6-27-05
Walking around the college today I felt like I was floating on a cloud of good fortune. I felt...good. I know it sounds weird to say that, but life has provided me with a lot of reasons to whine over the last few years. This morning however, I was totally at peace with my lot in life.
    This strange wave of 'feel good' is all related to the great climbing trips I've been having on the weekends. I just got back from Smith Rocks a week ago, and by Friday was desperate to get back up on the cliffs to see if the grace I experienced at Smith had followed me home. On Wednesday I sent out a few emails to people who had been unable to go on the Smith trip, asking if they could go climbing on Sunday. Two people wrote back, and Lisa (my daughter) said she might go while Sue said she would only go if it was sunny.
     By Saturday night, I was looking at a Sunday forecast of 30 percent chance of rain, worsening to 70% chance by afternoon. Lisa and Sue had bailed, and one of my two online partners had bailed due to an accident suffered while canyoneering. My one remaining potential partner was a friend of a friend at work who had mentioned climbing experience in a college newsletter.
   We'd exchanged a couple emails where she had indicated an interest in "tagging along" on my next trip up. One of my office mates knew her already, and said she was "good people" so I called her first. N.D. was still willing to go, unless we woke up to a downpour. Next I called the guy who I met online, but, as I mentioned earlier, he was suffering from a possible broken wrist. His story of how it happened made canyoneering sound lethal. Ropes, wetsuits and roaring waterfalls do not a good combination make.
    I was worried about going up with N.D. without a third partner. I usually climb with guys, or my family. Going climbing with a girl had the potential of bringing up that whole "guy girl" thing. Can guys be "just friends" with girls?...and all that. Well, I'm here to tell you: yes they can.
   When we met up in Seattle (for the first time) and I told her our third had bailed, she seemed a little taken aback. She asked me if I was OK with that. She seemed to almost be worried that I was concerned about going up with just an inexperienced woman. (the canyoneering guy was experienced). I said I wasn't worried and asked her if she was concerned about going up with just me, trying to give her an out. She grinned and said, "let's go."
   As we drove up, I kept glancing nervously at the continuous low cloud cover, but when we arrived at the parking lot I was amazed to see a dozen other cars. Apparently I wasn't the only dreamer to doubt the forecast. We hiked up the trail and arrived at the bottom of the easiest 5.6 climb, surprised to find it dry and climbable. "You know what?" I said to N.D., "I think we'll get a route in before it rains."
    We got our gear on and I checked out her harness and knot very carefully, knowing that my life was in her hands. She had climbed before, but it had been 5 years and she'd forgotten how to belay. I walked her through the process of feeding out slack, taking up rope and catching falls while we were still on the ground. After she had mastered that I climbed up to the first bolt, back down to the ground and jumped off from about a foot off the deck. My 162 pounds yanked her 114 pounds up into the air and she swung toward the cliff. I threw up a quick arm and narrowly kept her from smacking into the wall.
   We both laughed nervously, but I realized she was so petite that she'd have to be anchored to a nearby tree root. That done, I climbed up again and jumped off to a successful catch. We both grinned, and I reminded her that she needed to keep her belay hand on the rope at all times. "Never let go!" is the motto of the careful belayer.
   Once I got on the rock I felt the Smith Rock grace come over me almost instantly. I was "in the zone" as they say and climbing like I was born to it. The 20 foot long, run out crux section was mysteriously missing. Instead I found myself in the dreaded difficult section looking at great big buckets for hand and foot holds. "How could I have ever thought this was difficult?" I thought, as I hiked through to the bolts.
    N.D. turned out to be a natural born climber, despite having been out of it for 5 years. She was very tenacious, and completely fearless toward heights. Her grin at the top of the route was something to remember. We continued on like that all day, route after route with hardly ever a break between. I kept asking her if she was "ready for another?", worried that I was wearing her out, but her answer was always a big grin and a "sure, let's do it!"
   We eventually found ourselves down on the "wall of nines" where I finally found something that slowed me down. The 5.9 on the far right side is continuously overhung for about 15 feet to the tune of about two feet horizontally, making it a real test of ones climbing ability. As usual, I got freaked out at the lower crux and wore myself out placing an unnecessary friend when I should have powered through to the next bolt.
   After finally placing the friend, I found I could take most of the weight off my hands by tucking my head right up against the roof while walking my feet out to the extreme edge of the cliff. It was an odd position, but I was able to almost let go with my burned out hands and rest for a minute or two. I was so stressed out my legs were giving the occasional twitch as I hunkered down under the overhang.
  N.D. noticed I was behaving strangely and hollered up up at me, asking if I was OK. I leaned back and told her I was simply resting and explained that I always freaked out on this route, it being so steep. After five minutes I was able to climb up and clip the bolt, but couldn't stop to rest due to the overhanging nature of the rock. I could feel my forearms starting to burn out again and knew I either had to hang on the bolt or lunge for the big jug off to the right.
   I chose to lunge, but the "big jug" wasn't nearly as big as I remembered. It was there all right, but no matter how I wrapped my fingers around it, it simply didn't feel very jug like. I saw another jug further up the cliff, but getting to it meant pulling up on the current jug to the point where I could press down and walk up my feet. I looked down at the cliff for footholds but only saw vertical cliff.
  Ah crap! I thought, bad foot holds, bad hand holds, 5 feet from the bolt and it's overhung, she may have to catch a real fall. Once again, I realized there was nowhere to go but up. If the next jug was as big as it looked, I could grab it, pull up and clip the next bolt.
   I put my feet on some slightly less than vertical bumps, pushed down and lunged for the next jug. It was out of reach so I stepped up on to even worse holds and was finally able to wrap my finger tips around the jug. This one was truly a jug with a captial J and I quickly got both hands on it;, used that leverage to pull my feet up onto better holds; stood up and clipped the bolt, simultaneously letting rip with a rebel yell, petering out to hysterical giggles.
   Forty feet below me, N.D. looked vastly relieved and said she had been bracing for a hard fall, wondering what the impact would feel like when I lifted her up in the air. I told her I was OK now, but that I'd scared the piss out of myself. Another climber nearby looked up at me with a big grin, clearly enjoying the spectacle. I felt like saying something along the lines of: "Wait tell you're 51 and trying this stuff. Damn young pup!" but I restrained myself. Time will tell him for me soon enough.
    I try to reason out the logic from time to time and I guess my only real justification for the sport is that nothing else has ever brought me so much pleasure. Walking around at work today I felt like I'd completed a successful hunt...I'd faced down the grizzly bear and brought home the elk from the wilderness. The family was provided for and I had a feeling of completeness, almost a glow if you will.
    In reality, the family would have been better off if I'd stayed home and spent the day studying programming or doing home maintenance. Still, I believe we were given an adrenaline gland for a reason, and like any organ it needs to be used once in a while, I just prefer to exercise mine without being behind the wheel of a car. N.D. seemed to feel the same way about the sport and asked when I'd be going up again. She's a real trooper and seems to have quite a gift for climbing. With the exception of the overhang, nothing even slowed her down, and she managed to power through that after a couple falls. I think it would be fun to take her and Lisa and Sue up together. They are all good people and I'll bet we'd have a blast together.

6-21-05
One hundred feet off the ground I looked up at M.S., 30 feet above me on the 5.6 crack. Beyond him I could see a disturbingly gray cloud growing ominously darker with each passing minute. The winds were picking up and throwing dust in our eyes, making it hard to see. We had learned the previous day that strong buffeting gusts of wind under a slate gray sky preceded rain showers.

"Doesn't look too good up there," I shouted at M.S. over the gusting wind.

"Yeah, it looks like it might pour," he shouted back as little drops of rain began floating down.

"You want to come down to the belay station with me? It's under the overhang and should stay dry." I asked.

"No, I'll put in some gear and huddle under this shelf, it covers half of me. Maybe it won't last long enough to soak the rock," he replied.

The rain quickly spun up from scattered sprinkles to a full on downpour and I watched with dismay as the ground far below became veiled by a white mist. Any thoughts of getting off the rock quickly were cast aside as we watched rivulets of water form and stream down the cliff. I was safe and dry in my little alcove under the 4 foot overhang, but I could hear M.S. cursing above me as the rain found him under his little shelf.
    Ordinarily one can get off any climb by simply rappelling from the belay stations. Unfortunately, the 'Super Slab' route at Smith Rocks is one of those very old climbs that have been intentionally left without bolted stations. There is some kind of misguided "keep it pure" mentality that forbids the placement of belay bolts.
      The only way to rappel off would be to leave some of our gear, or tie slings around a couple stacked up boulders, hoping that our weight would be less than the boulders and they would stay in place while we used them as anchors for a rappel.
     Twenty wet minutes later M.S. called down that he was going to pull everything but one piece of protection and downclimb to my belay station whereupon we could decide what to do.
    After thoroughly soaking the cliff the rain backed off to a steady drizzle. We hung out, me in my dry little alcove and M.S. in another semi-protected chimney off to my left. We'd left the ground at 4 PM thinking we had plenty of time for an easy 3 pitch route. Neither of us had brought our watches, but we knew that a rain shower this long would make the rock unclimbable for at least thirty minutes after it stopped, which it appeared to have no intention of doing. We had also neglected to bring headlamps, and our margin of safety was rapidly disappearing.
      We talked about the merits of rappelling off versus going up, assuming it ever dried off. The boulders looked pretty manky for a rap anchor, which meant we'd have to leave some of our expensive climbing gear at the belay station. We were also too high on the cliff to get down with one rope. We thought we might have been able to reach a bolted belay station at the top of Peking, sixty feet below, and then rappel to the ground from there.
    As we were discussing our options the rain finally petered out and a small growing patch of blue sky appeared above us. I was in favor of going up, but M.S. wisely pointed out that the blue sky could be a brief break between rain squalls, and we would be safer if we went down. He pointed out that we could come back in the morning at first light and probably rescue our gear before anyone else snagged it. Climbing gear abandoned on cliffs is treated like abandoned ships at sea: first one to find it owns it.
    I argued that even though we were on a North facing cliff and couldn't see the weather approaching from the southwest, the current rain squall was the last one of the day. The weather was predicted to get a little drier each day, with only localized thunderstorms that day. I also argued that we could still bail from a higher position on the cliff, it would just be more expensive.
    Eventually M.S. agreed to go up, but only if I took over the sharp end of the rope. He said that getting caught in the rain, on lead, had sapped his nerve. I didn't blame him, I mean, how could I argue? I'd been sitting safe and dry under a big overhang tied to 4 bomber protection anchors.
    We waited until the rock had completely dried out before swapping ends and gear. I headed up the second pitch, casting nervous glances toward the sky, which remained mostly blue. The pitch follows a not quite vertical open book up mostly solid red rock. It's broken up into a series of blocky sections that are quite easy, intermixed with a series of 20 foot cruxes that can be challenging. There are no bolts at all, and on some of the harder sections the protection is not as good as one could hope for. Still, I had gear every 15 feet or so and was able to place more at the cruxes.
    The hardest part was when the corner bottomed out into a 5 inch groove, almost vertical for about nine feet. The last good pro was at the bottom of the groove. I muscled up to the top of the groove where the crack widened out to a body sized chimney, thinking that there would be bomber holds in the chimney allowing an exit onto rest holds above.
   To my surprise, the chimney had nothing but a miserable sloping knob for a handhold. My feet had very little to stand on down in the vertical groove. I found I could do an elbow lock in the chimney, and it was quite secure, but without a foothold to stand on, I was unable to move upward.
    I forced the panic back and stuck a small friend behind a rotten flake for moral support while I tried to come up with a plan. After much grunting and thrashing I decided that the sloper hold was a red herring and what I needed to do was combine the elbow lock with a mantle and lever my knees into the chimney.
   With a quick "watch me!" shouted to my belayer fifty feet below, I made the move and stepped onto easier ground. After that came a lovely two inch hand crack with sinker hand jams and I arrived at a nice 6 inch ledge where I could belay. I found 4 good placements for gear and brought M.S. up. He followed it quickly, but once again declined the lead, saying he was feeling tapped out. We exchanged rope ends again and he gave me the gear he'd cleaned out of the pitch below.
   He'd climbed the scary looking offwidth crack on the pitch above more recently than I had and I asked him how hard it was. He said it was larger than fist jams, but because it was leaning back a bit it wasn't terribly hard, and was actually a relatively easy pitch, the middle one (second) being the hardest one.
     We talked once again about the iffy weather. Should we continue up, or would it be safer to go down? This high on the cliff, if the rain caught us we would've had to leave at least one hundred and fifty dollars worth of gear to get down, and we'd be placing gear in the dark, with the distinct possibility of having the rope get stuck in one of the many cracks, leaving us stranded for the night.
    The light in the valley around us was beginning to wane as twilight approached. It looked like we had about an hour of climbable light. Rappelling would have taken a couple hours, and you can't safely place gear in the dark. It was either climb up, or spend the night on the cliff in shorts. I had long johns on under my shorts, and a windshirt, but we would have suffered badly, with hypothermia a distinct possibility.
    In short, it was go up or nothing. The delay caused by the rain had reduced our safety margin to zero. Any other delays would mean climbing, or rappelling in the dark. I cursed my stupidity in going up the damn cliff in iffy weather, then started climbing the last pitch, praying for easy moves.
   After all the stress of anticipation, the climbing was actually very friendly and I blew through the thirty foot, four inch crack in 5 minutes. A few more moves put me over the top onto the exit ramps which were nothing more than a steep hiking trail. I let out a great hurrah! as I realized that we'd made it to safety.
     As the last light faded from the deep blue sky, we walked down the aptly named Misery Ridge trail to our packs, had a quick bite and some water, then hiked down to the car in the moonlight, arriving at the campground at 10:30 PM. Smith Rocks is beautiful in the moonlight and I found myself singing as hobbled down the steep trail.
    The next day I led a 5.7, a scary 5.9 and a 5.8 (five gallon buckets) before we hit the road for home. M.S. said he didn't feel up to leading anything but was happy to follow and did a great job belaying me on the scary nine. All things considered it was a great trip. I met a new climbing friend and got my sea legs under me.

6-12-05
Climbed at Spire Rock today with Sue and Lisa. Spire Rock is a man made rock out in South Tacoma near Pacific Lutheran University. It's about as big as a medium sized 2 story vacation cabin. It resembles nothing more than a huge outdoor fireplace. Back in my twenties I used to drive out there a couple nights a week after work to climb and hang out with friends from the Mountaineers.
   Because I worked in print shops then, a friend and I came up with the bright idea of printing a guide book for the little practice rock. We sold the book through a local climbing store for a decade, running through about a thousand copies before we lost interest. It's out of print now, but I'm slowly collecting new photos and may re-publish it in the next few years, depending on my available time. I'm thinking it might be fun to build my first ecommerce site aimed at selling the books.
    Lisa and I climbed all the standards while Sue hung around trying not to be bored. She will have her arm in a sling for most of the summer. Lisa is quite a good climber for a beginner. She knows how to stick with things until she figures out a way to get past the difficulties.
   The rock has become a magnet for a somewhat disreputable crowd. There were small groups of junior high school hoodlums hanging around, smoking and talking about their drunken binges of the night before. These are the kind of children that can't string together 6 words without using the "f" word at least twice. Still, at least they weren't violent, and they mostly just looked bored. One can only imagine what kind of chaos they go home to at night. Spanaway is next door to Fort Lewis, and these children have the look of kids without dads.
    Because I've not hung out at Spire since before the kids were born, the routes are all new. By new, I mean I've forgotten most of the key handholds and everything is a challenge. Back in the day I had all the routes wired and found the place boring. It was mostly just a place to go and meet my friends.
   I've been looking for a partner to go to Smith Rocks next weekend but haven't had any luck yet. I've called or emailed my friends and they either haven't got back to me or can't go. I put an ad in a climbers forum last week and may drop off a couple notices in the local climbing gyms and shops this week. I'd really like to go down there and get warmed up while I have the time available.
   If I don't find a partner Sue and I may go try to find some sun somewhere so she can relax and I can paint landscapes. I'm still pursuing my programming agenda and have started a new book. I took too long reading the old one and didn't retain enough to build a web site. I'm going to try to stay more focused with this new php book. I have my upcoming vacation to focus in during the evenings, plus summer quarter I have all repeat classes so there will be no new lesson plans.

6-8-05
What is it with these unfocused blues? I really have no reason to be feeling out of sorts. I've got a job, I'm paying my bills, happily married, the kids are fine. Jeez, I'm such a whiner. To a poor Mexican down in Sacramento picking tomatoes I look like I'm living the life of Riley.
    Most of my discontent comes from job satisfaction. I got out of printing for a number or reasons, but primarily because of the bad hours. My secondary reason was that I'm not really suited to being a mechanic in charge of a large complicated machine. One must have a crystal clear head for that work, and my creative mind tends to wander if it's not constantly challenged. I used to have several bad days a week working as a pressman.
     This new career in computers looked like it would be a better fit for my creative mind. Trouble is, it turns out there are far too many people who had the same idea, and many of them are also extremely bright and creative. They've already got a lip lock on the good jobs out there, so people like myself, who got laid off because there skills weren't quite absolute top dollar have to work where we can.
     I spent some time surfing around the web site of my former web employer, and it is clear they have moved far beyond my meager skill set in the 3 years I've been gone. I tried to reverse engineer their web site and couldn't get past square one. One of the guys who is working there now has a 4 year degree from a hot tech college in California, knows 3D studio max, video and excels at high end xhtml, plus, the son of a gun can draw like Walt Disney and writes beautiful ad copy. There is absolutely no way I can compete against that kind of talent.
    I finished my book on PHP programming, but I spread it out over 4 months and retained very little. I guess I need to re-read and work all the exercises again. I'm scared that I might simply not have the mind for it. Programming does not come easy for me. I don't seem to be able to wrap my mind around 200 lines of programming code at the same time.
       To write it from scratch, you have to be able to think about if/else statements that are up to 4 levels deep. It's like chess in 3 dimensions, something I always sucked at. Give me a landscape or still life to paint and I can capture it perfectly, given time. I can focus on one thing at a time with laser like accuracy, but give me 200 lines of bizarre programming code and I get overwhelmed. I've not given up on php yet, but I'm starting to have some serious doubts about whether that is the proper course of study to improve my income. Some people find it easy, but for me it's an unnatural fit.

6-3-05
Friday after work I picked up Sue from intensive care at the Lakewood hospital. She was still in the bed when I arrived, looking pretty groggy after having her rotator cuff surgery. I brought her home to our two teenagers, and, after making sure she was ok, left for the 3 hour drive to Leavenworth for my standard 3 days of rock climbing over Memorial Day weekend. A good husband would have stayed home, and I'd felt bad about leaving her, but needed to climb more than I wanted to baby sit.
     When I parked beside Mark and Mary's car beside the Icicle River at Bridge Creek campground three hours later I stepped out into the cool night air of midnight to hear the familiar sounds of the river and the wind blowing through the huge pine trees. Up above, the stars were brilliant in the black sky and I wheeled around, soaking it all in. This is where it all began, I thought. Ever since I was in my early twenties and discovered the joys of climbing rock, and the deep camaraderie of the climbing community, I've simply never found anything better for taking my mind off my problems and living for the moment.
       Saturday we climbed Saber and Midway on Castle Rock in an intense heat wave. They are both easy 3 pitch climbs, but by the time we topped out on Midway, we were both approaching heat prostration. On Midway, I'd stopped to belay at the standard spot 70 feet up on top of Jello Tower. Mark L. led up from there and skipped the normal belay spot 100 feet up, choosing to continue on to the next belay spot.
     Thirty feet higher he stopped and looked down. "How much rope left?" he hollered through the baking air. I threw the coils out across the flat top of Jello Tower so we could both see them and hollered up that he had about 20 feet left. One hundred and thirty feet above me, I could see him looking around for a spot to set up a belay station. Castle Rock is a 500 foot tall stone tower five minutes west of Leavenworth on the Stevens Pass highway. Because it is filled with cracks, there are very few bolts, and one can belay just about anywhere.
    Mark chose to bypass the second and last decent belay station and head higher up the rock. I looked in alarm at the rapidly diminishing pile of rope. If he didn't stop soon, I knew he would leave the easy crack system and enter the relatively blank face and friction climbing section near the top. It's only 5.4 climbing up there, and usually quite pleasant, but on this cooker of a day I didn't know what kind of shape Mark was in up there.
   Sitting at the belay on top of Jello Tower I was anchored into two three eighths inch stainless steel bolts and quite safe. Unfortunately, because Mark had passed the last good belay station far above me, he was soon going to run out of rope right in the middle of the unprotectable face and friction climbing section. I knew there were a few cracks up there, but not enough to set up a belay.
      If he ran out of rope up there, he wouldn't be able to climb back down, and the only safe choice would be to keep going up. Because we were tied together, this meant that I would have to leave the safety of my double bolt belay station and begin climbing with him.
    Rock climbing teams try to always keep the belayer anchored while the leader is climbing. In a worst case situation where the leader runs out of rope before reaching a safe belay station, the belayer can give him more rope by untying from the anchor and climbing up the rock. This is called "simul-climbing", and the theory is that if the leader falls while 10 feet above his highest piece, he will drop twenty feet at which point the pulley effect will pull up on the rope and lift his follower (me) up into the air, stopping his fall. We'd both be dangling in space at the same time, but at least we'd be safe.
      That's the theory anyway. Unfortunately, the rock was so steep that I could see the rope pulling out from the cliff for 50 foot sections where Mark had put in zero protection. This meant that there might have only been 5 or 6 pieces of protection in the entire fifty meters of rope. If he popped off up high, he could yank out the top one or two and drop a long, long way, potentially pulling me up into the last few good pieces and dropping us both into the big beyond.
    These were the thoughts going through my mind as I fed the last few feet of rope out though my belay plate. I hurriedly untied from the bolts and stood up on top of Jello Tower, uneasily eyeing the scary step across move from the tower onto the main cliff face, 3 feet across the 70 foot tall gap. What if I blew the move and tripped, pulling him off his holds high above? The whole thing was giving me the willies!
    I felt the rope tugging at my harness and realized it was time to move or risk pulling him off. I stepped out across the gap onto the thin holds just as he gave another hard yank on the rope. As I climbed up, I tried to measure my pace against his, preventing too much slack from gathering in the rope. As I neared his first pieces of protection above the step across I felt his pace slow and quickly pulled the gear out, ready to move on up the cliff. Finally, though, it looked like he'd found a belay as the rope stopped pulling at my harness. I put his protection back in the crack and waited, hoping he'd finally either reached the top, or found a good belay spot.
    Between the stress and the heat (it must have been over 105 degrees on the baking black vertical granite face) I was beginning to feel weak. It's true that the climbing was moderate, but this was my first weekend of the year, and I was coming down with a bad cold to boot. I peered up the searing cliff at the heat waves shimmering along the granite and realized there was nothing for it but to climb straight up.
   When I felt the rope begin to tug at my waist again I said a brief prayer to the climbing gods and began following my wandering partner up the rock, knowing that sooner, if not later, I'd eventually be on belay. After crawling through a couple vertical tunnels I emerged into the large open seam and marveled at how far he'd run out the rope between pieces.
        He had passed up dozens of great chock placements. The rope snaked lazily up through the granite cracks, uninterrupted by carabineers for a solid fifty feet. I was so hot that whenever I climbed past an edge big enough to cast a shadow I stuck my head in it, panting like a dog under a car on a hot city street.
        I seemed to have lost all my strength, and could barely climb 10 feet without stopping to rest. What the hell was going on? I wondered. I'm usually a lizard and can climb comfortably in any heat. It must have been the cold coming on, or simply the stress of too much work wearing me down. Half an hour later I arrived at the top and leaned my head on the cliff, unable even catch my breath for a long five minutes. "Hot!" was all I was able to say to Mark, who was safely anchored to the monstrous boulders on the summit of Castle Rock.
     The next day we climbed everything at Mad Meadows and had a great time, finally beginning to warm up after the long winter. Monday we hiked half an hour down to Dog Dome, only to find the routes overgrown with moss. We hiked back to the car disgusted and decided to try our luck at Snag Crack. This is a lovely climb featuring the full host of climbing problems from face to friction to finger crack, off widths and hand jams. It even has a bomb bay chimney, and this is where I finally bailed, unable to force my way up the chimney. I lowered off and Mark was able to blow through the crux on his second try.
    That was the end of our trip, and I can't wait to get back up there and beat that bomb bay chimney. It's the following Friday now, and I've not slept more than 2 hours at a time since returning from Leavenworth with bronchitis, laryngitis and asthma. I called my doctor yesterday to get some real drugs. Nyquil puts me to sleep for a couple hours, but I hate relying on it because it just treats the symptoms...and not very well.
   Sue is recovering slowly from her shoulder surgery, and already complaining about the boredom of taking a week off from work with nothing to do but sit around and clean house with her left hand.

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