Webster Art

I was gone for 32 days. My climbing road trip started in City of Rocks on May 23. I saw Andrew and his kids up by Parking Lot rock on arrival. These were two of the 9 children under 5 years of age that eventually arrived at the group site.

Normally I’m there with the Over 50 crew but we dropped the ball on the reservation game. Truth is Joan had done it two years in a row and was tired of the hassle. You have to play the reservation.gov game 6 months out and buy $1000 worth of camping. Then you wait for your climbing buddies to Venmo you their individual tabs, which is usually around $120.

When I heard that Craig and Craig had done the same thing as a family style I joined up. What I didn’t realize was that 9 kids under 5 meant there wouldn’t be as much climbing as the over 50 crew. I had imagined me being the always climbing partner to the various spouses who took turns babysitting and climbing.

The reality was that sometimes the moms wanted a ‘girls only’ day, so I was hanging out with the dads and children. We still climbed, but it was limited to child friendly crags, usually sport and top roping. As a result, I led one trad route in 8 days. I led some sport, but nothing fancy. I specifically wanted to get to Lost World again, but that approach was too long for kids under 5. As was the 6 pitch route on Steinfelds Dome.

On the plus side, I finally got to meet another climber artist named Craig. Craig is a friend of my long time climbing buddy also named Craig. We had many illuminating conversations about the art business from plein air painting to framing and marketing. I had never met another artist who rock climbs. He is professional in both worlds. He really liked my painting of Craig, and was fascinated by my sketchbook of watercolors (+ pen).

He told a story about having a show in Twisp featuring paintings of the nearby Washington Pass. He didn’t sell a single painting because he didn’t know anyone there. When the show was over he put them up on Instagram and they sold within a few days.

Craig: I can’t believe you have all these amazing unsold paintings in a spiral bound book! Everything I paint is designed to be sold immediately.

Me: You’re much better than me, your work is professional grade stuff. I used to hustle my art and was in galleries for decades. Now that I’m on a pension I seem to have lost the drive. It sounds corny, but I paint for love and don’t really care if this stuff sells.

I did get comfortable leading eights on bolts. We also had some great campfire jams with people scrolling through my iPad and choosing songs. My buddy Craig had his banjo and the other Craig could sing harmony. Best of all, one of the mom’s with a newborn used to sing for money and had a kick ass voice. It’s very rare that I play with female vocalists but this climber girl had it going on. We did a bang up job on this John Prine song. Another time we had the whole band playing and I heard a wonderful tenor voice singing high harmony. I looked over and saw it was Craig the artist.

When it was time to leave I checked my messages and saw that Joan was back from Spain and wanted to meet at Lovers Leap on the 7th. I thought about driving due south and painting the mountains on the way to Lake Tahoe but decided instead to head there via I-5. That would allow me to hang out with Sue for 6 days between trips.

A week later I arrived at Lovers a day early and explored a few of the BLM camping options. There are first come first serve campgrounds but at $36 a night they were too expensive for my fixed income. With a little research and some local inquiries I quickly dialed in on a wonderful spot where we stayed for the next 10 days. We saw one other camper on the weekend but otherwise it was just me and Joan, briefly joined by her friend Kanyu for a couple nights.

Joan and I have climbed together almost a dozen times now. She has also climbed with Sue several times and we all get along great. She leads right at my level and is even slightly stronger than me at pure crack. I take the lead on runout slab, but that’s only because I got more stupid. She can do it but is smart enough to just say no to the sharp end when the bolts are far apart. Another example of why women live longer than men.

We spent all but the last three days climbing at the Hogsback where they are many leaning over routes five six to five eight. James and I had discovered a route called It’s better with Bacon. We’d bypassed the dangerous looking first pitch but on rappel decided it could be safe if we had more smaller gear. Six years later I returned and send it clean. It’s dangerous in a ground fall free solo kind of way, but if your friction feet are dialed it’s an exhilarating climb. Joan led pitch two which I’d promised was safe. But I made that judgement call from 50 feet away while placing tiny wires. The bolts looked reasonable. While following I realized I had misled her. It was badly runout. She soldiered through but wisely chose to let me lead the next two pitches.

Pitch 3 looked really runout and scary from below but I remembered enjoying it in 2020. Looking up, all you see are smooth undulations and a few widely spaced bolts. Frankly I was terrified. But I thought it would be safe to do some exploring and see if I could at least get to the first bolt.

If it was awful, I had a leaver biner. It turned out that the dykes were incut on top which allowed for easy-ish mantels. They were only half an inch at times, but the slab was sticky enough that the whole thing worked. My terror slowly turned to delight as I clipped bolt after bolt with nary a slip. A couple of retired senior citizens out for a romp on slab…so fun!

With Can Yu we did the 4 pitches of Lover’s Chimney. Then Joan and I did Corrugation Corner and Haystack Crack. I’d loved Haystack with Sue in 1979. But it turns out that 47 years and old man muscle loss does make a difference. That roof move was soooo much harder. I had to clip my daisy to a nut to pull up slack to clip a top rope cam. It’s sad that old age makes these “easy” routes so much harder. When I got home I talked to my body builder son about my weakening arms. He told me to buy some rings and hang them out in the shed. They are adjustable and much better than a pull-up bar.

I drove home for 2 days then left for Leavy where Fletch was having his 5th annual climbing and live music rendezvous. Craig was there again along with Julia & family, Kimmi, JoJo, Lisa & Brian, Adam, Dave, Alex and Danny. Fletch and I played our usual crowd pleasers while Brian and Craig joined in on guitar and banjo. Fletch took me and Julia up Cocaine where once again my weak arms flailed. Twas great hanging with old homeys.

Yesterday I did two cool metal working projects. One was repairing a 6 year old steel camping chair. It has a complex folding hinge that had broken. I was able to take it apart and simplify the hinge with some drilling and grinding. It’s now working again quite nicely. I’d already bought a new one, so now I have two. My rule on that chair is to never try to unfold it after beer. Unfold first, then beer. But I’ve now added a second rule: never let friends unfold the new one.

My second project was modifying my handlebar mirror on my ten speed. I moved it from my upper handlebar to the brake lever housing. Hopefully it is now positioned away from where my hands grab the bar. I had to custom fabricate a handlebar mount from a length of iron bar. I should have been a blacksmith.