In any un-curated blog there will be gems and boring stuff. It’s the nature of writing. You have to get past the choss to get to the good stuff. If you don’t write the choss, the good stuff never sees the light of day. Without further ado, here are some of my favorites, organized by most recent. I will add to this list as time goes on:
My son has three egg laying chickens, a dog, and three towers of bees. He and his wife sell their honey to friends at work. During the bee harvest he stacks up two cubic yards of jars of honey in the living room.
I’ve been fascinated by his animals. I’ve drawn his dog several times and now I’ve started in on his chickens. I also have a great photo of Rose, which I plan to do in oils.
After my disastrous experience trying to place my big paintings in the gallery I’ve switched to drawing whimsical things just for fun. It’s much more relaxing knowing I don’t have worry about whether they will sell. Like Van Gogh, who sold two paintings his whole life, I paint because it’s an itch I have to scatch.
I photographed the birds with my full frame Canon. The details up close are dramatic and were super fun to paint.
After I finished the birds I made another cowboy hat. This is my fourth one and it’s getting easier. I wore my first one for 5 years. And while it’s still going strong, it’s heavy. My second one worked, but I used the wrong leather and made the brim too short. I gave the third one to Clint and liked it so much I made another one for myself.
Part of the success of the last two hats is using the right leather. I bought a half skin from Tandy for $120. It’s got a hard polished finish but isn’t anywhere close to full grain. They measure leather thickness weirdly. I have no idea what I’ve got, other than it’s about 2mm thick. Fortunately, I can walk into Tandy, hand them the leather and they show me where there is more.
Buying leather is a very hands on experience. It’s something that must be felt. I always feel bad for the cows, but that’s a story for another day.
chicken number 1chicken number 2 in progresschicken number 2Hat number 5Hat number 5
Not in sales
August 20th, 2024
I recently enlarged a 12 x 16 plein air oil to a 24 x 36 inch painting. I liked the unhurried studio experience so much I painted it again on canvas, but with a palette knife. It’s so nice to work at my leisure in the studio. There’s time to sort out form, lighting, and color choices. Painting plein air is lovely, the views are captivating and being outdoors is wonderful. And capturing that view over the course of 3 hours is very satisfying.
Tourists are always hiking by and taking photos of me working. I may be deluded…but from my perspective, cameras are cheating. Nevertheless, there are always problems working plein air due to the sun racing across the sky and the resulting movement of shadows.
In the studio, I can take the flawed plein air painting and fix it’s problems. I have my iPhone photos of where the shadows were, and my painting showing my interpretation of the colors. Cameras can’t begin to capture the colors my eye sees and imagines. I choose colors almost randomly. For example, my thought process might go like this:
Hmm, the drawing looks accurate, now what color am I going to paint all that white snow? It can’t all be shades of light blue or grey, that doesn’t look right. There is blown dirt on that snow, and some of the brown gray rock is wet from snow drainage, while some is bone dry and sand polished. If I can’t mix that exact color, would another color of the same value work?
An old saying in portraiture is: “Any color will work if the value is correct”. An example is a portrait painted with very wild colors. Meaning the flesh tones are barely seen, having been replaced with purples, greens,blues, you name it. But when you take a photo and convert it to gray scale (black and white), the portrait looks like normal skin. The values are correct, just not the hues. And this is where the art comes in. I have, on a good day, a gift for color.
I finished the two 36 inch mountain paintings and then faced the challenge of framing. I’d never framed anything that big. They were not only large “over the fireplace” style paintings, but they were on two inch deep canvas stretcher bars. My moulding from home depot is 3/4 inch deep. I needed moulding 2.5 inches deep.
Off to Lowes I went to get 24 feet of .75 x 2.5″ pine. I built the frame but my son’s borrowed miter saw is out of adjustment. I had up to 0.125 inch gaps at the joints. That meant week joints so I put triangles in the corners, along with the strainer pieces. The strainer is what the painting sits on, or “floats” in the frame.
framing
The painting fit with a relatively accurate 0.25 inch gap all the way around. But then I began the nightmare of varnishing the frame. On my smaller frames I simply paint them with acrylic paint and gold leaf. But these deserved a piano gloss varnish…being so large and hopefully expensive. I got some Minwax Polyshades Stain + Poly in Satin – Espresso color. OMG, that stuff is a nightmare!
I painted it on very carefully, wiping down the drips and oozes repeatedly as it dried. Two hours later, the paint film had experienced some kind of weird gravity ooze. Forming ugly drips. It looked like a 7 year old had varnished the frame.
I sanded the bad paint off. But my 21 year old sander wasn’t cutting it. I bought a new velcro style corded Dewalt. So much faster and better! I painted it again even more carefully and it dripped again. I sanded it off again. For my third coat I used a rub on Danish Oil. That went on nicely, no drips. But it was’t the “coffee” stain color I wanted, even after two coats. For the third coat, I mixed in a bunch of black artist oil paint. I used about a 3 inch bead of Ivory Black in one quarter cup.
Float frame
Finally I got the shade and varnish I wanted, but it dried like an oil painting…as in slow. Plus the darn thing was super heavy since this first one is painted on a canvas glued to a cradled board, not just canvas alone. Before starting the next frame I looked at youtube and found other frame makers were using half inch board, and they glued the strainer to the frame before cutting it in the miter saw. In theory this makes a strong frame since you are chopping through an “L” shape and it gets glued + nailed, in two dimensions…the side, and the bottom strainer piece. But the saw was still out of alignment and my miters were awful. I was able to patch it with putty…but jeez, I am such a bad carpenter.
To wrap up this overly long blog entry…I took the two framed monsters up to my gallery at the mountain. I thought he’d flip over this new work. I was so excited after two weeks of full time artist labor. I was like, rah, rah, this is going to be awesome! I was dreaming about them selling for a grand each.
But when I walked in and asked him if he wanted to see some new work, he replied that he had no more wall space and hadn’t sold my last oil painting. It was still hanging on his wall. Basically…”nah, I’m good, but keep painting, those are great”. He did give me some good feedback, preferring the knife painting the most, and said my frames were just right. He likes the floater style.
After that I realized I’d been taking my art too seriously. At the end of the day, it’s just a hobby, like Sue and her perfect yard. She loves to tinker out there, watering and pulling weeds. She doesn’t try to sell her hobby. It gives her satisfaction and that is enough. So I started making leather hats. I’ve made four so far using a youtube tutorial. I’m not a bad hat maker.
I made a hat
A climb called Battered Sandwich
August 17th, 2024
I have a long history with a climb called Battered Sandwich. I sent Alex up it on one of his first trips to Index. I’ve done it with my niece Pam and her friend Kena. My daughter got a cam stuck on it while following. When she lowered me down to retrieve the cam, I rubbed the knot in the chimney and core shot our brand new bicolor rope. I’ve hung all over the route in the 3 unique cruxes. One is off fists in the first 40 feet. At 50 feet it goes from fists to a body slot, but the body slot is smooth with nothing to grab. You’ve got pro at your feet, but nothing above you as you try and rock up into the bottom of the 8″ body slot. It’s extremely insecure.
Then the 8 inch slot gradually widens over the next 50 feet. You can walk a four and a 5 if you still have them. I only had a 5 yesterday. It’s a no fall situation. When you are walking your only cam for 30 feet you are risking a 60 foot whipper. So the move was: flex, push the cam up, unflex, wonk your way up above the cam, flex, reach down and move the cam up, repeat.
Eventually the slot opens up into a left facing flared chimney with hands in the back. It’s imminently climbable for 30 feet but then the hands turn into reds and greens. Which for my big mitts mean insecure again and I have to press my back against the flaring chimney since the hands are so strenuous. The chimney meanwhile is arching over towards less than vertical. At a certain point, right when the green cam sized crack becomes ring locks, you realize that you can sort of stand on the bottom of the chimney wall by pressing upward with your back. It’s steep friction, but just barely works.
A couple moves of that on increasing less steep footing, one more maxed out green or purple cam and you can reach a good hand hold and stand up. So for my hand size, it’s three cruxes: the off fists, the body slot, and the off hands at the top.
With all those challenges, I avoid it like the plague. Many people just top rope it. The party before us led up from the top of Wild Turkey and got a top rope on it. But Lisa G and I have some climbing chops and decided to give it a go. She got it clean with only minimal grunting. I was super nervous at the bottom, thinking all the worst case scenarios, including down climbing and going home.
But the terror starts slowly. After the runout start (bring extra reds just for that) it’s very solid hands leading into friendly blues. Just when you are getting comfortable (love my big hands) it gets bigger than steepled hands but not big enough for fists. So I was doing diagonal fists which is both painful and insecure. Right about then all the face holds on the left vanish into a blank vertical wall. But by committing both feet to the crack splitter style I was able to grunt my way past the bomb bay bulge in the crack. I slammed in one of my fours and the crack, even though it was bigger inside than fists, tapers at the outside to make perfect fists.
I happily walked my four up 10 feet and then arrived at the body slot…where there is nothing to grab but a rounded one by four inch ledge. I put my five in at the bottom of the slot, which was great. But then I had to climb above it into the body slot. I’m an old chicken and do not like climbing above my gear, but I manned up and made it work with a tipped out blue for a top rope piece.
A week later I did it again with Julia but brought three fours, so I had a much safer top rope piece at the body slot. A few days later Chris and I did Rattletale and Peanuts to serve you. I hung all over Rattletale pitch two. I’m blaming it on the heat. My hands were greasing out of what should have been secure yellows. She also had trouble on pitch three, so maybe it was just low tide. Couldn’t be that we are getting older.
The next day was my nephew John’s wedding, and then we followed Lisa and family to Leavy for Levi’s first birthday at 8 Mile campground. In the morning I led Lisa up Classic Crack. That thing is not getting easier as I get older. Maybe fresh from Indian Creek it would be a cruise, but I found I really had to focus on technique to get it clean, and that was just barely. The feet felt insecure, the good jams were over long reaches and I could feel my power ebbing. When I finally got up to the secure fists at the top I was breathing like a cart horse.
It was great to hang out as a family. As we walked from the campground to Classic, Lisa said she was having deja vu moments, remembering walking there with my parents, me holding her 5 year old hand. Now she was holding her own daughters hand, while I was the grandpa. It’s funny how age gives you this grand perspective back through time, looking down through the generations.
Speaking of grandparents, yesterday Clint had to work an unplanned shift. Sue went over at 6 to babysit. I pedaled over at noon to help. Rose was bouncing off the walls with Abby crawling under her. It was an accident waiting to happen. I asked Rose if she wanted to go for a walk. We walked down to the park together. I’d never taken her for a walk by myself. But there I was, an old white haired grandpa walking a three year old girl in a little white princess dress. Who saw that coming?
She reminded me of Wyatt, meandering along, stopping at every point of interest. But unlike Wyatt the dog, Rose could talk lucidly about the pretty yards, the fine old elegant brick houses. And she was so well trained, grabbing my hand at each street crossing, watching for cars. Getting old sucks, but there are these neat things that happen, like grandchildren.
Inventing, sewing and painting
July 27th, 2024
I’ve been meaning to write up my last Utah trip. But I’ve delayed so long that it seems pointless. I’ll probably just post up a bunch of the photos. Part of my problem is that I’ve stopped subscribing to Photoshop. Gimp and or Affinity is a lot slower at processing photos.
On the plus side, I have been busy. In no particular order, I’ve complete a long list of projects.
Invented a new ultralight wet painting carrier…on the third try
Redesigned and cut the weight of my Upright Panel Holder (UPH) to 12 ounces down from 32oz.
Sewed a new zippered brain for my rock pack. Zippers are so fragile!
Finally learned the picking and singing for More to This (after two months)
Changed the oil in RAV4 and on the Tundra: swapped out studs and greased ball joints
Tightened my shoulders with exercises so I can play decent ping pong again.
Painted Rainier twice plein air and twice in studio
Climbed at City of Rocks, Leavenworth and Squamish
Replaced an exterior door, who knew it was so much work!
offwidthstuck kneePirellifive sixes, a 7 and a 9lighting boltlighting boltstuck leg girlstuck leg girlSoul FireZitsHorse crackIncredible hand crackGreen riverHorse Shoe bendHorse Shoe bendPetrified HornetHot Sex, 5.9 thin handsMegLiam – ChelseyLiam – ChelseyCass, Liam – Chelsey, Megbig gearChristine on 5.11 soul fireBridger JacksExasperator 2014
Going back to the beginning, I got there in a day and a half. Meg showed up that night. I know Meg from the City of Rocks group and had climbed with her and Jill for a couple days. It was nice to have a partner show up. Not that I’m opposed to making new friends and partners face to face…that works great, it’s just less convenient for us bashful types.
We started out dead easy on a couple 5.8’s: Twin Cracks and Triple Jeapardy. Meg didn’t think the stacked blocks on Triple were safe. She may be right. But they don’t move at all and I’ve climbed past them probably a dozen times now. People say the Creek starts at 5.10, but it’s not true if you hunt around. I never lead tens the first few days.
I saved a life Wednesday. We were packing up at the end of the day, no one around. We heard a shout from Twin Cracks 5.8. S. had her knee stuck 50 feet up and was hanging below, suspended from the knee. She’d been there for 15 minutes and was in tremendous pain. I climbed up and over her body to the anchor, then lowered down with a knife, water and lotion. I built her some aiders to stand in on my cams. After a scary 30 minutes we were getting nowhere, pouring water just made it worse. She kept saying that her knee needed to come out going down but it wasn’t working.
“Just grab my tights and pull!”
“Are you sure, they might rip and it could make it worse.”
“I don’t care, just yank on them, I have to get out of here!”
I grabbed her tights below her knee and yanked. I felt the fabric tearing but suddenly there was movement and her knee came free. We took some photos at the base, feeling very happy to have completed the rescue.
She started coming by our camp each night and became a quick friend. She joined us at Lighting Bolt crack and lent me her 6 and 7 for the offwidth.
We were climbing a 5.9 called Binous crack when we saw a 30 year old couple walking toward us with lost expression. They were looking at the wall, then down at their open guidebook. We all do it at new climbing areas. It’s one reason why I like repeating routes. You waste less time looking for stuff.
“You guys looking for something?”
“Oh, thanks. Yeah, we are looking for Chocolate Corner?”
“It’s about two rope lengths to climbers right.”
As they got closer they saw our line.
“What is that route that you’re on?”
“It’s a 5.9.”
“That looks pretty good. We just got in last night, never been here before.”
“Ah, creek virgins!”
“Yupp, everything looks pretty hard. We are primarily boulderers but we do trad climb.”
“Would you like us to haul your rope up for you? Meg is about to clean this one. She could hang a top rope for you?”
“Oh man, that would be awesome, you don’t mind?”
“No, it’s the least we can do. I know what it’s like to walk up to these walls and get intimidated. Happy to help.”
Liam went first as we packed up our gear. He floated up it with no problem at all. We talked with his lovely girlfriend Chelsea as he climbed. She told us they were towards the end of an eight month road trip and had both taken sabaticals from their jobs near Squamish, Canada. He was a carpenter and she was something white collar?
They followed us over to Chocolate Corner where I had, again, backed off and handed the lead over to Meg. I have a complicated relationship with that climb. I’ve probably climbed it a dozen times, but only once clean. It’s red #1 Camalots, and my hands are two big to get secure jams.
Stronger, usually younger big handed climbers can stick their hands as deep as they will go…up to the start of the palm…and simply flex. With enough forearm power they can make their hands stick and climb up. The feet are fine. It’s a tight corner, less than 90 degrees so shoes are decent. It’s the hands though that have to hold on long enough to place gear.
Meg got up Chocolate Corner just fine. I followed it with no problem, even finding some kneebar rests.
The next day Chelsea and Liam joined us at the Blue Grama crag. I’d been hearing about it for years. But had avoided it because new crags often involve lots of searching.
Turns out it’s a very nice crag with a nine I flashed.
It looked like too much work but later I wished I had taken the top rope. Pride has no place at the creek. One needs to be constantly building stamina and any top rope is a good top rope.
Meg led Petrilli Motors and I did TR that one, falling a couple times at a corner transition and at the crux. Kelsey flew through the crux. We were all watching and Cass said: “Yup, she is a gymnast!”
Cass showed up for the second week. Meg, Cass and I had a fun few days, including a rain rest day up at the ruins. I told them about my vision up there and we looked around. Meg left soon and Cass and I had a slow morning. It was her birthday so I offered to draw her portrait. Then in the afternoon I flailed my way up Generic Crack. Technically I have no problem with the moves. It’s the stamina issue that keeps me from getting it clean. I must have hung 4 times. Each time after a rest I climbed strongly before petering out again. Cass was so hot from belaying in the afternoon sun that she had to take a long rest in the shade before gamely cleaning my route. Not surprisingly, there was no one else up there, and this on a route that normally has parties waiting.
Cass left at the end of the second week. I spent two days painting at both Horseshoe Bend two hours south, and at the green river before picking up Chris at the airport.
We climbed at Donnelly where I led The Incredible Hand Crack almost cleanly: I grabbed one cam to clip the rope rather than taking a runout whipper on the roof. I’m calling it 98% clean. Chris also led it but didn’t get it clean due to it not being her hand size. We also climbed Horse Crack, Zits and Soulfire. For those that don’t know, that means two long approaches in one day. The second one, up to Optimator crag was a grueling sufferfest in broiling sun. That was the day we decided to never do two crags in one day…and to come down two weeks earlier next year.
On the last day she led Cave Route. One of my last memories from that day was her looking at Quarter of a Man. Christine and Julia were looking at 150 feet of reds and greens in a 90 degree corner. That encapsulates my last trip to the creek. Having just led Cave Crack, and it being our last day she was seriously considering Quarter of a Man. I’d not done it…it being light years out of my league…even in my prime…and not my size anyway. But it would have fit her. The determining factor was we were all tired from 4 days of climbing (her and Julia) and 3 weeks for me. Plus she didn’t have enough greens and reds. Her last word on the subject was: “I saw that really good German guy hanging on a green.”
I flailed on the easy 9 by railroad cracks. We were looking at Binous crack, and I was thinking it looked like too much trouble when I was saved by a rainstorm. It rained all the way back to Salt Lake City airport. That night, our last at the creek, we played sad lonely cowboy songs around the campfire as the rained drummed down on the tarp overhead. At one point, as I chose another song about broken hearts she commented: “It’s weird you and I singing love songs together.”
“Ah yeah,” I replied. “We’re both thinking of our loved ones, who we miss very much and who are so far away.”
“And who I’ll be seeing tomorrow!”
“I know. It’ll take me 2 days to drive all the way home. You’re lucky to be catching a flight.”
Our last song, cast into the rainy desert night was “House of the rising sun”. We sang that song in perfect harmony. She really does have perfect pitch, and it was a joy to hear that flawless harmony blast out into the empty desert night.
Since Indian Creek I’ve now gone to Leavenworth, The City and Squamish.
In the midst of that I painted Rainier plein air twice. I liked the paintings so much I decided to upscale them to a studio version but much larger at 24 x 36. I’ve painted the mountain 22 x 30 before, and sold it to a friend. But this is the first time I’ve done it in oil.
Usually I try to finish plein air pieces in the studio. They often have rough edges that need refinement: passages that were hurried due to changing light. But I’d forgotten how relaxing it can be to take my time on a large painting in studio over multiple days.
It does tend to drag on like work, but I enjoy the process and sense of purpose a multi day painting brings. Being retired gets boring, there are days when I almost miss work. But the opposite is true also. On my 3 day trip to Squamish with Dave we were doing up to 7 pitches a day followed by long walk offs or 4 pitch rappels, plus a walk off. Incidentally, you can do four 30 meter raps from 100 feet below Karen’s Math to a short trail down to the car. It’s vastly superior to the Broadway Decent.
Anyway, after three days of doing either new routes (Welcome to the Jungle and Long time no See) or 7 pitch routes (St. Vitus to Karens to Memorial), I needed a rest day. Dave doesn’t tolerate rest days and left. I could have tried to get a spot and a partner at the Chief campground but was more in the mood to hang with Sue and paint, so I left too.
I liked the big 24 x 36 inch studio painting so much I painted a copy of it same size, but this time I used palette knife. Knife painting is fun because the colors are so bright, but jeez it’s labor intensive! The first one is on canvas glued (Miracle Muck) to a cradled board. The whole cradled board concept is fine up to a point. Yes, the paintings are well protected, and glue is archival and reversible. But what I didn’t know is that a cradled board that big is very heavy…and that’s before you add the frame.
In researching it on youtube, I’m finding that artists have traditionally painted on canvas because at the end of the day it’s easier for the artist. It’s true that the painting is much more vulnerable to damage. I know it sounds harsh, but once it’s sold it’s not my problem if you poke a hole through it.
If the painting doesn’t sell, a cradled painting has to be stacked like furniture. Large paintings on canvas can be unstapled from the stretcher bars and rolled up. Van Gogh sold one painting during his life. But he always worked on canvas for convenience. When he died, his family found a shed full of rolled up, unsold canvases, stacked like cordwood.
Large canvases are surprisingly light. Sure, they are fragile…it’s just cloth. But museums are full of large paintings on canvas, and many are 200 years old.
Anyway, long story short, I’m getting tired of working in the studio. It feels too much like a job. Aren’t I supposed to be retired? I tried to make a frame for the first thirty six incher. Not only was it confusing and delicate carpentry to make my first floating frame, but varnishing is awful. How in the hell do people learn that stuff? Mine looks like a 6 year old was finger-painting. And the float leaves a huge gap where light can come through the frame. How do I fill that…paper?
Replace trigger wires on BD Ultralight and LinkCam
March 28th, 2024
I love my little purple .5 Linkcam. It’s the perfect panic cam for finger cracks. But I broke the trigger wire two years ago and then Omega went out of business. I also had a booty BD Ultralight with a broken trigger wire. Normal cams are easy. I can do them at the picnic table with weed wacker plastic string. All I need is a stove to melt the plastic. That solution has been around for 10 years.
But Linkcams and Ultralights are much harder due to proprietary connectors and ultra thin wires. I bought some 1/24″ stainless braided wire and a crimper tool with assorted crimping sleeves.
crimper
I also bought some specialty wire:
wire
I did the Ultralight first because it was easier. First step was to put the old crimps in the vice and grind them off with my rasp file. The solid wire that pins into the cam lobes is half the thickness of the normal cams…which is why they had to wrap it in rubber…but they break just as easy.
I tried to simply bend a bight and stick it into the trigger bar, but I’d used thicker more durable braided cable and it wouldn’t fit into the retaining pinch. So I had to manually weave one end at a time into the trigger bar…that worked great.
trigger wire weaving
You can see the skinny solid wires here. Notice how I’ve carefully guessed at where in the ‘throw travel’ the trigger bar needs to be buttoned down, then cut the wires with enough overlap for the crimp sleeve.
cutting for the crimp
Crimping the swage.
inserted but not crimped
I had a really hard time holding the squirrely wires, swages (sleeves) and braided cable in alignment with the cam lobes and trigger bar. Later my wife gave me a second pair of hands, but this ‘third hand’ soldering tool helped hold it all in place for the crimping.
crimping with a third handcloseup of the businesstools of the twadeoverview of my tools. Great to have the cam working again!
The linkcam was a bugger. They use proprietary pressed in connectors. I was unable to press out the pins in the lobes. Instead I used Dremel wheel to grind off the old eyebolt style cable connector. Then I fabricated a new one using a drill and a metal hole puncher…and some jewelers files. I put a tapering slot into it like you find on the back of smoke alarms that need to be mounted on a flat head screw on the wall. I figured I could simply crimp the “arm” on my new eyebolt to the new cable, then crimp the new cable to the original cable. My work is never pretty. If I can get it functional it’s a good day.
new eye bolt fabricated from a plumbing pipe mount – strapping tape. before assembly
Because the cam lobes need spring tension, it was difficult to guess at how many turns I needed to rotate the cam lobe to get it back to manufacturers spec. I went with two turns from the relaxed state and compared that with the working side. The tension seems to be holding my slotted eyebolt in place so far.
Taint pretty but it works
Vantage and Smith with Dave
March 26th, 2024
I’ve been slacking on regular entries. I do like to write, but I’m often too disorganized to post up through WordPress. Truth is I forgot my password and digging it out of my password manager is a pain. Why are browsers so intent on forgetting passwords?
Lately I’ve been doing random writing in my Notes app, which I used to replace Evernote. Evernote was essential when I was working, but now it’s not worth the price…same story with Photoshop.
Anyway, here is a month of random writing:
March 10
Handsome Dave and I sat on the Air Guitar ledge in the warm afternoon sunlight pondering our next move. On a lot of trips, it’s go go go all day long. But after the long cold and wet winter that desert sun felt amazing. And we had been climbing steady since leaving the parking lot at 9AM.
I also love the view out over the Columbia River gorge. From our ledge on the cliff we could see for at least 20 miles. It’s completely wild with no sign of civilization in sight, other than the distant abandoned highway leading down to the river.
So far that day I’d led Party in Your Pants 5.8.
Dave had led George and Martha 10a, to start his day off easy. I’d followed like a fish out of water, complaining at every missed jam and side pull.
Next I’d led Clip ‘em or Skip ‘em….barely. My power drain was ugly. All those sessions at the gym were for nothing. Looking up at the bolt spacing…twice the gym spacing, was scary. My eyes kept locking onto the razor sharp dinner plate flakes waiting to cut my rope in a fall.
But I managed to cop a few one hand shakeout rests. And the thin spots are thankfully short, always followed by huge jugs.
Next Dave led Stroken the Chicken. I was surprised to find it to be very similar to Pony Keg, but with better rock. I’m thinking it could be safe with 3 yellows, 5 blues and 4 fours, plus a normal single rack down to half inch. Those were some stellar moves above the chockstone. Practically offwidth stacked hands.
Speaking of the chockstone, our rope got stuck. And it was only a 50 meter, so our options were limited. Dan Kerns was there: “Looks like you guys could be done by dark?”
I was very uneasy about rescuing the rope. We needed to lead Whipsaw 5.9 in order to get above the chockstone, then swing down and over-around an arete. I’d barely got up the much easier Clip ‘Em route. Dave got the rope down and then it was my lead.
The temps were perfect. Shirt sleeve weather, 6 knots of wind. The views out across the desert were lovely in the alpen glow. We were sitting at the base of Pony Keg 5.9, which Matt had just led. I lead it every trip to Vantage, often using it as a warm up.
But I was tired, and I didn’t know why. PMR is always with me, but I’d also taken ibuprofen, so that wasn’t the real reason for not leading it. I started talking out loud, trying to sort through my conflicting feelings. Climbing is dangerous, and attitude is huge.
I don’t like gear at the bottom, the rock is really shattered. But those shattered edges are good hand and foot holds.
There is a good purple, green and red in the bottom 25 feet. After that, there is a stem rest, followed by a short section of “go” before a sketchy yellow, quickly followed by even better edges mixed with the beginnings of hand jams.
After that the jams and gear get much better because there is less shattering.
Plus there is that lovely line of solid bolts protecting Whip Saw. I can reach out and clip or lower on them at any time.
And you are down here to rescue me if I blow out and can’t finish it.
I should just do it. What’s the worst that could happen?
Now Mark, you should never ask your climbing partner that question.
Alright. I’m not feeling it but I’ll start up and have a look see.
In the event, I mostly kept my cool. We won’t mention the 3 bolts I clipped because I didn’t trust my cams. I found a bunch of thin but workable stem rests due to wearing my newly resoled custom built green and yellow shoes. When I got to the fist section, I endured the painful jams long enough to walk my blues up. There are always more hand jams even though it’s fists. You just have to reach farther in where it narrows.
I kept finding stem rests, even as I was fighting the sections where it was too big for hands, but too small for fists. Those diagonal fists are awful. I kept going past the Whip Saw anchors and found it harder than described. It was fists in semi shattered rock. And it didn’t lean over as promised. There is 20 new feet up there now for which I had no muscle memory. But the new bolted anchor is awesome.
I’m still trying to figure out my calorie needs for climbing days vs days in the city. Starting with lunch and dinner the day I left town, I ate normally. Though my dinner was a Fred Meyer Super Salad and three chicken breasts. Way back in the day when we were mountain climbing we were taught that pizza was the best dinner for the night before. Ton’s of carbs and protein.
Anyway, in the frigid 25 degree morning I had two yogurts before Dave rolled in. I ate a chicken burrito for lunch and was hungry for more but didn’t have anything.
Driving back I ate a wine sausage and some popcorn. I coudn’t stop for better food because there was already too much solo driving in the dark to get home for Sue’s stupid Will appt. the next day. You don’t get to enjoy your new will until you’re dead, so that was not a fun way to spend $650. She ponied up the funds.
I waited a day to weigh and found that I hadn’t undone all my progress. I was still at 168. We did our usual routine of playing ping pong and pedaling the hills while I continued on with my intermittent fasting mostly vegan diet.
Yesterday, I got really hungry at noon. I sort of hit a wall and had to break my fast, snacking on some peanut butter and a banana. Then a mid afternoon snack of almonds and I even broke down and had a slice of bread and butter. The body wants what it wants.
So this morning I was afraid I’d be up to 170 again…since I’d broken my fast early and all. But I saw 166 on the scale. I guess that punching through the 168 plateau wasn’t a fluke. Instead of sitting on the couch I rode my Schwinn Aerodyne while watching the State of the Union rebuttal speech. That woman was an alarmingly bad speaker. And her facts were scrambled. Politics in general suffers from a lack of integrity. I miss Obama, or even the Bushes. They had charisma and could speak well without sounding over the top.
So Mister 166 pedaled to the gym today. I was there until 5:30, still fasting. But more surprising: I climbed strong. I got up the hard white on the left with the sculpted door knob holds. Craig got it onsight clean and we talked about why I have to work up to that kind of power while he climbs off the couch. Youth and natural ability is remarkable. I also onsighted the new black in the SE corner, and the ten plus red in the SW corner. It’s the stem box with the big gaston holds. It’s very tenuous making the moves on half inch hands and feet.
March 24
I just got off my unicycle at Cheney Stadium. This is my third ride of the year, having cut back due to my ongoing issues with long covid – joint inflammation – PMR – old age…what ever you want to call it. I still have some grace…but it gets overwritten by sheer terror. The damn uni is so unstable it feels like I’m going to tumble off and break a hip any second. I’m bullheaded enough to keep trying, which is both brave and stupid at the same time.
I’ve given up on the unassisted standing start, but it’s in my future. I need to study some tutorials again.
My homework
I met Dave at Smith Friday through Monday. He had up to 6 Bend locals joining us every day. He says they all met through Cass, who has dropped off the radar. And I think I introduced him to Cass, which is weird.
We started with Dragon, Mandy, Chris and a few others at the Cinnamon Slab 5.easy routes. That was a perfect way to get up to speed on the welded tuff nubbins.
I recently discovered the Vertical World North climbing gym because we were looking to practice offwidth crack climbing. We used to go to their southerly location back before our local gym expanded. It was a fun way to get out of town and climb taller walls. Plus the South gym did have some nice cracks, though nothing was true offwidth.
This new North location has all the normal stuff as far as bouldering, toproping and leading steep sport routes. Plus it has the usual well equipped exercise area with free weights and aerobic machines like stair steppers and ellipticals.
And unlike many gyms they still have the (semi) dangerous auto-belays. These seat belt retractor style devices aren’t dangerous in and of themselves, they’re well engineered. But complacent, some might say spacey climbers, and the lack of buddy checks have led to many tragic auto belay accidents. If you’re smart, focused and constantly vigilant, auto belays are awesome due to the fact that you don’t need to bring a partner.
But what really makes this gym special, and worth the trip, even if you don’t live in Seattle…is the cracks. To our great surprise, we were the only ones climbing the cracks. Everyone else was pulling on plastic.
Starting with the smallest, they have a ring lock crack that varies in width from half an inch to three quarters of an inch. That means rattly fingers if you have small hands, and lockers if you have extra large hands like me.
Next is a standard yellow number 2 camalot sized crack. This is perfect hands for most people. If you like Classic Crack in Leavenworth, you’ll like this crack. And it has an auto-belay, so you can cruise up and down it without a partner.
Next up are two variations on a blue number 3 camalot crack. With my XL sized hands, I was able to get easy steeples or tight fists in both of them. My friend with small hands really struggled with these two number 3 cracks. She had to do elbow jams or shaky butterfly jams to make progress.
But the best crack of all, especially if you are training for Moab’s Indian Creek is the number 5 crack. Even my huge fists didn’t fit. I stuck them in hoping for at least a marginal fist jam…but it was nothing but air on both sides of my hand. It was the proverbial hotdog in a hallway scenario. This crack is also in a corner, with one of the fist cracks nearby if you need to cheat. Anyway, it’s a fantastic size for learning your worst case off-width skills. It wasn’t big enough for double fists for either of us. It was hand fist stacking.
But the crack is too wide to get any kind of heel toe jam. Initially neither of us could make uphill progress. We were completely shut down. After much struggle we found that we could get a secure no hands jam by sticking our left leg in up to the thigh. Then by contorting our hips we jammed our right leg in up to the knee doing a toe-knee bar. With both legs deep in the crack and sort of opposing each other, we could let go with our hand fist stacks long enough to slide them up. Once my hands were secure, I’d pull my legs out, do an insecure right leg heel toe to step up, then jam my left thigh back in and lock my lower body in place with some knee to toe opposition on my right leg. With my lower body locked into the crack, the only way to reach my hands higher was a sit up. We need to shoot video of this.
This was a full body, heart pounding workout. I couldn’t climb more than about 15 feet before hanging on the toprope to rest. But wow, such good practice! This comes very close to some of the 5.11 offwidth nightmares at Indian Creek.
Beyond that, they had the usual wide selection of cubbies and lockers. They also had some really cool free electronic lockers for phones, keys and wallets. You stick your things in the little 7 inch steel cubes, press a button, program your personal code and shut the door. That was so cool to know that my valuables were safe without having to bring a lock.
Vertical World was the first climbing gym in America. I remember going there in 1988. I’m really glad to see they are still running a tight ship!
At Thanksgiving I stepped on the scale and was shocked to see my highest number ever: 176. This is partly because of the prednisone I’m taking to treat PMR (Polymyalgia Rheumatica). That started in April, 2023 with my last (second) bout of Covid. I got really stiff joints during my week of Covid symptoms. But the stiff joints, and a cough stayed for months. In my mind it was just Long Covid. But by August I was concerned enough to bail on a Squamish trip and drop into our local clinic. I could barely climb, and some days barely get out of bed because my knees, shoulders, neck, hips and elbows were locked up.
The PA, for lack of a better idea, prescribed a 9 day dose of Prednisone, which cured my symptoms overnight. She sent me to a Rheumatologist a month later who prescribed a smaller dose of prednisone in a year long declining dose called a taper. I’m six months in and have the dose down to 4mg a day. Some people online are saying that you shouldn’t lower your dose below your pain level. But I’m willing to accept some pain because this drug is all kinds of bad.
After my yearly physical a couple weeks ago I was warned about high Cholesterol. She advised another drug for that. But I didn’t want to add more pharmaceuticals. I’ve been down this road before. You go to a physical feeling great, and all you get is gloom and doom. That’s why I waited 3 years since my last one.
Years ago I found I could lower my cholesterol and improve other numbers by going on what is basically a vegan diet. No red meat, flour or sugar. And especially stay away from the delicious $9 a pound hot bar at Metro Market. That had become a regular thing. I’d load up on mac and cheese, cheesy lasagna, meatballs, basically anything that looked delicious. And this was typically after Sue and I had exercised on the hills. We had a “we earned it” attitude. And the pounds packed on.
One of the reasons I don’t get too worked up about Cholesterol reports is because of my grandma. When she was 97 she was still living alone, with her dog, in her old house on the West Side. This would have been around 1990. Dad was doing for grandma what Sue is now doing for her mom, taking her groceries, helping out whenever needed. Anyway, dad took her for her yearly physical. They told grandma that her cholesterol was high and she should change her diet, or maybe even get on some pills to reduce her cholesterol.
Grandma asked the doctor what cholesterol was. The doctor told her it was something they had just invented. It was a way to measure, or predict your predisposition towards heart attacks and strokes. Grandma just laughed and told the doctor that she had got to 97 just fine and wasn’t about to make any changes. She lived another 2 years before old age finally got her.
She used to tell me that she wasn’t having very much fun anymore. She had out lived all of her friends and siblings. She had her vinyl talking books, church every Sunday, and the occasional visits from family on holidays. But other than that it was a lonely life. I went down and drew her portrait once. She loved that and we talked a lot about art and getting older.
Huh. I just looked and I don’t seem to have any photos online of my two drawings of Grandma. I’ll have to look into that.
I do have friends who have died from heart attacks though. I mean, I’m not oblivious of the dangers of clogged arteries. A couple weeks ago I combined intermittent fasting with the vegan diet. I have the occasional slab of salmon or chicken, but only between 5pm and 10pm. Sometimes I breakdown at 3pm if I’m really hungry. My motto is: “Hunger is not a problem I need to fix.” I know it sounds elitist, very first world…but this is where I live. I also like the clarity that comes with fasting. It’s like my body is on high alert, constantly looking for food. I’ll catch a whiff of someone eating food and my senses light up. That doesn’t happen when you eat normally.
So anyway, I was very pleased to see 166 pounds on the scale this morning, down from 176 at Thanksgiving. Now to go get some exercise, and skip the reward afterward. I was just perusing some old journal entries and I found one from May 21, 1999. In it, I complain about 165 being fat. Jeez, I’ve really slipped up in the last 30 years.
Big Blue to Josh
February 19th, 2024
Sorry for the disjointed out of order chaos of this entry. I’m covering about 3 months here, and to be honest my mind has been a jumble lately. It hasn’t helped that I decided to cancel my Photoshop subscription. That means I had to switch to Gimp and Darktable to be able to use HEIF and CR3 image files from my iPhone and Canon, respectively.
I took the avalanche photo a couple days ago. I was skinning up, heard a whoop, and saw the hundred foot wide slab avalanche sliding down at speed. The snowboarder who triggered it was skiing beside it. I watched as it slowed down and stopped. The boarders buddies came skiing down through the people skinning up, but to skiers left of the slide. Everyone acted like nothing had happened. The skinners kept going up, despite the obvious danger. It had blown hard from the East the night before when it snowed 12 inches. They were on a wide open West facing avalanche slope, and the conditions were clearly extremely dangerous. Worst of all, the snowboarder, who should have been changing his underwear, was instead putting his skins on to go back up for another run. Reminds me of this old saying: “God watches out for children, drunks and fools”
Avalanche on Panorama Pt.
I passed on the yearly membership sale at the climbing gym. Instead I let my last membership play out to the last day. The December 10, 2022 purchase lasted until January 28. I bought a monthly membership for $86. The desk lady said I could freeze it an unlimited number of times. So now, when I head out on a trip I won’t be paying for a gym while I’m out of state.
I’ve been hitting it every few days thanks to Chris and Gina. I also sometimes climb with Alex and Ethan though they are into twelves. I’m building some plastic power after a month of this and can now get up all the ten minus climbs. They aren’t a cake walk, but I can usually cleanly figure them out, though there may be whining. Last night the place was humming as they were having a “queer mountaineers” event. There was a big welcome sign on a table where you could grab a rainbow wristband. It was nice of them to put that on. Even Tod, the owner was there, climbing with Justin and friends. I love that the owner of our gym is not just a bean counter. He’s a real climber and genuinely nice.
I’ve been riding my bike up the hills in old town. Yesterday I pedaled straight up cobblestoned Carr street without my usual zig zag switchbacking. Granted I was going very slow, but it was a steady slow…suitable for a white haired guy.
Lisa and her kids
Both Clint and Lisa took their three year olds skiing for the first time. Rose even got on a chair lift. Clint told us he carried her off the first time, but the second time she exited on her skis, with help from dad. The look on her face as he holds her on the chair is epic.
Clint and Rose on chair lift
Sue and I spent a night at Lisa’s. We did our usual afternoon walk with her two kids, then in the morning Sue and I skinny skied down the road to the bridge. There was one inch of fresh over ice, with just 8 cars in the parking lot. Clearly everyone else also new the snow sucked. If the kids had been there I would have taken a run up the hill, but we felt bad for Lisa babysitting all alone and decided to drive back to her house.
I sewed a nice fanny pack out of medium thickness leather. It was my second try. I recycled the leather and zipper from the first one. I’m a pro at ripping out stitches…seems to be the price of being a seamstress. The first one turned out too small, so naturally I made this one too big. Still, bigger is better if you want to squeeze in things like a wind breaker and a water bottle, plus phone, keys and wallet.
I wanted to add extra zippered compartments. But the complexity, and fragility of zippers led me towards a simple padded divider. I also wanted to be able to attach various items vertically, and have them be removable, such as a Mace in a velcro lined sleeve. So one side of the inside is lined with soft velcro. That gives me flexibility going forward.
I sewed a fanny packI sewed a fanny pack
It’s maiden voyage was painful. The darn thing was too loaded down and kept pulling my pants off on my bike ride. I’ve since added a supplemental shoulder strap to take the weight off the waist belt.
A friend asked me to sew a holster for their Glock 19. If you don’t know guns, Glocks are striker fired pistols, as opposed to hammer fired. They have no safety, other than a little moving bump on the trigger. Supposedly the trigger can’t be pulled accidentally due to that little bump. But Glocks are famous for ND’s. (Negligent Discharges). Some of the gun nuts on youtube even say that the holster is the safety.
There are youtube videos of cops shooting themselves. It’s called a “Glock Leg”. As in: my damn gun shot my leg, or my junk, or my stomach. This usually happens because keys, or a drawstring wanders into the holster and pulls the trigger. A good holster, and careful usage, protects the trigger from being accidentally pulled. All rifles have safeties, I have no idea why these safety less handguns have become so popular. They are the standard for police departments. Anyway, my friend wanted a holster that would accommodate the laser.
There was a lot of prep work to get the pistol ready for molding in the holster press. I had to fill in the ejection port with a custom carved chunk of wood. And the whole point of the holster was to protect the stupid trigger. You pull it, it goes bang. I had to cut two aluminum plates that sandwiched the trigger. Then I had to screw them together, anchoring them around the trigger. This way the molding process would have a blank where the trigger was. You can actually buy plastic replica guns that already have the molding prep work done. They come naked, and prepped at around $45 each. Holster making is big business. If I was younger and needed a side job it might be fun. Certainly easier than selling paintings. Anyway, I like making things, especially from leather, so that was a fun project.
I made a holster for a friendholster press, yeah I made that too.
Big Blue and Josh
Regarding my Xmas Day trip to Jtree…it’s been almost a month and I’ve forgotten most of the details. Here is what I remember.
I had just been to Josh at Thanksgiving with Sue and didn’t want to incur another $1000 gas bill. JH offered to drive his Taurus (Big Blue) which gets almost twice the MPG.
My first clue that Big Blue was going to be a mistake was when we got on the freeway and it gave a violent lurch.
“What was that? It felt like slippage in a bad transmission.”
JH: “I’ve been trying to get to the bottom of that. I had the code read at Schucks and it said EGR valve, which I replaced. But it might also be the back sparkplugs which are old. I was able to replace the front 3 but I couldn’t access the back 3.”
His 2002 Taurus also had a scary tendency to die at idle in traffic jams. This is not in itself dangerous, but it is very frustrating and stressfull…especially if you don’t know the secret series of key turns and shift lever manipulations required to restart it…over and over.
To my great surprise, we did make it 1000 miles to the park gate. In the usual traffic jam to enter, I pulled over and let him take over for the stop and go traffic. No way was I driving that chronically stalling junker through a mile long traffic jam.
But I must acknowledge, it did get us down and back. I mean, kudos to JH for knowing his car. But considering the scary driving I sat through with both JH and T, it might be one of those things where you simply live longer by spending more money. JH has a tendency to tail end at speed which is unnerving to someone used to defensive driving. Lisa commented that I should just drive next time. She was like: “Your life is worth $1000!” Actually, it would have cost me around 700, since he does chip in. But splitting his gas in Big Blue cost maybe $250.
Regarding the climbing: I was able to redeem my honor on the 5.6 Double Dip route. That thing is so run out! At the move where I backed off last time, I forced myself, against my better judgement…to keep climbing up. I got up into a dead end and started freaking. I was too far right and there was nothing but slippery slopers. No hands at all. I considered stepping up on the slopers, but happened to look left…which was technically the wrong direction….the bolt was off to the right….and saw a decent dip for my foot. I stepped left, and found a sequence that got me up to the 1 inch horizontal ledge.
Once there, I saw I could clip the bolt if I could do a no hands traverse about 12 feet right. At that point I was looking down the throat of a 30 foot slab fall. It was one of those defining moments where you question your life choices. No one was going to rescue me. It was two choices: 1. take the fall; or 2. climb and hope you don’t fall. I went with door number 2.
JH and Tim led Penny Lane. I was still burned out on runnouts so I followed it. Tim and I climbed Eff Four, the mellow 5.6 multipitch right of Heart and Sole. Tim has a habit of walking off barefoot. He does great so he must have thick skin.
Barefoot Tim
When we arrived at the crowded first come first served campground the day after Xmas we knew that Dennis, Cam and Carmen were in 34, and Craig was in 10. But as soon as we drove past Toe Jam I saw Handsome Dave and his little black Pontiac hatchback in site 30. We figured we could make that work, but it was great to also have our other friends in the campground for back up options.
Handsome Dave
JH and I climbed the easy warm up to the left of the Flake. As we were descending we saw Cam and Carmen walking back from Illusion Dweller. I hadn’t seen them in a couple years. They invited us to camp in Dennis’s spot, since he was in town for a night catching up on work. I slept out in my bivy sack, which was very warm despite the 30 degree night.
While JH was cooking breakfast I did the dawn patrol. We really needed the ham radios as there is no cell service down on the road. But we thought we didn’t have room in his tiny car. If we had them, I could have called him to bring the car over when I found an empty site.
Dave belaying
As it played out, I found site 27 empty. I laid out my sleeping pad on the table and sat down in the site to establish our claim. I glanced over at Craig and Daves sites, hoping for reinforcement, but everyone was asleep. I was glad to be in my expedition puffy. It was an hour’s wait before anyone woke up.
Finally I saw Handsome Dave moving around 3 campsites away. Dave immediately recognized the dilemma and interrupted his breakfast plans to drive his Pontiac over to 27 which anchored the site.
Me and JH in site 27
I did climb a couple routes with Craig and Vladimir. Craig and I did Geronimo Finish, traversing in from the right. It was great to have a 5 up there. I’m pretty sure I could lead it by approaching via Dogleg.
One night I was on my second Mikes Hard when Craig appeared out of the darkness at our campfire.
“How’s it going Mark?”
“Ah, great, just finished dinner, hitting a Mikes.”
“You want to go do Hobbit Roof in the moonlight?”
“What? Didn’t you get enough climbing during the daylight?”
“No, we were hanging out with the kids, scrambling around the campsite.”
“Ah Jeez! I was just getting comfortable. But it’s not like we haven’t done this before (6 years back). I can’t say no…it would mean I’m getting old”
“Yupp, can’t have that.”
Vladimir and Cole also walked over with us. Vlad brought his big Canon and a remote flash. Craig led the 10+ face move by red headlamp, cleanly, in the dark. Neither Vlad nor I could follow it cleanly, not the face move or the overhung roof.
Me following Hobbit Roof, PC: Vladimir Bobov
Diane and Joan showed up on Thursday and we got them a campsite by the second night. Dave, JH, Joan, Diane and I all walked over to Sports Challenge rock where I led a stiff and awkward 5.8.
The next day Dave led the 10+ Exorcist at Hall of Horrors while I led a 5.8 to the left. Mine had a flaring start but good otherwise. We all followed the Exorcist but that crux is hard! You have to layback the side of the crack on tips.
My Bat tent and a storm approaching, Big Blue ready for action
Probably the best climb I did was following Dave up Left Banana Crack. Right Banana looked great also but it’s an eleven, though it looked like solid hands and I was tempted. Perhaps on my next trip when I’ve warmed up and not suffering from Long Covid aches and pains.
I did my usual trips up Mikes Books, Hands Off, Toe Jam and Bat Crack. JH had a bad eye on our trip to Indian Cove so Tim and I did a trip up The Duchess. He chose to combine pitches one and two so I was surprised to get to the belay ledge and see the rope continuing up…though a body slot tunnel! It had been 30 years since I’d done that pitch. As I was crawling up through the wedged washing machine sized boulders I prayed that they wouldn’t move and pin me in place. The walk off was cake, and we did two of the bolted lines on the way out.
On the last day JH led Photog. It’s only 5.6 but that thing is sketchy! The traverse on the vertical bottom 50 feet is incredibly intimidating for both leader and follower. Pro is minimal for both. I hesitated to commit to that move for a long 10 minutes. Didn’t help that it was freezing in the shade. I had to step on shoelace sized flakes with both feet while doing a gaston on a rotten flake. Then I reached up with my frozen fingers to a half inch ledge. It quickly got easier with jugs…but that move! No way that is 5.6, I don’t care what anyone says. This is the same crag with Illusion Dweller on the sunny side. The walk off was a cakewalk.
On the drive home we stopped for the night at Castle Crags. I slept in my 40 year old Early Winters bivy sack. I really need to sew a better, bigger bivy. Just a simple hoop to keep the fabric off my face would be so nice. I’m envisioning two exterior poles with the breathable fabric attached with snap on clips. It’s got to be super quick and pack small.
Josh with Sue
December 11th, 2023
It’s been almost two weeks since we got back from Josh.
I remember lots of nights in the bat tent. Waking up and staring at the condensation. I made the damn thing too short so my head brushes the roof when i get up. In the big thunder and lightning storm the forward rain facing seam leaked in a couple ounces of water. It wasn’t enough to matter, but could easily be fixed with a removable zippered vestibule. I’m thinking a one inch leather strip on both ends. It would have holes punched every inch. I could lace on the vestibule, which would have it’s last attachment point on the corner stake loop on both sides. On the other end, I’d secure it’s vee point to the O tent single anchor with elastic.
I climbed a few things well. Everything at Solarium went ok. Toe Jam was iffy but fine. Continuum, A 5.8 at Split Rock had me hanging 5 times. On our last day, the one following the thunderstorm, I led Hands Off and Double Cross like my old self…super strong and confident…figuring out the cruxes with ease…power to spare.
But where was that guy during the previous 12 days?
On the drive home:
Sue: “I got this seat so far foward the airbag will kill me if I get in an accident”
me: “Oh shit, I better start looking for a new wife. Hey Siri!”
Siri: “Yes”
me: “Find me a Russian bride”
Siri: “Yes, I can help you with that, here is what I’ve found. There are Russian brides in Vladivostok, St. Petersburg and Moscow. Would one of those be what you need?”
Sue: “We want to see Anastashia!”
Laughter ensues…
Sue got a stopper stuck on beginners 1. She had previously borrowed my nut pick the day before. But I’d taken it back and forgot to tell her. So she couldn’t get it out and I had to lower down to clean it.
With me belaying her on the way down we were slow to get off. I placed two cams for the belay down the last chimney…it’s the Bousioneer, Papa Woolsey walk off. I made a mental note to pull the anchor before descending. But lowering the rope and the rack in the dark distracted me. I got down and did a scan of the rack to see if anything had fallen off when I slid it down.
Good thing: t was missing the two cams from the anchor. I tried to climb up in the dark but that chimney is polished! I’d done it before but couldn’t figure out the damn moves!
Finally I realized I needed to mantel the last foothold while jamming a hip and reaching high. It goes, but just barely. In addition to no nut pick, she didn’t have an emergency head lamp or prusiks. On our next trip to town we got her all of that. She now has the petzl E+Lite.
I’ve had that lite 8 years and it’s never failed. It lives in my chalkbag. Sue also didn’t have a chalkbag with a zipper…so we bought her one of those.
But that got me thinking. My rock pack headlamp is an old school BD headlamp with 4 AA cells. It’s quite heavy and has one of those over designed single button functions to turn on red, blue and green lights. Plus it’s case is a gooey mess due to a spilled bottle of DEET.
I’m thinking I could save some weight in my rock pack by switching to Sue’s main camping headlamp which is a Fenix HM50R.
That would fit in my chalkbag when I know for sure I’ll do a late route, and would be much better than hauling up my big ass BD light. It’s just as bright, but obviously doesn’t last as long. I like that you can keep a brand new battery as a backup.
I could use the bd light in the house or the rav4 with my big fenix always hanging in the truck.
This means the new smaller fenix would go in my rock pack, and the big BD would move to the house or the rav4. I’m gonna think on it. I hate blowing money on stuff I don’t need.
Since returning I bought a bottom bracket tool at rei. The guy down at the old town bike shop was right. You can’t use a mountain bike derailleur on a 3 speed front sprocket without the matching shorter bottom bracket. With the shorter axle, the derailleur can reach out far enough to push the chain onto the farthest sprocket. It was only a few sixteenths shorter, but it worked.
I had to tinker with some cable lengths and set screws but it is shifting very nicely now thru all 21 gears. I’ve been climbing with both Gina and Chris at the gym. Gina was two days in a row Saturday and Sunday.
Lisa, Levi and Olivia were here Monday – Tuesday. Levi is starting to smile and Olivia is markedly smarter in just a couple weeks. She is forming sentences and clearly understands everything we say.
Clint’s got a bear head in his freezer. Hunting has taken him down some unusual roads. It cost $1000 to go to Josh at 15mph with gas prices around $4.50/gallon.
I took, but didn’t use my big camera. The few photos I took with my phone are dumb. I do remember quite a few nights sitting by my propane campfire, sipping some whiskey and enjoying the quite sounds of the desert evening.
My worst day was when I bailed off Double Dip at the second bolt. Rain was only 15 minutes away, and maybe I sensed that. But still, Double Dip!!!
I didn’t even recognize myself half the time. Blame it on long covid or pmr, or prednisone, or age…who knows. On the day we left I climbed Hands Off and Double Cross like my old self.
If I’d stayed, I might have finished strong, but Sue was burned out on camping.
Since returning we’re back in ping pong 3 days a week. Those are some great friends down there. On Wednesdays Bob and Randy show up and they play some mean ping pong. I played about 8 games with them and lost every time. Still, Randy is very good at keeping loosing fun. He’ll get on a roll where he pops up high floaters, aiming them towards my right arm which is my strong one.
I’ll slam them back as hard as I can. He’ll run way back and pop them up to the right corner again…rinse and repeat. It’s super fun. We both get something out of it. He improves his defensive game while I refine my slams.
Clint and family are in Hawaii for two weeks. Jamie’s got a rich relative with an island vacation home where they are staying for some helicopter pilots wedding. Sue is running herself ragged managing Clint’s farm. He’s got chickens and a fat old dog. Wyatt is a good dog, but he can barely walk anymore and mostly lays around.
There are some wack jobs around town now stealing Kia’s. They hang out the window waving guns and terrorize the neighborhoods. Clint was half a block away and saw them attacking a guy with a dog. He had both kids and Wyatt with him and high tailed it out of there, dialing 911 as he dragged Rose and Wyatt away from the crime scene.
Sue walks that neighborhood all the time either for exercise or to walk Wyatt. But with these wack jobs shooting people in the neck (Federal Way last week) we have been wishing we had some kind of protection. I’m going to buy another one of those tire thumpers from Loves travel stops. It’s basically a billy club. Not much good against a gun, but better than nothing.
I’m looking into some other options as well. There are some interesting paint ball markers that have been modified for self defense. They call it “Less Lethal”, as in: depending on what kind of round you put in them, they will be less lethal than a firearm. There is far too much firearm gun violence in America. Jeez, it’s constantly in the news. The people who are promoting the “Less Lethal” paint ball markers argue that, if you are attacked by a pit bull, or a wack job with a knife, the markers shoot a rather painful rubber bullet. It can be enough to persuade the attacker to go away. But the rubber bullets aren’t lethal. They typically just bruise. You can also load them with rounds that contain pepper spray, or maybe it’s some kind of tear gas. Anyway, it’s an interesting trend for people who don’t want to, or can’t, carry a real firearm.
It’s a real dilemma. As a pacifist, and someone who dislikes guns, I have no desire to carry a firearm. The statistics are horrific for having a gun in the home. You are actually safer to not have one. My dad was the same way. He hated guns after his little brother was killed in a tragic accident when a shotgun tipped over. My grandpa kept it by the door to shoot crows up in Sitka, Alaska.
But with wack jobs cruising the neighbor hood, hanging out car the windows waving guns…what is a good citizen to do?
I’ve finally finished both vestibules for the bat tent. Who knew sewing a cone shaped vestibule could be so hard? I tried using velcro, but that was a joke. I should have known better. Velcro is not capable of loading under tension. I ended up attaching the removable vestibules with zippers. Yup, that’s right. I’ve got one for each end…you never know which direction the storm is coming from. They protect the door seams…which leak a little.
With all the work and headaches I’ve put into the bat tent I’m starting to really miss our old REI 3 man mountain tent. That thing was dry as a bone when it was new. Even a Smith Rock gully washer couldn’t make that thing leak. I remember sitting in it as the rain poured down in buckets, dry as a bone inside.
