2014 has been a crazy year for me, filled with highs and
lows. The first few months proved to be
quite frustrating; several injuries and illnesses robbed me of fitness and time
spent doing what I love to do. However,
I still have managed to accomplish many goals I’ve set for myself and gone
beyond what I thought possible in such a relatively short timeframe. As July approaches and following some big
events in my life, I’ve decided to take this opportunity to reflect on the last
six months.
In January I managed to do the second ascent of The Morgue, a notorious local route put
up several years ago by my first climbing mentor, Eric Scully. Eric spent years projecting the climb
throughout his teenage years before finally sending in his senior year of high
school after beating cancer. I’ve always
admired Eric’s tenacity and drive and, while he isn’t climbing much anymore, it
still feels amazing to do the first repeat of something he put up when he did
so much to help me develop into the climber and person I am today. I’ve played around on it occasionally in
years past, but this was the first I stuck the crux moves and the send on
January 17th was one of the most rewarding of my life. I couldn’t have done it without Alex
Kirkpatrick, who provided great belays, beta and inspiration (as well as the
mutual support we needed to endure waking up and driving to the mountain at
5:30am in the dead of winter to sport climb).
Alex also sent a short time later, which topped it off beautifully. Thanks to Alex Kirkpatrick for taking these photos as well.
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| The opening moves of The Morgue 5.13d/5.14a |
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| Starting the crazy granite-sloper crux on The Morgue. |
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| Sticking the crux lunge on The Morgue. |
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| Clipping the last bolt on The Morgue. |
Towards the end of January Alex Kirkpatrick and I teamed up
again to sneak in an FA of a long-standing Ray Ringle project on the Andy Cook
Wall. We got on it expecting to be shut
down and quickly realized with just a bit of reworking the line would go at the
very reasonable grade of 5.12c and was very good. It has a bit of everything- jug romping, an
insecure, smeary lieback, a sweet face transition between giant flakes,
pockets, hand jams, pinches, and crimps.
Randy Cook Lives! is one of my
favorites I’ve done on Lemmon and gives Rain,
the existing classic 5.12 on the wall, a run for its money.
On the last day of January I managed to wreck myself with
one of the scarier injuries I’ve had.
Following a day of exploring and almost being swarmed by bees looking
for climbable rock in Ventana Canyon, David Adams and I grabbed our crashpads
and rigged a trickline at Himmel Park.
The goal, for me, was to learn the buttflip, which consists of a
buttbounce, into a frontflip, landing back in a buttbounce. I had been practicing frontflips onto
crashpads in the living room of my apartment for weeks in preparation and with
David, a former pro skateboarder, there to help me break it down into steps, I
was set. After a couple somersaults off
the line onto my butt on the pads, I was ready to commit. Many attempts later, almost all ending in me
landing on my feet on the ground, it was dark.
We re-rigged in the small spot of light provided by a nearby streetlamp
and I continued after my friend James Xu had joined us. Eventually, David needed to leave, and I said
“I’ll just give it one more go.” This is
always the sign disaster is about to strike, and that day was no
exception. I threw the flip hard and
knew immediately everything was wrong- not quite along the line, my heels came
up and caught the underside of my Powrline and I smashed, face-first, into the
edge of the pads with my feet scorpion-ing behind me. The impact rubbed a fair bit of skin off of
my face and gave me some insane whiplash that I still feel while looking up
belaying to this day. This deeply
changed my perspective on my tricklining and since then I’ve really tried to
mellow it out and only try to learn tricks that are relatively safe- I really
believe I’m pretty lucky that I didn’t break my neck or wind up with a more
serious head injury, as it seems quite possible given the forces involved.
After I healed up, I joined Alex Kirkpatrick and started getting
out with some regularity to the Dry Canyon, a rarely-visited limestone sport
area near Sierra Vista, AZ. Alex had
been trying his multi-season project, another route with a long history. Suzanne
Somers was a long-standing open project in the stunning Celebrity Cave that
managed to straddle the line between power-endurance and endurance climbing
while still containing some extremely hard sequences and some of the best hard
limestone climbing in the southwest. I’d
been struggling to build endurance- I had next to none after spending much of
the winter bouldering and finally feeling the effects of the break from
climbing I’d taken the previous summer- and the routes nearby Suzanne promised to be the perfect area
to do so. I sent Great White Hunter 5.12d in fairly short order and started
contemplating a new long-term project.
Aside from Suzanne Somers,
there was another megaproject in the area: the savage Lee Majors. Another old open
project just right of Suzanne, Lee Majors
fires straight out the roof of the cave past a very hard boulder problem crux
and follows a somewhat traversing line to anchors at the lip of the roof (and
the base of the beautiful streaked headwall it was originally to be extended
up). Long story short, I was never able
to pull all of the moves and around 7 of my draws are still hanging up on the
route, ready for my return when temperatures drop.
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| Sending Great White Hunter 5.12d at the Dry. Photo: Angel Mangual |
In mid-February I finished the book of photos and interviews
I did while on my summer 2013 road trip with my undergraduate research
grant. That trip stands out as one of the
single best experiences I’ve had in my life and there was a strange finality to
publishing and presenting my research.
As I am still jobless (and this summer, grant-less), there won’t be any
such trip this year. With that said, I’m
proud to showcase the product of my efforts: you can view (and purchase your
own, if you’d like) A Muerte: Inspiration
and Progression in Rock Climbing through Blurb self-publishing here: http://www.blurb.com/b/5090016-a-muerte
February also began the string of lingering minor illnesses
that hampered my training. As the 2014
Hueco Rock Rodeo rolled around I was very excited but, just prior to the trip,
I both got sick and had to pull an all-nighter to finish a paper for one of my
classes. This, combined with the
absurdly bad conditions the day of the Rodeo, led to a performance that, to me,
felt far below what I am capable of.
Still, I managed to place 4th in the Advanced category and 3rd
in the dyno comp. My stand-out send from
the day was Mr. Serious V8, and my
number one failing was breaking my streak on Better Eat Your Wheaties (and not sending Wheaties at all). I still
got to meet and climb with Paul Jones from the Mad Rock Team which was awesome,
as well as meet up with new and old friends and Mad Rock athletes at the after
party. Despite not climbing as well as I
wanted to I had a blast and I’m already excited for next year’s competition.
On the home front, I got a job setting routes at the UA’s
rec center bouldering wall. While the
wall is outside and the strangely designed terrain makes it difficult to set
quality routes, we were able to run a fun competition that, in the advanced
category, came down to a difference in attempts on a comp-style (read: tricky)
V2 between first and second place, which is something I’m proud of given my
long history of youth competitions.
Unfortunately, I gave myself wrist tendonitis setting the many problems
for the competition with a hand wrench and I had to miss the Joes Valley trip I
had planned for spring break the following week, which was a major
disappointment. I did get in a visit to
Southern Utah University, where I hope to spend a semester through
the National Student Exchange program, and a very relaxed fishing trip with my
Dad to Lee’s Ferry, which helped make up for the lack of “sik blocs” during the
break.
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| The caption says it all. |
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| Beautiful sunrise over Lee's Ferry, viewed from the Navajo Bridge. |
A couple of weeks later, I won the Lord of the Rungs campus
board competition at Rocks and Ropes, my local gym, after not climbing inside
for a rather long span of time. This
helped jumpstart my training for the 2014 Open SCS Nationals, which was to be
my first USA Climbing sanctioned competition after aging out of the youth
circuit. This included a lot of
early-morning runs on Mount Lemmon- I’d wake up at 5, drive up to Windy Point
(~6500 feet), run 2 or 3 miles with 500-1000 feet of elevation gain, drive
back, shower and be ready for class at 9. While I seem to be in the minority on
this, I think running has a very positive effect on my climbing. It helps my usually-terrible endurance,
allows me to quickly cycle my weight down a few pounds to the sending range
from my training weight for a redpoint or competition and additionally makes
approaches feel much easier.
Open SCS Nationals was a really cool experience (and
certainly one I hope to repeat) that was once again marred by an all-nighter
the day before I drove out to Los Angeles.
While I didn’t do as well as I think I could have on the first route, I
placed 27th which was far better than I thought I would and I think
I can do much better next year with better preparation. I also met up with fellow Slackline Brothers
student athlete Andrew Marshall twice and walked my personal records for both
longlining (180’L T18) and highlining (90’L double T18) before heading home,
making the trip an amazing success regardless of the rocky start.
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| Spectating finals was pretty cool |
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| Andrew Marshall does a sweet exposure turn on the 90'L highline at Ortega Falls in Los Angeles. |
