skip to main |
skip to sidebar
For two days it has been storming up high. I wait here for time to go, weather to clear, careful not to upset the cart but jonesin' just the same. People have been in touch; to maybe GO climbing but we'll see. I like to think they might protects me from the bleakness of it all. Days brisk windy the omnipresent smog blown to Texas or some similar conservative shit-hole. I have steel in my hands sharpening grinding touching hands calloused from the panel.
For I've become a rock-climber more lean my leanest in a decade or more where it all went I can't say but with my shirt off I see what I looked like (must of) when I was 28. Life seems less complicated with less baggage I do not miss the bulk I see a future in this a future of improbable lines cold chrome molybdenum smoking in the seams fruit-boots trimmed to just the very front plate or less, if I can manage it somehow...
I know it's still out there I just need to hunt for it stay lean ready for the moment of tying in that time before I connect see how prepared I am.
So here's a thought since you know where all the holds are in your gym take them ALL DOWN grind back there on a bright day then lovingly ever so lovingly grind the tool gouges out ablate if not repair some damage create a new feel in the hand because nothing rings like a new edge keenly sought or curve felt anew oh the challenge of that which does not meekly just lay-down...
Winter constitutes hardship mornings to make the face pinch hands long-dead to mid-forearm toes not seen until May 5. This year we will have more winter than most I feel and there shall be a reckoning oh yes spinster crags you shall yield not dry stone but that sheathed in luminous yellow-ocher-blue-white ice to make the fore-arms weep for the day all sinew-bone-muscle-blood melds to one.
Photo: Rob Fullerton.
I could see snow on Mt Evans and surrounding peaks from the 5 floor of research tower 2 this morning. That would be time 2 yet this time the snow had an look of permanence. Sure it will melt but where else would ice come from if not melting snow?
Mind you I know I am running out of time out of winter then again who knows for how long I will hump the sac up the hill do battle with frozen dragons more often than not stride the black maw bridging white-ice dagger-teeth. (o0h, the purple prose...) I had grunted sentiments of retiring then this summer I found Goddess stone again all bright-lichen body paint and hard-sharp edges. There were the orange slippers freakish cranking on La Panel and and Ryan who turned up to crank walking stick and all.
No I haven't done Arete of Fear may very well not my hand caught the fish-ear (exactly...) the other day and that was quite enough though that may change right-soon here. In dark early-morn' have we run Sue my biggest fan trudging out too Bella hesitant yet excited.
Tonight my hands smoked around the F2s Kayland sent shoes (YAY!) so there is a whiff of adventure about the air these days. I look to sleep so the dawn brings a day ripe for steep stone the expectation of cold ice to come. Dream sweet dreams of ice...
It is an inescapable fact of life on the Front Range that in climbing if you cant' pull you don't matter for shit. In 1992 when I first lived here I couldn't believe the stone so much in so little time. The girls were nice too...
Now the place is overrun with fat chicks hailing from Ames or Omaha or Wheatridge out-eating me 2:1 at the local pub in half the time. The stone is way more crowded but lately unbelievably the stone has been vacant near my house red yellow cool to the touch yet fierce.
Mind you Vito was set to work and created Le Panel very air I breath always a hand-ripping good time. Not that the stone is any less enjoyable only love-making sans arousal is fairly tense so having a fine pair of guns good for the soul on stone...
The hot breath of summer lingers another fucked autumn as climate change uses up the last fun bits of living on earth. Hot dry crowded like the man said; no doubt time then for ME to retire spin yarns...
"When I was your age it used to SNOW in TARGETADO (they used to call it 'Colorado' before SUPER-TARGET replaced the Constitution)", and so on...
My daughter is home from University now she has wryly observed the inability of her brother and father to clean up after themselves. I find this interesting because up until now, my wife has done all the cleaning unless she was tired and then I could not get a moment of peace without doing what she asked. We have insisted upon engaging in barbaric activities such as drytooling and lacrosse, such past times amuse us because they involve sharp metal objects that we can bludgeon inanimate objects and other men with. While my daughter, who has the patience of a saint, tries to watch her harmless television show about the repressed nature of sexuality in America I sit to her right gnashing toast under my crooked teeth, hidden by my sea creature-like mustache. But this is all in the life of an ice climber. Which reminds me, I have made a recent convert. His name is Vito. He was an innocent; had not experienced the siren pull of the ice until a jaunt into Hyalite Canyon, Montana with a boy scout troop. Upon emerging from the wilderness, he had seen the light. It may have subsided, but he came to The Den during his Spring Break. He entered THE CAVE and all hope was lost. My daughter could only stand by and watch as her boyfriend became enamored with the Black Diamond Fusion and the dry tooling walls I constructed in my gym. He left with his eyes spinning and full of wonderment. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a new addition to the force. Let us welcome Vito to the brethren with open arms.
~ Guest Post written by Simone Cordery-Cotter
Some years the ice-climbing season just vanishes a pile of cash left on a table the POOF gone. I noticed kestrels looking to roost in a flicker nest box I nailed to our utility pole surely raptors fornicating and eating every vole on the property is incompatible with mixed? Better to set said skunk up on the bar the season is toast unless the alpine bug bites, its just no good anymore...
This is good. Seasons have a way of hanging around too long. Already there are unbelievably bright orange Italians slippers in a brown box on the front porch when I get home from Neurology. They are bright, sleek and European (like my car) and hint at long airy boulder poblems on a perfect Colorado day.
After all, there must always be a few of those...
I always prefer to end the season with a project something that lends closure to the winter by giving some inkling as to how and if I have progressed at all. This past winter some guys I know hand-placed a line of bolts right of Hidden Falls in Rocky Mountain National Park an odd boulder-problem type line engineered to surmount a prow so unusual for a mixed climb.
The lads worked it a bit then didn't word reached me interlopers via top-rope had laid siege time to take matters into one's own hands.
My first day out I try to on-sight but forgot my glove bag due to last minute gear-carrying reassignments. A cold day to go bare knuckled not so much the cold as my fear of getting cut. I had my tools stacked up on the crux pretty tight but had trouble getting my body position correct to go up for the sloping key hold I tried repeatedly but to no avail.
Back in the gym the lab as it were I practiced the dead-arm crank that seemed requisite for the move so a week later Simone's beau Vito, Cormac and I drove back up loaded for bear. This time I had had two days off from work felt rested the sky azure blue beyond comprehension three lads wandering in the mountains got lost (thought we did anyway) found the climbing did HF Vito giddy with his climbing.
Last year I had Cormac with me for the Svengali send and as before I went right up making all the clips dead-armed the crux lip to set up the move which now seemed rather forthright. Just as quickly it was over stuck the ice stemmed over happy to have the screws there then we pack hurriedly haul ass back to town as Cormac has lacrosse practice.
Cormac has Vito's camera shoots B&W stills which Vito tweaks so the image above was born a man his son his daughter's beau all out in a Mini Cooper ripping around the Rocky Mountains with sacks of kit all on the last of a winter's day not the hardest day but my day, finally...
