Sharpening Steel

I am sharpening steel as of late, ice screws, ice tools, fruit boot plates, the file has been busy by the fire sending filings into the abyss. Here in CO there is but a brief, torrid respite from cold, oh I how I immensely enjoy the red-dawn forays out back in the nude to piss out last night's spirits the day already thick on my sun-browned skin. Now the wheel turns a great cosmic retribution for such sybaritic acts the sun fleeing south, away, a great pagan reckoning to come. The solstice looming birth death renewal days to grow longer again in freezing cold assertiveness...

I run from my car to work, to RC-2 across the parkway golf-course over the campus panting in the elevator like some alien being past the warm pastries at the cafe' up to the fifth floor the mountains silly beautiful with their cake-frosting snowfall helm, is this for real? Should really be getting paid for this?

I smell the winter "it beckons" so to speak my hands frozen so I could hardly work this morning so I press on smitten by the beauty of it all. When the post-docs arrive they are sullen will close the blinds on their side but I leave mine gawping for I see snow that one day will no longer fall when the world is reduced to excrement by the crush of humanity and christian investment bankers in their shit SUVS.

Steel begets steel for I am looking for bite-pump-terror the transfiguration one more year OH-F*CK-PLEASE just one more year one more fish one more 24 year-old woman writhing upon me, please f*ck please...

Good things may come to those who wait but good things are more likely for those who get up early do their pull-ups and bother to chat-up, I'm sprinting for a finish line that is really the edge of a cliff a void black infinite beyond open my arms tumble feel a rush of air then nothing the ride over but no one there to even recognize said fact...

This week the storm come the mother of all storms that ushers in the horned God Goddess in descent still I pray for that rotation the end of winter resumption of green the promise of grandchildren I old and broken only stories to tell of a time when the earth held ice and cold life not obliterated by the crush of humanity still wild creatures and places.

Tell us grandpa what did snow look feel taste smell like?

The Great Beyond

I was flipping through my Facebook feed last night there amid the usual personal drivel was a post by Micah Dash. For those of you unfamiliar with the illustrious Dash he is/was the archetypal Boulder yuppie climber who perished under and ice-fall over the summer.

Accidents of course happen. It has been my observation that such accidents are more prone to happen when folks go off seeking fame and glory with a cameraman in tow then the onus is upon them to proceed instead of saying FUCK THIS when conditions are sub-optimal or just downright suicidal. In this case as with the late great and woefully uninsured Alex Lowe climber(s) and cameraman were buried alike. Nobody of course thinks they are going to die except of course me who knows he's going to die any damn day all it would take would be a moment of inattentiveness on I25 and some crack-whore subdivision mom in her Honda Pilot yacking on her phone to her life-coach/yoga guru/colonic therapist will plow right into my Cooper forever snuffing out my cantankerousness.

Having had a bevy of tins of strong ale I wrote on his (MD's) page "holy shit dude yer dead..." as if from beyond the River Styx this person still sought fame and recognition. Mind you I had never even met or heard of this person before they requested me as a friend then I come to see what a famous personality they indeed are which is why I assume they befriended me in the first place. I should note that good men and women get killed nearly every day in those far-flung shit-holes Afghanistan and Iraq, for what purpose I cannot say. Yet they are fellow citizens some of whom I actually met while practicing down by Fort Carson soldiers there with families and worries off on 12-15 month deployments where they are not exactly always welcome yet they saddle up and go anyway from a sense of duty or out of a need to pay the mortgage.

The point being that if you walk around Boulder you'd think the wars existed on another planet everyone being so health conscious and self-absorbed. When there was a draft young men were conscripted and sent off to places like Vietnam which maybe cured them of the urge for subsequent adventure travel. Now that there is a privileged leisure class freed from such societal obligations with nothing better to do but recreate and go on luxury vacations by way of a profession we are supposed to feel a deep sense of grief when such a holiday goes awry.

If I actually knew these people that might be the case my own feeling that there is a certain amount of nose-rubbing into the fact that these folks have such a cool life being featured in one catalog or magazine or another aren't they just so amazing? Then there's the fact that I HAVE known some of these people although not this particular bloke which leads me to think to some extent that they might have got their comeuppance for a lifetime of questionable antics whilst being rather smug up until that point.

So we are all free to do, and write, whatever we wish. By inviting me to be his "friend" he invited me though unintentionally to comment upon his demise, the keepers of the flame may be offended by this and so they may but I too take umbrage with their insistence upon lock-step adulation. I can recognize the need to grieve as I have for parents and a lost child but revisionist deification I have little patience for.

For no one is getting out of this life alive, of this I can assure you all. Yesterday Susanne popped open a bottle of red wine we were saving, "for what?" she said and so we guzzled the warm drowsy red fluid in the last warm sun of 2009 a sun which soon slid behind the mountains with the ensuing autumnal chill seconds behind.

I must have slept soundly for just before 7 (a luxury to sleep in so late for me who is usually up before 5 out of the house before 6) I awoke to the dawn illuminating tall yellow grass on my property. A fresh day full of potential, all I ever really hope for...

The Buffalo Commons

The wolf is back, so much so that red-necks shoot them in Idaho for a fee, good...

The Buffalo cannot be far behind, supplanting European cattle once for all, pull up the fences, bulldoze the SuperTargets, every man women and child gets one buffalo per year, hippies can sell theirs if they wish only to eat green burritos, let them...

I foresee the plains as they were, wild, lost, uninhabitable as they again prove to be, the wolves among the herds, humans permitted to come and appropriate their own, they must. My dog LIKES Buffalo, Bison, the gristle I can't chew she inhales, that's what dogs evolved to do, not go to doggie-day-care, crikey...

End of Days, End of Empire Part1

Summer is is wrap cold hard rain blew in from the west this morning driving me in tattered Italian robe back into the house. Susanne is in England with my global phone so Cormac and I are bachelors-in-residence, all quite groovy with Saturday hot sunny up on the Carter Lake boulders. Ryan came back after taking the cure up in Sheridan having gained weight & color his left leg looking rather worse, his mishap on Hallet's in the spring of 2008 being one of the more insane accidents I knew of personally.

Sunday my bitch was berserk from her heat so off we went for a 40 minute trail/road run the day warming upon us. That afternoon Zack avec Ryan appeared for a cave session with Lucky Dube and Bob boomin' in the background. My feet are a ruin so I climbed without shoes: the bigger the moves the better. I had a good session until Zack suddenly decided to try and swap-out his wasted Monsters for my set hanging there, my set a gift from the lovely Betta Gobbi some years back.

Dude, do I LOOK bigger than you?

Autumn thus begins the horned God ascendent Goddess descendent, I am eyeing a massive patch of mint out back mint jelly in mind a present for Susanne when she prances of thge plane in a week.

In August we drove through Yellowstone, spent a few nights there. One morning I got up after coffee I crossed under the road stepping out onto a river bottom under brooding mountains. The river was low only small fish about soon I noticed the umber mass of a solitary bull bison in recline along a bend to the south. Earlier I had walked by his dust wallow, his fresh fecal splatter, his piss stains. These lone bulls dot the primeval landscape within the park ousted from the herd they live out their days in solitude munching grass, lolling in the dust, dosing, just taking it all in until a pack of wolves happens by, wolves who by hard-wiring have again learned to stalk, harry, then bring down that one-ton bison supermarket extravaganza.

End of days...

I see something in that old bull, something in empathy. There are always challenges, the oldest bull would seem the most comely of opportunities for the upstart, yes? Randy Couture might prove otherwise though even he has of late taken his share of lumps. So is this the path to enlightenment?

I see today in the UK times that we will lose now in Afghanistan, shades of Vietnam the fall of which I watched with incredulity by black and white TV in 1975. Rome had such far-flung wars most of which she eventually lost going bankrupt both financially and morally in the process, the analogy being obvious.

Being a Good Partner-Staying Alive

Autumn, a time when I begin to recieve nibbles about going climbing. I so look forward to those first days, crisp, cold, thin ice, that first flash pump, clipping the slings. In the old days before my brains came in I would solo waterfall routes in the Canadian Rockies, my favorite part being to rappel back down the ice and see finally just how steep and harrowing the ice was, magnificent!

I will say I see a disconnect at times between what people anticipate in a day out and what occurs, there are a multitude of reasons for this I suspect so in the interest of writing a primer plus checklist here goes, what to expect on a day out upon the hill.

STAYING ALIVE
The list of the famous & recent-dead is long and storied, I don't intend to join them anytime soon. With that said if you climb with me there will be expectations, no one in thirty-plus years of climbing has ever been seriously injured climbing with me and that pretty much includes me, that record will remain unblemished in 2009-2010. Yup, I have taken some big whippers but thanks to diligent belaying I have survived with only a little missing paint, so...

1) KNOW HOW TO BELAY!!! Sounds easy right? It is, but you will need to pay attention, maybe for a while, in the cold, and no you can't talk on your cell phone at any time during this process. For winter I like the Grigri, although a skilled plate user is fine as well, do not use a Reverso for mixed climbing as these are designed for guiding not actually belaying a leader trying to pull rope for a difficult clip, if I see you pull out a Reverso I'm going top snatch this away from you and throw it off the cliff.

Any send takes two people, leader and belayer, the belayer needs to anticipate what the leader is doing, movement, particularly making clips, in general leave a slight "belly" in the rope. This is essential as it prevents nasty, jarring falls, the leader "boinks" down rather than swinging back into the route. A tight rope sucks when you make it to a dagger, pumped and here your belayer is keeping a tight rope putting, 5, 10, 15 pounds of back-pull on you, so knock it off!

2) Wear your helmet! Yes, I know there are all those groovy Alex pictures taken in Hyalite bare-headed (scary lady magazine editors all swoon here), but, he's dead, right? A few years back some dork knocked a whopper off and hit me square in the noggin BOOM!, according to the EMT who actually witnessed this I staggered a few steps and kept right on walking as I was wearing this cool yellow Grivel helmet betta Gobbi gave me, the shard dimpled the shell and split the foam liner, I had a stiff neck for a few days. Without the helmet someone else would undoubtedly be shaggin' Mrs. Cotter and that frankly is right-out.

Tools, crampons, ice screws, ice shards, rocks, quick draws, will all hurt you if they fall and hit you, they can kill you if they hit you in the head. In 2008 in the Ouray final Ines Papert fell from the diving board, left a Fusion tool rocking on a plastic hold, the tool then fell and popped Ines right in the head, her tracer spared her a serious injury or even being struck fatally thus preserving the very outside chance that I may at some point get to yet date Ines Papert.

Last winter I fell out of a Yaniro and went head-first through a curtain, spectacular but my Cassin Stunt plowed right through the icicles, violent but uneventful.

3) Don't use spurs! Sooooo 1990s, these things are excellent if you like to flip over in a fall, expose the blue-white intimacy of your tibia for all to see or disembowel your friends, not to mention that when walking around they will cut your rope without your even knowing it.

In fact I don't even wear a heel-plate on my Kayland Ice Dragons, lighter, they pack easier, less lethal, easier to walk in and unloading the yaniro is much easier.

4) Be prepared... Food, drink, warm clothes, tools, boots, harness, HELMET, belay device, spare gloves... Guys show up with a Blackberry and no helmet, or all their pot-smoking gear and no water, I'm not yer' mom which means I didn't pack your lunch. At a minimum you need a good belay jacket, a warm hat, gloves for climbing and belaying, spare (dry) socks, harness, tools, fruit boots, grub, fluids, a foam pad to sit on.

5) Be stoked! Most people in the world don't have enough to eat, no access to medical care let alone postable water, you are getting to go climbing for the day in the beautiful winter mountains so ENJOY YOURSELF!

6) Get up early, be on time for said rendezvous, don't plan on leaving early. I like to be first on the hill, pick the choice routes first then project when all the knuckleheads appear late for their flail on the aforementioned routes. I can't recall how many times I am clipped into bolt one, belayer is in position, I'm just giving my hands a final warm when up trots some bloke, "Duh-uh, are gonna climb that?"

What does it look like I'm "gonnadooo"...

7) Which leads me to point next. GIVE PEOPLE THEIR SPACE... Never fails a plethora of routes to choose from and along comes some tosser, wanting to climb exactly whatever route it is I am on. Why? My favorite is the guy who always has to climb right next to me (dude, WASH YOUR CLOTHES), newsflash, I don't care what you climb, I just don't...

8) My tendency is to move away from crowds, not towards them, much safer, quiter, I say whassup and off I go, much safer to not be hit by them or their falling tools or listen to them shrieking FUUUUUCCCCKKKKKK!!!! TAAAAAAAAKKKKKEEEEE!!!!! FUUUUUCCCCCCCKKKKKKK!!!! IM PUUUUUUMMMMPPPPPED!!! Sheesh...

9) Be strong... I mean mentally and phsically. No need for all that cross-fit horseshit, there's more to life than working out, everyday, every minute of every day, until you puke I mean (I grew up to believe puking was to be avoided, but then again, I GREW UP).

Yet a little preparation goes a long way, specific preparation. Recently I read an article about Erwan Le Corre and his Natural Movement approach to fitness. In short, gyms suck as you can't apply any of what you learn in a gym, better to train outside in nature to simulate Cro Magnon type activities.

Like dry-tooling...

Trail-running, bouldering, river-swimming, canoeing, grappling, fishing, all natural activities. Since I'm going to dry-tool I train by, yes, you guessed it, dry-tooling, my cave is all set up for it. I do pull-ups on a board not on a bar as there are never any metal bars to pull-up on the routes I climb. When it gets cold out I open the garage door and train in the cold, I wear climbing clothes and gloves, I freeze my ass off because when I climb I'm going to freeze my ass off. I lifted weights last year, a lot... I gained about 12 lbs., looked buff, I didn't climb very well. This year I am 173 pounds (79 kilos), lean... Climbing is about movement, since I am an adult I have adult responsibilities so this precludes spending three months in Canmore very autumn, I need to come out banging. I keep it simple, pushups, sit-ups, pull-ups, running, bouldering, dry-tooling, I'm too old to do shit that pisses me off...

10) Have some humility. There are routes I've done dozens of times, maybe over a hundred times that I can/will no longer do. There is merit in having done these routes I assume, which is why I came to master them over time, now that they have slipped away I adjust to that.

During one down period I told Susanne, "I'm not the man I was".

No, but you you are a different man, and no less of a man for that being true.

People get in a rut, human nature I suppose. We have our favorites, I enjoy certain climbs a good deal, anyone who has ever seen me do every variant of Eliminator Left Hand can observe this about me. As Yvonne Chouinard intoned, Every climb has its time, the road to enlightenment is rife with fine routes, some to be done once others repeatedly, there are always other routes to do and today may not be your day, nor tomorrow, nor this season. Trying hard and failing has merit, seeing others succeed as well can be enjoyed.

I avoid popular climbing culture not because the climbing portrayed has no merit but mostly because the culture of self-absorbed, wealthy white folks out enjoying luxury vacations in Calymnos or Patagonia or Nepal is all rather soul-less, the intent is to create envy I suppose but after a time I merely feel phsically sickened.

Mind you I don't deny anyone a grand holiday, I certainly take mine when I can, but the portrayed perpetual leisure lifestyle looks rather fabricated with all the perfect white teeth, the flat in Cahmonix and those stilted faux-benevolent stints at the Khumbu climbing school teaching Sherpas to ice-climb, for whom is this really intended?

SUMMARY
Winter is fast approaching, well, autumn is anyway. Days-off matter, make good use of them, don't waste yours, nor mine...

Leaders!

Okay, this is more for me than anyone reading this. The leader of the route/the day/the philosophical movement that is dry-tooling has the responsibility to, well, LEAD!

Dry-tooling has really taken a beating lately, receiving almost no press here in the USA, furthermore many "big-name" climbers (i.e., douche-bags) have spoken out against dry, whankers!

With that said this season I have been very encouraged by the interest people have had in getting in touch and training, everyone seems really stoked!

So, no yelling, cussing, berating the belayer, make sure everyone climbs!

ALLEZ!!!

Me and Bobby Kennedy

"There is a beginning to the voyage and an end to the voyage, and this beginning and ending is part of the natural order of things." -Edward M Kennedy-

I want to preface this piece by unequivocally stating I did not know Teddy Kennedy, I never met the man but I did admire his dedication to public service although the Chappaquidick episode was inexcusable, the actions of a coward and drunk. With that said I also being a two-fisted Irishman I appreciate his lust for woman and the bottle, a Catholic by birth I am certain there is no God but should there be one then teddy will now have to atone I suppose providing God is not unduly occupied with the various wars and genocidal on-goings.

I did however, once meet Bobby Kennedy, I even shook his hand. A first grader at Our Lady of Sorrows Catholic elementary school Bobby paid a quick visit as he campaigned for president on the way to his date with destiny in the form of an insane Sirhan Sirhan. The nuns brought us outside briskly, lined us up, Bobby rolled up got out and started pumping the flesh. I held my small 1st-grader hand out resplendent in gray slacks and blue wool blazer when voila' Bobby grabbed my hand and gave it a big squeeze. I recall a big horsey smile, a great shock of reddish-brown hair, then he was moving off down the line, gone...

Then this asshole Sirhan Sirhan shot him, no doubt asserting his second-ammendmant rights that seems to include blowing away your classmates, coworkers, random salsa dancers, your kids and most recently yourself.   

Of course all manner of right-wing fruit-cakes from Anne Colter to Rush Limbaugh will sorely miss the last Kennedy brother, who else to blame for two decades of colossal mismanagement of a great nation and its resources if not one senator rather than two Bushes, "the great" Ronald Reagan and that fatso Clinton.

But I digress, autumn always put me in a reflective pose, the long weekend has hints of summer but most certainly autumn, the days refuse to make up their minds.

Recently I received the Patagonia fall "alpine" catalog, I was relieved to see that despite nearly 10% plus national unemployment and knowing that over one million children in this country will return to school this autumn effectively homeless, to see that certain well-heeled yuppie white people are still out there impeccably attired enjoying any number of luxury vacations climbing and skiing, their perfect white teeth grimacing for the camera. Supposedly I am to "believe" in these activities of these folks, even donate to support them, hmmm...

 

Death sans Transfiguration

A rather bad summer for big-name climbers, Tom Kelley phoned us Monday to say Craig Luebben had been killed attempting the Torment-Forbidden traverse in the North Cascades, I have climbed extensively in the NCs but not this one, more of a mountaineering outing, but I will say that a heat wave was afoot in the Pacific Northwest at the time so it does not surprise me that the glaciers there are rather unstable, likely a factor in the demise of Johnny Copp and Micah Dash in China as well. John bachar has also died in a solo climbing accident, what can you say? Bachar was the Master until Michael Reardon came along, the new Sensei, there was also Derek Hersey here in CO, Jimmy Jewel in the UK. They are all of course now deceased which leads into the question of how safe is solo rock-climbing the answer being not very, in fairness Michael reardon was caught by a rogue wave, a not unexpected vent in the North Atlantic particularly given the yachting race being held off the coast at the time was a shambles due to the immense seas. Bachar had been injured some year back in an auto accident, was getting older and honestly I am here to tell you that as you age you slow down, he was either going to retire or get killed. 

I used to do a great deal of solo climbing something I almost never do now. There is still some high-ball bouldering and the odd mixed route that I know well but always I do these routes with friends there in the context of a day of roped climbing. Last winter I was in Chamonix so I climbed Serac Gulley on the Triangle, a 185 meter ice route that is normally straight forward only the route had nearly sublimated away entirely so was really pieces of an ice route with eerie sections of dry-tooling to put the bits together, fun but that was enough of that for a while particularly when I was climbing leash-less without tethers (or a rope) and half the ice fell off the crux vertical section while I was climbing it.

Years ago inspired by the antics of Peter Croft I did a solo enchainment of rock routes in Eldorado Canyon, I started with Bastille Crack (5.7), the did Werksup (5.9), then climbed AntHill Direct (5.9+) then finished on Wind Arete (with the 5.8 variant), all with a thunder-shower in the middle and done by 1PM. I wore my old Boreal Aces and didn't take a rope, of course I am known as an ice-climber but yes, I used to rock climb too. I met Luebben about that time in 1992-3, he was still mooning over Liz Grenard at the time, smoked a good deal of pot and climbed frantically. I went out climbing with him a few times but I don't think we could bear one another so I then went to seeing him around now and again. I tried to get him out ice-climbing at one point but he deferred, something about Derek Hersey's girlfriend being in town.

I read his blurb on total climbing today to see he had "retired" and was mostly interested in skiing now, he has/had a four-year old daughter who looks very, very cute. Next week I am taking my little girl up Montana State University so she can start college, sad but sadder in the light of knowing Craig will now miss all of his upcoming family life and they will miss him sorely.

To be blunt, climbing is pretty fucking stupid, trying to climb as a living totally insane. I would stop but "retiring" looks to be even more hazardous so I may have to trust in Allah, an alert belayer and a sturdy helmet. Maybe it's just me but in recent years the bodies have really been piling up, Sue Nott, Harry Berger both folks I have been in the Ouray competition with and then these recent deaths. Last month I just out-of-the-blue ceased being able to climb Cat Eye at Rotary Park a problem I had done weekly over the past 15 years or so, frustrated I phoned Susanne on my global.

"It's John Bachar", she said, "He's gotten into your head."

By that she meant the demise of the Master imposed a new mortality on us all if he could fall and be killed we were all vulnerable. Heavy rains had left a coat of fine sand on the Cat Eye exit, one day I went up there five times while some top-ropers sat stock-still in silent audience, I finally pulled the plug and went home.

Autumn is coming, the air is cooling, snow is a month or two away. I train for one more season, already look for a partner for the Bozeman Ice Festival open, a thinly guised excuse to motor up to Booze-mon in my Mini Cooper, see my little girl, and eat a good Buffalo Steak at Fascist Ted's.

Oh, and send a bunch of ice and mixed routes. No way am I retiring, too dangerous...