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CLIMBING M AGA ZINE 5720 Flatiron Parkway Boulder, CO 80301 Phone: (303) 253-6301 Subscriber Services: Within U.S.: (800) 829-5895; Canada and Foreign: (515) 237-3669 CLMcustserv@cdsfulfi llment.com Contributors: Visit climbing.com/contribute Retailers: To sell CLIMBING in your retail store, call MagDogs at (800) 365-5548 Logo Licensing, Reprints, and Permissions: Contact Brett Petillo, Wright’s Media, 1-877-652-5295, aim@wrightsmedia.com MOST OF THE ACTIVITIES DEPICTED HEREIN CARRY A SIGNIFICANT RISK OF PERSONAL INJURY OR DEATH. Rock climbing, ice climbing, mountaineering, backcountry skiing, and all other outdoor activities are inherently dangerous. The owners, staff, and management of CLIMBING do not recommend that anyone participate in these activities unless they are experts, seek qualifi ed professional instruction and/ or guidance, are knowledgeable about the risks involved, and are willing to personally assume all responsibility associated with those risks. ©2020. The contents of this magazine may not be reproduced in whole or in part without consent of the copyright owner. The views herein are those of the writers and do not necessarily reflect the views of CLIMBING’s ownership, staff, or management.
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CONTENTS
5 6 8 12 18 20 22 24 26 28 30 80
Ed Note Basecamp Talk of the Crag Onsight Tested For the Love of Climbing Grasping at Draws The Place Topo Unsent Skills Rock Art
Claire Bukowski and Sara Dekker on pitch two of Honeymooners (5.11c), Windy Point, Mount Lemmon, Arizona.
PHOTO BY JIM THORNBURG
FE ATURES
36
SONORAN GEM
44
PARADISE FOUND
54
68
LONG, HARD EASY ROUTES
FLOOD IN THE DESERT
The 2,500 routes and endless bouldering at the overlooked cragging nirvana of Mount Lemmon, Arizona.
Palm trees, blue seas, and brilliant limestone on the Caribbean island of Cayman Brac.
Climbing America’s tallest bolted moderates, deep in Washington’s Cascades.
How a tidal wave of climbers is reshaping Bishop, California.
Issue 371. Climbing (USPS No. 0919-220, ISSN No. 0045-7159) is published six times a year with combined issues in Aug/Sep and Dec/Jan for six issues (February/March, April/May, June/July, August/September, October/November, December/January) by Cruz Bay Publishing, an Active Interest Media company. The known office of publication is at 5720 Flatiron Parkway, Boulder, CO 80301. Periodicals postage paid at Boulder, CO, and at additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to: Climbing, PO Box 37274, Boone, IA 50037-0274. Canada GST # 8256424911. Subscription rates are $29.97 for one year of postal delivery in the United States. Add $15 per year for Canada and $20 per year for surface postage to other foreign countries. To remove your name from promotional lists, write to: Climbing Subscription Services, PO Box 37274, Boone, IA 50037-0274. Postmaster: Please send all UAA to CFS. List Rental: Contact Kerry Fischette at American List Counsel, 609-580-2875, kerry.fischette@alc.com.
COVER: Nina Williams shaking out on Pirates of Penance (5.12b), Wave Wall, Cayman Brac. Photo: Andrew Burr
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Ben Rueck, Delicatessen (8b+), Col de Bavella, Corsica, Aero 9.2 mm. Photo: Jeff Rueppel
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ED NOTE
The Real Cost of Travel BY MATT SAMET
PHOTO BY ANDREW BURR
T
his issue marks our annual Travel/Road Trip Issue, a celebration of the climber-vagabond lifestyle and the incredible places we get to visit. I’m excited about the destinations, including our cover feature Cayman Brac (p.44), Mount Lemmon, Arizona (p.36), Bishop, California (p.68), the epic-long sport climbs of Washington’s Cascades (p.54), the granite of Cathedral Ledge, New Hampshire (p.26), and a multi-pitch (!) crag in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (p.24). It is almost impossible to extricate getting vertical from globetrotting—even if your local area has thousands of routes, at some point you’ll crave fresh terrain or a go at bucket-list climbs like the Hunchback Arête on Mount Lemmon or High Planes Drifter at the Buttermilks or Flyboys in the North Cascades. We climbers have always traveled, stretching back to the Golden Age of Alpinism (1850s–1860s) when wealthy British climbers would visit the Alps in a mad dash to claim virgin summits. It’s as much in our DNA as any other aspect of the sport. However, as we’ve come to realize after seeing how fossil-fuel emissions—among many other out-of-balance aspects of modern life, including industrial farming and the wanton overuse of plastics (see photo at right)—have reshaped our planet for the worse, that travel comes at a cost. And it’s a cost that we climbers, including the pro climbers who jet-set between A-list crags, producing the media we all so voraciously devour, often choose to ignore. Because, well, it’s a bit of a buzzkill. When I first heard about global warming, I was in middle school—my father read and shared with me a New York Times story about “greenhouse gasses” like CO2 and methane heating the planet. When things might get catastrophic no one knew, but a consensus was emerging that we could do real harm. It’s one that’s since been backed up by untold studies and reports, including the Executive Summary of the U.S. Global Change Research Program Climate Science Special Report, which noted that the earth’s annually averaged surface air temperature increased by 1.0 degrees C (1.8 degrees F) from 1901 through 2016. Now consider that in the relatively short span of 40 years since I first learned about global warming, I’ve seen these effects firsthand at cliffs in the Southwest where climate-change-fueled drought and “global weirding” have wreaked havoc on the landscape. There’s Cochiti Mesa in my home state of New Mexico, which saw its monolithic tuff scarred, soot-stained, and spalled by the massive Las Conchas fire of 2011, not to mention the loss of the towering ponderosas that shaded the rock. There’s the Flatirons, Colorado, where a lightning-sparked fire in the dry year of 2012 threatened to burn down all of Bear Peak. And there were the floods of September 2013, during which a freak cyclonic storm parked over the Front Range for five days and dropped 18 inches of rain on Boulder, with raging creeks scouring the canyons where we climb, destroying roadbeds, approach gullies, and trails, and in one case undermining one block so much (Black Ice in Fern Canyon) that it tilted downhill, forever burying the problem.
Bottles and flip-flops litter the blowhole at Pollard Bay on Cayman Brac—“Great job, humanity!”
Of course, these are but a few examples, and I bet you can think of ways climate change/extreme weather has impacted your local areas, too. I get that it’s hypocritical to talk about climate change out of one side of my mouth while promoting travel from the other. But with all problems of such a massive scale, having the conversation is a good place to start. So I’ll consider our own impacts in putting together the Cayman Brac story. To fly six of us there released 7.9 metric tons of carbon. Meanwhile, the estimated 600 miles we drove (two cars x 300 miles each) during our 10 days on the island released another 0.48 tons. Then there were other things with their own carbon cost: our climbing and photo gear, the (imported) food we ate, the energy to heat water for showers and run the air conditioners in our rooms, etc. I acknowledge that our trip created carbon impact, and that if you choose to go to Cayman Brac—or any destination—you’ll be creating impact too. It’s inevitable. But I also understand that there are things—purchasing offsets, carpooling to the cliffs, making the most of local climbing, driving a high-MPG vehicle, eating meat sparingly, etc.—I can do as an individual both to offset this trip and to reduce my carbon footprint. And at Active Interest Media, Climbing’s parent company, we are making efforts, including recycling 23,378 pounds of materials last year (comingled recycling, paper, cardboard, electronics, etc.)—preventing 11.64 tons of greenhouse-gas emissions—and buying renewable energy for our building to the tune of about 3,500 kilowatt hours per month. Also, our building recently received an EPA Energy Star certification, which means that energy-wise it outperforms at least 75 percent of similar buildings in the States. I would truly hate to give up travel, but I also know that the days of $1/ gallon gas and pretending that global warming is a can we can keep kicking down the road have passed. If we’re to limit our total temperature rise to the 1.5 degrees C beyond which scientists think human life becomes unsustainable, then we need to start taking these matters seriously— including take a cold, hard look at our impacts as climbers.
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BASECAMP
CLIMBING MAGAZINE TOP 10 INBOX
Resolutions We’ll Be Breaking in the New Year
DECADE DANCE Regarding your Skills piece in No. 370: “Return to Sender: Comeback fitness in two weeks for climbers over 40” (climbing.com/returntosender): At 67 years old, I’ve been in and out of shape a dozen times over the years, always getting back into multi-pitch trad 5.10-to-5.12 shape each time. Swimming has always been key for my return to fitness. Also, my experience has been that there is a period of adjustment somewhere around the turn of each decade that lasts 4 to 14 months, and then you’re good again for the rest of the decade. I’ve always suspected that climbers failing to persevere through these decadal adjustments is the reason for the high attrition rates at each successive decade mark.
1
Go to the gym at 6 a.m. before work to start a training cycle instead of just hitting snooze seven times then lying in bed watching YouTube videos of Magnus Midtbø doing one-arms.
2
Construct beautiful, Pinterest-worthy gearstorage pegboard to replace ugly, embarrassing bird’s nest of gear in laundry basket.
3
Lube cams (like, you know, actually do it).
4
Patiently explain best practices and etiquette to clueless newbie gym climbers who are screwing up instead of taking surreptitious photos of them to post, mockingly, on Instagram.
5
Stop making tinkle 20 feet from the base of the crag and actually walk out into the woods to do our business.
6
Focus on specific training drills in the gym instead of just climbing easy problems that make us feel good about ourselves or look “heroic” to other climbers.
7
Build that garage woody we’ve been talking about all these years—oh look, it's gonna be in the 60s and sunny this weekend. Never mind …
8
Pack better, healthier crag snacks and not just whatever jingus junk food we grabbed from the 7-Eleven en route to the rock.
9
Stop referring to climbing partner as “Heyyou-dammit-take!”
JOSEPH HEALY, VIA FACEBOOK
DON’T CALL IT A COMEBACK! Regarding your “Return to Sender” article from No. 370: I am 42, and while I can still train to the same level as I did a decade ago, I’ve definitely noticed that I lose muscle and fitness more rapidly when there’s a hiatus. I am getting back to the wall after being sick for 10 days and am so weak—so thanks for this plan! ANGELA DOYLE, VIA FACEBOOK
THE TEACHES OF PEACHES? I just received my first delivery of Climbing Magazine, and read the Peaches Preaches article (No. 370: “The Perils of Recreational Outrage”; climbing .com/outrage). Wow. James Lucas seems pretty angry and self-important. The magazine had some good content, but I don’t want to pay to read this guy’s rants. Thanks, but no thanks! Subscription cancelled. VICTORIA CLARK, VIA EMAIL
CORRECTION In Tested No. 370, we mistakenly identified The North Face Summit L5 LT Futurelight jacket as the Futurelight Summit L5 Vapor LT. Climbing apologizes for the error.
/climbingmagazine
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@climbingmagazine
10 Finally tackle our fear of lead falls head-on instead of kicking the can down the road for another year and refusing to fall at all (visit climbing.com/overcomefear if this resembles you). COMPILED BY THE EDITORS OF CLIMBING MAGAZINE
@climbingmag
letters@climbing.com
RE-GRA M
Crowded Crags
50 people waiting at the Ninja Boulder, which has three V11/12s, two V10s, and many V8/9s, Mitake, Japan. You have to be very aggressive to climb here. KEN AOSHIMA
A somewhat busy day at Cannibal Crag in Red Rock Canyon, Nevada. ALEXANDER BARATSKOV
The Grotto, just west of Yosemite, sits in a 30-foot-deep basalt pit with 22 routes around it. This April day saw over 40 climbers there. LISA ELLERIN
Climbers crowd around the classic Solarium (V4) at the Happy Boulders outside Bishop, California. SUE VONG
A crowd of topropers dangles at Rainy Wednesday Tower area, Devil’s Lake State Park, Wisconsin. PHIL B. WATTS, PHD
Copious amounts of people, gear, climbers, dogs, and even a hammock at the Amphitheater, Pilot Mountain, North Carolina. SHAUN WILLOUGHBY
METOLIUS is giving away a sweet prize to the
On a hot afternoon in October 2018, climbers filled nearly every line at Tung Lung Island’s Technical Wall in Hong Kong. If you look carefully, you can see the photographer’s belayer petting a crag dog. EDWARD KWONG
As the only dry crag in Washington some weekends, Vantage can get very busy. Fortunately, every single person at the Sunshine Wall was wearing a helmet at this chosspile. ASHLEY ANDERSON
best Re-Gram photo—check our social channels to enter! This issue, Ken Aoshima wins the Upshot, the new standard for belay glasses.
CLIMBING.COM
7
TALK OF THE CRAG
Why “Get ‘er Done” Doesn’t Work
Shift your focus into the present to manage fear—including your fear of falling BY ARNO ILGNER
H
ave you ever experienced being above your protection, gripped by hesitation and a fear of falling? Your friends “encourage” you by telling you to “Go for it” or that “You’ve got it.” But part of you knows better: It knows that your fear has meaning; it wants to protect you from danger. So do you listen to your friends and go for it, or do you listen to your fear and back off ? Motivation drives how you climb. It reveals what you value and impacts how you make decisions on the rock—and also informs the consequences of those decisions. For example, if you’re motivated to bypass your fear and avoid falling, then eventually, you’re likely to injure or traumatize yourself. Everyone falls, and if you haven’t learned to fall skillfully, a bad outcome might deepen your fear. This approach reflects a “Get ‘er done” motivation, or more specific to our sport, the old, misguided “Man up and go for it”—you try to move past your fear in order not to have to deal with it anymore. But such all-or-nothing thinking (all = “I send”; nothing = “I call for a take or don’t even try the route because I’m afraid of falling”) shifts your attention out of the present toward some imaginary future when you’ll no longer have to face your fear. However, in rock climbing, since we are almost always trying routes that are new to us—on which we might fall—this dilemma will re-present itself time and time again. With this thinking, you’ll soon begin to perceive falling as stressful and fear inducing. Stress and fear are uncomfortable states, so we avoid them. However, something seems wrong about being motivated this way, about running away from what is integral to the sport. Instead, we need to approach fear as a teacher that actually helps us understand risk and manage stress. What’s needed is a shift in motivation, which you can accomplish by addressing, in order, the following six questions:
Molly Mitchell takes the ride on the Roof Wall, Eldorado Canyon, Colorado.
Get Focused Shift from the plateau-inducing “Get ‘er done” mindset into a more open, focused one by adhering to the following six steps: 1. CLARIFY THE GOAL: Learn falling as a skill 2. WHEN TO SEEK COMFORT: In the present moment
As you go through the list, note your answers. Any time you select the first option, you’re taking a “Get ‘er done” approach. Here, you react by switching into survival mode—fight-or-flight and all-or-nothing thinking. You’ll either fight through all of the risk and send without falling, or flee and do nothing. Ego feeds this whole process: It hopes you’ll
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3. RELATIONSHIP WITH STRESS AND FEAR: Honor them as teachers 4. HOW TO ENGAGE: In small, manageable steps 5. EGO: Separate identity from outcome 6. WHO MAKES DECISIONS: You do!
PHOTO BY ALTON RICHARDSON
1. Clarify your goal: Do you “get rid” of fear or embrace falling as a skill? 2. Identify when to seek comfort: The future or the present? 3. Clarify your relationship with stress and fear: Do you “get rid” of them or honor them as teachers? 4. Decide how to engage: With all-or-nothing thinking or little steps? 5. Address your ego: Do you tie your identity to the outcome, or do you separate the two? 6. Elucidate who makes decisions: Your friends or you?
succeed, which will prove that you’re a badass; or it’ll make excuses for you doing nothing, for walking away from the climb. All that’s needed to take control of your fear and deal with the stress is to answer each of these six questions skillfully—choosing the second option in all six cases, which will switch you into a “Get focused” mentality. This is how we move from misplaced, macho thinking toward a healthier, more engaged approach. The goal of “Get focused” motivation is to learn falling as a skill— to engage your stress and fear with curiosity, which in turn lets you take small, actionable steps, relying on how much fear and resistance you feel instead of feedback from your friends or ego. A small step into stress, such as taking incrementally larger falls off an intimidating crux, creates “some fear” and “some resistance,” which is fine. This resistance indicates that you’re not in your comfort zone anymore; you’re edging into the stress zone where learning occurs. But you’re also not in your panic zone where the fear is so overwhelming that you can no longer
learn. Instead, you are in the driver’s seat, incorporating falling as a skill by identifying and taking small steps toward mastering it. So don’t try to “Get ‘er done” when you’re above your protection, pumped and hesitating; rather “Get focused.” It’ll help you value your fear and make decisions with more manageable risk consequences. By getting focused, you’ll be able to respond skillfully when the inevitable happens and you find yourself airborne. You’ll also enjoy the whole process more, too—which, after all, is why we climb. To learn how to incorporate falling as an essential skill, take our new course Overcome Your Fear of Falling taught by Arno Ilgner, founder of The Warrior’s Way mental-training program and author of The Rock Warrior’s Way. CLIMBING.COM/OVERCOMEFEAR
The Skinny on Fad Diets Are they messing with your performance? BY CHRISTINA MANIAN, RDN
A
s a climber of two years and registered, practicing dietitiannutritionist (I studied nutrition education at the Mayo Clinic with a focus on medical nutrition therapy), I’ve seen firsthand with both myself and my clients how nutrition can spell the difference between sending and yet another day of dogging. Much of how your body functions stems from its food sources. But with so many diets out there based on seemingly contradictory principles, it’s tough to know what certain diets are doing for our climbing. While our bodies differ in their needs, knowing how the diets currently getting the most buzz at the cliffs—the ketogenic diet, the paleo diet, and intermittent fasting— generally affect performance can help you decide how to eat. (Also see our Skills piece on optimizing body composition for sending on p.32.)
KETOGENIC DIET Pediatricians developed the ketogenic diet in the 1920s to alleviate seizures in kids with epilepsy. While effective at its goal, the ketogenic diet remains little understood in its mechanism. It entails tweaking the diet to become low carb and high fat (think avocados, coconuts, olives, nuts, and other high-fat foods and animal protein). This switches you into
a metabolic mode called ketosis, which occurs when the body doesn’t have glucose or cellular sugar to use for energy from carb and protein sources, and so switches to burning fat. While ketone production could save your life in a starvation situation, it won’t necessarily allow you to climb hard. In fact, because carbs provide the most energy in the shortest amount of time, your body uses carb stores as its first source of energy during exercise. A 2017 Nutrition & Metabolism study1 followed 42 competitive athletes, and found that six weeks of a keto diet had a mildly negative impact on performance in terms of endurance capacity, peak power, and quicker exhaustion. Meanwhile, a review in the 2007 Journal of Applied Physiology2 found that high-fat diets could increase the perceived effort of training in endurance athletes. Carbs are the only macronutriet that can provide energy for both anaerobic and aerobic activity3, furnishing the quick bursts of energy (power) we need to latch distant holds and the sustained endurance needed for long climbs. Carbohydrate deprivation as seen in the ketogenic diet could limit performance when working through a dynamic crux or powerful boulder problem, enduring long training days, or charging up a big wall. For all climbers trying hard, it’s best avoided.
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TALK OF THE CRAG
PALEO DIET In the 1970s, Dr. Loren Cordain created the Paleolithic-based (paleo) diet to improve people’s alimentation and mimic what he thought humans 10,000 to 2.5 million years might have eaten. This boils down to eating fruits, vegetables, meats, fish, nuts, seeds, and oils while avoiding grains, legumes, dairy, salt, potatoes, and any processed food, including refined sugar. So essentially, it’s a very low-carb diet like the ketogenic diet but with a higher amount of protein versus fat. While this diet involves eating lots of produce and limits processed foods (both good things!), it deprives the body of carbs, cutting off many sources of the nutrients associated with them, such as the thiamin and folate found in whole grains. You could compensate for this with supplements or by diligently including larger amounts of specific allowed foods in the diet. But given the necessity of carbs in peak athletic performance, the paleo diet may, in any case, leave you feeling tired and less capable of summoning power, making those options not worth the effort. Looking further into the effects of carbohydrate deprivation on performance, a February 2011 study published in Psychophysiology4 looked at six males performing high-intensity exercise after consuming both a high-carb and low-carb diet at separate times. Across the board, the participants had a greater rating of perceived exertion after eating a low-carb diet than when on a high-carb diet. Out climbing, this can translate into feeling like you’re working harder than if you were embracing healthy, complex carbohydrates.
INTERMITTENT FASTING Less about diet composition and more about meal timing, intermittent fasting (IF) entered the spotlight for its possible benefits on weight loss, sleep, blood pressure, the gut microbiome, and metabolism. We all intermittently fast while sleeping, not eating for between 8 and 12 hours, but IF extends that period to 16 hours or more daily. Some practice IF by eating the same amount of calories, and some end up eating less given the shorter period of food consumption. While this may result in gradual weight loss through modification of metabolism and possible calorie restriction, exercising in a fasted state will force your body to burn fat instead of carb stores; in some circumstances, you may even burn muscle. This can be detrimental to climbing performance, as the body won’t have available the quick energy from recently eaten food, requiring a longer method of breaking down your body’s fat and valuable muscle (versus ketosis, in which fat from food is burned while muscle mass is preserved). In 2004, 55 Algerian soccer players were studied during Ramadan, an Islamic tradition that entails fasting from sunrise to sunset—around 14 hours. With the addition of 6 to 8 hours of sleep, most of these players fasted around 20 hours daily. “The phase shift of food intake and disruption of sleep patterns affect actual and perceived physical performance,” stated the results in the 2007 British Journal of Sports Medicine5. The study also showed that exercising in an extreme fasted state decreased speed, endurance, strength, and agility. However, intermittent fasting can be done in a way that will have less, if any, impact on your climbing (see “Intermittent Fastsing 101” sidebar). Given that the diet doesn’t modify actual diet composition, it can still promote balanced eating and shouldn’t require supplementation. While not performance enhancing per se, this diet can help with weight loss and the associated health benefits.
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Intermittment Fasting 101 If you do try intermittent fasting, use these suggestions to mitigate any impacts on your climbing: 1. STICK WITH A SHORTER FAST. If you fast 12 to 14 hours, you likely won’t see much difference in performance. Select a fasting schedule that allows you to eat for most of your waking hours (8 p.m.–8 a.m., 6 p.m.– 8 a.m., etc.). 2. EAT THE SAME AMOUNT OF CALORIES AND PROTEIN AS WHEN YOU AREN’T FASTING. This will ensure you have those energy stores available when it’s time to work. 3. FUEL BEFORE, AFTER, AND DURING (IF NECESSARY) WORKOUTS FOR PEAK PERFORMANCE. Save the fasting for the hours when you aren’t climbing or training.
THERE’S NO MAGIC BULLET … Above all, listen to your body and your internal wisdom. We climbers can choose from dozens of diets, from vegan, to Mediterranean, to Whole30, to gluten-free, and more. To assess if a diet will maximize performance, take a holistic view: Is an entire food group being excluded, or just one type of food? While you can easily find the nutrients in a single, excluded food elsewhere, an entire group can be hard to replace—this type of dieting should generally be avoided. While supplementation can make some of these diets work, it certainly begs the question as to whether the diet is going to be as effective as simply getting your nutrients from food. Many popular diets shy away from carbs, as seen with the ketogenic and paleo diets. While these diets may spark weight loss, they won’t support muscle strength, muscle endurance, and quick response time (power). Climbing requires complex carbs to provide quick energy in those dynamic moments (anaerobic effort) as well as sustained, efficientburning fuel for endurance efforts (aerobic effort). As you probably already guessed, consistent, balanced eating will do more for your climbing than adhering to a specific, restricted diet—there’s no magic bullet! For more clarity on specific diets and individual nutrition needs, consult a registered dietitian. Sources: 1: Impact of a 6-week non-energy-restricted ketogenic diet on physical fitness, body composition and biochemical parameters in healthy adults. Paul Urbain-Lena Strom-Lena Morawski-Anja Wehrle-Peter Deibert-Hartmut Bertz Nutrition & Metabolism - 2017 2: “Fat adaptation” for athletic performance: the nail in the coffin? Louise Burke-Bente Kiens - Journal of Applied Physiology - 2006 3: Carbohydrate and fat utilization during rest and physical activity. Katarina Melzer - e-SPEN, the European e-Journal of Clinical Nutrition and Metabolism - 2011 4: Low carbohydrate diet affects the oxygen uptake on-kinetics and rating of perceived exertion in high intensity exercise. Lima-Silva AE-Pires FO-Bertuzzi RC-Lira FS-Casarini D-Kiss MA - Psychophysiology - 2011 5: Impact of Ramadan on physical performance in professional soccer players. Yacine Zerguini-Donald Kirkendall-Astrid Junge-Jiri Dvorak - British Journal of Sports Medicine – 2007
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ONSIGHT
“For me, China Doll was one of the best traditional lines I had seen on the Front Range—and one of the best pitches I’ve ever climbed,” says Mike Patz, who made the first integral free ascent of the Dream Canyon, Colorado, granite testpiece by first pinkpointing the extension as an isolated second pitch in 2004 and then returning in 2007 to redpoint the entire line, placing gear. The 40-meter route starts with six bolts, a fixed pin, and 45 feet of 5.13c, the crux of which involves a V7 layback on a pinch loaf. After a moderate rest, the climb tackles 22 feet of gear-protected tips jamming along a flared crack. In September 2019, the Boulderbased climber Molly Mitchell redpointed the integral line, skipping the bolts on the first pitch and placing her own gear. At the upper crux, she used a tiny cam—a Metolius 00—to protect the V8/9 moves. On the send, Mitchell had to dig deep into her physical and mental reserves—fitting, as she’s also the model (read: whipper victim) for our newest online course with Arno Ilgner, Overcome Your Fear of Falling (climbing.com/overcomefear).
SCOTT CRADY
PHOTO BY TK
From November 28 to December 1, 2019, 44 competitors from around the globe raced up a speed wall, bouldered, and tackled lead routes in Toulouse, France, all vying to secure an Olympic berth. The first Olympic qualifier, held in August in Hachioji, Japan, allowed eight men and eight women to move on to the Olympics. This second qualifier allowed six men and six women to advance to Tokyo 2020. Nathaniel Coleman, who placed eighth in the combined, became the first American male, while Kyra Condie (shown here in Toulouse; see climbing.com/ condie for more), who placed seventh in the combined, joined Brooke Raboutou as the second American female to be headed to the Olympics next summer. The Olympians will be training in Salt Lake City at USA Climbing’s National Team Training Center.
DANIEL GAJDA
ONSIGHT
With sea spray crashing onto the belay ledge, sea turtles swimming past, and hard climbing above, Jeff Elison and Lizz Grennard’s route Freedom (5.12c) epitomizes the experience on Cayman Brac’s Northeast Point (see p. 44 for more). Elison equipped the coastal limestone line in 1995 after rappelling, bolting, and climbing the neighboring Throwin’ the Tortuga (5.11b), which climbs crystal-filled huecos up a brilliant-orange corner. These days, Freedom sports corrosionresistant titanium glue-in bolts, a much-needed upgrade you’ll welcome at each of the route’s three cruxes: the thin face down low (here, climbed by Nina Williams), the strenuous bulge in the middle, and the physical exit roof. Accessing Freedom, which shares a belay ledge with Throwin’, involves rapping 100-plus feet down the unbroken sea cliff to a small stance above the water. From there, your only path back to freedom is to top out.
ANDREW BURR
ONSIGHT
In May 2012, Daniel Woods sent Mission Impossible (5.14c) in Clear Creek Canyon, Colorado, freeing a line Jay Samuelson had bolted at Wall of the 90s. The 10-bolt route climbs 75 feet of vertical and slightly overhanging gneiss. The slopey holds, tiny crimps, and nonexistent smears have made the half dozen ascentionists speculate at the grade, though it has settled at a difficult 5.14c. “It’s hard to say, since the moves aren’t too bad, but the hands and feet are really poor,” says Paige Claassen, who redpointed the line in spring 2018. “And it’s kind of impossible until you unlock the body positions, and then it’s not too bad.” Her first day on the route, Claassen did less than half of the 50 or so moves—but by her fifth day, she had sent. “Thus is the nature of body-position cruxes,” says Claassen. “Once they click, they stick.” For more technical wisdom from Claassen— namely how to upgrade your footwork game—check out her course Precision Footwork (climbing.com/footwork).
TARA KERZHNER
Snow place like home.
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Photo by Kevin Smith
TESTED
WINTER CRAG KIT
Six new must-haves to help you climb in comfort, safety, and style
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1. Mystery Ranch Tower 47 $275, MYSTERYRANCH.COM I’m not sure I’ll ever need (or want) another crag pack—the Tower 47 is that good. First things first: Mystery Ranch gets sizing right. At 47 liters, this cragging pack is big, which crag bags to date have rarely been. And it uses that space well, with myriad pouches, interior pockets, external pockets, etc. to stash—and keep track of—your sundries. I used the upper sleeve against the backing for my kneepads, the zipper pocket below for first-aid and skin-care kits, the two internal racking loops for belay devices and the occasional trad piece, the big mesh side zipper pocket for rock shoes (two pairs), the two smaller side zipper pockets above for belay gloves and glasses and snacks, and the pack body for my harness, chalk bag, clothes, and water bottles. And the pack was rarely full—only when I dropped in a rack, set of draws, and a drill and drill kit did I max out capacity. Meanwhile, you also get a zipper pocket in the brain, a rope-lashing strap above that, and two compression straps on one side that hold a stick clip.
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Couple all this with the Tower 47’s ingenious “splay-open access,” in which the pack essentially unzips into a giant tongue, and you’ll no longer need to yard-sale your stuff amongst everyone else’s sorry tangle of gear at the crag base. Your gear can stay in your pack where it belongs, nice and organized. The Tower 47 has Mystery Ranch’s telescoping Alpine yoke system to customize fit; it carries, as all their packs I’ve tested do, like a dream. Made of 1000D Cordura with aluminum buckles and weighing 4.4 pounds, it’s a bear, but it’s also nearly indestructible—I used the drag handles more than once to shuffle the Tower 47 along the cliff base, and it’s showing zero wear. To consider for future iterations: With a rope and stick clip lashed on, easy access to the side pocket and brain are impeded (like, for grabbing your car keys), though you can get into the pack body through a collar zip just below the brain. The pack comes in two sizes: S/M and L/XL. MATT SAMET
2. Beal Birdie $75, LIBERTYMOUNTAIN.COM The first thing that caught my eye with Beal’s new assisted-braking belay device was its steampunk aesthetic: The Birdie is all stainless steel, with a gleaming silver body and colored handle. It just looks cool. Weighing 7.4 ounces, the Birdie is 1.2 ounces heavier than its main competitor, the Petzl Grigri; however, the Birdie costs $34.95 less. Both devices use an internal cam to assist with braking and have a similarly positioned lowering handle—if you’re fluent at one, you’ll be good with the other. I tested while cragging and up on multi-pitch routes. The Birdie feeds slack super well, catches falls perfectly, and gives a smooth lower, with minimal kinking or jerking. I also appreciated how nicely the rope stayed in its channel even under high-torque situations, as well as the metallic heft of the lowering handle. One note: On single-rope or simul-rappels, descending can be a little jerky/slow and there’s potential for the metal handle to get hot as heat translates from the body—bring gloves. The Birdie has a rope range of 8.5 to 10.5 mm. MATT SAMET
3. BlackYak Calvana Hoody $250, GLOBAL.BLACKYAK.COM As someone who grew up in the Upper Midwest where half the year is winter, I’m not trying to spend any more time being cold. Which is why I was psyched to have the new BlackYak Calvana Hoody given the snowy forecast the day we planned to climb the 18-pitch Flyboys (5.9) near Mazama, Washington (p.54). Up on the route, I remained pleasantly warm and dry after pairing the Calvana, as a midlayer, with a wind shell. The continuous airFLOW technology, meant to keep humidity out while keeping heat in, was effective even on the last six pitches when the white flakes started flying. Not only is there an insulated, helmetcompatible hood (thank you!), but the jacket’s Cordura cuffs are tough and held tight when I slid up the sleeves to get in deep in a few cracks. Plus, the whole hoody is made up of Climashield Continuous Filament, making it more durable than a standard down. Meanwhile, the internal stuff pocket made swapping gloves on and off convenient, and kept them toasty between belays. The waist is fitted with an elastic, rubber-lined, 270° waistband, which kept the Calvana close to my body and tucked under my harness for almost the entire day—no, this isn’t the elusive miracle piece that will stay put even during reachy moves, but it did play nice during a time-consuming (read: timid) onsight of the steep Mazama classic Beta Male (5.12b). BlackYak touts the Calvana as the accumulation of 40 years of product development, and after many chilly days climbing around Washington, I’m inclined to agree. And yes, you read that right: 40 years. How come you haven’t heard of these folks? Only because you don’t live in South Korea. There, BlackYak is the dominant mountain-wear brand. If the Calvana Hoody speaks for the whole line, then I suspect they’ll soon be a staple in the States as well. DAKOTA WALZ
4. Armaid $79 (1 ROLLER) / $129 (ALL ROLLERS), ARMAID.COM Without my Armaid, I’d be a goner, given my tendency to train to the point of “perma-pump.” By letting me drill deep into my fore-
arms, addressing painful knots and problem areas, and “squeegeeing out” lactic acid between burns, this simple, portable tool has been a game-changer. With a cult following, the Armaid has gotten even better in its second iteration, which most notably moves the “load spot” (massage point) closer to the fulcrum, letting you clamp down with greater ease and massage more deeply. (With the old model, I’d sometimes pump out whichever arm was holding the device, as I had to squeeze hard to get the desired effect.) Other improvements include a heavier, more stable and ergonomic saddle-shaped base, a simpler, more intuitive system for switching out attachments, and a new medium-firm yellow roller. Weighing one-pound-plus and fashioned from super-bombproof polypro buffered with glass fibers, the new Armaid is also 2.5” shorter, making for an easier carry to the crag—where, buddy, you’re gonna want it! MATT SAMET
5. Black Diamond AirNet $160, BLACKDIAMONDEQUIPMENT.COM
Today’s savvy climber rocks a quiver of harnesses—there’s always the right harness for the right job. The incredibly light AirNet (8.3 oz men’s size M; 8.0 oz for the women’s) may just be the new harness for limit sends where weight and mobility matter. I tested for months, and the AirNet quickly became my go-to redpointing harness: There’s so little to it that you often forget you have it on— this is ergonomic, unintrusive tech at its finest. Yet the load-bearing waist belt and leg loops are remarkably broad—2.75” for the waist and 2.5” for the legs—which has made the AirNet plenty serviceable for extended belays, dogging, and even semi-hanging belay stations. The technology—a Dynex net clad in hard-wearing mesh, sealed with bonded edge tape—keeps things both airy and comfortable. Another big plus is the Infinity Loop belay loop, a streamlined, half-inch-diameter loop with no seams—that’s right, no janky bartack—which makes for lurch-free belaying. Not surpisingly, the gear loops are minimalist: The forward ones hold draws and a little gear, while the two in back are thinner than shoelaces and can hold a few more draws or trad slings. Although if you’re wearing the AirNet, the gear’s probably already hanging .… MATT SAMET
6. Butora Acro Comp $160, HMHOUTDOORS.COM I’ve long been a fan of the Acro, a steep-rock/bouldering shoe with a passionate following. The Comp builds on its low-profile last to create a much softer (hence “Comp”) offering with volume climbing in mind—and that excels at its métier, in particular toe hooks, given the enormous scumming patch, which had me glomming around arêtes and under Kilter stalactites as if I had a tail. The Comps have an almost “gummy,” slipper-/sock-like fit and feel, and close with a high Velcro strap; coupled with the 4mm Fuse outsole, there’s just enough torque for mild edging and precision jib-smedging, though given the shoes’ forefoot flexibility, smearing is their strong suit. The new, 3D-molded heel deforms like Silly Putty onto big features to suck you in—the perfect match for today’s volumes—but wasn’t as reliable on precision hooks. The Arco Comp comes in both regular and narrow versions; Butora suggests coming down a half size off your street shoes. MATT SAMET
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FOR THE LOVE OF CLIMBING
Mentors Wanted
Remedying the teaching and leadership gap for women climbers BY KATHY KARLO
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feels inspired. “I see this sentiment echoed by my clientele,” she says. “One woman said that her favorite part of a retreat was watching me climb. Learning from people who look like you allows you to believe you’re capable.” Unfortunately, despite the recent influx of women into the sport, female leaders like VanPatten have been statistically rare—even today, only 8 percent of mountain guides are women. (For more, see climbing .com/womeninguiding.) Kitty Calhoun has been guiding for 39 years, and guiding exclusively with Chicks Climbing and Skiing events since 2000. When she started climbing in 1982, there weren’t many female alpinists, let alone mentors—her first mentors were men. And male mentors have a different vibe. “The support is different. Men tend to show, but women share,” says Calhoun. “Male partners and mentors were assertive, and if I wanted to swing leads, I had to be that much more aggressive to make sure I got my share.” In Calhoun’s experience, women tend to learn better in all-female environments because they are less intimidated to ask questions. The good news is, Calhoun says she’s
Kade Diakite and an unknown spotter in Horse Pens 40, Alabama, during a clinic at the 2017 Color the Crag event.
PHOTOS (3) BY IRENE YEE
B
ack in 2012 when I started climbing, a climber stood out a mile away if they were living in New York City—or any city for that matter. She was even more noticeable if she were a woman, given that there were fewer experienced female climbers in the sport. From my own observations, the gyms I frequented in NYC reflected this. In 2014, Manhattan Plaza Health Club hosted a bouldering competition, but the women’s category remained empty until the competition date. A few women eventually signed up, but this was only due to local women rallying to spread the word. Additionally, a girlfriend of mine was awarded a huge cash prize at another competition hosted by Chelsea Piers. Despite being a talented traditional and ice climber, she placed first by default; no other women entered. My friend took the cash and flew to Yosemite to aid-solo the West Face of Leaning Tower. It’s hard to believe this was less than a decade ago. In that short time, we’ve come a long way from “Ladies Night” meaning half-price gym passes for women to a massive uprising in women’s climbing coalitions, initiatives, and events, with shared goals like promoting womenfocused mentorship programs and more-representative stories that uplift other women. Chicks Climbing and Skiing, She Moves Mountains, Flash Foxy, and others are offering women’s-only climbing clinics. The UK-based Women’s Climbing Symposium, now hosting its ninth annual festival, was recognized in 2016 by the Women’s Sport Trust for raising visibility and increasing the overall impact of women in the sport, and has featured Lynn Hill and Hazel Findlay as speakers. The inaugural Women’s Bouldering Festival, founded by Zofia Reych, was held in Fontainebleau, France, in September 2018 with a mission of encouraging excellence in climbing and ethics through route-setting and conservation workshops, bouldering clinics, and a strong mentorship network. And Treeline Women’s Climbing Festival, based out of British Columbia, hosted its third annual event in July 2019 to provide women with the resources to grow their skills. When you consider that a 2018 report from the Outdoor Industry Association showed that 46 percent of outdoor participants are now female, this is an understandable trend. Lizzy VanPatten, the co-founder of She Moves Mountains, an outfit that guides and teaches climbing exclusively to women, believes in the importance of working with a mentor—regardless of gender. “There is something to be said about working with a mentor in whom you can see yourself, with whom you share similar life experiences and conditioning, who you can ask questions beyond the technical aspects of the sport,” says VanPatten. “Oftentimes for women, this means learning from other women.” As both an athlete and an AMGA Apprentice Rock Guide, she has had to ask herself how she can gain respect as a professional when how she looks—a woman standing only 5’2”—is often not what people imagine as a guide. “My climbing career has been defined by people doubting and challenging my capabilities,” says VanPatten. “[But] climbing with other women began to challenge what I believed my body was capable of.” When VanPatten sees other women climb, she
Elaina Arenz, Rock Guide and SPI Provider Trainer, teaches trad placements at the Flash Foxy festival in Bishop, California.
now seeing more women getting into climbing—thus creating more such all-female environments. During my initial, hungry years in the sport, all three of my mentors were older men. Eventually, through their thoughtful guidance, I became well-versed in anchor building, gear placement, and rope management. However, for several years, I didn’t feel any desire to take on a mentorship role myself. For me, it was less about my level of technical experience than about my reluctance to assert leadership. Perhaps, much like VanPatten, I was concerned about how other climbers—specifically male climbers—would receive mentorship from a woman who stood only five feet tall. This preconceived message that a woman may be subject to criticism, implicit bias, or even potential harassment is reason enough not to step into a leadership position. But I’d like to argue that it’s the very same reason we women should continue to do so—in order to change the tired, old, sexist narrative. As our sport continues to grow, it’s critical that we address the lack of mentorship, regardless of gender labels or any gender imbalance. Women are ready to lean into leadership roles with the understanding that these positions aren’t solely about mentoring—they’re also about creating powerful networks between climbers. While historically it was challenging for women to connect with other female mentors, women climbers are now spearheading a movement that says, “We are leaders.” Back when I was learning to climb, my mentors were compassionate and committed to helping me develop my skills—but they were men. I was well aware of a space that needed to be filled. Back then, I used to say, “If he can do it, then I can, too”—and I did. Today, I see women everywhere ardently taking on more mentoring roles and supporting other women. Today, I also think, “If she can do it, then I can, too.”
Podcast producer and freelance writer KATHY KARLO (fortheloveofclimbing.com) lives for rock climbing, sharing doughnuts with strangers, and positive vibes. Climbing is mostly jumping for her, as she has a negative ape index.
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GRASPING AT DRAWS
“Oh, but you already know, don’t you?” she said, pulling a small teapot and five cups from beneath the table. “You’re simply too scared to believe. Let me show you.”
Part 1: The Alpinist
Four Climbers Learn Their Fate BY ANDREW TOWER
Four figures spilled out of a Prius, followed by the chemical aroma of pine-tree air freshener. A Lyft sign lit up the car’s windshield, casting a soft glow through the foggy alleyway. Above a red door, a flickering light revealed peeling script: “Seer.” Calling the four “friends” would be a stretch. They were barely acquaintances, sharing only swollen forearms, callused fingers, and a penchant for the vertical—they’d found each other through Meetup, or perhaps it was Partner Finder. Nobody could recall. Each arrived with their respective talisman in hand: a freshly sharpened ice screw, a mangled yellow/red offset cam, a boar’s hair brush covered in $300 of fine-grained premium chalk, and a 30-foot extendable stick clip. They joined to find a common truth: what might become of their passions.
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The four climbers pushed through the door. Inside, velvet draped the walls, and in the middle of the room was a small, candlestudded table surrounded by five chairs. As the climbers crossed the threshold, a gust slammed the door shut, extinguishing the flames, plunging the climbers into darkness. “Sit,” said a sultry voice with a tinge of a French accent. One candle flickered back to life then another as the fortune-teller leaned over to relight them. Covered in what appeared to be old, tattered pof rags, she towered over the climbers. “Why have you come to me?” she intoned as they all took their seats. “To find out what will happen to us, to our sport,” the trad climber said. “We want to know what the future holds.” The others nodded their assent.
Part 2: The Trad Climber Hands shaking as if at the base of a 5.11 X squeeze chimney, the Trad Climber jerkily filled the cups, splashing liquid all over the saucers. The psychic then instructed the Trad Climber to use the mangled cam to stir the tea clockwise five times, drink it until only a teaspoon of liquid remained, and place the cam next to the saucer. “An uncomplicated future for an uncomplicated people,” she said, peering into the cup. The Trad Climber breathed a sigh of relief. “But not without its own travails.”
ILLUS TR ATIONS BY NOIRESOR/CRE ATIVE M ARKE T
BEWARE THE FUTURE!
"What, you’re going to read our tea leaves, trace lines in our palms, kill a chicken and look at the guts?” the Alpinist ranted. Pinkfaced with anger, the Alpinist slammed the ice screw on the table. “I’m outta here! I’ve got better things to do.” “That’s right, you do,” the seer responded. “Never forget, Alpinist, your sport is dying as we speak. Pick up a newspaper, turn on the television, check @gretathunberg—the warming climate is killing your sport. In a decade, the Ouray Ice Festival will become a summer festival for kayakers.” The seer closed her eyes and picked up the ice screw, turning it over in her hands. She continued, “As for your big mountains, the classic summits will benight even the most accomplished alpinist. As the receding glaciers and snows unveil either dangerous death-routes with loose rock and calving ice or only difficult, technical faces far beyond your abilities, suffering as a skill will no longer suffice. Few will find favor in the alpine …. “Mark my words, Alpinist, your dogged dismissal of other disciplines will be your downfall. The Piolet D’or turns to a Piolet D’rouille—‘rust,’ as you Americans call it—as obscurity and repetition take the baton. You shall be like Sisyphus, cursed to ascend only the few hills that remain in season, eking out every last possible variation before you return to the valley below, only to start again.” The Alpinist shrank, shaken by the seer’s words as she said, “Now, Trad Climber, pour everyone some tea.”
Continued the seer, “Once upon a time, beginning in the 1980s, uncivilized villains with Lycra tights and power drills scarred your rock with bolts. They brought heathens to your crags, and made a mockery of the sport’s ethos. A decades-long war abated with a brief renaissance, with the killer elite establishing hard lines using removable protection. But are these routes truly ‘trad’ climbs? The gear placement involves more memory than adventure, and could ultimately be said to be as basic as clipping a bolt. “Even big walls, once the pinnacle of free climbing, have felt the hammer-blow of modernity. Your crown jewel, El Capitan, has been free-soloed by a semi-homeless, atheist vegetarian. A Czech sport climber repeated the wall’s hardest route 2,500 days faster than its first ascent only to return to sport climbing. You must see the writing on the big wall. “Trad climbing finds itself at a proverbial fork in the road. To get more difficult, it must either become so dangerous it’s just rehearsed free soloing with a rope or it must be bolted, in which case it’s just sport climbing. Join the Country Club Crack and ease into roadside retirement: The Hand Jammies have come and they don’t care what you once were—only what you might become.”
Part 3: The Boulderer “Boulderer, give me your talisman,” the seer commanded. The climbers stared into their laps, wondering why they’d come. They were peeling off the topout, falling in slow motion, unable to avoid a groundfall. The Boulderer handed over the boar’s-hair brush. The seer stared at the Boulderer’s callused tips, and then brushed them in slow, clockwise circles. “Well then, Boulderer,” she said. “It would appear your fate differs, but not how you may hope. Bouldering will gain popularity, more than you can imagine. Its sheer accessibility provides an opening for the masses. It is at once the most affordable and the most social discipline—a veritable boon to the sport. “But what becomes of your standards? Your bouldering ratings rely on two factors: physical difficulty and commitment. With Shawn Raboutou trying to revert the V scale back into a close-ended, 10-grade B scale, hearkening back to the simpler days of John Gill, any leaps in difficulty will be soon so personal they’ll border on a feeling. Is that problem in Japan, Brazil, or RMNP really
“And so it is that the Rock Gods shall smite you, and those things you once held sacred fall into ruination.” V16, or do you just not want to hurt the first ascentionist’s feelings—or it simply ‘has’ to be V16 because you traveled such a long way to repeat it? No one will truly repeat your climbs; instead, they’ll only create their own reality, their own standards. And it will dilute the experience until only one rubric remains: a problem’s goodness, its movement, its consistency, its delight. “And then what of the emotional commitment—the landing or the height? As Reel Rock pushes the ‘High Road,’ what separates the boulderer from the soloist? A mattress? By the time you’re no longer willing to fall off, you’re no longer a boulderer but a glorified trad climber who doesn’t place pro. At which point you might as well sport climb.” Hearing this, the Trad Climber whimpered. “But beware, Boulderer, the venom of comparison, a virulent path that may lead your climbing soul up, up, and away. Your new altitude has no room for attitude.”
Part 4: The Sport Climber The seer then brought her gaze upon the emaciated sport climber. “And what should we do with you, Sport Climber? Even your talisman, the stick clip, is imbued with the same combination of ingenuity and laziness that has long infused your discipline—like the kneepad or hand warmer in your chalkbag, or rappel-bolting itself. But even as you push yourself to the limits of human endurance, your sport corrodes by the day. Convenience will be your downfall. Few venture beyond the cliffs of comfort, your Rifles and your Reds. Once radical, sport climbing is now middle-aged, a Boomer in a world of alphabet generations. The youngsters make fast work of your legacy, doing in one hour (‘second go; soft’) that which took you years of training and self-starvation. You are but drill dust to be blown away by the breeze of passing phenoms. “This is the curse of the Sport Climber: Your crowds grow while your developers thin. The remaining Bosch owners will fade into the periphery—why equip on your own dime only to be the butt-end of 57 bomb ratings on Mountain Project when you could ‘put up’ routes in the gym for a paycheck?
The new school will fail to heed your backin-the-day ramblings and obscure kneescum beta for Living in Fear—their climbing coach has created a perfect replica from a YouTube video to train on all winter so they can flash it come spring. Your days of spray are over.”
Epilogue The seer scanned the four drawn faces at the table, lingering on each climber as she addressed them. Intoned the seer, “You’ve all contributed to your own demise. You are the reason the Olympics will feature three separate disciplines rolled into one, each the pinnacle of your specialty. Alpinist and Trad Climber, speed climbing captures the velocity necessary for multi-pitch climbs and alpinism. Boulderer, find yourself in the tactical strength and precision the athletes must manifest on each problem. And, Sport Climber, see yourself every time the competitors rope up, seeking difficulty in endurance. “This Hydra is the culmination of your hubris, of your disdainful dismissal of the other disciplines. You have all sealed your fate, with ecosystems damaged, crags bolted, boulders overrun, and your cliffs of convenience tapped out. And so it is that the Rock Gods shall smite you, and those things you once held sacred fall into ruination.” With that, the seer swiped her hand across the table, extinguishing the candles. Through the inky darkness, a blinding flash dazed the climbers. When their eyes readjusted, they found themselves in the alley next to the same Prius that had delivered them there. “Call for a car?” the driver yelled into the fog. Sharing a glance, the four climbers piled in, unsure what to make of what they’d just heard. The Prius hurtled down the alleyway, pausing before turning onto a one-way street. It pressed on into the night, toward the only illumination on the edge of town: a flickering neon sign advertising “Rock Gym,” welcoming all souls ready to come in from the darkness. ANDREW TOWER lives in the mountain town of Crested Butte on the Western Slope of Colorado—far from people but close to rocks.
CLIMBING.COM
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THE PLACE
SILVER MOUNTAIN
Northern Michigan’s Hidden Gem BY BENNETT SLAVSKY
W
e rarely think of rock climbing when we think of Michigan. Instead, “the Mitten” typically conjures images of lakes, potatoes, flat land, and Detroit. However, deep in the recesses of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (UP) is a hidden 140-foot cliff with 40plus stellar routes from 5.7 to 5.12d, including several two-pitch climbs. Silver Mountain, cleaved from the hills of Ottowa National Forest by the last ice age, is a stark black and gray basalt wall, with pink, orange, and white mineral deposits splattered tie-dye throughout. Two hours west of Marquette and six hours northeast of Minneapolis, Silver is hidden far out in the northern woods. The next tallest routes in the UP top out at 50 feet (AAA Wall), and in the Lower Peninsula there’s only Grand Ledge, a 30-foot toprope crag. Meanwhile, the next nearest sport destination is the Red River Gorge—a 12-hour drive. There is a creed in UP climbing that no one claims a first ascent. Climbers will often think they’re on an FA only to find a rusty piton or weathered webbing. It is rumored that people climbed at Silver Mountain in the late 1980s, but when Bryan Rajdlel first arrived in 1996, he saw no evidence of passage. At the time, Rajdlel was a student at Michigan Technical University in the town of Houghton, about an hour away. “It was pristine, untouched, and the style me and my buddies did—we were all trad climbers,” Rajdlel says. “It was scary. It was hard to protect. It was thin. The cracks flare. It was, like, super adventure climbing.”
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Rajdlel, along with a handful of other locals, put up 12 to 14 mixed free/aid lines at Silver in the late 1990s—routes titled no further than “That hard one over there.” They cut their teeth on these scary, groundup traditional routes and practiced the aid skills they’d later take to big walls in Yosemite and elsewhere. According to Rajdlel, the ethic in the UP at that time was clean—no bolts, no anchors, and minimal chalk. Enter Paul Peppin, a young, thirsty climber native to Marquette, Michigan, a few hours east of Silver Mountain. Peppin began climbing as a teenager and got strong on trips to the Red. There, he saw firsthand how sport climbing could unlock an area’s potential. After hearing of the mysterious Silver Mountain, Peppin made the journey in 1998. “When I came around the corner and saw this thing go straight up and down, I almost had a heart attack,” Peppin says. “It was an epiphany.” In that moment, Peppin saw what Rajdlel had seen just a few years before: an awe-inducing 140 feet of sheer, featured rock—in Michigan. Peppin bought a power drill, and in summer 1999, he and another Marquette climber, Aaron LaBelle, bolted five lines at Silver, some of which unknowingly eclipsed existing trad lines. When Rajdlel caught wind—fearing access issues with the forest service and disgruntled that the original climbers at Silver had not had a chance to weigh in—he removed the bolts. Disheartened, Peppin would not return for five years. In the meantime, Rajdlel started a family and took a hiatus from
PHOTO BY PAUL PEPPIN
Bennett Slavsky and Emily Cabot climbing Anal Dwelling Butt Monkeys (5.11a), Silver Mountain, Michigan.
PROTECTING AMERICA’S CLIMBING
PHOTO BY BENNE T T SL AVSK Y
climbing. During that time, Silver remained largely untouched—what Peppin calls “the lost years.” “I didn’t really intend to [go back],” Peppin says. “But then I met [my future—now former—wife] Liz and I just wanted to show her the place.” In 2004, the two returned to Silver to find the rock overgrown. They toproped and trad-climbed at Silver for years, all while quietly scoping and cleaning potential new sport routes. Paul concedes that he is second generation at Silver Mountain, saying that Rajdlel and his crew were pioneers and have “first rights.” However, for the Peppins, developing Silver as a sport area became a matter of accessibility: As Liz puts it, “90 percent of the current bolted routes on trad would be rated R and X—they really are dangerous, and most people aren’t going to climb them unless there are bolts.” In 2012, the Peppins began bolting again, spending almost every summer weekend for the next five years brushing, cleaning, drilling, and blowing lichen boogers. During that time, the Peppins, along with help from various UP college students, established almost 40 sport routes at Silver. Meanwhile, as his kids have grown, Rajdlel has taken up climbing again and began guiding. He takes his children and clients to Silver because it provides a perfect training ground for young climbers to hone their skills, much like how he practiced aid climbing there years ago. “I totally get it … We’d rather more people climb it than not climb it,” says Rajdlel 20 years after he removed the first bolts at Silver. “[Paul and I are] gonna meet and
try to bury the hatchet. It was a long time ago. We both really care about climbing here [in the UP], and I think we will work together moving forward.” Today, any given fair-weather weekend at Silver draws young climbers from across the Midwest. With no buildings or facilities for miles, climbers camp off a dirt road 100 yards from the cliff. They set up tents amongst the trees, and in the evening hang out around the campfire, occasionally donning a headlamp for night climbs. The off-vertical rock produces delightfully technical, heady climbing. A quintessential Silver route, Between a Block and a Hard Place (5.10d), works up 90 feet of large stacked blocks through fingerjams, sidepulls, crimps, and precision footwork. The climb is captivating, each move a new puzzle to methodically solve. For the strong, the 60-foot second pitch of Golden Heart (5.12d) is a sustained beast with monster moves to miniscule holds. In mid-September 2018, Liz bolted what ended up being the Peppins’ final route at Silver, the second pitch of Anal Dwelling Butt Monkeys, a stunning 5.11a. Most of the crag’s potential has been unlocked, and it’s time to pass the development torch to a new generation. On the route, a heady start leads to back-to-back burly dihedral cruxes and a slabby finish. The climb is an interesting, multifaceted, instant classic. As you top out high above the trees, a 180-degree panorama of the endless, rolling green sea of the Upper Peninsula awaits you, spread out at the foot of Michigan’s finest crag.
• AF, Western Massachusetts Climbers Coalition, and Ragged Mountain Foundation bought Hanging Mountain, a new area in Massachusetts. This may be the biggest find in Northeast climbing in decades, offering 150–200 routes once fully developed. • In autumn 2019, thousands of climbers joined forces with Native American tribes to save Oak Flat, Arizona, which is in the crosshairs of a foreign mining company set to take ownership of this public land and destroy the surface, including its climbing and spiritually significant landmarks. • The fight for America’s public lands is evolving, but the one constant is that the front line is in Washington, DC, among our elected offi cials. Plug in to AF’s 2020 Election Prep series to learn how to vote for climbing and public lands (accessfund.org).
Silver Mountain developer Paul Peppin on the cliff’s upper headwall, climbing Silver Sweetness (5.10d).
CLIMBING.COM
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TOPO
Life, The Universe, and Everything BY ANDREW BURR AND JAMES LUCAS | PHOTO BY ANDREW BURR
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n October 14, 2018, Jay Conway, a math teacher at Plymouth Regional High School, New Hampshire, stared up at the fourth ropelength of what was poised to become a new, five-pitch 5.14a on Cathedral Ledge. The route was Life, The Universe, and Everything, on the cliff ’s forbidding Mordor Wall. Above him rose the 5.13c Edge of Bridge pitch, which tackled V8 refrigerator wrestling— the climb’s most difficult moves. To get here, Conway had climbed the 5.11+ first pitch of Cecile; a crux, 5.14a second pitch via his 2013 Difficulties be Damned that exited via a tough, new V4 mantel; and a sparsely bolted 5.12b “enduro slab.” Conway, supported by his friend Pete Arnold, had already put in five tries over three hours on the Edge of Bridge and was exhausted. If he could make it past the 30 feet of 5.13 above, only a 5.10b section guarded the summit. While Cathedral is known for its multi-pitch free classics like Thin Air (5.6), Recompense (5.9), The Prow (5.11d), and Liquid Sky (5.13b), the dark, roofy, and seemingly holdless Mordor Wall has mostly been the domain of aid climbers. In years past, the hardest free climb there was Tim Kemple Jr. and Sr.’s Highway 61, a three-pitch, zigzagging 5.13a. “With Rumney close by, most of the 5.13s at Cathedral see very little traffic,” Conway says—with its mixed climbing and funky fixed pro, Cathedral has kept its mantel as the traditional bastion of New England. In 2013, Conway, now 39, looked between the fixed bashies and old-school mank on the Mordor Wall to find Difficulties be Damned, a mixed pitch with five bolts and five pieces of gear. In spring 2018, he returned to scope a left exit to Difficulties. “That cliff is roadside and has been climbed at since the 1920s,” Conway says. “It’s picked over. I was shocked that I found stuff above that line”—including the 20 new feet off of Difficulties that segue into the new, upper pitches. “All the routes just seem so impossible at first,” Conway says of Cathedral Ledge’s smooth, fine-grained granite, “but once you figure out that almost everything is a foothold, the routes seem to click.” LOCATION Mordor Wall, After his fruitless battle on the Edge Cathedral Ledge, of Bridge, Conway rested at the belay. New Hampshire He queued up “Damn It Feels Good to GRADE be a Gangsta” by the Geto Boys and got 5.14a psyched for a sixth attempt. This time, Conway fought through the second V8 boulder problem, with its balancey windmill move, finally sticking the sequence. “It was like my version of the Dawn Wall,” he says. Elated, Conway romped up the last ropelength at dusk, bringing two and a half pitches of new climbing and a proud, new 5.14 to Cathedral Ledge.
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LENGTH 400 feet; five pitches TYPE Mixed FIRST ASCENT Jay Conway, October 2018
Jay Conway, belayed by Michael Larson, above the arĂŞte crux on the 5.13c Edge of Bridge pitch, Life, the Universe, and Everything (5.14a; five pitches), Cathedral Ledge, New Hampshire.
UNSENT
HERDING YOUR PARTNER:
The Selfish Climber’s Guide BY KEVIN CORRIGAN
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1. Feign graciousness A reasonable person would take turns when choosing climbing plans, or settle on a common goal. This is the unspoken social contract: “I choose the movie/restaurant/crag this time, you choose next time.” Start by pretending that’s who you are. Insist that your partner choose the crag. He earned it with that two-hour belay last week, when you worked the crux of Extra-Spicy Chicken Wings 20 times in a row, hanging for 10 minutes between attempts without going in direct.
2. Make excuses Your partner is an independent being with his own wants, which is annoying. You just need him to hold the rope like a human autobelay. So when he suggests ideas, you’ll need to find a reasonable excuse for why each is impossible. It’s not that you don’t want to go to Wall of Monos; it’s just those damn outside circumstances! Piggyback off the following to craft excuses of your own: • • •
Oh, Hand Jamboree? That sounds fun—except that it goes in the sun at noon and it’s supposed to get up to 65° today…. Yeah Mouthful of Angry Bees looks sick, but I heard the crux bolt was spinning and is about to blow. I’ve been on Smedge Maze. It’s good, but last time there was a bat behind the crux flake. Yeah, that was a few years ago, but it looked settled in. It’s prime bat real estate—my bat-guy friend said so.
3. Suggest convenient alternatives Now selflessly suggest routes that would be perfect for your partner—right next to the route you want to climb (DO NOT MENTION THIS PART). Remember: It’s all about him. At least, that’s what the dumb rube is supposed to think. Try something like this: “What about Chim-Chimney-Charroo? You’re super-strong on chimneys. I bet you’d love it. Oh yeah, I guess it is next to Extra-Spicy Chicken Wings. I mean, I’d give Chicken Wings a burn if we had time, but no big deal if we don’t. I’m easy.”
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4. Make him think it was his idea If your partner is on board with your suggestion from step 3, great. Sucker! However, should he resist, your contingency plan will be to make that idea look better by suggesting even worse ideas: • “What about Hip Stitches? It’s about time you learned to climb unprotected offwidths.” • “My cousin’s university club will be at Five Onederland, and their Bluetooth speakers are so loud you’ll feel like you’re really at a Sublime concert.” • “Could be cool to make the first repeat of Mancrush after all that rockfall.” After rejecting enough of these, your partner will revert to the only remaining viable idea: yours from step 3. Since he brought it up this time, congratulate him on his excellent idea. Now all you have to do is ask for a lap on your proj during the hike in, then turn that into the entire day. E.g., “Let me just run back up real quick to work out the crux.” “I’m sooo close—you don’t mind if I go for a redpoint burn, right?” “Ah! I flubbed the beta. One more go?” Etc., until it’s time to go home.
OTHER CONSIDERATIONS Maintaining your partner pool People will only put up with your manipulative behavior for so long. Once your partner wises up, he may throw your pack into the creek, threaten you with a nut tool, or worst of all, refuse to belay. It’s best to switch partners before this happens, so get on Partner Finder early to have your next sub ready. It’s like a Ponzi scheme, but with climbing partners.
In case of emergency Sooner or later, word will get around that you’re a sociopath (fair), and you’ll become a pariah. You could move, but in this digital age, bad reputations are hard to shake. It’s easier to start bouldering—then you’ll never have to waste your time belaying someone again. Plus, if someone asks for a spot, you can just leave once they’re on the rock.
PHOTO BY LE VI HARRELL / ILLUS TR ATION BY LINDSAY WESCOT T
he relationship between climbing partners is sacred: We hold each other’s lives in our hands; we trade belays, sharing successes and failures. Some might say that our time bonding is more rewarding than any redpoint. But these people don’t care about sending—any time spent helping your partner achieve his goals is time not crushing your projects. However, by following the steps below, you’ll never have to support another climber again—100 percent of the day will be about you.
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Avoid the Newbie Syndrome How to Prevent Gym-Bouldering Injuries Early in Your Career BY R. BRYAN SIMON
Sarah Filler demonstrating safe, controlled bouldering at The Spot Denver.
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limbing-injury doctors and clinical researchers Volker Schöffl and Christoph Lutter have dubbed accidents like Jane’s—a hypothetical example that points to the recent trend of major injuries due to minor falls at bouldering gyms—the “Newbie Syndrome.” Until recently, indoor bouldering and climbing were considered relatively safe, with an acute-injury risk of 0.01–0.03 injuries per 1,000 hours of participation. In recent years, however, Schöffl and Lutter recognized an uptick in indoor-bouldering injuries, attributing this to the increase in problems with dynamic, parkour-like movement, coupled with a lack of general fitness—leading to poor technique—for new climbers. Novices often get lulled into pushing themselves before they understand the risks associated with dynamic movement and falls. However, through a proper warm-up, foundational fitness with a focus on core strength, better flexibility, and an understanding about climbing (and falling/landing) safely, we can overcome Newbie Syndrome.
INJURY PREVENTION Injury prevention begins with a good warm-up, which will elevate your body temperature and improve joint mobility prior to climbing. Meanwhile, having a foundational level of cardio fitness and core strength will improve your form, protecting against injury.
muscles,” says Mark Pugeda, a climbing physical therapist based in the New River Gorge, West Virginia. Pugeda suggests 10 to 15 reps of the yoga pose Upward-Facing Dog, forward and side lunges, upperand lower-trunk rotations, and forward/side leg swings (see “Bonus Warm-Up” sidebar). Finally, warm up on roughly 8 to 12 easy problems, no more than a number grade or two below your onsight level, as it takes the body approximately 120 moves to prepare the pulleys and tendons for the demands of difficult bouldering.
Strength and conditioning Having an adequate level of strength, flexibility, balance, and joint stability encourages the proper form and technique that stave off injury. Additionally, having a strong fitness base allows for a longer—and thus funner!—session. CORE A stable, strong core helps you keep your body tight to the wall, allowing you to climb with greater control. Moreover, a strong core brings stability to the cervical, thoracic, and lumbar spine to help prevent back injury.
Bonus Warm-Up: Curls and Circles Circuit This “curls and circles circuit” is a great way to warm the joints, moving each through its full range of motion and physiologically prepping it for rapid flexion and extension while climbing. Start at the fingers and work down to the ankles, doing 10 to 15 reps of each exercise both clockwise and counterclockwise—except finger curls—for the entire circuit. •
FINGER CURLS: Alternate from straight fingers to making a fist.
Warm up
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WRIST CIRCLES: Make a fist and then roll your hands.
Climbers often overlook the need to warm up, hopping right on problems and injuring themselves. However, taking the time to prep the body will reduce the chance of injury. So begin with 7 to 10 minutes of jogging, cycling, or jumping rope. “Follow this with dynamic stretches that target the trunk, thighs, calves, shoulders, and forearm/hand
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ARM CIRCLES: With arms straight and to your sides, rotate your arms in a circular motion.
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HIP CIRCLES: Place your hands on your hips and roll your upper body.
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KNEE AND ANKLE CIRCLES: Bend over with hands on slightly bent knees; move your knees in a circular motion (your ankles will follow).
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PHOTO BY MIKE MILL S
After four months of gym climbing, Jane, a self-taught climber, feels ready to push herself, eyeing an overhanging V3 at her local gym. Her first try, she falls immediately. Her second try, she makes it through the opening sequence to a dynamic move. Having seen other climbers dyno, Jane hucks for the jug, swings wildly, and loses her grip. She lands awkwardly on her left ankle, fracturing it.
Remember, core strengthening means working the entire trunk. Varied exercises include supine leg lifts with a bent knee, V-ups, bicycles, side crunches, and isometric flexor chin tucks. As a general rule, you should barely be able to complete the reps on the final set of each exercise. You can do core training up to five times a week, but also take rest days. STRETCHING Incorporate static and dynamic stretching multiple times a week and before climbing, to cultivate flexibility throughout the body and stability in the joints, especially the knee and ankle. Static stretches that target “climbing muscles” include wrist flexor/extensor stretch, hamstring stretch, and hip flexor stretch; dynamic stretches include arm scissors, windmills, and side-to-side lunges. Generally, static stretches should be three sets of 15to 30-second holds, while dynamic stretches are one set of 15 to 30 reps.
Quick Clips Fixes for common climber problems COMPILED BY MATT SAMET
A green, heavy-duty dish-scrubbing pad is great for quickly cleaning your climbing shoes before starting up a route. I keep a couple in my pack, and always stick one in my pants pocket in case I encounter unexpected gunk midway up a pitch. JASON MOORE
Use this “Rock and Roll Climber’s Hack” to restring a broken camtrigger wire: Either solder a guitar string through the cam lobe or tie it off with an overhand knot (janky-looking but effective). As you can see here, the eye ring from the guitar string stays well anchored through the blue lobe. Sure, this isn’t as low profile as the traditional method, but it’s hard to beat the math: used guitar string + 5 minutes = fixed trigger.
RISK ASSESSMENT To avoid injury, you need to understand the forces exerted on the body during falls and landings, and become fluent at assessing risk
Consider the entire problem Examine the problem’s angle, length, and hazards: How steep is it and what sorts of features does it climb—arête, corner, slab, or cave—and what does that mean for falling/landing? Will nearby climbers create a hazard? Where does the problem top out? What’s the likelihood of a fall from the top, and what would the landing be like?
Examine the individual sections Now consider individual movements—the unique climbing positions. Will any single move expose your body to injury? For example, falling onto a stuck heeltoe cam can shred your knee, and micro-crimps can cause finger injuries. Ask yourself what existing injuries you may have and if you’re putting yourself at greater risk. Also consider dynamic moves and what would happen if you don’t stick them. Is there the potential for a swing or a face-down fall—and if so, do you want a spot?
Climb safely Climbing in a controlled manner, with good body tension and a focus on precise movement, can limit your risk of injury. Move from hold to hold deliberately, focusing on each step of the process. Continually assess and back off if needed. If you feel uncomfortable with the fall, downclimb to a better position. Not only will this move you back to greater safety, but it also improves your footwork.
Stick the landing In bouldering, where every fall is a groundfall, anticipate and control your fall, hitting the mat with your legs slightly bent and feet beneath you shoulder-width apart. In a well-executed landing, your ankles and knees should flex within their normal range of motion to absorb the impact, while your core tightens to protect your spine, and your chin tucks to protect your head. Also, rolling in the direction of the fall after impact lessens the shock—think “stunt roll.” However, don’t throw an arm out to “catch” your fall, as this is a common avenue to a sprain, strain, or fracture. R. BRYAN SIMON is the managing editor for the American Alpine Club's Accidents in North American Climbing and is co-author of Vertical Aid: Essential Wilderness Medicine for Climbers, Trekkers, and Mountaineers.
WESTON HAMILTON
When living in a panel van or dirtbagging out of your car, a cheap plant sprayer helps with cleaning, washing up, and even getting chalk off your hands—without using much water. JAMIE STANDBRIDGE
I’ve started tucking a rectangular box-cutter blade inside my phone case or taping it to the inside of my helmet instead of carrying a belay knife. It doesn’t add weight or bulk, and slices through webbing, rope, and Dyneema with ease. MAT T HANRAHAN
Got an amazing quick clip? Send it to letters@climbing.com. The top tip in this issue—Weston Hamilton’s—won a new 70-meter Boa Eco rope from Edelrid.
SKILLS
Rapid Weight Loss vs. Slower Body-Composition Changes Is there a superior way to change our bodies for climbing performance? BY ALYSSA NEILL, RDN
Physiological effects of rapid weight loss When you lose weight, you lose mass. And when you lose weight rapidly (more than 1 to 2 pounds per week), you’re more likely to lose both main types of body mass: fat, aka adipose tissue, which is hormonally active but doesn’t require as much energy to sustain; and muscle, aka lean mass, which requires
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a little more energy. This occurs because extreme caloric restriction slows your metabolism—the body, in an energy deficit, now has fewer calories to use (as well as less mass to fuel), and so reacts accordingly by conserving energy. This is basic metabolic balance. Aside from rapid weight loss making you feel lethargic, another way the body decreases energy output is by metabolizing metabolically demanding tissue—i.e., muscle. This typically occurs to some extent regardless of weight loss; however, in times of fasting, when glucose and glycogen have been used up, the body will turn to amino acids (protein building blocks from the muscles) to make glucose in a process called gluconeogenesis. This muscle loss not only makes weight loss
unsustainable, but can lead to diminished power and a higher chance of injury.
Unsustainable weight loss: Upsetting the metabolic scales BOB Age: 26 Height: 5’8” Weight: 160 pounds Build: Fit, healthy balance of muscle and body fat Bob has been climbing for six years, and hit a grade plateau at about year four around V7/V8. Rocky Mountain National Park bouldering season ramps up in about two months, so Bob decides to lose 15 pounds in hopes of sending harder. Each day, he’ll eat: 1 low-calorie protein shake + 1 low-carb, low-fat
PHOTO BY FOX YS/CRE ATIVE M ARKE T
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ou wouldn’t be wrong if you believed it’s advantageous to be light for performance rock climbing—we all know it’s helpful to feel like you’ve slipped through gravity’s fingers. But is there a hidden cost to rapidly losing weight? Moreover, is there a more advantageous and sustainable way to change body composition?
The Protein Connection A 2018 review in the journal Nutrients demonstrated that compared to other calorically restricted diets, a “high-protein diet” (at least 25–35 percent of your daily calories coming from protein) catered to losing more fat mass and preserving more lean mass than all of the other fat-loss macro ratios. This is no surprise, as muscle requires amino acids from dietary proteins to be synthesized. Likewise, protein is the most thermogenic macronutrient, which means proteins (aka amino acids) require energy to digest and absorb. Moreover, research has established that people with higherprotein diets trend toward consuming fewer calories, likely because protein consumption stimulates the “I’m full” hormone, leptin. protein bar + a big, strictly vegetable salad with 4 ounces of lean chicken, dressed with lemon juice. He starts a 4x per week climbing, 3x per week running, and 2x per week lifting regimen with the goal of amplifying his caloric deficit. After 8 weeks on this regimen, Bob hits his target weight. Throughout, he experiences drastic hunger, but remains committed. He notices more frequent muscle cramping and interrupted sleep, but he’s seeing gains at the gym, and so persists. After week eight, Bob heads into the alpine to try a V9, which goes down after a few weeks. He feels light, but not particularly energized; he can muster up power, but not always at optimal capacity. After sending, he tries another V9. In the meantime, Bob resumes eating the same foods and quantities as before his regimen—about double the calories per day. His lowcalorie diet was leaving him too hungry to perform on the boulders, and he was bonking on the hike. Over the next four months, Bob gains back about 17 pounds despite eating healthily and staying active. He’s happy to have sent V9, but feels frustrated that he’s now heavier than his original starting weight, and that he feels less powerful. As Bob quickly learned, you not only get hungrier when eating less and exercising more, but your metabolism also slows. So, sure, Bob got down to “V9 sending weight,” but his sending window only lasted a couple of weeks—because, as discussed, rapid weight loss with no emphasis on losing fat while retaining muscle is often not metabolically sustainable. Indeed, weight regain after weight loss is so common that research has quantified the body’s drive for more food, estimating that for every two pounds of weight loss, hormonal signaling prompts us to eat 100 more calories per day1.
We saw this with Bob, as his hunger cues grew stronger than he could resist past eight weeks. This is the body trying to balance the metabolic scales. In fact, a commonly accepted statistic is that 80 percent of people who lose 10 percent of their body weight will regain that weight. Moreover, many people’s hunger cues become aggressive after bouts of rapid weight loss, and it’s not uncommon to experience cravings to eat in quantities surpassing your intake while dieting.
Sustainable weight loss: Balancing the metabolic scales SARAH Age: 35 Height: 5’5” Weight: 130 pounds Build: Fit, healthy balance of muscle and body fat Sarah has been climbing for 15 years and has a trip to the Red River Gorge six months out during which she wants to climb her first 5.13a. Psyche is high, but Sarah realizes that she’s in it for the long haul, and wants to dial in the many aspects of her lifestyle that will support getting into better shape. Sarah started by cutting out alcohol and processed carbs, while oscillating between 3 to 4 light, lean-protein-containing, whole-foods-based meals per day. She also began to focus more on nutrient timing, ensuring that most of the high-carb, whole foods she consumes are within 30 minutes of training sessions. She also cut back on bars and highsugar sports drinks, while adding in more electrolyteinfused water and pre-made, lean-protein-centric meals with ample vegetables. Protein shakes are used as needed after training. While precise about her eating, she is not restricting calories. Sarah prioritizes getting 6 to 8 hours of sleep, especially around intense training days. Each week, she climbs at least 3 days, with a focus on endurance on one day and fingers the other two. As she goes, she listens to her body’s feedback and modifies accordingly. Over this six-month period of precise fat loss with muscle-maintenance nourishment, Sarah loses 11 pounds, most of which is fat. She feels powerful and light, and sends her goal routes at the Red. Sarah is able to sustain these changes throughout the year, and because many of them are lifestyle based, continues to see subtle improvements in body composition and performance, even as she become slightly less precise in her eating.
How focusing on body composition works As Sarah learned, the way to sustainably reduce body weight is by focusing on body
composition—losing body fat while maintaining lean body mass. Rather than being a starvation slog, the process can instead be enjoyable, and yields performance gains, more energy, (often) increased power, and less chance of an injury. The only “problem” is that prioritizing the maintenance of lean body mass while losing weight, which really ends up being fat, requires longer-term commitment. It requires changes around patterns and habits, which doesn’t cater to the typical American get-fast-results mindset. So, how and why does focusing on body composition actually work? Well, first off, this nourishment pathway supports metabolism, as it leaves you with more energyrequiring muscle. (Note: Muscle only requires slightly more calories to maintain than fat, but longitudinally, those extra calories are beneficial.) As we saw with Sarah, this was best accomplished with a highprotein, whole-food-based diet (see sidebar at left, as well as climbing.com/protein). In addition to getting adequate lean protein, there are other dietary pillars that sustainably shift body composition: consuming fiber-rich carbs, eating plenty of greens, fresh fruits, and vegetables, avoiding processed foods, and staying hydrated. Meanwhile, factors like age, hormone dominance (sex hormones impact many biological functions, many of which impact body composition), elevation and geography, food preferences, activity levels, health conditions, sleep status, work, social, and cultural environments, genetics, and even your goals factor in as well. Long story, short: If you want your bodymass reduction to be sustainable, then it’s more about the type of mass you lose than the amount. To be clear, I’m not encouraging you to go out and gain tons of muscle so that your metabolism gets faster. Nor am I suggesting that we could all stand to lose weight. However, because weight loss is a frequent conversation amongst climbers, let’s make sure we’re nourishing to optimize our climbing goals, fitness, and overall resilience. ALYSSA NEILL, registered dietitian and owner of Nourishment Nutrition, lives, works, and plays in Colorado. Find her online @nourishment_nutrition or @alyssa_neill. Reference 1. Goodman, B. (2016, October 14). Research Sheds Light on Why People Who Lose Weight Gain It Back.
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SKILLS
The Allfreefi Maximize Big-Wall Efficiency with an Adjustable Fifi Hook BY DAVID ALLFREY
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cursed my puny biceps as I gripped a carabiner with one hand and, feet in aiders, crawled up Southern Man (V 5.10 A2) on Washington Column in Yosemite. Using my other hand, I frantically stabbed a fifi hook toward my daisy chain; it missed twice before finally catching in a loop, leaving me gasping from exertion. I sagged onto my daisy and prepared to repeat this grueling, inefficient process another thousand times.
While the fifi system—keeping a small hook on your harness that you place in your daisy chain to snug up to a high piece—has long been a staple of aid climbing, I knew there had to be a better way. So I began experimenting. Adjustable daisies were OK, but I ended up having to tinker with and loosen them only to tighten and tinker again. And when I ditched the daisies altogether and just went in direct to my high piece with the fifi, I couldn’t top-step (stand in the highest ladder rung to place the next piece). After devising and tossing out dozens of homemade systems, in 2009 I finally came up with a crude but useful tool. Eventually dubbed the “Allfreefi” by my friends, it comprised a cam buckle (a one-way metal buckle you can cinch and release by depressing a small button) and an attached fifi hook. This new tool let me simplify my movements. With each placement, it only had to go one place—onto the carabiner holding my aid ladders. This prevents the need to stand up, hold on tight, and move the fifi, reducing several strenuous steps. After over 50 ascents of El Capitan and 15 or more speed records using the Allfreefi, I can confidently say that this simple device revolutionizes aid climbing.
THE STEPS Aid climbing is a slow, methodical, repetitive process. Being efficient at each step eases and speeds ascents. It starts with standing on your top piece.
Place the piece Start by placing your piece as high as possible, standing tall in the rungs of your wall ladders. From what I’ve found, the second rung down is often the sweet spot—the highest step lets you reach farther,
With all of the excess gear and “tentacles” everywhere, stepping out of the ladders and moving into free-climbing mode is one of the more difficult aspects of wall climbing. As I’ve learned, it’s often best to ditch the ladders first. To do so: 1. Free your daisy chain from the ladder then climb to the top of it. 2. Climb right off the end of the ladder, leaving it behind for your partner to clean.
The author using his hook on the Grey Circle pitch (A2+) of Zodiac in 2015, when he and Alex Honnold sent 7 El Cap routes in 7 days.
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3. As you free climb, drape your daisy chain, Allfreefi, and ladders (if you bring them) over your shoulder. Here, they can hang from your harness up onto your back, remaining easily accessible without getting caught in your feet while you climb.
PHOTO BY G ABRIEL M ANGE
Transitioning to Free Climbing
but will force a strenuous body position, especially on steep terrain. Meanwhile, if you place gear while standing below the middle step, you are losing easy and valuable reach—though you should be prepared to use these lower steps based on the terrain.
Bounce-test the piece Avoid airtime by bounce-testing your gear, either via your legs or hips. BOUNCE-TESTING THROUGH THE LEGS Once you’ve placed and clipped into your high piece, step into the lowest ladder rung; now, shift your weight onto that leg and apply cautious (read: not full) weight. The piece holds? Great! Now hop all of your
weight onto it, bouncing up and down a few times to seat and fully test the piece. BOUNCE-TESTING THROUGH THE HIPS After placing and clipping into your high piece, step back down into your lower aid ladder until the daisy on your new piece tightens. Now, with feet in the lower ladder, slam your hips and harness onto the piece. Hip/body testing will apply more force, but requires descending to the end of your daisy chain, making it a less efficient movement. However, this method is also more secure—if the upper piece blows, you’re closer to and more securely positioned on the lower piece.
Weight the piece: Moving the adjustable fifi After you’ve tested and confirmed the reliability of the piece, it’s time to snug up to it using your Alfreefi. By using this adjustable fifi, you won’t have to fiddle with flossing the fifi into your daisy chain as you climb the ladder. Instead, you can just pull yourself up. Here’s how: 1. Shift your weight onto your new, high piece. 2. Holding tight to the piece’s carabiner, use your other hand to grab your Allfreefi. Depress the trigger and pull it to full arm’s length; as you do so, place the fifi on the carabiner of your highest ladder. 3. As soon as you’ve hooked this biner, sit down and save your arms. 4. Breathe, and then repeat the process with your next piece.
THE TRICKS Top stepping While essential to efficient aid climbing, top stepping is often strenuous—especially on overhanging terrain where it may actually be unnecessary. The trick is to find the right balance between the difficulty of placing gear and the distance between pieces. Using an Allfreefi allows you to crank the buckle tight to your waist and easily sit or stand around your ladder’s third step down. This will be the sweet spot most of the time. As you climb into the second step from the top and then the top step, you can carefully release tension on your adjustable fifi and climb up. As your waist travels above the piece, crank the buckle tight, pulling downwards hard from your harness to the piece. Lock your knees, drive your hips into the wall, and embrace the discomfort of the harness pulling down on your hips. Place your next piece, get it clipped, and then get out of this uncomfortable position!
Steep terrain MAKING AN ALLFREEFI PHOTO BY DAVID ALLFRE Y
1. Buy a cam buckle from the hardware store or reappropriate an adjustable daisy chain. 2. Tie a fifi hook on the end of the buckle using 1” webbing and a water knot. Use pliers to tension the knot, making it and the sling length as small as possible. 3. Wrap the knot and fifi bottom with tape to create a stiff hook. This helps with holding the buckle and placing the fifi on biners. (Note: You can buy a premade “Alfifi” at skotswallgear.com.)
Steep terrain tends to be safer because there’s nothing but net below. However, it is also the most difficult/time-consuming for aiding, with the rock’s angle forcing you to place gear closer together than on vertical or slabby ground. Stand higher and more easily on steep terrain by using your legs to press down into your ladder. Tighten your core, squeeze your glutes, and drive your hips toward the wall, and then tension the Allfreefi into your stiff body. Now you can reach overhead with both hands to place cams and pound pitons.
DAVID ALLFREY, a longtime wall climber, is currently stepping into his next big adventure as a father. In between changing diapers and squeezing in some MoonBoarding, he’ll undoubtedly be on the walls of Yosemite, Red Rock, or Zion.
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Story by William Butierez || Photos by Jim Thornburg
sonoran gem T H E O V E R L O O K E D C R A G G I N G PA R A D I S E OF MOUNT LEMMON, ARIZONA
Claire Bukowski on Holey Moley (5.11d), New Wave Wall, Windy Point. The route features powerful, elegant sequences on small but positive crimps—classic Lemmon climbing.
William Butierez on (or rather, off ) Orifice Politics (5.12c), a wildly exposed king line at the Orifice, the Fortress, Summit Crags.
hat if I told you that deep in the Desert Southwest, a 28-mile road winds up through five ecosystems and provides access to more than 2,500 routes, year-round, on steep, featured granite? Would you be able to set aside your stereotypical image of the Southwest as desolate, flat, hot, and devoid of anything to do besides watch tumbleweeds roll by? Nestled in Southern Arizona, amongst the towering saguaros, blistering heat, and creepy crawlies, lies just such a gem: Mount Lemmon (9,159 feet), just north of Tucson and flush with routes and boulder problems both new-school and historical alike. When I was growing up in Tucson, Mount Lemmon always served as an oasis, an escape from city life and Arizona’s oppressive heat. I spent sweet summer nights camping up there as a child, and took countless classic teenage drives with friends up the Catalina Highway to where it ends near the summit. I even learned how to ski and fish on the mountain. However, when I turned 18 and discovered climbing at the local gym, my appreciation for just how special Mount Lemmon is would forever solidify. My hands met its fine-grained granite; I learned to use my feet, and experienced dangling in space and seeing the ground from differing, addictive perspectives. As my knowledge of climbing expanded through various trips, jobs, and relationships, I grew to understand the treasure at my doorstep. It is now my pleasure to
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reintroduce the often-overlooked Mount Lemmon with the respect and recognition it merits. The drive begins in the Sonoran desert at 2,000 feet on the northwest side of town and ends at just over 9,000 feet near the summit. In the late 1800s, Sarah Lemmon became the first known nonnative woman to summit the Santa Catalinas’ highest peak. So impressed was her guide that he suggested the mountain take her name, making it one of the few North American peaks named for a woman. On April 28, 1995, Catalina Highway became a National Scenic Byway, and today an estimated 1 million visitors per year drive to the summit. The journey has been compared to driving from Baja, Mexico, up to the Canadian Rockies, but with all this landscape diversity compressed into a 28-mile stretch of tarmac encompassing three major sectors: lower, mid, and high. (Squeezing the Lemmon—the area’s climbing guidebook—breaks these down into sub-sectors, including Bear Canyon, Windy Point, Windy Ridge, Upper Highway, and the Summit.) Mount Lemmon’s granite varies in texture and style between its lower, middle, and upper canyons. The primary rock type is banded gneiss, aptly named for its alternating darker- and lighter-colored bands broken by wide vertical joints. As you travel higher, the texture shifts from smooth to sharp to blocky. Yet while you can find a bit of every style, crimping remains the primary name of the game.
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CLIMBING IN THE CATALINAS HAS a rich history dating back to the 1960s, including some of the earliest recorded ascents from the local pioneers Jon and Ila Rupley. The Rupleys climbed for climbing’s sake alone. When Jon was considering moving to Tucson for work, access to Mount Lemmon became the deciding factor: He saw it as an opportune training ground for bigger mountaineering objectives in Canada. The Rupleys put up some of the mountain’s first routes, following aesthetic cracks at now-notable areas including the Fortress, the Ravens, Rappel Rock, and Windy Point. They neither named nor graded many of their FAs, though future climbers would inevitably do that for them—e.g., The Rupley Route, Lost Rupley Route, and so on. The Rupleys generally sought out the longest objectives (up to 450 feet) they could find, with most of the climbs being 5.7 to 5.9.
It wasn’t until the early 1970s that Mount Lemmon experienced its “Golden Age.” It was then that a ragtag group of friends led by Dave Baker peppered the mountain with lines. Born and raised in Tucson, Baker had spent a lot of time exploring the Catalinas. While inspired to climb, he found himself stymied by the lack of available gear. In 1970/’71, a friend jokingly suggested they open a shop, and thus the Summit Hut was born. (Today, it has two locations.) “The Hut” at last outfitted local climbers, who took to the hills with gusto to cherrypick the Lemmon’s endless granite lines. Many routes established then were bold, ground-up affairs. Consider the 5.9+ R Chaboni, put up by Mike McEwen and Dave Baker in 1971 with just one pin and two bolts to protect 90 feet of tenuous friction. In an interview from 2002 on the website climbaz.com with the local legend Steve Grossman, Grossman recounted the story
ABOVE Bukowski roses through on Honker (5.12+), an old Hidetaka Suzuki/Ray Ringle route at Windy Point. RIGHT Kim Pfabe climbs The Golden Egg (5.9) on the Goosehead, Windy Point. Bolts and perfect patina edges get you up this short but airy spire.
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of another bold FA from the McEwen/Baker duo: Helms Deep (5.10+) on Rappel Rock, climbed in 1971. As Grossman recalled, “[…] The second pitch is pretty much a flat, steep face. Mike climbed up and drilled the first bolt. It was sticking kind of halfway out. A typical kind of thing, he says, ‘Aw, I can’t screw around with this anymore. I am just going to go climb it.’” Wearing what Grossman figured were the blue, hard-soled Royal Robbins shoes, McEwen cast off into 5.10 above his iff y bolt; higher, the climb offered continuous 5.9 slab. Continued Grossman, “Rather than stop and put another bolt in, he just did what Mike always did, which is run it out. At that point, he just kept running it out and running it out and running it out. Dave, sitting at the belay, kept looking down, wondering whether he was going to end up on the ground if [McEwen] fell and pulled the first bolt out [.…] ”
Pfabe on Hydroponics (5.11c), Milagrosa Canyon, lower Mount Lemmon. The route starts from the bank of a deep pool that’s a great spot to swim and climb when the rest of Milagrosa is too hot.
Mount Lemmon was also one of America’s early sport areas. As rappel-bolted cliffs emerged in the States, so too did the ethical debates, including at Lemmon where bolts were chopped, reinstalled, and chopped again. But as the area drew more interest, change was inevitable. In 1981, Devils Tower crack-master Eric Fazio-Rhicard (EFR) left his previous stomping grounds for Arizona. He initially characterized the Catalinas as a runout trad chosspile, but in 1986, EFR received his first Bosch drill as a Christmas present from his wife, and his perspective shifted. With this new tool and a fresh eye, EFR suddenly saw the mountain’s sport potential. He and others pushed development, and opened hundreds of bolted routes. Beyond being on the lookout for interesting features, EFR has brought an eye for connections and lithic subtext. Arizona Flyways (5.11+) and Raven Maniac (5.12-) are classics of the style—crimpy, complex, sustained. Despite traditional pushback, as the dust settled amongst the sport-trad debates, the bolts remained—and proliferated. Munchkinland was one of the first fully bolted cliffs, and today houses over 100 routes. For a period, the Lemmon boasted one of the West’s
highest concentrations of difficult sport climbs at crags including the famed Beaver Wall, stacked with crimpy 5.12s and 5.13s— and itself a victim of bolt wars, after its rapbolted climbs were chopped then reinstalled. Mount Lemmon quickly earned a reputation as a place of try-hard, crimp-tastic, technical face movement—though the reality is that 5.13 and 5.12 face climbs are rare compared to the more plentiful 5.11 terrain, which has earned Mount Lemmon the nickname “5.11 heaven,” with must-dos at the grade including Steve’s Arête (5.11b), Arizona Flyways (5.11+), Just Do It (5.11a), and Histoplasmosis (5.11+). EFR continues to be active in local development and has remained a fi xture in the Tucson scene. He recently released his latest edition of the guidebook, Squeezing the Lemmon III, which includes 2,500 routes within 30 minutes of the highway, more than 600 of which EFR helped author himself.
BOULDERING HAS BEEN AROUND Mount Lemmon for about as long as sport climbing thanks to Bob Murray, the retreating legend who pushed Southwest bouldering—and who often climbed solo and barefoot, leaving little trace. Murray moved
west in the early 1980s from Delaware, and would go on to establish untold fierce problems at Lemmon, Hueco Tanks, and around Albuquerque, New Mexico. “Murray problems” like The Matterhorn (V9) on Lemmon’s Windy Ridge still remain testpieces. Tall, lanky, and steel fingered, Murray approached his climbs with an equal balance of finesse and power. The Matterhorn exemplifies this style, inviting climbers in with nail-biting crimps and then demanding a huge move to the lip, followed frequently by surprise at the miserly size of the target grip. The bloc did not see a second ascent until decades after its early 1980s FA. While the boulders have somehow never gained the reputation that the cliffs have, in the last decade bouldering development on Mount Lemmon has skyrocketed thanks to local diehards. Classics can be found dispersed across the Catalinas’ foothills, but the Summit offers the highest concentration and quality lines. (Check oldpueblobouldering .com for the latest—some 1,900-plus problems around Tucson, most V0–V7.) Wilderness of Rocks and Aspen Trail Boulders are the prime summit areas. If time is short, hit up the Gulch and classics like The
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Brute (V6), Civil War (V6), Odin’s Revenge (V6 stand or V10 sit), or Lucky Goes for a Walk (V9). Bear Down SDS (V12), FA’ed by Matt Fowls in October 2014, is likely the mountain’s hardest problem. Wilderness of Rocks is out of the same parking lot but takes more effort to reach—imagine a playground of freestanding boulders, thousands of them. While not all are featured, the ones that are have problems tackling huecos, quartz veins, and slap moves up blank eggs. You’ll encounter the first boulders 45 minutes in, and they continue until you’re two hours deep—many folks hike out and bivy in order to boulder for two days. The potential, especially in the doubledigit range, is staggering. Wilderness of Rocks is under constant development, with room for more. Bring a brush and an open mind if you’d like to add to the ever-growing list of new problems.
SO WHY, GIVEN ALL THIS, HAS Mount Lemmon not made your list of must-visit areas? The routes are many, the access is free or nearly so (the mountain is owned by the USFS, with no entrance fee and free camping toward the summit—though some designated campgrounds and picnic areas have a day-use fee), and crowds are often minimal. But something seems to be keeping the masses away. Maybe it’s Mount Lemmon’s location in the desert and the temperature extremes: highs that swing to 120°F and lows that plummet to single digits. Yet with the elevation gain and the way most crags are orientated (both north and south facing), you can comfortably climb year-round. Enter the lower canyons, and climbers can expect less-than-vertical to vertical walls across all disciplines. With flora including palo verdes, mesquite trees, saguaros, grass, and scrub brush, this is still very much the desert—with polished, sometimes chossy rock, and bees and snakes. Still, the climbing can be excellent, techy, and edgy, as found on must-climbs like Triangulate (5.10), Go Speed Racer (5.10+), Armed Robbery (5.11), Solar E-clips (5.11b/c), and Sentenced to Hang (5.12b). However, come summer, you’d be a fool to find yourself climbing in the lower third unless motivation is high and you like climbing by headlamp. The mid-mountain brings a shift to more vertical to gently overhanging, consolidated granite. Here, the foliage cedes to manza-
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Bukowski romps up the Eric FazioRhicard, Scott Ayers, and Mike Head masterpiece Arizona Flyways (5.11+), Anduriel Tower, Windy Point.
nita, juniper, and scrub oak. Now 5,000 to 6,500 feet above the desert floor, the crags offer dramatic views of the lower canyons and Tucson Mountains. Here is the classic Windy Point, which was a big draw in the 1980s and is thin and crimpy in the “classic” oldschool way. Unfortunately, as was often the case in the era, many developers employed tools like chipping and gluing, with oddities like drilled pockets appearing up blank headwalls and arêtes. Nonetheless, there are plenty of natural or “natural enough” classics to cut your teeth on, including the perpetually photographed Steve’s Arête (5.11-), Arizona Flyways (5.11+), Tsunami (5.12), Honker
(5.12+), Lessons in Yorkshire (5.13-), and the seldom-repeated Hebe (5.13+). Mid-mountain is also home to some of Mount Lemmon’s headiest trad climbs, including Lizard Marmalade (5.10+), Credibility Gap (5.10+), Mean Mistreater (5.10+), and Cripple Creek (5.10-). The gear-protected routes aren’t like splitters at the Creek. Instead, they necessitate bold climbing above small cams and wires, runouts between weaknesses, and fussy placements—bring offset cams. Farther up the winding road, past Windy Point and through Windy Ridge, a big, sweeping left turn brings you into forest. Now pine trees and aspens line the road, and the rock
becomes blockier and more featured. In this author’s opinion, the upper third of Mount Lemmon hosts the crème de la crème of crags known collectively as the Upper Mountain, home to the widest range of climbing, from sport cragging to adventure trad. Multiple, new single-pitch sport crags have popped up over the last decade—some radically overhanging like Raycreation, Mariposita, the Steep, Southpark, and the Orifice, allowing for athletic climbing amongst a lush forest. Finally, the last stop on the tour is the Summit Crags; at nearly 9,000 feet, these cliffs offer traditional multi- and single-pitch routes as well as sport climbing. Shortly after the Mount Lemmon Ski Valley (the United States’ southernmost ski resort), you encounter a small pullout for the aptly named Reef of Rocks, with its splitter cracks, routes up to six pitches, and hard sport climbing. Farther up the road is the summit. Here, you’ll find
classic sandbagged, multi-pitch trad routes from the 1970s heading up Rappel Rock. If bolts are what you seek, adjacent formations the Ravens and the Fortress host multi-pitch sport climbing, but the main bolted attraction, located in the middle of the Fortress and 100-plus feet off the ground, is the Orifice. The Orifice is Tucson’s steepest venue—you’ve probably seen the epic photos on Mountain Project. The dizzying exposure is ameliorated by pillow-soft falls into space. Here, the stylistic Lemmon edginess breaks and the holds get … bigger, with 20 routes ranging from 5.11- to 5.13-. The classic Orifice Politics (5.12c), better known as OP, is the glory line, featuring 105 feet of enduro jug-hauling with boulder problems broken up by kneebars and scums. Fight the pump or enjoy the ride. If the grade is out of reach or you need a cool-down, Murray Wall (en route to the Orifice) hosts 5.10s and 5.11s.
Whether you’re after sport climbing, trad climbing, or bouldering, Mount Lemmon has it all—and is under constant new development. The local climbing organization, Climbers Association of Southern Arizona, has made incredible efforts in fostering and maintaining a healthy relationship with the forest service through their cleanups and trail work, and the Catalinas remain the biggest recreational area for Tucson, hosting mountain bikers, runners, fishers, hikers, skiers, canyoneers, lake-goers, and, of course, climbers. This oasis has hidden in plain sight for long enough: Her doors are open, she left you the key, and it’s time to plan a visit.
WILLIAM BUTIEREZ, a Tucson native, moved away in 2012 and has since climbed at over 50 venues in the States. He frequently returns home to visit family, friends—and Mount Lemmon. Every trip up the mountain leaves him wide-eyed and drooling.
LEF T Butierez on Lizard Marmalade Direct (5.10+), Punch & Judy Towers, Windy Point. The line combines tricky placements with cerebral, insecure moves. BELOW Pfabe sampling the perfect incuts of The Golden Egg (5.9), the Goosehead.
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PHOTO BY TK
James Lucas sticks the finishing jug on Pirates of Pissants (5.12d), Wave Wall, Cayman Brac, in the fading evening light.
The palm trees, blue seas, and brilliant limestone of Cayman Brac STORY BY MATT SAMET PHOTOGRAPHY BY ANDREW BURR
The wind had followed us from Colorado. As we walked across the “ironstone”— limestone weathered into razor spines, shark-mouthed sinkholes, and fluted daggers—atop the Northeast Point on the Caribbean island of Cayman Brac, an invisible hand pushed us back from the sea 140 feet below. We staggered, taking slow, tentative steps. A fall on this serrated landscape would tear you to ribbons; if the wind shifted and pushed you over the lip— curtains.
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The Northeast Point of Cayman Brac. Long Beach and Spot Bay are visible at right.
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ur crew had come to wee (12 miles long by 1 mile wide) Cayman Brac in 2018, leaving Colorado on a blustery December morning. It was me, Senior Associate Editor James Lucas, the pro climber Nina Williams, Climbing’s Digital Editor Kevin Corrigan, Senior Contributing Photographer Andrew Burr, and Burr’s life and business partner, Juanita Ah Quin. We’d all come to the Point on a stormy afternoon to shoot Angel Robledo, a Brazilian transplant who has co-run the Cayman Islands’ Rock Iguana guiding service since 2017. Angel and her friend Armin Gooden wanted to climb Throwin’ the Tortuga, a classic 5.11b up an orange dihedral to a crux roof high over the waves. The Point is one of the Brac’s 17 unique crags, which comprise 100-plus singlepitch sport routes up to 5.13 on limestone ranging from black, vertical, and spiny to wildly overhanging tufa, pocket, and colonette climbing. The 18 5.9 to 5.12c climbs at the Point are approached via hair-raising rappel to precarious stances above wave-battered hollows. The cliff sits at the isle’s northeast tip, amidst rock, sea, and jungle. Were you to fall into the drink, you’d need to swim for miles along the unbroken cliff line to find egress. And then, the “beach” would be ironstone and the waves would pummel you skinless. The commitment is palpable, especially when wind-driven swells boom against the rock. In autumn 1996 on a similar high-wind day, Jeff Elison and Lizz Grenard, part of the early, northern Colorado crew who began bolting on the Brac, rapped in to make the first ascent of Wholy Huecos Batwoman (5.10c). Below the route, a hookshaped rock creates a “whirlpool” that sends waves shooting straight up the wall. At the belay, wrote Elison in a trip report, “a large wave came right up to head level and soaked us both.” Elison led off post-haste. As he climbed above the fourth bolt, some 40 feet up, a second wave broke, he wrote, “within two feet of my heels.” So, what of his poor belayer? Grenard, immersed, had been lifted off her feet, flipped over, then slammed back onto the belay upside-down, hitting her head. “When the water cleared she looked up at me with terror dripping from her face and requested that I get her the hell out of there,” wrote Elison. He climbed quickly to the fifth bolt, equalized it with a horn, and brought her up to this improvised anchor. From there, the two “shivered and cowered their way to the top.”
As I helped with rigging for the photo shoot, I wondered about the wisdom of dropping in on this unsettled day. Still, Burr, with his lifetime in the mountains, fierce blue eyes, and bushy Forty-Niner beard, loves “sketchy shit,” and Angel and Armin seemed game. While they climbed and shot, I walked along the 2.5-mile Lighthouse Footpath, which hugs the cliff edge west toward the more habitable lowlands of Spot Bay, home to much of the island’s best climbing. The trail began in the early 1900s as a way for locals to access the bluff to collect booby eggs and look out for ships. Beginning in the late 1920s, it became an access route for lighthouse keepers, who dragged handcarts full of gas cylinders out to power the lighthouse. As I wended through small, grassy valleys and clusters of silver thatch palms, and past massive agave plants, birds cried and flapped at the plateau’s edge. There, brown boobies roosted in the rocks, and I passed by quickly, going around these reclusive mini-pterodactyls with their inscrutable dinosaur eyes and long, pointy bills that resemble plague masks. An hour later, back at the Point, the crew prepared to drop down Throwin’ the Tortuga. In an odd micro-phenomenon, the cliff itself, they said, was calm—it was just where the warm air met the lip that the wind was howling. This close to the equator, night falls fast, and
Nina Williams flashing the first ascent of the dynamic In Vino Veritas (5.13a/b), Dixon’s Wall.
though it was already 4:30—one hour shy of sunset—Armin, Angel, and Burr disappeared over the edge. After some fussing with the descent ropes and situating the belay, Armin led out in the gloom. I crab-crawled to the edge. “Can you see them?” I asked Burr, who hung 30 feet below. “Like, are these photos going to come out?” “Yeah, he’s heading up,” Burr said laconically. “I’m just keeping the shutter open to work with the light.” A half hour later, Armin topped out, clipping the belay in the gloaming. He sported a massive grin, having onsighted a dream route. “Good job,” I shouted, reaching down to pass him my headlamp as the wind tore the words from my mouth. “You might want this.” As Armin belayed, the rope crept through his device. When Angel emerged onto the headwall, he shone the light for her—she hadn’t had a headlamp. I was glad when we were all on top. If you get into trouble on the Brac, there is no mountain rescue, nobody with the equipment or skills to reach you. There’s just you, the rocks, and the ocean. “Oh, my god,” said Angel, coiling the rope. “I got hit by a wave, my shoes got wet, my chalkbag was soaked, and I’m freezing. And I had to climb mostly in the dark! I’m never going down there without a headlamp again. I should have known .… ”
1. Kevin Corrigan crimping next to a swath of caymanite, Orange Cave. 2. Angel Robledo, of Rock Iguana guides, getting ready to drop in at the Point.
1
2
Cayman Brac Logistics GETTING THERE: Fly into Grand
ROUTE BETA: Find an up-to-date guide
Cayman (direct flights available from Denver via Cayman Airways—caymanairways.com)
and island beta at climbcaymanbrac.com. If you decide to establish new climbs, you must
then take a Cayman Airways flight to the Brac ($160 round-trip).
use titanium glue-in bolts or your hardware will rot; do not trust any existing bolts that
GETTING AROUND: You’ll want a rental car, as the crags are all grouped on the
aren’t titanium! GUIDE SERVICE: Rock Iguana
island’s unpopulated eastern tip. We got ours
(climb.ky) offers guided climbing all
through CB Rent-A-Car (cbrentacar.com).
over the island, including rappelling/caving/ multi-pitch tours on the Point and yoga +
LODGING: Climbers typically stay at John Byrnes’s Bluff View (climbcaymanbrac.com),
climbing at the Yogi Wall.
with many crags in walking distance. There is
MUST-HAVES:
also the amazing, all-inclusive Cayman Brac Beach Resort (caymanbracbeachresort
• Sturdy approach shoes
.com), with its pool, sandy beach, buffet, and seaside hammocks.
• Sunhat
SEASON: Late November through April;
• Snorkeling gear (or rent it at the Beach
• Sunblock • Belay gloves/leather gloves
early spring has the advantage of fewer hours of sun on the south side, making it possible
Resort) • For rapping in/escape at the Point: static
to spend more time at the Love Shack, Wave Wall, Orange Cave, etc.
line/extra rope, rope protectors, and Tiblocs or other lightweight ascenders
Juanita Ah Quin and Corrigan on the hyper-scenic What’s the Point? (5.9), which climbs an exposed pillar where the north and east sides of the island converge.
But then: “That was the best route of my life!” gushed Armin, oblivious to Angel’s frustration, still awash in his post-send buzz. “That was the worst climb I’ve ever had,” continued Angel, a former mountaineer. “Not even in the mountains have I been so miserable.”
Cayman Brac is the easternmost of the Cayman Islands, a string of three isles (Grand Cayman, Little Cayman, Cayman Brac) 200 miles south of Cuba. Unlike Grand Cayman, with its resorts, cruise ships parked in the harbor, and constant hum of tourist activity, the Brac is a relative backwater. There are only two thousand full-time “Brackers” and very few sandy beaches, with scuba diving being the main tourist lure, especially at the renowned MV Captain Keith Tibbetts, a 330-foot-long Russian frigate deliberately sunk to create an artificial reef. The Cayman Islands are autonomous British overseas territories, but given their proximity to the States have been sufficiently Americanized; other than driving on the left side of the road, you might as well be in Florida. Many inhabitants are of mixed English and African descent, a result of England’s importation of enslaved Africans beginning in the 1700s as the UK colonized the region. Brac is Gaelic for “bluff ” and refers to the limestone escarpment that forms the island’s backbone, gradually rising from cute, boulderingheight swells and blocs near the western end to its apex at the Point. All three Cayman islands are summits on the Cayman Ridge, which rises above the 25,000-foot deep (shudder) Cayman Trough—when you climb here, you’re essentially on the summit of a giant undersea mountain. Unique to the east end of Grand Cayman and to Cayman Brac is the mineral caymanite, which, with its bands of pastel tans, grays, oranges, and reds reminiscent of Jupiter’s clouds, can be found embedded on the climbs—and is used to make local jewelry. Christopher Columbus discovered the then-uninhabited Cayman Brac and Little Cayman in 1503, naming the twin islands “Las Tortugas” for the sea turtles; later that century, the isles took the name the
Matt Samet amidst the jungle on Anansi (5.13a/b), Heritage Wall.
“Caymanes” from the Carib caimán—or marine crocodile—though the name may also have been spurred by iguana sightings. Cayman Brac was not permanently settled until 1830, and, with its seaside caves and rough terrain, was a sometime hideaway for pirates including Captain Morgan and Blackbeard, with accompanying lore about hidden gold. On the day we climbed at Neptune’s Lair, a seaside scarp on the north side of the island with a rock that looks, in profile, like the Roman sea god, two treasure hunters scrambled by, telling us they believed they’d find gold in a cave “because of the face.” The men later returned empty-handed, their metal detector zipped back into its bag. Climbing began on the Brac in 1994 thanks to the northern Colorado climber Skip Harper, who, as he wrote in “Hidden Treasure” (Rock & Ice No. 69), had been visiting the islands for years to dive. As Harper was celebrating a night dive off Grand Cayman with a local, he “remarked that I wanted to boulder on the coral-rock façade at the airport.” The local mentioned the Brac—namely the Point—and Harper, intrigued, chartered a seaplane. “A view from the air reveals an endless patchwork of dark-blue and fluorescent aquamarine, an endless aquarium of sharks, dolphins, turtles, and other sea life,” wrote Harper. “It also reveals beautiful multicolored cliffs rising from the sea.” That same year, Harper returned with Ernie Johnson to put up the island’s first climb, Chum Buckets (5.10b), at the Orange Cave on the south coast. The route was named for how the sharp upper stone—“edges covered with spicules reminiscent of hypodermic needles,” wrote Harper—savaged the climbers’ hands. Back in the States, Harper rallied fellow Coloradans, including Elison, Grenard, and the late Craig Luebben. In March 1995, the climbers established a few more routes at the unassuming Orange Cave. Elison, who would go on to establish many of the island’s testpieces, including the bouldery Get It Together (5.12d/13a) on the Wave Wall, recalls his initial impression. “Skip had drilled two pretty crappy routes out by the Orange Cave—Shark Attack and Chum Buckets,” he says. “The guy’s just a sprayer—‘It’s the best climbing; it’s unbelievable.’” But when the climbers got out to this sunny cliff, they were, says Elison, underwhelmed by the “hot, slimy” venue; Elison even recalls thinking, “What a waste of money coming down here.” Visiting the Point, however, quickly changed his mind. Here, the climbers opened Shiver Me Timbers (5.10b) and Throwin’ the Tortuga (5.11b), selecting these and later lines based on a chartered boat tour Harper had taken and also just throwing their ropes down to have a look at the walls. On that trip, they established 16 routes at the Point, and on that and two later visits (1996 and 1997), Elison and Grenard would bring their Brac FA total to 43 climbs. Today a professor of psychology at Adams State University in southern Colorado, Elison recalls these being some of the “best climbing days of my life” for the sense of freedom and exploration. In 1996, when he spent 32 days on the island, Elison was so psyched to bolt that he couldn’t bring down all the metal himself, and had friends help carry it in their luggage. In January 1997, John Byrnes, another northern Colorado climber and a now-retired engineer, made his first visit. He’s since become the island’s unofficial climb-
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Two driving forces behind Brac climbing: 1. John Byrnes on Spiral Staircase (5.10a), Edd’s Place; and 2. Jeff Elison, climbing Stateside.
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thicker metal, for anchors, and Eternas for the lead clips. In 2011, Byrnes organized a major rebolting effort, and in 2013 he and former Climbing editor Jeff Achey began to establish new climbs. Byrnes has since put up three-dozen new routes on the Brac, including the seven clean, vertical routes on the high-quality Valentines Wall in 2017.
“How hard do you think that dyno was?” I asked Nina, who had just sauntered up the Byrnes open project In Vino Veritas (5.13a/b) on Dixon’s Wall, flashing its first ascent, smoothly linking its deep pockets, monster leap to a sidepull hueco, tufa cranks out a bulge, and finishing headwall on crimpy blue stone. “I dunno. V4?” she said, then burst out laughing. “Feck,” I said. James and I had each put in a burn and failed to do the dyno, though I’d at least figured out the setup beta—left-hand undercling pocket, right-hand jizzly sloper, feet on barnacles, leap! “Nina’s kind of a sandbagger,” James said. “Watch out for her.” The trip went pretty much like that. One of us would go first, chalking, hanging the draws, working out the sequences, brushing off accumulated sea salt and other smeg. Then the others would try it—which usually seemed to involve Nina flashing whatever climb the rest of us had been toiling on, except for one route, the open project Anansi (5.13a/b) at Heritage Wall, that I managed to scoop her on. This day, our second at Dixon’s, conditions were “tropical dreamy,” meaning a trade wind was blowing, it was only in the 70s, and humidity was sub50-percent, unlike our first day, which had been in the high 80s with no wind and palpably moist air. And which had seen us spend half our time on our backs, jet-lagged, lethargic, sweating, heat-stunned, looking numbly up at the web of bulges, tufas, flowstone, and stalactites overhead while roosters crowed in the background. From a purely visual standpoint, tropical limestone is dreamy, with blue-gray swells rising above palm trees and sandy beaches. But on a tactile level, it’s punishing, with your feet swelling in the heat and salt air, your skin growing mushy, every hold feeling like it’s been coated in butter, and the term “good conditions” involving some serious recalibration. On an island like the Brac, where the average temperature during the coldest month, January, is 77°F, the one certainty is that you never climb in the sun. (Though in January 1996, Elison recalls a freak cold snap that let the climbers put up routes in the direct sun, at the Love Shack on the south side of the island.) Fortunately, Dixon’s Wall, on the north side, is in the shade all day in winter. Dixon’s, the island’s best wall, would be a top-shelf venue anywhere, with its impeccable rock and 19 climbs from 5.10 to 5.13 on a tufa-laced, 90-foot-high panel that crests overhead. It takes its name from the Dixon family and their patriarch, Hindenburg Dixon, whose land you must cross—the cliff is literally in the Dixons’ backyard. Fortunately, like all of the Brackers we met, the incredibly friendly Dixons are psyched to see climbers. Simply walk up to the house, knock, ask to climb, and off you go. Cayman Brac’s cliffs are considered “crown land”—themselves and land 10 feet to either side are owned by the government and hence open to the public. Climbing started at Dixon’s in 1996 with Elison and crew. “We had been driving past these [north walls] and sneaking through the locals’ yards for several weeks without taking that big first step,” wrote Elison in a trip report. Then, with a local’s permission, they began working the first route here, Elison going ground-up on Lizzard the Gizzard
FROM LEF T: L ARRY HA MILTON; JOE R AWLINGS
ing mayor, and runs the Bluff View house (climbcaymanbrac.com), a serene rental property on the south side. Tall, lanky, and sportclimber fit, Byrnes spends six weeks each year on the Brac. Without his new-routing, and his and others’ bolt-upgrading efforts, there would be no climbing here. In fact, the hardware would be rust. Back in the mid-1990s, climbers bolted using whatever hodgepodge of bolts and hangers they could find, and concepts like galvanic corrosion and stress-corrosion cracking had yet to enter the climbing parlance. And so, the early climbers on the Brac used stainless steel. However, the bolts began to fail by 1999. A couple of visiting climbers decked due to hardware failure, and Byrnes snapped off an 18-monthold bolt while cleaning draws off Reef on This (5.10d) at the Wave Wall. In February 1999, Byrnes published an article in Rock & Ice telling climbers to stay away until a solution could be found—though he had no idea, in this pre-titanium era, what that solution was. In May 1999, Mike Shelton, a climber and welding metallurgist, called Byrnes to chat, having just returned from Thailand, which was experiencing similar issues. Byrnes sent Shelton a broken Brac bolt, and Shelton confirmed it had failed due to stress-corrosion cracking—the steel corroding from the outside in via small, often invisible fissures. Shelton, Byrnes, and Harper reached out to Jim Bowes, another northern Colorado climber, who was a founder and general manager of the US-Russian outfit Ushba and had a few concept titanium bolts. As the men gathered at CooperSmith’s pub in Fort Collins, they refined their design and came up with a production schedule and a name—the “Tortuga.” Eighteen months later, in November 2000, they had a product in hand and began to upgrade routes at the Brac. “From 2000 to 2002, we mainly just rebolted,” recalls Byrnes. (At this point, the island had nearly 80 climbs.) Installing glue-ins is time-consuming work, not to mention that titanium is expensive—for example, $13 today for a single Eterna bolt. The climbers had re-equipped 44 routes before Ushba tanked in 2002, leaving them without a supplier. Then, in 2011, thanks to the grassroots “The Thaitanium Project,” founded by the Boulder, Colorado, climber Josh Lyons, climbers who bolted in maritime environments were able to get titanium bolts again by making bulk orders (the minimum order was $20,000) from United Titanium in Ohio. Eventually wanting a more official solution, the UK climber Martin Roberts started Titan Climbing, which today produces the Eterna. As Byrnes continues to establish new routes on the Brac, he uses leftover Tortugas, with their
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1. An unsafe, corroded, original bolt next to a bomber titanium glue-in on Freedom (5.12c), the Point. 2. Palm trees + sunset + tropical island = paradise at the Cayman Brac Beach Resort. 3. Lucas on the powerful Anemone (5.13a), Sector Seahorse—clip the anchors from above for full send points. 4. Robledo on the second route established at Dixon’s Wall, the impeccable Dixon’s Delight (5.11b). 5. A brown booby on Long Beach. 6. Ah Quin at Dixon’s Wall. 7. The lonely road to the Northeast Point, slick with rain after a passing squall. 8. A fishing boat and epic tree in the Dixons’ backyard, which you must pass through (ask permission!) to access the climbing.
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Recommended Routes The bulk of the Brac’s climbs are in the 5.10-to-5.12 range. On lower-angled, more moderate terrain, the rock is often so sharp as to preclude development. OLD SCHOOL (5.8), Wave Wall: Bucket-hauling up classic Brac huecos on choice white rock (the 5.10s around it are killer, too). WHAT’S THE POINT? (5.9), Northeast Point: Sharp rock and spicy runouts, but an amazing position on the prow. DIXON’S DELIGHT (5.11b), Dixon’s Wall: It’s hard to believe this king line goes at 5.11, but it does—unless you stray left at the crux (all the 5.12s around it are four stars as well). THROWIN’ THE TORTUGA (5.11b), Northeast Point: Long, physical, and perplexing on dreamy white stone. FLYING THE COLORS (5.11c/d), Sector Seahorse: Fun, roamy climbing leads to an exposed nose with big cranks to miracle buckets. THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE (5.12a), Neptune’s Lair: A commanding position hard over the waves on incut huecos. CARPE STALACTITE (5.12b), Dixon’s Wall: Steep, punchy, and go-ey. You will never forget the step-across move! FREEDOM (5.12c), Northeast Point: A long pitch with three distinct cruxes and loads of 5.11 in between. Full value! PIRATES OF PISSANTS (5.12d), Wave Wall: Physical pocket-tugging on a smooth, intimidating panel tilted over the sea.
Williams on the wild-but-fortunatelyjuggy Flying the Colors (5.11c/d), Sector Seahorse on the south side of the island.
POLE DANCER (5.13a), Dixon’s Wall: A power-endurance masterpiece on incut, tufa-tastic holds.
Lucas rounds the roof—crux three of three—on Freedom (5.12c), the Point.
(5.11d/12a), using hooks and threads between bolt placements. While the lower stretch of the route is vertical, the headwall tilts out into a steep stalactite maze. Climbing onsight, Elison reached a stance. “Bail or go for it?” he wondered. By proving to himself that he could let go with either hand and shake out for 45 seconds, Elison built the confidence to pull up the drill. “Several minutes later the bolt was in, I was hanging, and my stomach was about to heave,” he wrote. The next day the climbers returned and finished the route, then began work on a similar four-star line just to its right. As they drilled, the Dixons came up with fresh water and cups, then moved the wire fence behind their property and used a machete to cut an access trail. At 5 p.m., as the climbers knocked off for the day, the Dixons invited them for rum punch. “Three generations of Dixons watched, cheered, questioned, and welcomed us,” wrote Elison. In honor of their hosts’ hospitality, they named the second route Dixon’s Delight; at a physical, complex 5.11b, it is one of the best 5.11 sport pitches I’ve done. Like many walls on the Brac, Dixon’s has a preponderance of 5.11s and 5.12s, with other standouts being Out of Africa (5.11d), Boom! (5.12a), and Carpe Stalactite (5.12b). Lying on the continuously overhanging right side are In Vino Veritas and its companion Pole Dancer (5.13a), a six-bolt power-endurance sprint up a vaguely extruded tufa. Small pockets and incipient colonettes color the gray limestone in between the routes, and we wondered whether these unbolted lines would go. The Brac has potential for more difficult climbs, including an open project at Neptune’s Lair and untapped terrain at the Wave Wall and at Dixon’s. The question, however, becomes how hard can you climb in the heat? As we surveyed the virgin grips, I wondered if even Adam Ondra would hit his limit at 5.13d, or what sort of meteorological fluke—a freak cold front or maybe the winds out ahead of a hurricane—you’d need to climb 5.14.
Our days on the Brac took on a certain rhythm, a simplicity and laidback pace. Thanks to the Cayman Islands Department of Tourism, we were staying at the Cayman Brac Beach Resort, a valet diving resort (like, they take you out on a boat from the resort) with a pool, hot tub, sandy beach and hammocks, and—most perilously—a
delicious buffet that sent everyone but me home with “buffet belly,” as I wisely swapped salad for dessert. Each morning, we’d pile into our rental cars and drive east, almost invariably finding the crags empty, synching up with Angel when she wasn’t guiding or doing construction work on her open-air yoga studio below the Yogi Wall, a new sector on her property on the island’s south side. The Brac has two main eastwest roads, the north road being the most developed, with all the stores, schools, hospital, etc. The south road is beach, jungle, and big aqua sky—and, like, 10 million wandering chickens, a non-native species that far outnumbers Brackers and is said to have eaten up most of the iguanas. James wanted a photo of a chicken crossing the road for Instagram, but every time we stopped the car and he ran toward the birds they’d evaporate back into the jungle. “Goddamn chickens,” James would grumble. “I’ll never know why they’re crossing the road.” Rest days were divine, spent riding bikes, exploring caves, snorkeling, and playing in the waves at the picture-perfect, alwaysempty “Public Beach.” This is the Brac’s allure: It really is an unpopulated paradise, and if you want rocks and sea but hate logistical hassles (ugh) and humans (barf ), then there’s no better venue. Maybe it’s the paucity of sandy beaches or the hostility of the terrain—sinkholeriddle ironstone overlaid with jungle so thick Byrnes was nearly benighted in a hungry, exhausted, and dehydrated state, lost in the tangle atop Dixon’s Wall while going around to drill anchors. Or maybe it’s the island’s size, which can provoke a frisson of angst as you realize “I’m just one small person on this tiny hunk of rock” Or maybe it’s just how far the Brac is from everything—the sense of isolation. But to my mind, all these things make Cayman Brac a wonderful destination. As our trip wound down, we made a final foray to the Wave Wall, a Buoux-like swell of pocketed limestone hard over the sea, reached via a scramble that’s suicide at high tide or with big seas. This day, the rowdy waves slapped up in sets over the white-dark border of the highwater line. We wanted to try Pirates of Pissants, a six-bolt 5.12d Elison route up a smooth white face. I went first, brushing holds, hanging draws, blowing out crystals of sea salt, chalking the best grips as the waves crashed what felt like inches behind my head. When I had a workable sequence that involved a mega-drop-knee and drive-by move to a recessed pocket, I lowered off, back to our little pedestal. We could see a boat on the horizon, but otherwise there was no sign of humanity, the only sounds the waves and the clicking of Burr’s camera. James went next, then it was Nina’s turn. Fresh off taking a pro-climber selfie, she shoed up, took a breath, pulled on—and flashed. “Nice, Nina!” James and I hooted as she clipped the anchors. I lowered her, James threw her rope to pull herself back into the belay, and then it was my turn again. It was 4:30 now—only an hour till dark, the equatorial sky bruising deep indigo. I’d have to climb quickly. We still needed to collect our gear and get back across the slabs. It was time to get going. On Cayman Brac, the night waits for no one. MATT SAMET, the editor of Climbing, is still scheming how he’ll get “back to the Brac” in the near future.
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Long, Easy Routes Climbing the States’ tallest bolted moderates, in Washington STORY BY KEVIN CORRIGAN | PHOTOS BY ANDREW BURR
Cole Osborne traverses onto the face of P4 of Flyboys (5.9; 18 pitches), Mazama, Washington, with the Methow River below and the snowy peaks of the North Cascades to the northwest.
og fills the valley below. I’m freezing. We’d been told it’s not uncommon to see 12 cars parked for Flyboys, an 18-pitch 5.9 sport climb on the Goat Wall in Mazama, Washington. Today, we have the wall to ourselves. It’s no longer raining, but the rock is soaked. As I start up pitch one, seconding my friend Cole Osborne’s lead, my feet slip off the wet stone. I hold myself on jugs, reset, and continue toward a short face where Cole French-freed across smears. My chalkbag contains four hand warmers, and I give my digits a quick toasting before moving up toward the wet friction. The chalk disappears from my skin as soon as it hits the water. Before long I’m in the Pacific Northwest fog. I can’t see how far the wall extends above or below. It’s just me and the rock in a void. From the road, the wall looked to be a dark, monochromatic gray. Now up close, I see flecks of orange and green lichen among white, black, and gray crystals. I grab an edge of the funfetti rock and step up. We’ll only succeed if we keep moving. I’ve always fantasized about climbing something big, and would love—like most of us—to top out El Capitan. But I’ve focused on sport climbing the past few years, and I’ve also had a difficult time progressing into higher grades. However, I’m solid on moderates. With 18 bolted pitches, none harder than 5.9, Flyboys was a route where I could have a real adventure at my current level—and top out something big. Completed by Bryan Burdo and Jerry Daniels in 2017, Flyboys is the tallest bolted 5.9 in the United States. It’s what would be called a
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BELOW Climbers are asked to sign in at the Goat Wall trailheads. Increased use in recent years has prompted the Forest Service to assign a climbing ranger to the area. RIGHT Goat Wall, as seen from the Methow River. Flyboys follows the rib right of the promiment V at center, while Prime Rib moves up the formation to its left.
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plaisir climb in the Alps—a long moderate with closely spaced bolts that is meant to be enjoyable. Just 16 quickdraws will get you to the top. The Cascades’ unique, rugged topology lends itself to these massive routes—bolted lines up to seven pitches have even popped up in the trad bastion of Index—but Goat Wall is the only place with a concentration of them. The lines here have become popular, but are tall enough to support multiple parties. Joining me on the trip were Andrew Burr, Dakota Walz, and Cole. Andrew is Climbing’s senior contributing photographer. Dakota is an EMT and author in Golden, Colorado, as well as a 5.13 trad climber who focuses on first ascents. He’d serve as Andrew’s ropegun, fixing lines so Andrew could shoot. Cole, a paramedic who works with Dakota, would be my partner. I’d met Cole when he joined Dakota and I at the Fisher Towers. Dakota and I climbed Ancient Art, while Cole attempted to rope-solo Kingfisher. He bailed after aiding the first pitch of drooping, rusted bolts, but only seemed upset that he’d left his gummy bears in his pack on the ground. That was the kind of partner I wanted.
“It’s pretty darn obvious,” says Bryan Burdo when I ask how he discovered Goat Wall. “It’s hard to miss something that obvious that’s that close to the road.” Goat Wall is a 2,000-foot-tall piece of glacially carved, meta-pyroclastic rock off Lost River Road in Mazama, deep in the heart of the North Cascades. Mazama is the gate-
Multi-Pitch Tips When climbing long routes, wasted minutes add up to hours throughout the day. To speed things up: • Use a pre-tied quad for bolted anchors. Wrap the quad around your back and clip it across your chest with two lockers ready to go, and additional lockers in place for going in direct. • Belay from above with a Grigri. While a guidemode tube-style device will do the job, a Grigri provides less friction when pulling in slack, which will spare you shoulder fatigue. (Note: Petzl doesn’t necessarily recommend this practice—check their literature for more.) • Avoid downtime. Eat, drink, etc. while belaying your partner from above, and then rack any extra draws on the anchor so they’re ready to go when your partner arrives. • You don’t have to climb like you’re in a race, but you should climb at a consistent pace. Hesitation saps time. Keep moving and don’t overthink it.
Dakota Walz taking in the air on the 15-bolt ninth pitch of Flyboys. While the route climbs above a ledge system, it still offers opportunities for wild exposure.
Leavenworth local Jessica Campbell shaking out on the sustained second pitch of Walking Legend (5.10c), Index, Washington, on a perfect, sunny day.
LEFT The author preparing to pull through the chockstone-flake crux on P14 of Flyboys. The developers were thrilled to find the block wedged in the crack, saying it was key to keeping the route 5.9. ABOVE Fog seeping through the Methow Valley, as seen from the base of Goat Wall on a cold Pacific Northwest morning.
way to Washington Pass and its granite alpine climbing. Fred Beckey, Jerry O’Neil, and Charles Welsh reached the summit of the iconic Liberty Bell as far back as 1946. But it wasn’t until the late 1980s that Goat Wall received any attention. It also happens to be 1.5 miles wide and part of a greater 6-mile massif—it’s impossible, as Burdo says, not to see it. Burdo, 63, summers in Mazama and winters in Seattle, and has made his living through construction, coaching runners, and writing guidebooks. He first visited the area with his family in 1971, and they owned several cabins there over the years. With a wall so expansive sitting in plain view, the question wasn’t “How did you find it?” It was, “Why didn’t anyone climb it sooner?” Burdo, who’s been climbing since 1977, is the primary force behind Goat Wall and Mazama new-routing in general. CB Thomas, the owner of Goat’s Beard Mountain Supplies, Mazama’s gear shop, estimates that Burdo has put up 96 percent of the rock routes in the area. Burdo doesn’t dispute this number, and a quick flip through the guide (which Burdo wrote) confirms it. Burdo has been a prolific Washington developer for decades, with hundreds of FAs. He’s largely responsible for the popular Seattle areas Exit 32 and Exit 38. He’s put up alpine routes in the Cascades. Perhaps his proudest line is the 18-pitch Vanishing Point (VI 5.12b) on Mount Baring near Index, ascending a 1,300-foot overhanging prow on Dolomite Tower. Burdo started focusing on Mazama around 2000. “When I first got into climbing, all anyone climbed in Washington was granite, so that meant that I’d have to drive from right past Goat Wall up to Washington Pass to climb—like a 30-minute commute,”
he says. “I was always like, ‘It’s too bad the rock’s all crap up there [on Goat Wall] and it doesn’t take gear.’” Indeed, Goat Wall lacks continuous cracks; the rock seems more like it’s been heavily broken then smoothed over with concrete. The features are there to climb, but there aren’t many gaps between them for pro. Burdo’s first foray onto the larger Goat Wall lines came in the late 1980s with Promised Land, a 12-pitch 5.11a/A1. Recalls Burdo, “I climbed the central buttress, which is mostly face climbing, and it was all ground-up, bolting on lead with runouts on questionable rock.” The first three pitches have been retrobolted, but Burdo speculates that the full, original line hasn’t had a second ascent. It wasn’t until 2000 that the wall’s first modern mega-moderate went up with Burdo and Scott Johnston’s Prime Rib (5.9; 11 pitches).
Andrew, Dakota, and I landed at SEA-TAC in September—allegedly one of Washington’s warmer, drier months—to a dismal forecast. Goat Wall was our main objective, but we’d planned to hit Index and Leavenworth along the way, tagging a few other bolted moderate, multi-pitch routes to warm up. We’d have to make the best of it. Our first two days in Index were soaked. At the Toxic–Tang Area, the routes may as well have been waterfalls. Jamming the opening parallel cracks of Toxic Shock (5.9), it felt like I was trying to plug holes in a dam as the water streamed down my arm and into my jacket. On our first sunny day of the trip, we made the hike out to Lower Lump wall to climb our first bolted multi-pitch. Named for
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The Next Best Things Flyboys is by far the tallest bolted 5.9 in America, but you don’t have to travel to Washington to enjoy multi-pitch sport moderates. These four clip-ups climb 1,000 feet without crossing the 5.10 barrier. ROYAL FLUSH (5.9; 1,500 feet), Frisco, Colorado Described on Mountain Project as “a 5.8 climb put up by a 5.13 climber for 5.8 leaders.” (Though it’s now considered 5.9.) A sub-10-minute approach leads to the long gneiss-granite route that ascends Mount Royal above the town of Frisco, right in the heart of scenic Summit County. MEMORIAL ROUTE (5.8+; 1,000 feet), Slick Rock, Idaho Wear comfortable shoes for this huge granite slab. As one commenter said, “If this were in Colorado, it would get done all the time.” Since it’s in Idaho, it doesn’t. Bring one pink Tricam to supplement your draws. VOID OF FORM (5.9; 1,000 feet), Mount Lemmon, Arizona As with Flyboys, climbers can enjoy comfortable belay ledges throughout this line to the top of Pontatoc Peak. Rap the route with a single 70-meter rope, or enjoy the scenic walk-off through Arizona’s high desert. COSMIC SPACE DUST LASERS (5.8; 1,000 feet), Rock Canyon, Utah This is perhaps more of an adventure route than the previous routes listed. Climbers report plenty of loose rock, but those who don’t mind a little chossaneering will be rewarded with an incredible position.
CB Thomas (second from right), manager of Mazama’s Goat’s Beard Mountain Supplies, sharing his wealth of local knowledge.
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Pat Sullivan, an Index local who survived a 100-foot groundfall from the top of Thin Fingers (5.11a), Walking Legend (5.10c) follows three pitches of edgy face climbing that’s uncharacteristic for Index. We’d selected the climb because it was the easiest option. After two days on Index granite, I understood why everyone talks about how difficult the place is. I opted for the one route I might be able to finish. The first pitch was supposed to be the easiest, but for me the crux came on a traverse after the first bolt. The dense trees had sheltered the lower rock, and it was still soaked. I started up confidently, clipped, then stepped wide onto a small, sloping foothold, but only tentatively weighted it. Fuck that, I thought, imagining my foot flying off the edge. Instead, I climbed higher to a rail of underclings and sidepulls, only to be shut down by a wet nubbin. I started getting frustrated. This was the first pitch of the first route, and I was blowing it. I downclimbed to the ground and recomposed myself. My second time up, I willed myself to commit to the lower, sloping foot, and before I knew it was pulling on jugs to stand on a ledge. Just another bolt past that, the sun had burned the moisture away and I was moving up cruiser moves on dry stone. Suddenly, I was having fun.
“I had never [developed] a multi-pitch before,” says Jerry Daniels. “I was kind of naïve. Like, ‘How much work could that be?’” Daniels, 56, moved to Mazama full-time in fall 2019 after splitting his time between Seattle, where he worked as an excercise therapist for patients with neurological disorders before retiring. He has been climbing for 20-plus years. Daniels had approached Burdo because he’d wanted to learn to develop routes. Burdo was the guy, and Daniels wanted to learn to do things the right way. The pair started by developing some single-pitch routes. One day, Burdo asked Daniels, “I’ve got this four-pitch climb I’m working on—it’s on the lowest tongue of Goat Wall. You wanna come up and have a look?” That route, which would eventually expand past the lower pitches to become Flyboys, would take them two seasons to establish. The pair followed a two-days-on, one-day-off schedule, spending 8 to 10 hours on the wall at a time. Burdo estimates that he spent six to seven weeks of cumulative time working on Flyboys, with Daniels putting in four to five. Working top-down, the pair fi xed ropes on the entire route and would stash bolts, chains, and crowbars at the top of pitches. In total, the pair drilled 275 bolts and spent thousands of dollars on gear. Funding came from a few sources—Daniels’s wife, Annette, who worked in corporate sales and also climbs, was one of them. “I’d be like, ‘Honey, I need to order some more bolts, or I need to order scrub brushes, or we need rope’—a spool of rope here and there,” Daniels says. The team also launched a GoFundMe campaign, raising $2,000 in just days. Burdo’s reputation drove contributions. One thing they didn’t expect was that half the donations would come from outside Washington—places like Florida, North Carolina, and New York. That’s when they realized how much demand there was for the kind of route they were creating. The last funding source came from Burdo selling the family cabin after his parents passed away. Burdo’s father had been a
While you can rap the Goat Wall or drive out via a car shuttle, the preferred descent is to stash bikes at the summit beforehand then enjoy 13 miles of downhill dirt road. The team estimates they hit speeds of 30 mph without pedaling.
pilot. He and friends would fly small planes from the grass airstrip amidst the cabin community where Burdo, Daniels, and Thomas now live. The route is named Flyboys in tribute to the airmen.
Andrew, Dakota, and I had been all-in on the Washington trip since day one, while Cole had agreed before receiving his semester’s class schedule—and learning that he would fail out if he joined us for all 10 days. He committed to making it work by arriving at 2 a.m. on our third night. Dakota surmised that Cole would feel guilty about waking us when he entered our shared bunkhouse at the Sleeping Lady Resort in Leavenworth. To prevent this, Dakota devised a prank to ensure that Cole would wake us—and thus not need to feel guilty. “What the fuck? … What the fuck?” I awoke to the sounds of Cole’s confusion and the tower of beer bottles we’d stacked behind the door clattering to the floor. Then I spent hours staring at the bottom of the bunk above me, unable to fall back to sleep. The joke was on me. The next morning, we’d climb Condorphamine Addiction (5.10b) in Icicle Creek Canyon near Leavenworth. The guidebook calls it seven pitches, but four pitches with a 70-meter rope makes the most sense. We started the day by losing the trail and then bushwhacking for 1:15
BELOW Leavenworth’s Icicle Creek Canyon features epic views of the Enchantment Peaks to the south. RIGHT Osborne latching the finishing jug on the slabby P5 crux of Condorphamine Addiction (5.10b), Icicle Creek Canyon.
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up dense brush, boulderfields, and loose slopes. The weather cycled between rain and sun as we hiked. On this day, the rock was dry when we reached it, and the rain provided a vibrant rainbow, framing views of the snowcapped Enchantments to the south. We moved up featured slabs and ladder-like vertical faces. The first crux pitch featured bolts every three feet inside a rounded stem-and-smear corner. Lulled into a false sense of security, I soon found myself panicking on the second crux, 10 feet above the last bolt on the hardest, least-secure moves of the route—friction smears and what can only be described as “psychological holds.”
“I really enjoy unlikely-looking routes, where it’ll look like a 5.12 and turn out to be a 5.10,” Burdo says. Burdo and Daniels scoped Flyboys from the road with binoculars before venturing up. One feature stood out to Burdo: a chimney near the middle of the wall. Daniels remembers when Burdo first rapped in to the feature, on what would become pitch 14. “[Burdo] drops down and I can hear him say, ‘Oh, my God, it’s gonna go! I can’t believe it—this is so rad!’” Daniels says. Daniels descended second. He was petrified by the free-hanging rap 800 off the deck; he didn’t even look at the pitch. He reached the ledge below before turning to the wall and telling Burdo there was no way it
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could be 5.9, to which Burdo responded with detailed, blowby-blow beta. “I never believed it was 5.9 until we climbed it, which was months later,” says Daniels. The key to the 70-foot pitch is a chockstone flake. You move into a huge crack on face moves, pull the juggy flake like a roof—one of Flyboys’s cruxes—then chimney up easier terrain to exit. The pair reinforced the chockstone with two pins that Daniels’s neighbor, a non-climber, had picked up at a garage sale, not knowing what they were for. “I was like, ‘I can’t believe we’ve got this huge flake right where we want it,’” Burdo says. “It was pretty amazing, almost like being able to manifest your hopes and dreams for that particular thing to happen.”
The Methow Inspiration Route
The author sets off on P3 of The Methow Inspiration Route (5.9), Mazama. Bolted in 1996 by Arain Manchego, a visiting French-Canadian, this runout route predates Mazama’s accessible-bolting trend.
(5.9; five pitches) was our introduction to Goat Wall. It’s one of the few routes not developed by Burdo, and it’s apparent in the bolting. Where Flyboys has a bolt every six feet on average, Mountain Project warns new 5.9 leaders against the Inspiration Route due to the runouts—up to 30 feet in some spots, as we’d learn. It started raining as I led the first pitch. It had been beautiful throughout our two-hour drive from Leavenworth. Now, menacing clouds swirled in the valley north of us. Typical. On pitch one I dealt with the worst of it: wet rock and runouts. I moved slowly and delicately through what would have been easy climbing on any other day. I tiptoed around an exposed corner while runout the length of a gym route, clipped a bolt, and then spent five minutes hesitating while perched on an airy ledge, pawing at holds too thin or slopey to use in the rain. The rock at Goat Wall is covered in edges, nubbins, divots, and pockets, like climbing a sheet of extra-large, elephant-gray bubble wrap. You always have options, but I didn’t like any of them. Later, while following the (dry) crux pitch, I’d be thankful I’d led pitch one instead of risking the 20- to 30-foot falls between every bolt on the sustained, vertical face. Three days later, we met up with Burdo and Daniels at the parking lot below Flyboys so Burr could shoot their portraits. He had asked them to bring props, something that illustrated their work as developers. He’d suggested drills. The team instead brought brushes and pry bars. “The thing about the rock here in Mazama is that we get a lot of freeze-thaw cycles,” says Daniels. “It tends to have a lot of loose rock. And a lot of lichen. So you use a lot of prybars, and as a general rule of thumb we always dropped in or climbed up and then cleaned from above. [On Flyboys,] we took blocks off anywhere from basketball to refrigerator size.” The pair divided the route into two sections: pitches 1–9 and 10–18. Flyboys angles right throughout, so one person would clean the upper half while another cleaned the lower half, with no danger to the lower developer. Still, the team had to be careful. The approach to Prime Rib nears the base of Flyboys. Burdo and Daniels would only trundle if the parking lot was empty, and whenever possible, if they had a clear
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LEFT The tools of the trade: Flyboys developers Bryan Burdo (left) and Jerry Daniels (right) pose with wire brushes and prybars. The routes on Goat Wall require significant cleaning due to Mazama’s frequent freeze-thaw cycles.
view of the scree field below. They even fenced off the route base with caution tape, at times.
one else as maniacal as I was … If it wasn’t for Jerry, Flyboys would still be one of my many unfinished projects.” Both men are proud of their achievement, and delight in seeing others enjoy their work, but the increased traffic has brought growing pains. On one hand, local shops are seeing increased business. On the other, the area is beginning to have problems with human waste and trash. “It’s like, ‘Careful what you wish for,’” says Daniels. “Mazama is this wonderful place that’s nice and quiet and has really great climbing, and it doesn’t have the overcrowding that a lot of areas have … Hopefully it doesn’t get that way.”
On our last day of the trip, we were rewarded with On the day of our Flyboys ascent, lines of fog flowed up the valley below like fat, tired snakes. Snow covered the mountains above, stopping abruptly at a certain elevation, defined by a horizontal line across the range. When the rope came tight, I didn’t hesitate. Three wasted minutes per pitch would add an hour to our day; we’d only finish if we were efficient. As we climbed higher, the rock dried. It never got warm, but it did get less cold. The pitches blurred together in a flurry of crimps and jugs. Every time a move felt hard, I’d look around and a better hold would materialize. At various points, I was so focused on moving quickly that I had to remind myself to have fun. I led pitch 14, Burdo’s baby. I was intimidated moving up to the chockstone. After a high reach, I latched the flake’s edge, an amazing jug, and wondered how I’d pull through. As the pump built, I swung my left heel around the side of the curving feature, pulled in with my leg, and I was done. Above, a short, easy chimney took us back into the sun. The pines had gotten just a little smaller down below, as they’d do with each pitch throughout the day, shrinking from a mighty forest to children’s toys. Flyboys does have its quirks. You’ll need to pick up the rope and walk between most pitches. This made the climb feel more like 18 singlepitch routes than one continuous line. Burdo had told us before we started that we may wonder why there are bolts on flat ground. The intention was not necessarily to clip them, but to guide climbers across these sections. Burdo and Daniels also seemed to develop with an every-part-of-the-buffalo ethos. We skipped pitch 15, a section of bolted third class, because there was a trail alongside it. We topped out at 4 p.m. The summit is anti-climactic, just a clifftop. We walked a snowy trail to a dirt road where we’d stashed mountain bikes, and then followed Goat Creek Road down for 13 miles, rarely having to turn our cranks.
It’s clear that Daniels reveres Burdo, his friend and mentor, singing his praises at every opportunity, but Burdo makes it clear that the partnership goes both ways. “There was no question in my mind 20 years ago that this area would be … a national destination, but I knew how much work it would take,” Burdo says. “I thought that at some point that there’d be some-
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beautiful weather. We spent the day climbing Prime Rib. The route is seven pitches shorter than Flyboys and a mere 5.9- compared to the latter’s 5.9. We climbed it casually over five and a half hours, taking time to joke at belays and marvel at the Methow Valley below and the Cascade Mountains to the north and west. I grabbed jug after jug, toed in on a never-ending supply of edges, and jammed the occasional crack. This constant flow of our team up the stone felt both casual and heroic—what I’d pictured it would be like before leaving Colorado. Prime Rib and Flyboys follow adjacent ribs up Goat Wall, so the character of the line was similar: a stack of single-pitch routes, walking across ledges from pitch to pitch. But Prime Rib was completed 18 years prior, and it was interesting to see how Burdo’s tactics had evolved. On Prime Rib, the bolts were farther apart. We often had to check the topo to discern anchors from rap stations. I even found myself getting gripped leading pitch 8, which spaces the bolts 12 feet apart on a slab where the edges are never quite big enough to feel secure. Prime Rib was like a prototype to the masterpiece of Flyboys. That night, we had dinner with Daniels, Burdo, and Annette. As he dug into a pile of ribs, Burdo told me that without kids or a house, he considers his routes to be his legacy. He told me of ambitious future Goat Wall projects. The wall is enormous, and mostly untapped, with potential for routes ranging from third class to 5.13 and heavy in the 5.10–5.11 range, given the varied verticality of the terrain. But one anecdote seemed to best sum up the routes we’d climbed. Burdo said that back in his earlier climbing days, people didn’t bolt routes to make them accessible. They put up first ascents for themselves and would use dangerous runouts “to keep the riff-raff out.” He recalled a day when a woman approached him, beaming. She’d just led her first outdoor route—a moderate Burdo had bolted at Little Si—and wanted to thank him. “That was it,” he says. Burdo still bolts projects for himself—he is prolific—but he changed his main focus to putting up routes for the masses: well-bolted moderates. Flyboys is that concept escalated to its logical end: the tallest, bolted 5.9 and the most accessible 1,800-foot route in the United States. KEVIN CORRIGAN is Climbing's digital editor and in-house multi-pitch moderate connoisseur.
A busy weekend in autumn 2019 on Fish Slough Road, the parking area for the Tablelands (Happy and Sad boulders) near Bishop, California. The author counted 80-plus cars along the road that day.
How a tidal wave of climbers is reshaping Bishop, California STORY AND PHOTOS BY JAMES LUCAS
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1. An L ADWP sign in the Tablelands prohibiting camping; climbers typically use dispersed camping on BLM land in the area or stay at the Pit. 2. An educational sign at the Birthday Boulders, Buttermilk Road. 3. Downtown Bishop on a sleepy, off-season morning.
For eight days in mid-September 2019, the Owens River swelled in its namesake volcanic-tuff gorge, closing access to the narrow canyon’s 1,000-plus routes. Fourteen miles north of Bishop, the ORG has long been a destination sport area. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) had coordinated the release, making the relatively placid stream swell from 45 cubic feet per second to 680; crossing the river or navigating the gorge’s rugged floor became impossible. The LADWP originally cut off the water supply from the Crowley Reservoir area to the Gorge in 1953 when it bought water rights in the Eastern Sierra, constructing a 233-mile aqueduct through the Owens Valley and Mojave Desert to Los Angeles. Then, in 1991, the LADWP began releasing water back into the gorge with a 30-year plan to repair the riparian environment through seasonal flooding, as happened with 2019’s scheduled floods. The Gorge, which sees about 30,000 climbers per year according to an Access Fund estimate, is just one of the dozen climbing areas in the Bishop region that has seen significant, recent environmental change. Climbers have been scrambling in Bishop since the 1940s when Smoke Blanchard ran around the Buttermilks on his rock course. In the 80 years since, over 2,300 boulder problems and a few thousand routes have gone in, and in the past decade Bishop has swelled in popularity with climbers. The warm, sunny weather and the abundance of rock, from the volcanic tuff in the gorge and Tablelands to the granite of the nearby Sierra to the quartz monzonite of the Buttermilks, make Bishop a climbing mecca. However, the area is also environmentally fragile: Situated in the rain shadow on the East Side of the Sierra, the ORG and Bishop see only five inches a year of rain. Now imagine what thousands of climber feet trampling through this high-desert environment might do. And consider also that Bishop itself is a small town: With a population of just under 4,000 in two square miles and 10,000 people in the greater area, including the approximate 2,000 members of the Bishop Paiute Tribe, Bishop, as portrayed on the city’s homepage, is a
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“Small town with a big backyard.” But the recent influx of climbers, hikers, fishermen, dirt bikers, and other outdoor enthusiasts is also reshaping the town’s demographics in ways that not all locals appreciate. “It’s probably, in my opinion, the best bouldering area in the world,” said the author of the first Bishop bouldering guidebook, Mick Ryan, in West Coast Pimp, Tim Steele and Steve Montesanto’s 1998/’99 climbing film, which includes a 30-minute segment on the Tablelands and Buttermilks. Even in those early days, when in 1999 the BLM counted a mere 7,000 climbers per year at the Tablelands, climbers aimed to self-regulate to avoid what had recently happened at Hueco Tanks where the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department implemented the Public Use Plan, limiting unguided access to North Mountain only. (See climbing.com/hueco.) Hueco’s restrictions dropped visitations from 85,000 in 1996 to 17,000 in 1999—to many climbers, Hueco was all but closed. Lured in by Internet rumors of “the new Hueco,” the bouldering crowd drifted west to Bishop, finding untapped potential and amazing climbing. Meanwhile, the Bishop locals—knowing full well what they had—sought ways to avoid a similar implosion. “Around the Bishop area, what we’re trying to do is educate climbers on what we call semi-primitive recreation,” continued Ryan in WCP. “That’s basically an extension of the no-trace ethic where when you’re bouldering in an area you leave as little trace [ … ] as possible.” When publishing the iconic, black-and-white foldout Bishop Bouldering Survival Kit, Ryan specifically left out climbing areas on BLM land with sensitive desert ecosystems or that contained native petroglyphs. “Originally, there was a wave of skiers that came here back in the 1970s and ‘80s, so there was a little bit of an outdoor influence,” says Steele, who moved to Bishop shortly after making WCP. “There’s just way more climbers here now—just so many more.” While Steele thinks the climbing scene overall has remained positive, in the last couple seasons there have been hard feelings. “A lot of people don’t have an outdoor ethic, and that’s a huge difference,” he says.
“Have you been here?” Shondeen Chavez asks the half dozen preteen kids, all fellow members of the Paiute tribe, sitting in the spring sun at the Tablelands. It’s March 2019, and I’m out with Chavez, cultural affairs director for the Bishop Area Climbers Coalition (BACC), and the kids for some bouldering along Fish Slough Road. Most of the kids respond that they haven’t, and Chavez explains why: “We don’t come out here anymore. We live in an 800-acre box [the Paiute reservation] because we were removed from these spaces so that the rest of the world could enjoy them.” He goes on to explain the trauma of the native eviction and then emphasizes their role as stewards: “We’re the only people that are always here, the people that will take care of the land.” Later, the kids run around the red and brown rocks, wearing oversized shoes and falling onto crashpads bought by the tribe. A few adults spot, while Chavez and pro climber Nina Williams instruct. The kids’ excitement at topping out the five-foot boulders lights the rock, making the scrappy climbing suddenly seem appealing. Chavez sees climbing as a way for these kids to go beyond the tribe, to see the world. “Climbing unlocks a whole world to them that they didn’t know existed,” he says. Bishop climbing comprises a complex patchwork of land ownership and management: The Tablelands are on Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land, the Buttermilks are on BLM and LADWP land, the Gorge is on LADWP land, and other areas like Pine Creek are on Forest Service land. Locals thus saw a need to organize themselves to preserve
Colette McInerney on Sabres of Paradise (V7) at the Happy Boulders. Members of the Paiute tribe used to hunt small game in the area, but climber impacts have destroyed the vegetation where the animals once hid.
these largely unregulated spaces. After several failed attempts at gathering the climbing community, nine local climbers formed the BACC in spring 2018, creating a “unified voice for climbers to support the Bishop, California, area through stewardship, education, and community engagement” as per their mission statement. Many issues were pressing, including informally expanded parking areas at the Tablelands, social trails at the Buttermilks, and rogue, climber-built bridges in the Owens River Gorge, which had angered the LADWP. And so the BACC got to work, trying to bring the various parties together. In April 2018, Chavez started a self-funded program to introduce Paiute youth to climbing. “A lot of the spaces where we used to go and do things are no longer accessible,” says Chavez. He recalls bunny hunting in the Tablelands as a youth—part of a tribal tradition— and remembers when vegetation amongst the boulders allowed small game to hide. However, today, “There are climbers camping all over the place,” Chavez says, citing the BLM’s policy of dispersed camping, which allows climbers in Promaster and Sprinter vans to drive onto the mesa tops, where they often congregate by the dozens, creating impact. At the boulders, where sagebrush and other desert shrubs once flourished, sand now covers the base of many climbs—the cottontail rabbits, huge-eared black-tailed jackrabbits, and desert woodrats stay away due to climbers and their crag pets. In 2010, Chavez started climbing as a way to return to these plac-
A normal, busy weekend on Iron Man Traverse (V4) at the Buttermilks.
es where he’d spent his youth, and quickly realized the value in it. He began taking youth groups to the Alabama Hills and to the Sunny Slopes by Crowley Lake. However, his initial efforts saw little support amongst the Paiute. “People in the tribal community don’t believe in climbing,” says Chavez. “They don’t believe in what it can do because all they’ve seen is the negative impact on the land.” Many tribe members take a militant view, wanting climbers—whom they perceive as intruders on a land that once belonged to them—to leave entirely. After Chavez, beginning in 2018, organized five climbing camps in which the kids immersed themselves in the history and culture of their native land, received nutritional education, and climbed, the tribe’s view on climbing softened—it even began allocating money to buy equipment. Chavez hopes to expand the program in ensuing years. Just south of Bishop in Big Pine, Steele also began taking groups of students to the Tablelands and Buttermilks. (Steele teaches English to grades 7 through 12 in the Big Pine Unified School district.) With 63 percent of the high school students at Big Pine being Native American and a significant portion being economically disadvantaged, bouldering has provided an accessible way for local kids to connect with the land. “There have been so few native climbers in the Payahuunadu [the Paiute name for the Bishop area] up until now, and it will help immensely with cultural-monitoring needs,” says Steele. This is especially important as the tribe seeks changes in access to the climbing. According to Chavez, the Paiute tribe wants to restrict access to the
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Tablelands in a Hueco Tanks–style plan that would allow for regrowth of the flora and fauna. Namely, this would involve having a single point of entry by the confluence of Fish Slough, Casa Diablo, and Chalk Bluff roads. (At present, you can drive to the boulders from either side of Fish Slough Road. The proposal would control the flow of climbers into the Tablelands—beyond X number of people already recreating in the area, you wouldn’t be allowed to enter, like in Hueco.) The tribe has a conferral and consultative relationship with the BLM: Whenever the BLM has a proposal for land use, they are required to consult with the tribe in a government-to-government relationship. While the tribe can put proposals in front of the BLM, it is ultimately up to the BLM to decide what to do. “It only takes a few people a year to really do some damage to [the Tablelands],” says Chavez, suggesting that there could also be a curfew on climbers to mitigate dispersed camping. In addition, ticketing would also supply revenue to the tribe, which is partially funded by the town’s casino. While these measures seem extreme, petroglyphs in the Tablelands have been stolen, with thieves—almost certainly not climbers—using ladders, power saws, and generators to steal four petroglyphs and destroy two others in 2013. Chavez, who grew up in Bishop, notes that the changing demographics of the town’s residents have helped the tribe. In the past 20 years, the increase in recreation has attracted a younger, more liberal population. Not only are these younger folks more concerned with preserving the land, but they’re making greater efforts to communicate
with the tribe. This shift has also had a large economic impact, though it’s unclear to what extent. The BACC plans on doing an economicimpact study in 2020 with William Hobbs, who wrote one such study on the communities surrounding the Red River Gorge, Kentucky; meanwhile, the Bishop Chamber of Commerce hopes to complete their own study as well.
In 2006, the Bishop climber Tai DeVore grabbed his copy of Peter Croft’s Sierra Nevada guidebook The Good, the Great, and the Awesome and climbed the Pine Creek classics Pratt’s Crack (5.9), Sheila (5.10b), and Rites of Spring (5.10d). He soon became obsessed with the area’s featured granite, establishing the seven-pitch Fischer Memorial Route (5.10) and the 10-pitch Mainline (5.10), and compiling a guidebook, which was published in autumn 2018. When Climbing featured Trevor Hobbs on the August 2009 cover climbing It’s Not the Wheat, a 5.11d at Pine Creek’s Mustache Wall, the area, some 16 miles from town, became a known destination, prized for its banana-belt weather. A wet spring in 2019 kept people out of Tuolumne and Yosemite, bottlenecking them into Pine Creek. “If this is the new reality, I’ve fucked this place over,” thought DeVore, surveying the crowded crags. For years, he’d just handed out his own paper guides while working in town at the gear shop Wilson’s Eastside Sports. But now, having authored an official guide, he felt responsible for the impact. Luckily, Tioga Pass opened quickly, and one of Bishop’s “secondary” climbing zones returned to more manageable visitor levels. However, this instance had shown DeVore just how busy Bishop was becoming—and could become. “It seems like every other week, another professional climber is moving here,” says DeVore, today the president of the BACC, of the exponential increase in pro athletes, doctors, tech workers, and others
moving in. The younger demographic has led to new boutique-style businesses like the Bishop Cowork, the Mountain Rambler Brewery, Good Earth Yogurt, and the Sage to Summit climbing gym. Part of the appeal comes from transportation improvements, too. In fall 2020, the Bishop airport will open for commercial flights. While small planes fly into Mammoth, the winds make for a high cancellation rate—14.5 percent in the winter of 2018/2019 according to Mammoth Tourism Executive Director John Urdi. This often leaves travelers to the ski town stranded, having to drive to five hours to LA or to Reno to fly out. The Bishop airport, which once served as a military airport, has stable weather and a larger runway, making it attractive as a hub for skiers and snowboarders. The hope is that the new airport will make accessing the Eastern Sierra easier for visitors and residents alike. The changing demographic has also led to a change in demand for housing, including for more temporary lodging. A number of climbers support themselves through Airbnb rentals. Lisa Bedient, who bought a house in Bishop 13 years ago, supplements her work as a traveling chef by renting a room in her home, making nearly $15,000 a year. According to the Bishop Real Estate Annual report, home prices peaked in 2006, declined until 2011, and then in the past seven years have stabilized and recovered. “You can come here and buy a cute little cottage for $350,000” says Bedient, “which is nothing for people who have jobs.” (The median price for a home in Bishop is between $323,250 and $345,000.) Bedient, however, notes that many climbers looking to move to town have lost home offerings to cash buyers. “People from the Bay Area are coming here at a pretty good pace,” says DeVore. “They sell their shithole for, like, eight hundred million dollars over there and they can buy a pretty nice spot over here.” This leads to new residents who are willing to spend more money on food and services, pushing
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1. Bishop local and Big Pine schoolteacher Tim Steele hanging out at Black Sheep Coffee Roasters in Bishop. 2. Bishop Area Climbers Coalition (BACC) President and local guidebook author Tai DeVore training on his home wall. 3. Shondeen Chavez, the BACC’s cultural affairs director and a member of the Paiute tribe, in the Tablelands where he’s been introducing kids from the tribe to climbing.
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the economy to expand and change. As DeVore puts it, “Gentrify baby!” Meanwhile, after 2005, Bishop hoteliers began earmarking 2 percent of their revenue for a marketing fund, which, not surprisingly, brought more visitors. “So we have more climbers but we have more of everything else too,” says Tawni Thomson, executive director of the Bishop Chamber of Commerce, adding that “The sales-tax revenue and hotel tax revenues are very healthy.” “I love that Bishop has become so much more diverse,” continues Thomson, who grew up in town. Thomson then points to the Toggery, which has been operating on Main Street for nearly a century, providing locals with Stetson hats, Wrangler jeans, leather boots, and work clothes. “At the same time, we haven’t lost our Western roots,” she says. Nothing exemplifies this better than the town’s famous Mule Days, during which Bishop swells with attendees who come to watch competitive cattle working, coon jumping, gymkhana, shoeing, chariot racing, and other rodeo activities that highlight the East Side’s outfitter and packer community. While Mule Days and the Tri-County Fairbring money into the town during the summer months, it’s climbers who spend money during the slower months—the winter, when tourists have moved on. On a busy weekend in Bishop, a hundred climber cars might line the Buttermilk Road, with another hundred at the Tablelands. Meanwhile, 300 climbers attend the Flash Foxy Women’s Climbing Festival each spring, with some 600 attending the American Alpine Club’s Bishop Fall Highball Craggin’ Classic. “We get major support and collaboration from the Chamber of Commerce, the police chief (who insists on buying a ticket and tells me every year how much he loves this event), and the town itself, allowing us to shut down some popular streets and alleys,” says McKenzie Long, the event coordinator for the AAC festival. But it’s also “a true double-
sided coin,” she continues, pointing to the 900 festival attendees and their respective organizations. “There is an increasing amount of climber impact as well.”
In May 2011, an unattended campfire burned a large area at the Coral Boulders, on LADWP land south of the road just before the Buttermilk Boulders. Over the years, the site had played host to weddings for Bishop locals. Further uphill at the Peabody Boulders, the Paiute used to gather for similar ceremonies. Now, however, you’re hardpressed to find anyone but climbers at the Buttermilks, in numbers often so large that it keeps the Paiute away. A decade ago, fewer than 20 climber cars lined the Buttermilk Road in high season. Now you’ll find at least 100, and maybe more on holiday weekends. While the BLM in conjunction with the Access Fund has installed bathrooms at the Tablelands parking and at the Buttermilks’ Birthday Boulders, it’s still an all-too-common experience to find used toilet paper flapping around at the rocks. And though official trails have been designated at the Buttermilks, there’s still a spider web of social trails—as well as in the Tablelands. A 1977 Chris Falkenstein photo of a conspicuously chalk-free Ironman (V4) printed in the Bishop guidebook shows how 40 years of climber hands have stained the rock white. One of the biggest issues facing Bishop is that of dispersed camping, staying outside a designated campground where there may or may not be facilities like a toilet, table, or firepit. “We’ve been free to do whatever we want, but now things are coming to a head, like the camping out in the Buttermilks,” says Steele, citing, in particular, people camping illegally on the LADWP land south of the Buttermilk Boulders. While dispersed camping is technically legal, the increasing number of people camping on BLM land around town has created impact. In 1999,
LEFT Cedar Pidgeon shows fingertips chafed raw by the rough quartz monzonite of the Buttermilk Boulders. RIGHT Kevin Corrigan samples one of the Owens River Gorge’s 1,000-plus climbs. The area, north of town, has seen seasonal access issues due to deliberate floods released by the L ADWP to restore the canyon floor to its original riparian state.
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LEFT A grater smoothing out the notorious washboard on Buttermilk Road, with the boulders visible in the background. RIGHT Ryuichi Ichikawa attempts The Swarm (V14), Beehive Area, Buttermilks. The problem is one of the many classic, iconic Bishop testpieces that draw climbers from all over the world.
the BLM opened the Pleasant Valley Pit Campground in the Tablelands, offering 75 sites. To further combat dispersed camping and get climbers to spend more money in town, Bishop will be converting the fairgrounds into a campground with showers, bathrooms, and electricity for $15 a night. However, given that climbers often prioritize stretching their money in order to keep climbing, many may pass. “What we want is social and environmental conformity,” says Visitor Center Host Supervisor Joe Pollini, who worked with the BLM to create the Pit, “cause that’s the way you manage high numbers.” Pollini notes that it’s easy to restrict access and enforce regulations by following a draconian Hueco Tanks model, but that “It’s a lot harder to ask people to do what’s socially and environmentally beneficial for all of us.” To move toward this model, the BACC in conjunction with the Chamber will be hiring two full-time, non-commissioned climbing rangers to patrol the climbing areas starting in November 2019. By educating climbers about their impacts and how best to minimize them using Leave No Trace principles, the program aims to help climbers regulate themselves before things get out of hand. With the floods of people coming to Bishop, climbers learning how to be responsible stewards of the land may be the only way to preserve it. In spring 2019, I hiked back to my van from the huge patina wall of Secrets of the Beehive (V7). The west side of Buttermilk Mountain receives far fewer visitors, and still has a wild, untrammeled feel. That day, the desert was in spring bloom. Desert peach, blue lupines, and
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yellow blazing star grew beside the small, single-track trail I hiked on, while cottontail rabbits ran through the sagebrush. With cool temps and the smell of flowers, Bishop felt like the perfect place to be. Six months later, when I was back over Veterans’ Day weekend, it was a different scene altogether. A drone flew over the 80-plus cars parked at the Buttermilks, past a dozen people hiding in the shade of the Green Wall Boulder, over an unleashed puppy wandering by Evilution, and over the two slackliners who had set a line up between the Peabodies. Then the drone crash-landed on top of a blue SUV on the road, losing a propeller and nicking the vehicle’s paint before cartwheeling into the hardpack. The flood of climbers to the East Side has made the coffee better, the Wi-Fi more accessible, and the town easier to stay in. I wanted to complain about the crowds, the drone, and the noise, but then I realized that simply by being there, I was also part of the problem. As DeVore says, “If it seems busy and crowded, why add to it?” That day, I headed into town and found a few Bishop locals climbing on the MoonBoard at Sage to Summit. Sometimes, it seems, the best way to preserve an area is to stay away.
JAMES LUCAS, Climbing’s senior associate editor, slept on top of a Buttermilk boulder in summer 2002. Since then, he’s spent a half dozen winters in Bishop, car camping at the Tablelands and Buttermilks, housesitting off Main Street, renting a rundown apartment on Clark Street, and staying at The Hostel California.
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’ve always been fascinated with illustrated maps,” says Jezryl Castelo, owner of the climbing-sticker company Yama Climbing. “Your eyes wander into the picture, and you find small details that connect to a memory.” In 2010, Castelo, now 38, climbed for the first time, bouldering in her backyard of Joshua Tree— she grew up in Crestline, in the San Bernardino Mountains a couple hours west of the granitic domes. Though J-Tree’s slabby granite topouts intimidated Castelo, climbing soon became a central part of her life, and she frequented J-Tree, Tramway, and Black Mountain until moving to Colorado in 2010. In the past decade, she’s progressed into redpointing 5.12. Locally, Castelo spends time in Rifle or bouldering in the alpine, doing remote customer-service work for Sticker Mule. “I have to be clocked in 8–4 somewhere Monday to Friday, but it allows closer access to the outdoors,” she says. Castelo started Yama Climbing soon after her first trip to Joshua Tree. She made a chalk bag for herself and then a few for friends. When a comp came to her local gym, she sold chalk bags there. Castelo’s customized chalk bags were well received, and she sold them at numerous climbing events as
well as to gyms in South Korea and Japan. “When I was in elementary school, my mom taught me how to sew and my dad taught me how to draw portraits,” Castelo says of her creative roots. When she started traveling more for climbing, she couldn’t lug her sewing machine around, so she turned to illustrations. For her 13.5”-by-10.25” art maps of areas like Ten Sleep (above, right) and Hueco Tanks, Castelo uses pen and pencil, starting with small sketches and flipping through guidebooks for reference material. For her hexagonal stickers, she uses Illustrator and Photoshop, and a Wacom drawing pad. “Each sticker is 1.97” x 1.7”, so I’ll decide on what stands out about those places and what will fit in a small area,” says Castelo. Examples include her pairing of the Midnight Lightning bolt and huge formations with Yosemite, a silhouetted Joshua tree with Joshua Tree, and a donut with Joe’s Valley—recalling the mouthwatering pastries at the now-defunct Food Ranch. “I’ve had people ask about stickers for areas that I haven’t been to yet [or] haven’t designed yet,” says Castelo. “There are iconic features at each place that I can easily draw, but when I’m drawing, it’s inspiring to have the experiences.”
PHOTO BY JE ZRYL C A S TELO
COMPILED BY JAMES LUCAS
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