Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Lifestyles


My first year living in Prescott, and all the time I lived there for that matter, my second home was up in the ponderosas among the steel-gray boulders of Groom Creek. That first winter in the great AZ, I learned the true value of projecting a boulder problem. For those who don’t know, to project something is to try something too difficult to climb in a few tries, something where each individual move feels so hard at first the complete send is still off floating deep in the cosmos of your true ability. It can take years and hundreds of tries to commit an entire problem to muscle memory and finally finish it, not to mention the matter of weather conditions, hydration, and the level of callous on your fingertips. To climb a project is the true pinnacle of climbing; to finally feel both inner and physical strength align, even for just a few seconds, is one of life’s greatest pleasures.
The problem I decided to project my first winter in Prescott was Groundscore, a steep V11 with reachy moves on good holds. At V8, the stand start was easy to memorize, but the three moves the sit start added on were a locked door whose key wasn’t just under a rock nearby but rather hidden deep in some forgotten drawer of muscles and tendons and that would only open when temperatures dropped below freezing.
            I spent about six weeks working Groundscore that winter, most of which was spent trying to warm my hands between tries. Whenever it snowed, I’d drive up to Groom Creek with a broom and sweep off the topout so I could try it before the rock warmed up. As I sat quietly with my hands in my armpits I started to see things I wouldn’t have if I were just walking through. A small, shiny brown packrat who lived under the boulder got used to me and started to come out of his home of twigs and pine needles to watch me between tries. We became friends, though our relationship never passed beyond stares across the grainy sand and my pads.
            I started to look forward to each day of effort in a different, calmer way. I tried to be quiet so the packrat would come out, and I found that the more relaxed I was, the better I climbed. I made progress over the weeks until I was falling off the last move, the crux move of the V8, on every try. Then on the last day of the semester, a couple of days before I was to go back to California for a week, I climbed Groundscore with only a rat for fanfare. I was still buzzing a week later when I drove back to Arizona.
            The boulder that rat and Groundscore call home is one of my favorite places in Groom Creek. The tricky and wonderful Dirk Diggler found it’s way onto one of my circuits, so I spent at least a few minutes a week with the packrat. Once in the fall I caught a tiny Mountain Kingsnake no longer than my forearm and thin as my little finger. It bit me in protest and left a few tiny droplets of blood on the back of my hand. Still, I thought it was wonderful. One night I topped out The Diggler and found a tree frog clutching to the granite a few inches from a hold. It’s whole body, about the size of a quarter, was so perfectly camouflaged the only reason I saw it was because of the way my light reflected off its back.
Lifestyles rock, the surrounding pines and oaks, and smaller blocks of stone build a comfortable, familiar place whose cornerstone is one of sharp cold, sore shoulders, and the stare of a rat.

Monday, January 23, 2012

Place


They say hiking is the best way to see a place. I don’t agree. Driving down Buttermilk road, a stretch of dirt with waves or washboard reaching from shoulder to shoulder, I know exactly what speed I need to drive to stop the ratcheting vibrations. I know all the curves, gentle and smooth as the walls of a wine glass, and where all the erratic rocks protrude from the dirt.
So do all the other climbers who make the winter pilgrimage to this eastern sierra bouldering Mecca. And after so many days of sitting beneath a projected boulder problem the same kind of awareness builds itself like snow drifting into a cornice.  I don’t think we’re always aware of it, at least I’m not, but the more time I spend driving through the desert and sitting alone on my pad under the same several dozen boulders, the more I realize that we, as climbers, have better opportunity to develop sense of place than any outdoorsy fancy pants with thousands of dollars of gear and a pair of trekking poles.  

We are taken to places where snow falls year round, where the lines between desert and mountains blur, where dusty washboard and the two-fingers-lifted-off-the-steering-wheel-wave are daily routine. With all the massive lengths of time in our own wild parks, we learn all the intricacies until that place is another home and the bump from driving over the end of the pavement or the buzz of a cattle guard feels like going to meet an old friend.