Hoping to squeeze in one more day on our projects, Geir and I packed a bunch of layers and headed to the summit. My last visit was about 10 days prior, when stormy conditions and cooling temps forced an early retreat. I made decent progress on my one proj attempt that day, and was optimistic that if I could get about 4 or 5 more runs in, one of them could be a redpoint. Geir had been getting heartbreakingly close to sending Orifice Politics, and just needed one solid run.
We bundled up in belay jackets and beanies, and went to work. After two quick warm up burns, I hopped on Granite of the Apes. Sadly, it wasn't meant to be. My fingers just couldn't stay warm enough to pull through the first crimp-nasty 40 feet. Moves that I had pretty wired and had been feeling easy felt super strenuous, and every clip was a battle unto itself with no sensitivity in my tips. After three fruitless, frustrating burns, I realized it was not to be. I had to fold my hand and walk away from the table. Maybe next summer.
After I fumbled my way around on my project, Geir crushed his. He made a very impressive ascent of the uber-classic Orifice Politics. It was a perfect way to end the summer summit season.
There are road trips, which is probably my favorite phrase in the English language. And then there are dream trips. Destinations so distant, novel and exciting that you are not sure you will ever find a way there. In a few weeks, I am lucky enough to be heading out on a dream trip.
Kerry and I are off to Croatia.
"Croatia???", followed by a weird stare is the usual response when we tell people where we are heading. And even for climbers, the place is somewhat off the radar. When we were looking at options for a November adventure, one place stood out as the obvious choice.
(all photos stolen from interweb)
We have two weeks to play - exploring Old World Europe, sea kayaking between small islands, eating tons of fresh fish, speaking poorly worded Croatian phrases to the locals, hopefully catching a Hadjuk Split soccer match, snorkeling. And of course, climbing limestone above the Adriatic Sea!
Those aren't the best pictures I could find of Croatia DWS, but most of the other photos involve some horrific Euro banana hammocks. I'll spare you the horrifying images from the online guide I found. But if you are looking for a lifetimes worth of untapped DWS potential, Croatia might be the place. The Dalmation Coast of Croatia is lined with small islands, many of which are surrounded in limestone cliffs rising straight from the sea.
The above photo is of one of the many islands found in Kornati National Park. Unfortunately it is a bit further north along the coast than we are going to be, but it is where boundless climbing could be done. I am already plotting trips here, if anyone knows how to captain a boat.
We will be dividing our time between Split and Hvar, two coastal cities with rich history, local culture, and lots of limestone. There will be plenty of photos taken (Kerry is coming along, after all) and numerous over-excited blog posts to come.
I've been thinking, lately, about two art projects I did sometime back in my pre-school days. One involved tearing long strips of orange construction paper, smearing them over with Elmer's Glue and sticking them onto styrofoam cups to make shaggy jack-o-lantern faces. In the other, I ripped little pieces of thin cotton and canvas to glue onto poster boards for texture. The emphasis of my reveries is on the sensations of tearing things-- things that I ripped up for some lofty goal like art or self-expression. These days I still tear things up for reasons equally as nebulous. The sensation of skin peeling back off your hand, incidentally, isn't too far removed from the way ripping construction paper or canvas feels. It hurts a hell of a lot more, but that comes a second or two after the feeling of it actually tearing away from the rest of your tissues.
I've said it many times before, but there's just not a much better representation of what climbing is all about than a fat, bloody flapper waving around on your crankin' finger. For example, no matter how many hamburgers you throw against a rock, the rock will never break. Hamburgers don't get back up and give it another go when they get spit off their project and busted all up. Also they can't do heel-hooks. Climbers, on the other hand, sometimes climb so hard the skin on their hands curls up, bleeds and falls off. Climbers don't break the rock, but we also don't usually get completely broken by it either.
The point being, if you have flappers on your hand you are not a hamburger. It is possible that you are a climber if you have flappers on your hand, but further testing may be required to make a definitive claim.
Exhibits A and B: photographic evidence that I am not a 1/2 pound char-grilled angus patty:
Awwwh Sookie!
I got this puppy Thursday afternoon bouldering at the U of A Rec Center. This is my second week of trying to stick Eric Horst's 10-week 5.12-training regimen. The first four weeks are all about mileage to build up endurance. So, this week I hit the gym on Tuesday, but only put up about six routes due to the unfortunate time constraints of being a full-time grad student and working. Thursday I cranked at the Rec Center doing lots of long traverses and trying to crank out as many problems as possible. You can see what happened.
Wednesday, though, I went to The Loft for the Reel Rock Tour to re-up on my rock-horny. Jesus. That's all I can say about that. Sicker 'n hell!!!
It'd be hard to ask for more inspiration than that. I was so pumped to hit the Rec Center on Thursday I climbed until my finger burst. I think I've written about this before, but my dream, the idea that really makes my heart quake in the dark hours of the early morning, is to climb so hard that I explode. Not pop, like a sausage, but to climb like a meteor in reverse, moving so fast that the friction of my skin against the atmosphere and of my hands against the rock creates so much heat that I burst into flaming plasma and shoot into space. You'll be able to find me, if I ever stop, heel-hooking a meteor somewhere out by the Horse Head Nebula.
Now, and this is a little bit of a spoiler if you haven't seen the tour, what I just said was way cooler than what Dean Potter says about what he does in the tour. Even if what I DO is a lot less cool than what he DO (hint: things get really good at about 2:10).
Yesterday, Saturday, I turned back in to the gym-- with heavily taped fingers --to, again, try and crank out as many problems with as little rest as possible. Joe joined me after I'd been going hard for about 40 minutes or so and already had a decent pump. The gym held a comp on Thursday night so there are sick, sweet problems all over the place-- a bunch of which Dustin put up. I gave as many as I could a solid go and felt pretty strong, but realized that even with what I felt like was a good showing I probably wouldn't have even placed in the comp.
To top things off I had Joe time me on two sets of hangboard pyramids right at the end. I managed to hang on some tiny, tiny crimps (4 seconds) and even if the first pyramid didn't feel too hard the second round drove me right into the ground.
Here's a video of what I aspire to on the hangboard:
Got training tips? Pictures of sick-ass flappers? Brutal hangboard workouts? Tell me all about them in the comments sections below.
When the Aztecs popped over that ridge back in 1325 and looked down on the Valle de Mexico they saw an eagle sitting on a cactus eating snake. Something about that tableau stirred up warm fuzzies in the breasts of the Aztecs-- evoked memories of a homey place where screaming raptors decorated the shrubs with reptile innards, and they decided to stay. They called it Tenochtitlan and today that place is right at the heart of Mexico City.
A few weeks ago, after spending eight hours doing homework on a Saturday, I decided I needed to take myself out to Gate's Pass and get grounded in the real world of rocks and snakes and cacti again. Sometime during the summer, after an initial surge of hard climbing days, I lost the climbing plot, and stopped getting out.
Dustin and Joe climbed harder than ever this summer, and I watched an embarrassing amount of Dual Survival and Man, Woman, Wild. So, it was special and refreshing to load up the dog and crash pad in my old truck and head to the hills for a solo sesh.
On the trail between my old truck and the boulders the dog caught a whiff of something and shot off between the saguaros after it. My dog moves pretty quick, but whatever she was onto moved even faster. From a fifty yards back I saw a streak of black and the shock-green limbs of a palo verde tree start to dance. The dog circled the base of the tree, sniffed once and then trotted off to gnaw on the dusty bone of something old and dead.
I took a few pictures.
The snake seemed like a good sign. Those kinds of snakes eat the rattlesnakes that I'm not convinced my dog has the wits to avoid. And it was weird and strangely beautiful up there waving in the breeze.
I cranked out a handful of easy problems at the upper boulders. Thinking that if I was an Aztec I would set up a city here, and cram the cut-out hearts of my sacrifices into huecos at the tops of all the boulders instead of building a temple.
The holds felt warm and happy in my hands. Except for the dog, I had the place to myself, as I almost always do, and it was good. Instead of cutting the hearts out of captured enemies I resolved to make time to climb more and to train more in order to be strong to be motivated to climb more and climb harder.
I resolve to do these things about twice annually, but since then I've been in the gym three times and have climbed at the U of A's Rec Center at least that many times.
It's a start.
Yesterday I went to the gym with Paco and tossed off six routes (5.7, 5.8, 5.9. 5.10a and 2 x 5.10b) and finished up with five laps on four other routes from 5.6 to 5.9. I plan to do something similar next Thursday but perhaps also trying to extend the upper-end range of difficulty to 5.10c and/or .10d. Paco agreed when I offered up the idea of loosely following Eric Horst's 10-week training cycle from his book How to Climb 5.12. The Horst cycle starts with four weeks of endurance training. As a way of increasing both the amount of time I spend with this blog and the amount of time I spend training for climbing I'm aiming to complete Horst's 10-week cycle with at least 10 accompanying posts documenting my progression.
I'm looking for training tips, too-- on motivation, on training for endurance, on training for finger strength, and on making time to train. Anybody who wants to share: throw me some tips in the comments section of this post.
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