half Done away, way DOWN, in the hazy distance.

Back at camp, we sat amongst the mosquito wail in the sun, and again the Captain said "fuck it."

"?"

"I'm not going home. You know, my Mom has cancer...but they can't do anything till tests are done. I could go home and worry, and do nothing, or I can climb."

Two days later, I began shitting myself on Sun Ribbon Arete when the only gear in the crux was a blue Alien (which is nobody's friend). And then I realised, again-- I was so worried about falling (onto an Alien, and then three bomber nuts, in utter safety), worried about things not going as planned, that I wasn't paying attention to what was right in front of me.

And then I understood. I had known what I was going to do, four days ago. The Captain had known that his Mom wouldn't get cancer, and then he'd KNOWN he'd have to leave his trip to see her. We were both wrong.

This was the real gift, it turned out: the totally unexpected happened. Failing is a part of climbing...and so is failing when the possibility seems remote. Emotional pain is part of life...and so is looking it in the eye, feeling it, and dealing with it. We got handed what we didn't expect, our plans changed, and what did we get? I stopped worrying about the "causes" of my silent, day-ending freakout. The Captain stopped pointlessly worrying about Mom. And the Universe threw in an awesome route-- the West Ridge-- we hadn't planned on.

I swung my right leg out, toed the nubbin, reeled in the sidepull, sunk my hands into a nice deep crack, and smiled.

Butch Makes Lemonade (2)

So there I was after my second day of climbing, wandering around the campground, looking for partners. My very limited set of options-- 5.8-- was used up. I now needed to step up, or rope up, and since I am WAY too much of a wuss to step up and solo some 5.9, I went a-partner hunting.

Now you gotta love Applebee Campground. You thought that the hottest people in the world were in porn films, or perhaps on America's Next Top Model, or maybe in Napoleon's new SUV, or perhaps lounging about the Gossip Girl set? NOOO! The hottest people in the world are at Applebee Campground, and when the daytime highs are 25 Celsius (that's "freakin' hawt" for you Yankees) what you get is people stripping down to the essentials: clothes that reveal bellies and forearms, and a chance to rock the coolest possible headwear. Ladies and gents alike stood around, sat around, even strummed around-- one guy and his girlfriend, who were not climbers, had hauled in a guitar, some comfy chairs and a mean stock of vodka, and sat while their buddies climbed, wailing away, even pulling some major rock-star moves one evening when dry lightning and Twi-hard clouds brooded.

There were so many sexy people around that Butch, your humble narrator, couldn't keep it in his pants. Especially when his spraying Coloradan-- Sprayradan-- neighbours were joined by more Coloradan buddies, this newest batch of whom upped the spray ante by spraying about not mere All-Along-The-Watchtower-esque 5.12-, but 5.13b! ooooh! They turned the spray into a downpour when one of them told me that "yeah, it was a couple of Germans who did it, so it might be easier than 5.13b." Pretty good, but not anywhere near as good as

THE GREATEST PIECE OF SPRAY I HAVE EVER HEARD:


(posted on the V.O.C. bulletin board after a certain climber, well known to the now-14 followers of this blog, returned from their first trip to the Valley)


"I WENT AND LOOKED AT ASTROMAN. DIDN'T GET ON IT. BUT I THINK IT WOULD HAVE GONE REALLY WELL."

After my chat with the Sprayradans, I ambled down to the Smoking Spaniards. En route, I passed the miniature tent which contained the California Girl and her husky boyfriend. I had been dutifully eavesdropping outside their tent every night, waiting, penis in hand (the Sprayradan truck in the Porcupine Lot had had a massive one drawn on it), for their sex sounds, which turn me on ever so much, but none were forthcoming. (I later found out that this was because I had forgotten to remove my earplugs before creeping around camp, which also accounted for the odd breathing sound i constantly heard the next two days of climbing, and how my partner-to-be would resort to sign language and thrown rocks to get me to haul the rope up.) The husky Yankee lay about, reading George Orwell. I said to him "weapons of mass destruction" and he said "yup" and I left it at that. The girl was nowhere in sight.

The Spaniards were gone, off to do the Becky-Chouinard, having left behind only the older guy's sick girlfriend, who complained about la grippe and her dolor de cabeza, and in true Spanish style threw cigarettes and whiskey at the virus. The Koreans were eyei9ng their new route-- now four pitches long-- with an array of binoculars, while one of them fried Spam. I then finally hit the jackpot-- I met one Nelson from Nelson, BC, and we had soon hatched plans for doing the Super Direct on Snowpatch.

OK now Butch will S.T.F.U. for a bit and show you some pictures.


This is Nelson leading P2 (5.10c?) of Super Direct. It was somewhat mossy...so...we (I) cleaned it. I spent about two hours seconding this pitch, and when I was done, an enormous shit-stain of moss, dirt and rocks spewed onto the glacier below the route, much like my computer screen drips with my saliva when I spray about my routes.


This is the route base when we finished. MMM...but seriously, now the AWESOME P2 is clean


Here Nelson follows P5. Awesome position and very easy chimney/stembox climbing.



This is Nelson ont he scary (but cool) P6, which has a hair-raising traverse, amazing position, clean rock...you know, all of the good stuff you expect of the Bugaboos (except there was no beer stashed on top).


Here, Hardman Nelson follows me on the final pitch, an epic of weird moves, traverses and end-of-route surprises.

Well anyway, we had a super day up there on Super direct-- if you are in the Bugs, and there aren't enough smoking Spaniards or Sprayoradans in camp to entertain you, and you don't want to do Sunshine Cracks AGAIN, do this route. If only because Peter Croft (and me) have climbed it, so you can be like him (and me).

Back at camp, the young lady Spaniard continued to cough and smoke away. The Koreans were now 6 pitches off the deck, tink tink tink, and as I lay me down to wait for my espresso pot, I closed my eyes for a nap, and the Yankee Girl in the mini tent ambled over and said "I hear you're massively badass, plus I was checking out your rack earlier and you're totally hot, so would you like to hook up tonight-- I'll do anything you like [at which pooint I imagined having her go to the food locker and dig my sugar out of my dry bag]-- and go climbing with me tomorrow?" I then woke from my afternoon nap, but did in fact find the Yankke Girl there. She launched into a tirade about her lazy-assed partner, asked me if I had plans, and I told her sorry, since I was, like Elizabeth Bennet would have said, "firmly engaged," at which point her face fell.

The Sprayoradans returned from their day-- "just some twelve-minus, we were tired"-- and then began spraying about tomorrow's big day, where they were sure to onsight the 13- (err, they mean, 12+) and show the Germans what was up with grades.

The Ground Crew guitar player had created a song. We sat about and chatted awhile, and discussed music. I, being the old fart in the group, said that I was amazed at how much good music was out there, and what a huge variety there was, and how many artists were selling themselves via the Internet. The guitar player, Dustin, said, "yeah, and a lot of them are really creative!"

"Like who?"

"Nickleback. Pushing the aesthetic limits."

"Yeah. First, the singer was blond, with wavy hair. Second album, even blonder!"

"Totally."

"Third album...even blonder, a-a-and he STRAIGHTENED it!"

"Yeah man. THAT is innovation."

On my final day, Nelson and I went to do West Side Story, which was pretty cool...except opposite us, on PAddle Spray Direct, were yet MORE Sprayoradans, who went on and on about what a bummer it was that they were climbing only Paddle Spray, and not The Power of Lard (5.14R, WI7+, M13, A5+, V13, VI). We enjoyed our day, and watched the leading Sprayoradan grunt nd heave through the crux of Paddle Spray. "That," said Nelson, "should have looked easier" and we both laughed. The hardest thing of course was the rappels: since McCrowd Arete shares raps with WSS and Paddle Spray, it was a veritable international village of rap techniques and knots and waits.

Back at camp, I soaked up the view, brewed more coffee, fantasised about the Becky, said goodbye to the Yankee Girl, the SPaniard Girl, the Sprayoradans, and went to bed, hoping that Lisbeth Salander would finally corral the bad guys.

And now it is time to head BACK to the Bugs...I am hoping that over the next four days I will at least get to check out some more international accents and cooking styles.