First and Last Ascents

Two years ago, on this day, I was in southern China making my way east to Yangshuo for the last bit of climbing on a 4 month backpacking trip with my brother. Two weeks later I would be flying out of Hong Kong, headed to Hawaii and then back to Arizona. I had only started climbing during the semester before embarking on this trip, but still managed to find room for my first pair of climbing shoes in my 28 liter backpack (actually they were usually stashed on the side, in the bottle-holders). After about two months of traveling we arrived in Ton Sai, Thailand, and climbing became our main concentration. We purchased a rope and a rack of draws the second or third day, and climbed pretty much every day there for the next month. But before Thailand we spent most of our time reading, eating, and visiting temples if we felt like actually doing something, and we only managed to climb one day.

That one day was spent at 15,000+ feet, bouldering some of the thousands of rocks blanketing the slope of a mountain overlooking the Lhasa river valley in Tibet.

Lhasa River

Lhasa

We took a ride in the back of a farmer's truck to get up on the foothills of the mountain, about a ten minute ride. Then we hiked through a six hundred-year-old maze of a monastery for around 30 minutes, the buildings getting older and less restored as we gained elevation.

Finally, we were rewarded with this:

The yellow square below is approximately what is shown above. And the Google image below is maybe 1/20th of what surrounds Lhasa.

Some of the boulders right above the monastery were over 40 feet tall. Unfortunately, rock around there are "sacred" so we hiked quite a bit higher, until the prayer flags thinned out.

I only climbed three short and easy lines out of potentially thousands. Grazing around us were hundreds of wild yaks, probably some of the corpses we saw later, skinned, decapitated and piled on the sidewalks during the evening. When we got up to where the above picture was taken the rocks shrunk a little smaller, along with the level of oxygen in the air. With spots in our eyes we decided to retreat back down to the monastery. We made it back at sunset, with bells ringing we assumed some sort of service was starting.

To get from the monastery down the hill to town, where we could take a taxi back to the hostel, we rode on the back of a Tibetan's motorcycle, one at a time. After getting up some speed, the man turned his bike off, including the lights, and coasted the winding road down the forested hillside at night, and I thought of Space-Mountain.

According to the last email I got from our embassy in China, foreign travel to Tibet has been stopped since September of this year. When we were there they only required a 40 dollar permit, which we managed to avoid getting. We also met a French dude who had been camping and hitchhiking throughout Tibet for three months without one. But needless to say, getting caught would be pretty unpleasant, and you'd be blacklisted from China. Hope for the autonomy of Tibet, the return of the Dalai Lama, is pretty much a dream, Lhasa is a military state, and I'm sure by now it is much worse than when we were there. It is beautiful though, and there is a ton of rock.

On a cheerier note:

From an artificial mountain in Beijing.

Japan, Rearry?

I leave you with a crazy ass Japanese toilet, and implore you to enlarge the image and check out the options on the armrest.

More Early Christmas Presents

Panther Rhetoric

Here at Team Tuesday the excitement is palpable. Panther is the word on every tongue. Everyone sees their own private masterpiece when they look at the Panther Boulders-- slick new lines, slick new videos, a view that stretches from Marana to Mexico... If Panther Rhetoric resides, as Jean Genet said, not in elegant discourse, but in strength of affirmation then here I present, as forcefully as I can, my own affirmation of all things Panther.

Some Much Work To Do

Today I went back out to the Panther Boulders for an afternoon sesh. Paco and I arrived at about 1:00 but didn't start climbing until around 2:00, we just wandered around checking everything out and picking out potential projects. There are still so many problems to be cleaned and sent, the task is kind of daunting. (I look forward to the day when we have enough problems to fill the pages of a guide, and when I can flip through it at the base of these boulders). We found too many options, and finally settled back at our starting spot: The Meatwad.

Standing at about 40 ft at the tallest point, the Meatwad is a monsterous block with steep walls on two sides. The parts that aren't steep are just barely slab, and are also the tallest faces. Its scary to look up at all the watermelon-size blocks that may or may not break while climbing them. Two new problems were born here today, but only one was sent. Mechanical Mannequin V0, is Paco's first FA, and is pretty damn fun (watch below) . Pocketmaster 3000, the project, is likely to weigh in around V5 and is painful (Video will come as soon as a send does).

Panther's New Groove from Dustin Payne on Vimeo.

Two Quick Panther Vids

Hmmm, can't figure out why these won't get smaller....but if you click on the videom it will pop up in youtube and you can watch with no problems.

Dustin on Zig Zag

FA of Righteous Beast