Welcome to the third installment of my trip reports of my Canadian tour… Sounds more official that way. Right now I am on a rest day after a day TRing on the Cobra and a day working the Catcher. We are chillin at the Howe Sound Brew Pub here in town, snaking the Internet and sippin’ on free water. Ahhh, the climber bum lifestyle.
(Photo by Cory Richards) I awoke today barley able to move my body. I think I tweaked some muscles in my back yesterday on the Catcher after getting on it without a propper warm-up. It hurt like hell and I felt like I wouldn’t be bale to walk. It hurt to breath. After getting some food in my body and taking care of the triple S’s, the blood began flowing and the pain in my back subsided. It’s still there but, mildly, but I feel alive again. I am still sore as heck and my tips are about as thin as they could be without being non-exsistent… I’ll live.
So, I think I am like Storm, from the X-Men, except I’m a dude… and I can’t really control the weather. For the last few years I have gotten splitter weather almost everywhere I go, 90% of the time. I’m lucky like that. So following that trend, we arrived here in Squamish to conditions that are as good as it gets… in the summer. It’s still pretty warm, which makes the catcher a little harder, but I’m up for the extra challange… maybe. On Saturday Matty and I made the 30 minute slog up the backside of the chief to the Cobra to find none other than Dave Macleod mini-tractioning on it. Classic. I chatted with Dave for a bit and went to watch his slide show last night. Very nice and mellow guy, and obviously has an endless supply of motivation. So Matt set the rope up and we each TR’d a couple times of times on it. The first time I went up it it felt absolutely impossible. I guess I expected it to be a little easier. Very humbling. I even slipped at the top of the cobra feature which is only like 11+ by itself, and actually racked the side of my leg along the lip of it like a gumby which scrapped it all up and it started to bleed!!! On my second go it felt a lot more attainable, still hard, but I was even able to link 4 moves in a row on the head wall. It’s definitely hard to work because it is so painful and you can only spend so long on it before your fingers fill with blood, swell and the finger locks become unbearable. So it’s gonna take some serious commitment, a lot of figuring out, refining beta, changing beta, refining again, building calises, and eventually, hopefully sending someday. But I’m psyched to put in the effort. And I’m glad to have another project like the Catcher that I can work on as well, so I can actually climb consecutive days in a row, because it seems like a bad idea to put my fingers through the abuse of the Cobra two days in a row. The swelling might never go down…. I figure if I can do the hardest crack in the world first, then I’ll just be done with that facet of climbing! No, just kidding. I am definitely psyched to go to Indian Creek next year and learn to crack climb. While I’m on the subject, I guess I should let the climbing world know (or the tiny group of people that read this) that Nico Favresse has done the second ascent, the first repeat, of the Cobra Crack on Friday the 18th at approximately… who knows when. I’m not sure if Nico wants people to know yet, because I have looked on some of the major climbing websites and haven’t seen any mention of it. Heck, I’m here in Squamish and I didn’t even find out for a few days after the fact, and this place is a zoo right now! I was even on the route the next day after he sent and none of the other people at the cliff knew. So he’s been keeping it on the DL for now. So if you didn’t want anyone knowing, sorry Nico, but GOOD JOB ANYWAY!!!
I also climbed on the Catcher yesterday and… well, my skin just needs to get used to the rock a little. I was slipping off some of the sticky-est holds ever. It’s pretty friction dependent climbing on that one so I’ll need to have some good calluses built up and it can’t be humid or whatever was going on yesterday. Despite the humidity, or the… whatever was causing me to slip, I did manage to make it from the end of the slab to the start of the crux, then pulled back on after falling and went to the top. So that was a good link. These projects of mine just take some time, but fortunately I am one of the few people in the world who has heaps of that.
On a totally unrelated note check out this crazy pic
and go to surfline to check out the whole story… so sad. So odd.
Well, I’m hiking back up to the backside to epic on the Cobra some more, hopefully make some progress, maybe even fool around with it on lead and not tweak the hell outta my back! Wish you were here!
Yoyoyo! So after a very scenic ten hour drive yesterday we have arrived late last night in Squamish, BC baby! Pretty psyched to be here. As we drove past the chief last night I was remembering how beautiful the forest is and how nice the rock is. I am hoping to do some free climbing on the chief at least a couple days before I leave for the trade show around the 7th of august, but first it’s project mode on the Cobra Crack with Matty and on the Dream Catcher.
So! Here we are up in Canadastan (© John Dickey), lovin’ it. The Perfecto premier in SD was good, if a little low on the attendance, but a very personal atmosphere. Against my doctors orders to stay out of the water for a whole week because of the lipture (lip + rupture) which is now almost completely healed, I had myself a fun surf at moonlight beach in San Diego with one of the investors of Momentum who was very freindly and hospitable. The SF premier the next night was a good time because so many close friends came out and all seemed to enjoy the show. Everyone insisted that, despite my own low self esteem, I didn’t sound like a complete bumbling idiot in the interviews in the film. I think most people don’t like the way they are captured on film, at least talking to the camera. Some people definitely interview better than others. I think I fall into the ‘others’ category. I was also able to get in a few last gym sessions before taking off for Canalandia, which will hopefully help because I will most likely not be touching plastic until the comp at the trade show. Not sure if my foot will be ready for outside bouldering when we arrive in Squamish in a few days, but with all the bouldering in the gym I’ve been doing in the last few weeks I’m confident I’ll be fine in the comp.
Yesterday I realized that I couldn’t rock the white-trash mullet anymore. I strolled the down the block, back to the place I got it cut and had them “fix” it, demanding it was lop-sided, sloppy and not at all what I wanted. He offered to work on it a bit, maybe craft it into something more desirable and stylish, but my mullet phase was over. While rocking the mullet I started seeing people everywhere with them, Like fixies… so I had to ditch it. Plus, I saw a friend who’s mullet was superb and subtle, just the look I was going for, and he sure as heck didn’t pay fifty bucks for it! Now I look exactly like I do in Perfecto..
So it is pretty much back to the fantasy life at this point. I’m feeling pretty strong again, traveling and climbing non-stop. I have been bouldering in the gym a bit… risky, I know. But that’s the way I live: on the edge! Speaking of which, I hadn’t had a haircut for about 9 months, since I buzzed it really short on September 4th, the day after I did realization, and as of recently had an almost too full head of hair. I looked like a member of the Beatles, or the Monkeys. It was long, and my bangs were getting annoying, always falling in my eyes while I was trying to climb. Obviously it was time for another cut. I wanted to cut it short again, since it is summer after all, but it felt like a waist to just cut all the hair off at once, and I’ve been waiting a long time to do something crazy with my hair, it just never felt like the right time. So today, I went to the super-hip salon a block away from my house on the way home from Mission Cliffs and went all out,
…corroded bones and a saggy bag of flesh and skin”. Dope album. You know what I’m talking about Sellman!!!
So after a Gym sesh Monday night and a rest day Tuesday, I was rearing to go again Wednesday. Well, maybe not rearing. I was still pretty tired from the after midnight guitar hero extravaganza, which unfortunately for my health, is becoming a ritual.
We dawn-patrolled it out of the salty load at around noon, past the brine shrimp stench that is the Great Salt Lake and past the little tweaker towns on our way out to the narrows to check out The Big Smile. TBS is a route Sharma nabbed the FA of in… 1998(?) and rated it (hard) 14a, but it has broken several times since then and is now supposed to be more like 14b or c. We got out there and the temps were cold and windy which is probably perfect for a bouldery, crimpy route like that, but the water was a little high and the base of the route was pretty much in the river. The route looked pretty cool, albeit a little wet in spots, and there was very little chalk on it, so not wanting to do some MacGyver rig and spend all day Epicing on it, we decided to bail to American Fork for the remainder of the day, which turned out to be plenty of time.
I am now in the midst of my first climbing trip since I fractured my heel on January 1st. I flew out here to Salt Lake City, Utah, AKA the salty load, last Wednesday. Tim Kemple, myself and others have spent three fun days climbing out at Ibex, and a couple evening sessions at the Momentum gym in Sandy. Ibex is located next to a huge, flat, dried up lake bed which makes for a beautiful back-drop for the climbing. The rock at Ibex is quartzite with a kind of sandstone coating, which provides features you might find in granite, limestone and sandstone. The texture is amazing and there are lots of quartzite nobs and dikes, slopers, pockets, lots of cracks, crimps and edges. Ibex is mostly known for it’s bouldering, but there is a huge, sweeping, red streaked wall above the main concentration of boulders with a couple quality hard lines on it.
Friday and Saturday were my second and third days climbing on real rock since the start of my recovery. I climbed with a couple close friends from the city, and Kevin Jorgeson at Donner Summit, know for the Donner Party, and some pretty nine granite bouldering, trad and sport-climbing. Friday was actually my 22nd b-day. We warmed up on the snowshed wall and I felt kind of crappy on the first few 11s we did. Kevin and I both took on the first bolt of a 12 we tried to warm up on, and then got pumped silly on the rest of it barley making it to the chains. After getting spanked on the next climb I tried to flash, a 13a-ish route called Pump Lust with deceivingly big side-pulls but no feet, I felt as though I was just having a bad climbing day. We then ventured over to the famed Star Wall, home to Steep Climb Named Desire and the mixed gear and bolted route fathers day, which is the direct start to Steep Climb and was red-pointed using just natural protection by Allan Moore and Nico Faveresse respectively. I somehow managed a second go send of Steep Climb and just like that, the day was reversed. Kevin was dialing in the beta for the moves and the gear placements on the Star Wars Crack, the 13a beginning of Fathers Day and after watching him on it a few ties and feeling confident I knew where to put the cams, I went for the flash. I groveled up 3/4 of the route before pumping out, completely loosing my breath and almost having a heart attack. That night we gorged on swag Mexican food that gave us all, especially me, terrible gas the next morning.
A quote from the newest Grouch album Show You the World. Pretty dope. I have “acquired” so much music lately I haven’t had time to listen to it all. Still, I think my favorite band is Why? Their new album Alopecia is amazing, if you like that emo, indie, white-boy rap, which you do. I have also been reading a hilarious book called Orange Crush by author Tim Dorsey. I don’t know what it is about those authors from Florida, but they sure know how to make me smile.
Anywho, it has bee quite the week for me. Been living the good life. Lots of second firsts this week, if you know what I mean. I stood up on a surfboard for the first time again, at the same spot with the same rental-shop, soft-top board I used the first, first time I stood up on a surfboard. I climbed outside for the first time again today and surprisingly did my first “5.14″ again. I still can’t quite walk normally but I can put my foot in small moccasyms and do almost anything I would normally do with my foot. 
I even bouldered again, inside of course, which I know was risky and pretty dumb of me but I was very careful and made sure not to land at all on my left foot. What can I say? I live life in the fast lane… kinda. I’m also four days away from turning 22 for the first and last time. How scary for me!
Today I took a much needed rest day after 4 days in a row of boggie-boarding and two straight days of hang-boarding followed by a long session climbing routes in the gym. Yesterdays route session was… hard, to say the least. I can tell by my progression on the hang-board that the strength is returning to my muscles and my forearms and fingers are slowly coming back to life, but I could also tell during yesterday’s gym session that four consecutive days in the ocean and the two previous days hang-boarding had really taken it’s toll on my body. It did feel good to be so tired. I would just like to say that, despite the many excuses I can make for the grades of the routes feeling stiff at MC (I was tired as hell, it was like 90 degrees in the gym, I didn’t have full use of my left foot, my climbing shoes were a size too big), some of the harder routes at Mission Cliffs, namely the 12c and 13a on the main wall are hard as hell! I fell on both, failing on my second try as well on the 13a. Even if I was in good shape and had full use of both feet and had cooler temps, thoes routes would still be hard as hell! And that blue “13a/b” on the steep wall, fagedaboudit! Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for having sick-hard routes in the gym, but my poor little ego was bruised. So I repeated a 13a that I did the other day with a guide tennie on my left foot, this time climbing in two over-sized climbing shoes, and I barley squeaked it out. So yeah, I guess I was pretty dang tired.