Winter Break

Well, I should have mentioned this earlier, but I’m pretty well on my winter break from this climbing trip.  I’ve settled back in at home, and found a seasonal job, so I’ll try and save up for more adventures this spring.  When I hit the road again, I’ll be posting more.  Sorry if you’ve been expecting more blog posts lately!

Leaving the Red

A lot has happened since I last posted.  I had several friends from Kansas come visit me at the Red, sent a project, left the Red, and have arrived at Boone, NC, where I’ve been bouldering for the first times.  Busy times, which is why I haven’t been the most regular with my blog posts… I apologize!

Anyhoo, last weekend Peter, Derrick, Eric, and Daniel all came down from Kansas to climb for 4 days.  It was a looooong drive for them, but they made it alright and we had some pretty good climbing days.  The guys learned how to lead climb, and even led some tough stuff!  It was awesome.  Derrick also is an art major focusing in photography, so he got some amazing pictures.  On one of those last days that they were here for, I hopped on the last route I really wanted to send, Too Many Puppies.  This is a beautiful arete, and it’s a super technical, sequential climb.  My first try of the day (probably my 5th or 6th try overall) I breezed through the crux, got a good rest, and cruised up toward the chains.  I stuck the last hard move, and then it’s a simple reach with bad feet for a good jug and clipping the chains.

As I reached for it, my feet popped off the smears, and I fell! I could literally have touched the anchors! AAAAARGH.  I rested up for a good long time, then hopped back on the route.  No problems the second try, though I was pretty pumped at the top.  I was super happy that I sent the route, it was a beautiful piece of rock.  Thanks to Derrick for getting up at an awesome perch to get some cool pics!At the top!

The next day, we had plans to head out to try Twinkie again, but the rest of the guys were anxious to get back on the road for their 14 hour drive, so they took off.  I didn’t feel very motivated to get on Twinkie again either, so I packed up and headed out for my buddy Cruise’s house in Boone, North Carolina. It was odd leaving the place I’d called home for the past two months, but I know I’ll be back someday, so it’s not so bad.

I arrived in Boone, met up with Cruise at Grandmother Mountain, and we got a couple of hours of bouldering in before the weather started to turn.  After that, it pretty much rained for most of the next two days, so we set about doing some home improvement to Cruise’s indoor bouldering cave.  It’s really coming along, it just needs more holds at the minute.  We did manage to sneak out for an hour of climbing on Thursday, and I managed to send a V4 boulder problem and flash a V3.  It was a lot of fun, but freakin’ hard!  The V4 was  probably the hardest moves I’ve ever pulled off on a rock, so I was pretty happy about that.

The weather is supposed to be great today, so we’re planning on heading to Blowing Rock to boulder.  Maybe the day afterward, we will be able to get some multi-pitch trad in.  Either way, I’m just psyched to climb and be outside!  I’ll be back home in less than a week, so I need to get it in while I can!

I promise I’ll have more pictures of Boone, bouldering, and Blossom in my next post, so stay tuned.

Rocktoberfest

Hey all,

It’s been a tiring week thus far.  My friend Jason got into town Thursday morning, so we spent Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday climbing.  I didn’t climb especially hard or much on Friday, Sunday, or Monday, but I was still out there, hiking around, climbing a bit, and getting worn down!  I’ve rested Tuesday and today, so hopefully I can come back strong tomorrow and send some stuff!  Enough about me though, I know you’re all dying to hear about Rocktoberfest, so here’s the scoop:

Friday:  Miguel’s was starting to get packed!  A sea of tents covered the several acres of his campground.

We went out climbing, jostled with crowds for day, and then returned to the Rocktoberfest area to enjoy watching a climbing movie, The Scene, which was awesome, and entering some raffles and schmoozing around with gear vendors and pro climbers.  It was pretty fun, but I always feel like an idiot when I spend money on raffles and don’t win.

Crate stacking!

We had an early night Friday because Jason and I were psyched about the competition the next morning.  Saturday, we woke up and headed down to the PMRP to get to work!  We climbed as much as possible throughout the day, and at the end of the day I had climbed a total of 11 routes, with a hardest route of 11a.  Not that impressive, but I was pretty happy about it, since the most routes I’d climbed in one day so far was about 6.  It was a scramble to get as many routes in as possible that day, and I squeezed my last one in with about 10 minutes to spare, just in the Nick of time!

Jason and I looking satisfied after a long day of climbing.

We headed back to the Rocktoberfest campground, hung around, talked to more people, I entered into the dyno competition and nearly made it out of the qualifying rounds and into the finals. We had to dyno upwards and slap as high as we could on a ruler, and the top ten heights went to finals.  I got 6’9”, and I only saw about 3 other people hit more than 7 foot, so there must have been a lot of 6’10”-ers.

 The dyno wall.

I was kinda bummed about that, but apparently some dude or dudette broke his or her leg in the finals, so maybe it was for the best.  We didn’t stick around too long, as we were both pretty pooped.

Sunday we woke up, rested half the day, and then went out for some good ol’ fashioned Trad climbing.  Jason had never led trad before, so he was psyched to get his first ever lead in.  Monday we went and climbed for a few hours until Jason had to take off.  Overall, Rocktoberfest weekend was really cool.  I was disappointed that I didn’t win anything, but when I think about it from the angle that I was donating money to help preserve probably my favorite area to climb at the Red, it’s not so bad.

Now I just need to get rested up, get healthy, and try really really hard my last week here!  The 19th I’m headed out to Boone, NC to climb with Dalen and Cruise, so I’ve gotta dispatch any projects before then!  Too Many Puppies is at the top of my list, and I need to get back on Twinkie soon as well.  Hopefully this last week goes well!

 RAWRRRR

September by the numbers

This was a long month for me, and I can’t really remember all that happened, but to try and give you an idea of what life was like, I’ll condense my month into a set of numbers.  It will actually be about Sept 3-Oct 4, but you get the idea.  Here goes:

4 – number of 5.12a’s I’ve sent

3 – number of 5.11′s I’ve sent

25 – distance in feet of my biggest fall, estimated (maybe 30?).

6 – number of servings, per day, of vegetables I’m getting (more on this later)

28 – number of minutes, total, spent in the shower this month

0 – number of people I’m trying to impress with my cleanliness

450 – number of dollars it cost to fix my car

4 – number of bros in the wolfpack now

1 – number of writing assignments I’ve done this month for my KU English class (oops!)

7 – number of pounds of peanut butter I’ve eaten this month

92382479379 – number of people that show up at Miguel’s on the average weekend

92382479379 – number of people that are loud late at night at Miguel’s on the average weekend

60 – dollars spent this month on camping at Miguel’s.  What a deal!

Anyway, that seems like a decent list, if I think of anything more, I’ll add it.

Now, to the meat of the blog.  Today, we’re talking about nutrition on the road.  Ramen noodles and mac and cheese will only get you so far.  So my friends and I have started a thing called the Choss Pot.  (For you non-climbers out there, Choss is a term used to describe crappy rock, something bad, something strange, something thrown together, and anything else you want, really.)  The Choss Pot originally consisted of whatever we had to add to it that night, such as beans of several varieties, rice, noodles, sweet potatoes, and other stuff, all wrapped up in a tortilla with cheese.  Lately, we’ve been getting a bit more fancy, with lots of veggies such as avocado, asparagus, carrots, sweet potatoes, broccoli, peppers, onions, and corn, among other things.   It’s pretty darn healthy, and it tastes good too.  Here’s what it looks like:

mmm… Avocado, asparagus, mushrooms, garlic…

On the climbing side of things, I finally sent Dogleg yesterday.  I’d been on it probably 10 or more times, and I had one-hung it like 4 times straight.  It’s really a phenomenal route, probably my favorite ever, and also probably my proudest send ever.  It was much more sustained than routes I usually climb.  Unfortunately, I don’t have any new pictures of it, so here’s one from a few weeks ago:

Basically, it was just a bunch of HUGE moves off of underclings, was about 90 feet long, and required me to sprint up the first 50 feet before I could get any form of rest.  It was AWESOME! Strangely enough, the day before yesterday I was super bummed.  I felt like I was climbing poorly and not trying hard enough.  Now I’m psyched.  When your life revolves around climbing rocks well, it’s hard to keep in high spirits all the time.

Dalen and Cruise have been climbing hard too, though they’ve had their setbacks as well.  They will get some rest over Rocktoberfest weekend, when swarms of Chuffers take over the rocks.  Also, Cruise’s Venezuelan friend Jesus has joined the crew, and he’s a cool guy.

Dalen having a setback. Watch your leg!

Cruise whipping!

Me on Wild, Yet Tasty, 12a

In other news, my car is fixed, though it cost an arm and a leg.  At least I’m mobile again.  Also, Rocktoberfest is this weekend, and I’ll be competing in the comp.  I don’t plan on doing especially well, but I’m hoping there will be a prize raffle!  If not, oh well, there goes 15 bucks.  There will be lots of other activities during Rocktoberfest, and I’ll actually try and take pictures, something I’m notoriously bad at.  We’ll see if it gets done.

Troubles

To those of you that only look at the pictures on this blog, I apologize for the notable lack of them in this week’s blog, but there are two reasons for it.  First, I haven’t done anything picture worthy.  Second, my camera has been sitting in my car, which is currently parked in a old dude named Frank’s garage.  My car earned it’s spot in Frank’s garage by merit of not turning on.  Yes, it turns over, no it’s not out of fuel, and yes, Frank is a mechanic and he can’t figure out what’s wrong with it.  There’s lots of possibilities for what could be wrong, but, and I hate to say it, you probably can’t fix it out from 800 miles away.  Sorry, lots of people have tried!  Anyway, tomorrow I’m getting it towed to the nearest real auto mechanic’s shop, where they will run some tests.  Frank has hypothesized that it may be a computer issue, so we’ll see what happens, and hopefully it will be cheap!

In the meantime, that means I’ll be hanging out at the Red for a few more days, instead of driving the four hours to the New River Gorge in West Virginia, as originally planned.  Instead, I got to hop on Dogleg another couple times, and unfortunately my troubles continued there.  After a good warm-up run on it, I came really, REALLY close to sending it.  It was actually kind of a heart-breaker, because I was pretty much out of the hard part, and it’s just kinda nervy climbing from there on out.  I blew a fairly easy move, and then got a good long fall as my reward.  Honestly, that was probably a good thing, to re-assure me that a fall at that point in the climb was safe.  I was still pretty bummed though, because I was trying really hard.  It’ll be easier the next time though, I’m sure.

Oh, I forgot to mention the scariest experience, by far, that I’ve had at the Red so far.  It actually had nothing to do with climbing, and everything to do with my broken car.  My friend Joe and I decided that we oughta just tow the car to Frank’s shop the night that it stopped working, so we hooked me up to Joe’s SUV via 20 feet of climbing rope and carabiners, and he started towing.

Unfortunately, since the engine wouldn’t start, I was running entirely on the battery, which quickly started to die with the hazard lights, headlights, and windshield wipers (it was foggy) on.  So, I had to turn the car almost completely off, save the hazard lights.  Then, I got to get towed down curvy roads in the dark, with a completely fogged up windshield, a mere 20 feet from my friend’s car.  It seemed like a decent idea when we started, but as soon as we got on the road, I realized it was a bad idea, and by then it was too late to stop.  We drove the 8 miles of winding road with me in a panic, because, oh yeah, I have power steering and assisted braking on the car that doesn’t work when the car’s not on.  My only real method for not slamming into the back of Joe’s car if he started slowing down was to be pulling the parking brake.

It was the longest 8 miles of my life, with my head out the window, trying to see, trying to steer, and keeping a hand on the parking brake all at the same time.   We broke the rope once, when I had to pull the brake to keep from hitting Joe.  After we got it re-tied, we made it to Frank’s with little incident, except for my dangerously-close-to-exploding heart.

That was me.

Anyway, I survived, hopefully I’ll climb some more cool stuff, and hopefully I’ll get to the NRG in the near future.  Until then!

 

P.S.  I almost stepped on two mating copperheads on the trail.  That was also freaky.

Finally!

I’ve been trying not to whine much about grades while I’m at the RRG.  It has been tempting though, since I’ve come to discover that Arkansas grades are as soft as a Charmin bear’s behind.  However, I can finally stop my belly-aching.  I sent my first 12a at the Red today, and it was hard earned, but earned nonetheless.  It took me 5 tries, actually had me nervous for a good deal of time, and wasn’t the most fun I’ve ever had on a route.  Despite all that, I was able to send, and it was really pretty fun.

The route is named Hippocrite, and is in an area called the Zoo.  Here is a video I took of it.  Pardon the filming, since it was just a camera on a tripod (only me and my friend Joel at the crag today).  Also, sorry about a tree being in the way for most of the crux of the route.  Finally, sorry about the other guy that comes climbing into view about halfway through.  Oh yeah, and sorry about the length of time I spend in the Knee-bar rest about halfway through.  Actually, I’m sorry for a lot of things in this video, but basically it’s here as proof that I’m actually climbing and not spending my time in a crackhouse or something.  I’m the one in the blue, and you’re only missing about 10 feet of climbing below the picture.

Well, there it is.  Sorry for the grunts of exertion, but I was really worked.

I’ve got another few projects I’d like to finish up before I head to the New River Gorge in West Virginia this weekend (probably?)  Dogleg needs to go down for sure, and I would like to give Chainsaw Massacre a good shot.  Also, I would like to get on Twinky again just to see how (if) I’ve progressed during this month.  So far I feel pretty good, I think I may be getting stronger and more confident on the rock, and I’ve avoided injuries so far *Knock on wood!*  The Red rocks!

Week Two

The days have all seemed to blend together a bit since my last post.  Wake up when it’s light, eat breakfast, climb all day, eat dinner, go to bed when it gets dark.  Rinse and repeat.

I’ll try to remember some of the more memorable occasions, but forgive me if I glaze over several days at  a time, or am particularly vague.  Basically, I’ve been getting kicked around on all sorts of routes.  I’ve found that my goal of keeping up with what I’ve climbed in Arkansas, grade-wise, is pretty unrealistic.  Routes here are much different, and much harder than in Arkansas.  Though I’ve encountered much harder individual moves on Arkansas routes, they are usually isolated, surrounded by big holds before and after.  In the Red, the moves are a bit easier, the holds are sometimes a bit bigger, but the angle and sustained nature of the climbing makes it ridiculous.

Probably my best day of the trip so far consisted of sending an 11b, called Fuzzy Undercling, which was a lot of fun, and then later onsighting another 11b, which I really enjoyed.  Other than that, I’ve spent my days working 12a’s such as Dogleg, which is a route I’m totally psyched on at the moment.  It’s a long route, probably 80 feet, and the first 40 some feet of it are big holds with BIG blank spots in between them.  It’s rather dynamic and powerful, and a ton of fun.

Other than Dogleg, I’ve hopped on another couple of fun routes, such as Chainsaw Massacre, 12a, in a severely overhanging area of the Red.  Here’s a picture of Cruise working on a route beside it, but the angle is the same for Chainsaw Massacre.  It is super sustained, too, with no particularly great holds the whole way up, just decent edges. It’s exhausting.

This is near an area called the Madness Cave, which is indeed madness.  Overhanging at about a 45 degree angle, for 140 feet, it’s truly ridiculous.

Here it is in all its glory:

Anyway, I’ve been meeting lots of cool people, climbing at tons of cool places, and am probably getting stronger, though it doesn’t always feel like it.  Hopefully I’ll send Dogleg soon, so I can get a little confidence, and then move onto building some strength on Chainsaw Massacre.  If I can climb in that area, I’ll definitely have the fitness to climb anywhere, which will be nice.

The Red River Gorge

I got into the RRG on Friday night, after about 11 hours of driving.  The drive went smoothly, it’s really only about three or four turns.  I wasn’t entirely sure what Miguel’s Pizza would look like, but I knew that I’d be camping there.  As I pulled up to it, I knew I’d found the right place.  There were about 100 cars there!  Literally hundreds of climbers.  Unfortunately, I didn’t get a picture of it, but it was quite a zoo, and it only got more crowded throughout the weekend!

On Saturday I met up with Joe, a guy I knew from the Kansas Cliff Club, my local gym.  Joe is from Ohio, but has property in the Gorge, and visited Kansas once for work.  We met up Saturday morning, along with his other friend, Joe, and headed out for some climbing.  Joe and Joe were feeling up for some easy trad, so we headed out to a good trad area, and decided our first climb would be a two-pitch 5.6.  I volunteered to lead the first 5.4 pitch.  

Joe and Joe in action!

 

I had been worried that I’d get smacked down pretty hard in the Red, but I certainly wasn’t expecting it to happen so soon, or on a route so easy.  About 10 feet up, after placing a couple of mediocre cams, I slipped off a greasy 5.4 friction move, fell a couple feet, and whacked my tailbone on a small tree at the base of the climb.  Man, welcome to the RRG!  After that humbling experience, I lowered off, and restarted the pitch, getting in cleanly this time….Whew!

We did some more trad for the most of the rest of the day, and it went much better.  I led some 5.6′s and 7′s, and was pretty pleased with my creative use of passive gear and tri-cams on a particularly semi-sketchy 5.7.  Cam’s were not the way to go, and I definitely appreciated that.  I don’t know why, but very few of the people I climb with like Hexes, but I fricken’ love them!

At the end of the day, we walked over to a classic route called Twinky.  It’s ridiculously overhanging, and a super pumpy 5.12a.  This route absolutely wrecked me.  All of the moves were actually pretty easy, but I had nowhere near the endurance for that overhang!  It was an ordeal to get to the top, and even more of an ordeal to clean the draws afterward!  As Joe pointed out though, it’ll be a great barometer for how much stronger I’ve gotten during my time here.  I’ll have to hop on it again toward the end of the month.

This, as you may guess, is not me.  This is the route Twinky, though.

The next day we went out and met up with Joe and Joe’s other friends Brian and Amanda.  We all had a pretty nice day of climbing.  I onsighted a couple 10c’s, which made me feel a bit better.  About halfway through the day, it started raining, though, which cut our day short.  The rain then continued for probably 30 hours straight, and its been raining on and off, mostly on, for the past two days since.

Monday, the Joes and I killed the day by having Joe take me to some of the local tourist sites, and then they took off in the evening.  That night I met a couple guys at Miguels, named Cruise and Dalen, and they offered to climb with me the next day, since there is a couple places that were apparently staying dry.

So the next day, we headed out and got on some hard sport routes.  On the hike in, Cruise asked us what our biggest falls had been.  Little did I know that the probably four biggest falls I’ve ever taken would all take place that day!  Three of them were all on a route called Tissue Tiger, 12b, where I took several 25 foot whippers.  They were all nice clean falls though, due to the overhanging nature of the route.   Still, getting smacked down on routes whose grades I’ve already done was a bit of a reality check.  Arkansas grades are soft!

Cruise sent a 12c he’d been working on, but Dalen fell off the last semi-hard move after a really hard boulder problem on the route he was working on, a 13b.  That dude is ridiculously strong!  He said his goal is to climb 5.14 by the end of the season. Wow.  Anyway, they are both really cool dudes, and I had a good day of climbing, even though I didn’t send anything.  I’m feeling a bit more at home on the routes here though, so that’s definitely good.

Cruise sending his 12c, and Dalen hanging out.

It’s still raining today, and it looks like it’ll continue all week.  I’m taking a rest day today, but I’ll hopefully be back up on the wall soon!

Hitting the Road

I’ve been packing most of the day, saying goodbyes most of the week, and been getting excited most of the summer.  It’s finally all about to begin.  I feel fairly similar to how I did on the eve of my departure for Thailand this past winter.  Though I’ll be able to keep more contact with my loved ones than I could in Thailand, the idea that I’ll be gone longer, and without a friend for the whole time makes me feel a little intimidated.  I’m hoping that these nerves will disappear once I’m actually at the cliff, though.  That’s usually what climbing does for me.  I can focus entirely on the movement, and forget everything else in the world.

 

On another note, I’ve finally completed my sleeping platform for my car.  It’s certainly not anyone’s idea of roomy, and probably not that comfortable, but I think it’ll work just fine for what I need it for.  I plan to spend most of my time in my tent anyway.

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As you can tell from my sub-par pictures, I’ve got almost all of my stuff in large tubs, which are, believe it or not, organized to some extent.  I even folded my clothes.  The platform cost about $30 bucks for lumber, and was really pretty easy to make.  The head section is on hinges so it folds up to allow the front passenger seat to sit straight.  When it’s sleeping time, I fold the front seat forward, and the platform lies flat.  It is pretty simple, but I’m hoping it will work well.

Anyway, by this time tomorrow, I’ll be most of the way through my 11 hour drive to the Red River Gorge.  I’m planning on meeting up with a friend, so hopefully he can show me around and get me introduced to the area.  Stay tuned, I’ll update the blog with my first impressions of the RRG sometime after this weekend.

The Plan

So I spent a whole lot of money getting a history degree.  Luckily for me, that means I can research with the best of them.  Unluckily for me, it also means I’ve been conditioned to write in a dry, academic tone.  As seems befitting of someone who is forgoing the professional world (at least for a while) in search of thrills, I’m abandoning all I ever learned in school about writing, and will instead be trying every single gimmicky, cheesy method I can to make this blog interesting to you, the wonderful reader.  Here goes…

You might ask, “Will, where all are you going in this massive country, and what are you planning on doing there?”  I’ll save answering all those questions in the time-consuming manner that I’ve been having to use for the past few months with this image:

Ok, I lied.  I was going to draw an awesome map, with my route planned out and everything.  It woulda been sweet, but I couldn’t figure out how to do it, so here’s a link to my MapQuest route map instead.

http://www.mapquest.com/embed?hk=pIOhLW

As to what I’ll be doing?  Simple.  CLIMB EVERYTHING!!!  I’ll be keeping you updated on how that goes, and in a couple of days, once I’ve actually done it, I’ll post some pictures of the sleeping platform/organizational system that I’ll be building in my car.  I hear that will make the trip a whole lot more comfortable.  Until (if) I do get that built, here’s a picture of the area I want to climb at the most, the Gold Coast of the Red River Gorge.  Too bad everything is so freakin’ hard there!