Life Changing Moments in Colorado

As I sat straddling the sharp ridge, I wanted to cry. I should have cried. A normal girl would have been sobbing and shaking uncontrollably. I sat there for a few solid minutes just feeling the heavy rain soak though my yoga pants while the wind toyed with my balance. One side of the ridge was a vertical drop. The other was a sketchy 20' section of 5.9 slab that I needed to down climb to a ledge. I was completely exposed to the elements. Stupid girl, you should never wear cotton in the mountains. You don't belong here. You don't know what the fuck you're doing. You're going to die.

Lightening illuminated the eerily dark late afternoon sky & I could hear the distant rumble of thunder. I ran through my options one more time before deciding that proceeding to follow my partner was more dangerous than retreating and risking spending the night exposed to the elements alone. I pressed the talk button on my walkie-talkie and told my partner that I couldn't proceed. She didn't understand. She was safely tucked in a cave 50 meters below me eagerly staring at a set of rap rings.

The rock was wet and my sneakers were failing to gain any friction on the slab below me. I told her that I was retreating from the ridge and heading back to the safety of the belay ledge. All of our supplies, including my food, water & climbing shoes were in my partner's pack. How did a casual day of trad climbing in Colorado turn into such a life or death situation? Why did I not have my headlamp on me? Why did I not have my own pack?

I notified my partner via walkie-talkie once I was safely back on the belay ledge. She told me to untie my end of the rope. I refused. At that point, my only lifeline was the rope. She tried to convince me that if I untied my end, she could rappel and get mountain rescue to come back for me. She didn't want to climb back up to me. What the fuck? She had a safe top rope belay to come back to me. The 50 meter down climb from the ridge was so sketchy that my partner had placed several pieces of trad gear to protect her dry decent on a top rope. However, she failed to take into account how I was going to safely second her, while retrieving her gear; all while she couldn't take up the slack in the rope.

We were at an impasse and I wouldn't budge. Eventually the storm passed through and the rain subsided. My partner, now realizing the situation we were in, was willing to retrace her path back to me. She set up a belay below the section of sketchy slab where she had placed several cams & I set out again to retrieve her gear. With a tight belay, I was able to retrieve the gear and slide down the slab on my side as my shoes still would not provide any friction on the wet rock. We proceeded to work ourselves towards the rap rings and successfully rappelled to the base of the climb in the dark. Needless to say, I was quite upset with the course of events that day.

Several major life & climbing lessons were learned that day:

1) There's no such thing as a casual trad day. Always be prepared for the worst elements and circumstances to happen.

2) No one is going to look out for your safety more than you. Never allow yourself be pressured to go beyond your safety limits.

3) Know your climbing partner's ability. If you can't self rescue, your partner is your lifeline & should accept that responsibility freely.

My own private Dawn Wall

A few days ago, I found myself sitting in a plush beige leather chair in my company's boardroom getting ready to officially meet my divisional President. It should be noted that we did meet unofficially last year during an awkward elevator ride, but I'm pretty sure he didn't remember that encounter. At least, I hope he didn't. I'm a Senior Manager in the company, so technically he would be my boss' boss' boss' boss.

It was a casual meeting with about 12 attendees from different brands and functional areas within the company. The sole purpose of the meeting was for him to get to know the names, faces and stories behind some the people that he indirectly manages. Basically, it consisted of us going around the table and telling everyone our name, job/history with the company & something personal about ourselves. 

As each of the employees who went before me spoke, I frantically searched my brain for the right words and story to tell for when it became my turn. There were personal stories of marriages, children, grand-children & home ownership. These are all things that I used to associate with not too long ago, but feel strangely foreign to me now. No one talked about being divorced or childless or how online dating fucking sucks. Nope. They all had cute stories about getting used to their married names, starting families, buying houses, coaching their child's soccer game, or where they planned to retire someday.

When my turn came, I found myself talking about rock climbing. Apparently, but not surprisingly, this is how I chose to define myself. I went on about leading trad & sport (and what the difference between the two is). I artfully worked in the current events of Tommy Caldwell's completion of the Dawn Wall project, to which I think I saw a couple of enthusiastic head nods in the room (thanks to network news). I basically walked away from the meeting feeling like a badass rebel amongst a crowd of social reformists.

But, really, all I did was create a huge smoke cloud. As it turns out, I'm pretty good at this. I'm not married. I don't have 1.5 children. I don't own a home. I'm not saving for my child's education. I don't know where I'm going to retire. I have no idea how to coach soccer.

What am I doing? I'm doing what I can. I'm being brutally honest. I'm waking up each day thankful to be alive and healthy. I'm setting personal goals & doing my best to achieve them. I'm hoping that my limited time on this planet is making a difference. I'm trying not to fixate on past love & keep my heart open to new love. I'm not settling. Ever. As my most recent first date told me after I flat out rejected him: "You're refreshing." Yup. That's me... Refreshing honesty. It's not for everyone.

Goals for 2015? I'm going simple this year: Enjoy life, try new things & continue to push my comfort zone. Am I going to free climb the Dawn Wall? Hell no. I'm going to free climb my life.

Someone kick me in the ass, please?

I just climbed for the first time in four weeks last night. 5 routes & I was done. Pathetic. Since returning from Smith, I've simply lost all motivation. Both climbing and otherwise. Can someone kick me in the ass, please? I've got my excuses, but at the end of the day, they're just that: excuses.

I've also managed to gain 5 pounds as I've started to eat all of the things. Halloween certainly did not help. I'm slowly weaning myself off a candy addiction that started with an endless supply of sweets at work. I wasn't exactly shocked last night when my climbing belt fit a lot snugger than usual.

Luckily, I'm not the only one that's fallen off of the training wagon. I'm in excellent company with my friends Lu & Jessie. Although, I'm the only one that's been sitting on my ass prancing around the internet for the last month. I may or may not have purchased $76 in Lay's ketchup potato chips imported from Canada. Ok, I did. Thank god we made a pact to try to get together once a week to start training again. The next two months are going to be tough with the holidays, but at least the intention is there.

Time to plan the next big adventure and get my motivation back to train hard. I need to devote some serious research time to solidify it, but it's looking like a group trip to Utah in April. If you plan it, it will happen!

Oregon Adventures

About seven weeks ago, I left Boston for a nine day adventure in Oregon. At the time that I had booked the trip, I just wanted to run away. I had vacation days to burn, nothing keeping me in Boston & a strong need to recharge myself spiritually. Smith Rock was on my mind. I had seen pictures of this magical place floating around the Internet and knew that I had to go. In mentioning this to my climbing partner Deb one night at the gym, we just decided to book it. The main purpose of the trip was to do some rock climbing in Smith Rock State Park, but we managed to get in some other fun stuff too:

Day One

My alarm went off at 4:20am. I had two flights and a three hour car drive ahead of me. I had booked a shared car service to the airport & luckily at this hour, I was the only passenger. Our long day of travel went without incident & we stopped at a Whole Foods on our way to the house rental to grab some necessities. For me, this meant a bottle of Pinot Noir. The highlight of my day was sitting on the back deck of the house enjoying the sunset over the high desert with the flames of the gas fireplace dancing while I enjoyed my glass of wine.

Day Two

The forecast was rain. All day. It was a little deflating as I had been psyching myself up for all of the climbs that I wanted to do, but it actually worked out well. We woke up a little tired from our long day of travel & I made us a nice breakfast of eggs, potatoes & fruit. We took our time getting ready & then headed to the nearby city of Bend. We walked around in our rain jackets just taking in the city and shopping at the little boutiques that lined the main streets. We also walked through a famer's market, which was so colorful and cheery. I couldn't help taking pictures of the veggies & flowers! We ended the day with a pasta dinner that I cooked at the house while we planned a hiking day.

Day Three

We started the morning with homemade buttermilk cinnamon pancakes and a fresh fruit salad. Most. Delicious. Pancakes. Ever. Of course, I had to take a picture. The forecast for the day had a significant chance of rain, so we decided to head to Smith Rock to hike the Misery Ridge Trail. In talking with some locals the day before, everyone we spoke with recommended this trail. I'm so glad that we did it. Smith Rock is an amazing place and you definitely get a different perspective of the landscape from this trail. 

Day Four

First climb day! Woo hoo! After having walked all around the park the day before, we knew exactly where we wanted to go. One of the most popular climbs in the park is called Five Gallon Buckets (5.8), so we headed there first to get our turn on this classic. As much as I wanted to jump right on lead, I decided to TR this one. I had been training on lead at the gym for several weeks before the trip and had worked myself up to some 5.9's in the gym, but we were both unsure of the grading at Smith Rock & I didn't want to freak myself out on my first climb.

Next, we moved on to the Dihedrals area and I onsited a couple of mellow climbs: Night Flight (5.5) and Easy Reader (5.6). The start to Easy Reader was super bouldery and on the crux move before the first clip (Deb thought this move was 5.8ish & we weren't able to stick clip it) I let out what I thought was a grunt on the crux, but Deb thought it was more like a whimper. Haha... if it was a whimper, it was a bad ass whimper!  It was a fun first day & the sun was strong. We ended up a little tired by the end of this third climb, so we decided to call it a day. We headed back to the house & cooked up a massive stir-fry dinner.

Day Five

More rock climbing? Yes, please! We decided to head to the Monument Base Area to check out some fun, juggy routes we had heard about there. This area was not part of the Misery Ridge Trail, so we had not explored it yet. As we were walking down the trail, a climber with his harness still on came running towards and then past us. I could sense the urgency in his step & thought it was a little weird, but he didn't say anything and we just moved on. When we arrived at the base of the climbing area, we realized what was going on. A climber had taken a serious lead fall where he had not only experienced a ground fall, but a boulder had come loose off of the wall and hit him in the head on his way down. The rest of the climbing parties that were there cleared out, but Deb and I decided to stay. Sandstone can be fragile after rain & if pulled on too forcefully, like with all of the weight of a 225 pound male, why yes... it will break. Apparently this was the victim's first time lead climbing outside. As we found out later, he was lucky to get away with just a broken leg. He was carried off in a basket attached to a mountain bike wheel, complete with it's own braking system. At first, I was hesitant to take a picture, but the victim was insisting that his friends document the event with photos and video, so I decided to snap a couple pics as he was being carried out. We offered to help retrieve the gear left on the wall by the victim and the rest of his climbing party, but two guys in their party managed to get it down.

Needless to say, my helmet did not come off of my head while we proceeded to climb at this wall. I managed to onsite a 5.7 called Bagpiping in the Buff, lead a 5.9 called Approaching the Twilight & then TR'd a 5.8 called Snow Bunny. It was quite an exciting day! We decided to end the day a bit early, grab some ice cream cones, head back to the house to shower and change & then went out for dinner at the Terrebonne Depot. It's close to Smith Rock and a popular hangout for climbers. We actually saw a few climbing parties there which we had talked to that day.

Day Six

We woke up to a family of deer roaming through the backyard of our house rental! It was so cool, they came right up to the back deck & appeared to be begging for food. I refused to feed them and they eventually got bored and moved on. We had planned to climb a five-pitch moderate sport route called First Kiss (5.7), however with only one 60M rope, we needed to buy either a second rope or a tag line in order to rappel down from the 5th pitch. The scramble off of the top of this climb seemed too sketchy to attempt without good beta. Neither one of us needed a new rope, so Deb decided to buy a 60M tag line. Ugh, tag lines... Just don't do it. We should have known what we were in for when the thing became a snarled mess in the store as the clerk was measuring it out.

We actually had to drive down to Bend, OR to buy the tag line, so we decided to just hike for the rest of the day & attempt First Kiss the following morning.  Deb had her heart set on summiting Tumalo Mountain & I wanted to see Tumalo Falls, so we did both. We started at the Falls, which was cool, but way too touristy. Then, we drove about 30 minutes to the base of the mountain. I'm so glad that we did the mountain. The views were amazing and the volcanic rock that covered the summit was something that I had never seen before. It was pretty cold and windy at the summit. No snow on the ground there, but the surrounding mountains had white caps from the weather system that had brought rain to Terrebonne earlier in the week.

Day Seven

Multi-pitch day! Oh yeah! We geared up and hiked in to the base of our climb. The plan was for me to take the first (5.7) and third (5.5) pitches. Since I was taking the first pitch, Deb wanted a 5.7 pitch as well, so she took the second (5.6), fourth (5.5) and fifth (5.7) pitches. This was my first multi-pitch climb where I legitimately exchanged leads with my partner. I think it was about 10am by the time we arrived at the base of the climb and geared up. I was super nervous, but really excited and ready for the challenge.

The first pitch was smooth until I got to this awkward ledge where I had to clip to the left of a bulge. From there, I could either make a sketchy high step move off the ledge with poor hands, or I could traverse my way right around the bulge (I actually chose to scoot under it) to continue up on a pocketed face.  I tried to gather myself a couple of times to make the sketchy high step, but just couldn't do it. I was happy to belay Deb up over that section and have her confirm the sketchiness of it as well. She also decided to traverse right on top rope.

My second lead was the third pitch of this route. In all of the beta that I gathered on this climb, this was by far the worst pitch. It was a super long traverse with massive rope drag and a sketchy start. There should have been a bolt on the sketchy start, but I think it fell out. So, I traversed off of a ledge onto a blocky section of wall with sloping holds where you could see straight down and then onto another ledge where I made my first clip. This ended up being one of my favorite pictures as you can see the long length of rope hanging in between me and Deb as we stood on our separate ledges. We could not hear each other for most of this pitch as I was leading us around a massive pillar of rock. I basically had to yank out enough rope for me to make each of my moves so as not to be pulled off of the rock.

We completed the first three pitches without incident, but then the weather started to change. I had brought my windbreaker with me, but gave it to Deb just before she started belaying me on the third pitch. As she began her lead on the fourth pitch, I let her keep my windbreaker on & immediately regretted it as it started to rain and the wind started kicking up as she was making her second clip. My teeth began chattering and I tried to hug into the rock as closely as I could to get out of the wind and rain. This belay seemed to last FOREVER. I don't blame her for taking her time to complete it, as I sure as hell wouldn't have wanted to be the leader at that point. I followed that pitch as quickly as I could not only to warm up, but to try to speed up our climb as the weather seemed to be getting worse by the minute.

We discussed our options at the beginning of the fifth pitch & somehow decided to just go for it. This was Deb's 5.7 pitch and I don't think she wanted to give it up, even in the rain. I let her keep the windbreaker on & suffered through another miserable belay. My hands were so cold that I could barely feel my fingertips as I followed her on this pitch. We briefly celebrated our successful ascent and then began assembling our tag line rappel. This took way too long. The belay ledge at the top was small & uncomfortable. My fingers were frozen. And of course our tag line didn't uncoil neatly and we had to sort through a tangled mess of knotted rope as the rain and wind picked up and the sun began to set. Not my favorite climbing moment. Tag lines: Just say no.

After finally sorting all the rope out, Deb rappelled down first. I rappelled down second. And then, we tried to pull our rope using the tag line. Nothing. Pulled Harder. Nothing. Yanked the fucker as hard as we could. Nothing. I was not amused. The sun was setting and the wind and rain were not letting up. We still had a long hike back out of the park, so I decided that we should just bail off of the side of the climb and leave our gear. This was the first time that I've ever bailed on a climb and left gear overnight, which didn't feel great, but felt better than any other option. We put on our headlamps, scrambled down the side of the cliff onto a trail, retrieved our packs from the base of the climb and headed back to the car in the dark. What a day.

Day Eight (a.k.a. Operation Rescue 'Sven' Day)

We had other climbs in mind for our last day at Smith Rock, but due to the circumstances from Day Seven, we had to go back to First Kiss and rescue our gear instead. We had been using my rope, which I had named Sven when I bought him earlier this year for my Red River Gorge trip & I was not about to let Sven go. We stopped at the local climb shop on our way to Smith in the morning & I decided to buy a green 70M 10.2MM. I really wanted a lighter 70M, but they didn't have one. I decided that I would use it to rescue Sven and then have it cut in half to use as a gym rope & try to sell the second half. I decided at the store that her name would be Svetlana. New ropes are so pretty, so of course I had to pose for a picture with her! (Yes, the staff at the climb shop thought I was legit CRAZY).

However, I did learn something new. Most ropes come factory coiled, which you need to uncoil in a certain way to avoid kinks and curls later on. My salesman volunteered to help me uncoil my rope and then recoiled it for me, after we marked the center with a piece of tape. Operation rescue Sven was a success, and we later returned to the climb shop to have Svetlana cut into two: Svet & Lana. I'm still looking for a home for Svet... :(

Day Nine

Another long travel day, but I was ready to head back home after all of the adventures that I had on this trip!  We woke up around 7am, had a nice breakfast & then set off for the 3-hour ride to the airport around 8am. With plenty of time to spare, it was a relaxing ride & a beautiful day. Oregon is such a gem! I can't wait to go back out there again and share it with some of my friends.