Antimatter

For the last couple of weeks I’ve been projecting a problem at Priest Draw called Antimatter. I first started trying Antimatter last April but abandoned it once it got too warm and I began work at CREC. It’s been cold everywhere for the last couple of weeks. Here in Flagstaff temperatures didn’t even break freezing until yesterday.

On my first 2013 session on Antimatter I refined all of my beta, of which there is much. It took me about two hours to finally make up my mind on the crux section, which involves some strange pinches, a dropknee/toecam, a cross-under, and a bad gaston. The Draw is a wonderful place this time of year, if you were wondering. The parking lot is void of cars and covered in deep snow. Only the true die-hards make it out, so the whole place glistens with winter solitude. It’s quiet. Only the birds make noise, and during that cold snap they were elsewhere. Probably Sedona. Anyway, I climbed at The Beta every other day and once last week headed out to Antimatter with Danny and Matt. It was snowing and about 20 degrees. As soon as I booted up my feet lost all feeling and I made absolutely no progress on the probelm. It was beginning to seem as if Antimatter was impossible for me, that I’d never see it through to the end and hang from the double toe hooks on the lip where I finally, after like 15 moves, would get to relax my core.

            I made a point of not thinking about Antimatter for a couple of days and climbed up on Elden, where I found myself excited on a couple of other projects. I had to get Antimatter out of the way so I could move on. Climbers are often in a perpetual state of progression, and the feeling of stagnancy is disheartening. That was exactly where I was. I felt like the next level was just out of reach. I was getting frustrated.

             Yesterday I got off from work at four and took advantage of working in a bouldering gym and warmed up there. I drove quickly out to The Draw and raced the setting sun to Antimatter. The light was coppery while I set up the pads and camera. Conditions couldn’t have felt better. I did the crux once to remember the body positioning and cooled my hands off on a nearby rock. Hot hands and freezing rock equal condensation like on a cold drink during a hot summer day. I pulled onto Antimatter and walked it first try of the day. My feet even cut, which was the issue that had been keeping me from the top, but I held on and summoned energy I didn’t know I had and was soon topping out. My mouth tasted of metal and no matter how much I spit, there was more. It took me half an hour to catch my breath.

            Now though, I feel as if a weight has been lifted. I’m going to Hueco next week and I know that if I hadn’t done Antimatter it would loom over those desert rocks I hold so dear like a bulging thunderhead. But it’s not. I will go to Hueco with a clear mind and I will hopefully come back proud. There is always a feeling of change, of anticipation, and of fear on top of every project. With growth comes the great unknown, a place we generally avoid. The road to satisfaction is limitless and, for me at least, paved in crimps, slopers, pinches and pockets.

Oh, and here is a link to Antimatter.

New Year

I’ve tiptoed my way into the New Year, 2013 and it’s looking to be a good one. 2012 was an eventful year, for both climbing, and general life type things.  Christina and I bought a house in Flagstaff, AZ, a place I couldn’t be more pleased with. With a little more focus on climbing I managed to climb a few things I never imagined myself standing on top of. Both Bang On and The Mandala were problems I first saw in my fledgling months as a rock climber. They looked amazing then, but were veiled in a film of grandeur. Only really good climbers could climb those things. Climbers like Chris Sharma, Dave Graham, or Ben Moon. Eventually though, and faster since I started using boar’s hair brushes, that film has cleaned away leaving solid, climbable rock. And that’s what I’ve been busy doing.

A few weeks ago a true winter storm rolled through Northern Arizona. I took advantage of the falling snow and convinced Christina to walk part-way up Middle Elden with me. I packed champagne. At the warm-up boulders I uncovered a small box and got on one knee and asked Christina to marry me. She said yes, and we drank the champagne in a cave and watched snow fall for a while before the slog home. Christina and I have been together for five years. We met on a bouldering trip in Bishop in a “more dudes” kind of situation. It was her, the only one old enough to buy like 12 underage boys alcohol, and I, the only underage boy not drinking and able to carry in-depth discussions about Kate Chopin and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. We hit it off and now we are set to be married at the beginning of the summer. So it’s looking as if 2013, like its predecessor, will also be a year of good new things.

Tree Lobster In Middle Elden

Last week, before this sudden winter storm rolled through Flagstaff and left almost two feet of snow behind, I went up to Middle Elden with Spencer Church to see how my finger was doing and possibly try Broken Symmetry. The canyon was warm, the sun strong and as I warmed up my desire to give the old Proj a try was quickly dashed. My finger was still not totally better, it was too hot, blah, blah, blah. Boulderers are perhaps the best of all athletes at making excuses.

            Spence’s wrist has been in a cast since the first day of 2012 when he peeled off a wet hold on a problem in Priest Draw. Rocks: don’t even try to climb them if there’s water seeping down the face, bad things tend to happen. So, with that days dream as no more, I decided we would trudge up-canyon to a problem I’d found in my wanderings about three weeks ago. Spence, happy to be away from the couch and cable, agreed to walk up there and take pictures.

Gaston

            This problem is about 15 minutes past Entering Betsy way up on the west side of the canyon. It climbs a tall, orange face on some of the best rock I’ve seen anywhere on Elden. Days ago I walked up there with a few tools and cleared the landing. I’ve been thinking of climbing it since.

The First Move

High Step

            After pushing our way through the Gambel Oak and Mountain Mahogany Spence set up on a boulder over-looking the problem, the canyon, and all of Flagstaff. He opened a beer and got out his camera and I opened up my crashpad and put on my shoes.  The first move, a long throw to a good pinch, is the hardest move on the problem, so after I’d tried it a couple of times I started working the problem from the good pinch. After trying a few different variations, I found a double gaston and balanced high-step to work the best. After maybe ten or twelve more tries on the hard first move I sent the problem in it’s entirety on what I’d just told Spence would be my last try.

            The only other people we saw in the canyon that day were almost certainly looking for Bigfoot. We heard one of them say, “this is great Squatch country,” and they were howling like animals, which is not really peculiar behavior for Middle Elden at all. But it’s a small world, I guess, and everyone wants to find Bigfoot.

 With Cryptozoology in mind, I named the problem I climbed that day Tree Lobster, after this crazy hand-sized insect thought to be extinct for something like 80 years that was recently found on a remote island off the coast of Australia that looks like an illustration from a Hardy Boys book. After going to The Glorias and climbing Cross-Eyed Nurse, Flyswatter, and Tombstone, I think Tree Lobster is somewhere in the V8 range, but who knows. Once all this snow melts I’m going to take Matt and Danny up there to see what they think.

            The snow is falling again, and now with that quiet urgency of a true storm. I think I might go blow up the tube, or at least make something hot to drink.

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