Monthly Archives: September 2009

Had a fantastic day out at Reimer’s Ranch today.  I had been dreaming about climbing at Reimer’s for a while now; most importantly, I’ve been dreaming about climbing at Reimer’s in sub-100 degree temperatures.  Today I got both!  It was a little humid and moist this morning, but overall, I couldn’t have asked for better conditions.  Ryan, Rami and I got out nice and early, and had the entire park to ourselves for most of the day.

We did warm-ups on Dr. Suess Wall, starting with Smitten Psychopath (5.9).  This was a surprisingly fun climb, with an exciting start.  Ryan made it look pretty easy on lead, but he was really on his A game today.  Next we jumped on Star Belly Sneech (5.10a), with Ryan getting another redpoint ascent.  This one turned out to be pretty tough.  Rami affirmed that he wasn’t feeling good today here, but he still climbed pretty hard today regardless.

Dr. Suess was fun, but I wanted to do something over-hanging, so we hiked.  Our destination was T-Roofic Wall, with it’s over-hung routes and big suitcase handle holds.  T-Roofic Detour (5.10d) was our first route.  Ryan led it perfectly again, and then it was my turn on the rope.  It was an incredibly fun route to climb.  At one point, you’re practically doing a one arm pull-up, then extending your opposite arm up to jam your fingers into a fist-sized pocket three feet about your head.  Intense!  In another memorable move, you’re literally supporting your body by a middle finger, pulling hard on it to grab the next hold.  I was excited to get up it, and even happier to have Ryan around to put up cool routes like this.

We strolled next door to Arbor Wall, and set up my 70m rope on two adjacent climbs, Mrs. Johnson (5.10b) and Cliptomania (5.11a).  These two would keep us entertained for the rest of the afternoon…  Cliptomania was especially fun and tricky.  The crux move had us going from two awkwardly wide and painfully sharp side-pulls, jumping for a ledge we discovered was equally poor to hold.  We worked it out to a point that I think we can send it the next time we’re out.  Mrs. Johnson turned out to be pretty good too, but the holds were fantastically sharp once again.  I aided up most of this one to clean the anchors, and we called it a day.

On the drive home, we saw our friend Ollie at a highway intersection on the outskirts of the city, manning the Hey Cupcake! Airstream trailer.  We knew that a visit would result in delicious cupcake consumption, so we had to drop by.  I didn’t realize how tired I was until I walked through my door, but I’ve been completely out of energy since getting home.  My fingers and toes are sore, and just typing is a chore.  What a great day!

There’s an army of mosquitoes in my backyard right now.  I can’t stay outside for more than a minute without getting viciously attacked.  They try to sneak inside, but if they do, they tend die a horrific death.  I’m an Alaskan at heart – mosquito hunting is in my blood.

I was at work most of the day yesterday, and it wasn’t the most exciting thing in the world.  I did get to meet a lot of interesting people though, and have some pretty exciting human interactions.  We sort of deal in the market of human adventure, sharing our experiences, and being a pretty important part of other’s adventures as well.  I’m so well versed in what we do that sometimes I think I catch people off guard.  Not too many folks can tell you what roads to ride on in Banff National Park, teach you about climbing rope, and fix your road bike in the same breath.

I’ve done a lot in my life so far.  Sometimes I think I might have started out too fast, and now I’m beginning to stall out.  Maybe that’s why I’ve started dabbling in the more extreme pursuits – I’ve run out of things capable of keeping my attention.  I’m apprehensive that it’s going to evolve into dodging avalanches on remote Alaskan mountains…

I picked up a new pair of climbing shoes last week.  After losing my Scarpa’s, I hastily purchased a pair of Evolv Evo’s to climb later that afternoon.  Unfortunately they never quite worked with my left foot, and the rubber just wasn’t as good as the Vibram rubber I was used to.  With some strong recommendations, I bought a pair of La Sportiva Miura shoes, and wow.  I think I’ve found my one pair of climbing shoes for life.  They’re wicked aggressive, but not toe smashers like you’d expect.  And talk about sticky…

Carolina and I want to be climbing and leading, respectively, 5.11 by the end of October.  I can get up 5.11 now, and should be able to handle the sharp end of the rope by then if I keep climbing consistently.  And then 5.12 by the end of the year…  It’s totally possible.  The ultimate goal is 5.13a by May, exactly one year after I started.

We had grand plans of climbing out at Reimer’s Ranch all day yesterday, sending 5.sickness and getting some new kids more familiar with the rock.  But alas, one thing led to another, and our scheduling got a little tweaked.  So we settled for six hours of climbing at the greenbelt, sending 5.slimy routes instead.  It wasn’t a terrible day of climbing by any means (those don’t exist); we had a fun time hanging out, and I got to meet a few new people while whining about nasty holds.

I’m feeling restless, like I want to move again.  Not to a new neighborhood this time, but somewhere far away from Austin.  Alaska will have to be a summer time move though, because I’d probably die if I moved up there in the middle of winter.  But I think that might be my final destination.  I’ve been talking about it and talking about it for such a long time.  I have a feeling that what I thought might be worth sticking around here for isn’t, so it might finally be time to just go.

I ride my bike from East Austin to West Austin every workday, cutting across the center of the city.  I see a lot in the two miles separating home and work; crossing I-35 is like entering a different, and very wealthy city.  This morning they were running a marathon relay down Congress Avenue, cutting the city in half.  I always seem to get caught up in these events.  It makes me feel like a guy existing in two worlds – living in one, working in/for the other, and playing somewhere in between.

I could probably dissect this thought to mean a lot of other things in my life right now, but I’ll let you think about that.  I’m going to try to get out to Reimer’s Ranch tomorrow, because I still have 5.sickness on my mind.  That’s my most realistic impulse right now.

Ryan, Carolina and I went climbing this afternoon.  I love having such a great collection of people around me who are as enthusiastic to get outside as I am.  Good plans are always just a few phone calls away; sometime around midnight last night we solidified our objective for today.  Ryan wanted to check out a new wall he’d found while hiking on the greenbelt, which he later figured out was called Beehive Wall.  (I’ll get back to the name soon…)  I’d never heard of the place before, and it’s certainly not popular by any means amongst Austin climbers.  So we had to check it out for ourselves.

After maybe a 20 minute hike down the trail, we found ourselves under a really nice looking cliff, slightly overhanging.  And of course, looking about 30 feet up the wall, there was the gigantic beehive.  It almost looked abandoned at first, but then we noticed the worker bees flying in and out.  Too cool.  They wouldn’t cause us any problems, since we’d be climbing on the opposite end of the wall for the day.  Beehive wall has some pretty gnarly routes, most in the 5.12/13 range, but we found a pretty accessible 5.11 to warm-up on and get a feel for the area.

I’m pretty sure nobody has climbed on the wall in years.  The route we jumped on was covered in lichen, plants, dirt and rocks.  Carolina kicked off a nice sized flake, and Ryan pulled off a head-crushing boulder about 20 feet up.  We had to clear the plants from the good holds, and a few of the bolts were a little rusty.  And the mosquitoes!  I haven’t been in mosquitoes that bad since riding my bike through the Yukon Territory.  We were climbing in a jungle.

We did one route on the Beehive wall, then walked back down the trail to climb at Seismic, where the wind was blowing and the mosquitoes were dispersed.  I never thought I’d say this, but the quality of rock at Seismic makes the rock at Beehive Wall look absolutely terrible.  We didn’t have a lot of time left, so we stick-clipped a 5.11 and flailed around a little bit on the top-rope Ryan set up.  I want to start bringing my camera out with us, because we definitely have some pretty picturesque moments.

I don’t know where I’m going in life, or how I’m going to get there.  And I don’t particularly care.  If the world ended tomorrow, it’d end with me smiling.  That’s as complicated as my life will ever be.

I feel like the last four days have lasted an eternity, but i mean that in all the best ways imaginable.  I hate having a lull in blog updates, especially when that lull is right in the middle of a period of high activity.  I have so many things to write about, and good stories to tell, but I know that covering such a large amount of time in one post would be a nightmare to read, and I’d probably make a mess of dates and times.  So I’ll talk about Wednesday.

Carolina and I made loose plans to climb on Wednesday, sometime in the afternoon.  I had the day off, so for the morning/early afternoon I was doing what I normally do – a rough combination of coffee, computer work and such.  I was down the road at Cafe Mundi when my friend John called me, saying he’d be in my neighborhood for lunch soon.  We had food, took a tour of my house, and made loose plans to climb in a few hours.  A few messages and phone calls later, the three of us were on bicycles heading to the greenbelt.  Sunshine and sub-100 degree temperatures.

The climbing was good as usual.  There’s a pretty large group of people who climb on Wednesday afternoons together, so things were a bit crowded, and I quickly realized that I know too many people.  John is new to the sport, so we kept the routes fairly easy; I had fun teaching him a thing or two.  It made me think back to when I was just starting out, how I would flail around on the easiest moves.  I love seeing just how far I’ve come in not that much time.

We climbed until sunset, and on our way home we dropped by Polvos for beer and food.  I was in fantastic company.  After Polvos we headed downtown, still dirty and covered in chalk, to get tickets at the Drafthouse for Weird Wednesday.  The movie (Texas Lightning) absolutely sucked, but we shared quite a few laughs over quite a few beers.

I don’t claim to know the ticket to happiness, but I think I have things figured out pretty well right now.  Surround yourself with good people.  Challenge yourself with physical goals.  Learn something, and teach somebody something.  Make someone else smile.  And never let yourself sweat the small stuff.

Belaying Ryan at Seismic 9/14.

Austin had rain clouds over-head for four days straight, ushering cooler temperatures and making the plant life around the house a little greener.  I used it as an opportunity to get back on the bicycle for some much needed long miles, but my fingers were itching to pull on some Austin limestone.  Yesterday was our first break in the wet weather, but it was still a little moist outside.

I climbed anyways, joined by Ryan and Carolina.  It was difficult to dodge puddles on the bigger ledges and in the bigger holds, and the moisture in the air made everything very, very slick.  We had a good time despite the conditions, laughing a lot and struggling to not get mud on our climbing shoes.  I was the last climber to send the first route we warmed up on, following Carolina, who succeeded in getting mud on every good foot-hold.  I had to get by with raw finger strength…

Our little blue house in the eastside is absolutely lovely.  We haven’t had the air conditioner on in a few weeks, and there’s never a shortage of fresh air blowing through the windows.  I managed to pick up a little chest cold a few days ago, so I’ve been spending a little more time at home than usual, but I really don’t mind it.  I’ve been cooking a little bit – a gigantic bowl of guacamole and an over-sized batch of (baked) sweet potato french fries being my two favorites.  Now that’s it’s cooler outside and I can live with turning on the oven, I’m going to start baking things again.

This is the time of year that I begin to love Austin again, and now that I’m outside climbing every chance I get, I have a feeling I’m going to love it even more than before.

Rami and I went climbing yesterday afternoon.  We climbed the day before as well with Ryan, but I just wasn’t having the best day on the rock.  That, and I left my climbing shoes below the cliff when we left…  I hope who ever picked them up enjoys them.

Anyways, I had one of my hardest/best days of climbing ever yesterday.  After a quick trip to REI to damage my bank account with another pair of climbing shoes, I rode South to meet Rami at 4:00pm.  It was hot outside, but not unbearably so – I think we were sitting around 99 degrees.  We warmed up on my favorite route, a crimpy 5.9 with a grapefruit sized hole in the wall.  No one knows the name.  Ryan calls it the “vagina climb” because of a vagina-like feature in the rock, and because it hurts his fingers.  I led some easier routes, then we moved down to “over easy”, another fairly easy climb.  We wanted to do a ton of easy and familiar routes, and our plan was working well.

Next we moved on to “diving for rocks”, a challenging and dynamic 5.10 with a cool jump to a big ledge.  I did it with one fall; next time I should be able to do it cleanly.  After playing on the route for a while, we left Rami’s rope up, borrowed a stick-clip, and moved over to a difficult and crimpy 5.10c/d.  Climbs that are steep with tiny holds seem to be my strongest area of expertise.  Rami and I literally ripped the skin off our fingers linking the moves together and finding ways to do the harder moves in better style.

We let another group of folks use our rope on “diving for rocks”, but it was getting a little late and we needed to head home.  So we tied into their rope, ran up diving one last time, and set up a top-rope for them.  Maybe the good climbing karma will help get my old shoes returned to me…  It was a pretty cool feeling to be the two best climbers out there, because we’re terrible climbers in the grand scheme of things.  Four hours of afternoon/evening climbing, 10+ climbs, and sore fingers.  I couldn’t ask for much more.