Inside the Wheels

I leave in an hour for Cleveland and Vancouver. I am going back into book tour mode. Last year, when that was about my only mode, I would try to climb each time I came home to Boulder. I would text potential partners the moment my plane touched down at DIA. Three, sometimes four leads in, I would get a yes. I would pick up the van in long term parking, drive home and make a list of what all I needed to do in the 12 hours before I went climbing: get dog, unpack, groceries, bills, eat, sleep, pack for climbing. Those first nights at home were never restful as I was caught between catching up with my body and soul after flying and demanding an entirely different level of performance the next day.

I’m doing it again. I’m loading pre- and post-speaking trips with climbing plans. It’s some sort of weird self-rationing behavior....

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Fighting The Impulse or, Working Make Believe, 2

...As humans, we want to organize ourselves and others into categories. One statement—I am an accountant, says so much. Or at least it does so in our brains. We immediately assign a host of personality traits and choices to that statement. If, on the other side of it, we try to skirt the question, or even worse, launch into a five minute diatribe about our exasperation with the continued quantification and qualification of others vis a vis their profession, we will likely be labeled “that freak at the party the other night.”...

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The Dark Side: Whipped Installment

THE DARK SIDE: WELCOME TO THE MAD PURSUIT OF NIGHT CLIMBING

(Part of an on-going series on my blog of posts from my column Whipped, for Climbing Magazine. February, 2007 Installment)

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Four hundred feet up Eldorado Springs Canyon’s Yellow Spur, pigeon shit on my lips and headlamps around my ankles,I screamed at my belayer to stop pulling me off. It was well past 10 p.m., and what we were doing would easily qualify as an epic — except we’d chosen it.

Some things are good ideas. Others are, well, potentially good ideas. Take night climbing. It had never occurred to me to intentionally go climbing in the dark. Sure, I’d done full-moon ascents of a few easy climbs, but I’d never sat down with my tick list and thought, oh yes, that one would be choice in the blackness. But then, Gary Ryan came along.

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Girls On Point

Sarah H heading into the steepnessUp until five years ago I climbed with men more than women. It wasn’t a conscious choice, it was just what I was surrounded by. These days it is almost the opposite. Maybe some of that has to do with the murkiness that surrounds cross-gender climbing. With women, it’s relatively simple. And it’s getting easier. But it is still surprising when you get to go out and dry tool with three other ladies.

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The Great Divide: Whipped Installment

THE GREAT DIVIDE: THE GOOD, THE BAD, and THE UGLY OF CLIMBING COUPLEDOM

(Part of an on-going series on my blog of posts from my column Whipped, for Climbing Magazine. December, 2006 Installment.)

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“I just want a boyfriend who climbs ... I just want a woman who will go to Yosemite with me ... I want a man/woman/dog who gets climbing ... I want to sleep with/date/marry another climber. ... ” Well, don’t we all?

I had one of those — a husband, Eli — and, yes, it was great to put our hands down each other’s pants at frigid belays, work out adhesions in each other’s sore forearms, and support one another on endless projects. We had it good ... until it ended. And, boy, it sucks when it’s over. I’m not talking about that lost love or lifestyle; I’m talking about divying up the gear.

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