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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Tossed

...“Things happen for a reason,” that’s what people say, right? I don’t know if I believe that. I think I would say that things happen. How you deal with them creates your life. I spent the better part of my twenties dealing with car accidents and fallouts. They always happened at significant times. They always happened when I was going too fast. I’m doing nothing if not going too fast right now....

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Consistent Humbling

I did my first lead climbs at the Gunks, in New York. Back then I was feisty, eager, and adamant that I could pull anything off. After my first lead tying off trees for pro, I decided I was ready for more, hopped on a climb, placed two pieces, and took one of the biggest whippers of my life. On a climb called Baby. The Gunks never really got to be more for during my time out east. It was where I constantly got schooled, while in school in New Jersey. My friend Andrew and I would roam the carriage road looking for a likely two-pitch 5.6 on which to spend the majority of our day. We would toggle the guidebook to our harness, appraise the route, and often times come down with elaborate rappels before even getting to the top.

Last weekend I was back at the Gunks for the first time in twelve years. It was just like I remembered it. It kicked my butt. I didn’t really expect anything different, and in fact I might have been disappointed if it had seemed easy. What then would I have thought of my younger self?

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Mountain Appraisal

When I was fifteen I took I NOLS course in Wyoming and hated nearly every day—in the beginning. I was skinny and short with bony hips that jutted out perfectly into the marginally-padded hip belt of my external frame hip pack. I got hip hickies within the first two days and had to cut giant doughnuts of Styrofoam out of my insulite pad to protect the scabs. This in turn made my feet get cold when I was sleeping, which was exacerbated by a leak in the tarp over my head in a rainstorm… It was miserable.

And then it was fine. Better than fine. It was phenomenal. I woke up on day nine to nothing but rain and was happy. It was just that simple. Had it gotten bad enough that it had to be good? Had I finally just given in to the experience? I have no idea.

Like an amnesiac lover I return to the high peaks every year and skeptically appraise their shadowy faces and hidden chimneys. Yesterday I did this on the southern flank of Flattop Peak in Rocky Mountain National Park. Sixteen years into a life in the mountains and I watch my reactions still. Others learn faster. But I keep going back. There was wind and snow and my hip hurt but I was there instead of rock climbing in Eldorado Canyon in the 70-degree weather in Boulder. And I'm going back tomorrow for more.