Cow’s Life - Thinking Outside Of The Barn

It’s sad to see the snow go, but Spring is finally here! For the first time in 2006, I packed up my climbing gear and headed over to Turkey Rock area to climb with my team this past Sunday.

I always thought rock climbing is a sport for human and survival skill for squirrels. But wait until you see this:
Eiger, a black Lab named after a climbing site and owned by one of the climbers came with us this time. One of our climbers made a joke with Eiger by putting his favorite stick in a small cave about 7, 8 feet above the ground. Eiger, an absolute stick lover was determined to get this stick. He first analyzed the situation by stretching his body. “Ok, I am not tall enough.. “.

He then tried to jump a few times. Check out this video. That didn’t do him any good either.

His owner Mike and our climbing team lead Doug started to show him how to use the extra piece of rock to get him higher.

Then, they showed Eiger the basic climbing techniques: Get your legs up first! Boy, this smart dog is really learning.

Check out this video too.

After 20 – 25 minutes of struggling with the climbing techniques, he finally got his body up on the rock and reached to his favorite stick.

WOW! I don’t know if Eiger realized it or not, he just climbed the hardest part of a 5.8 route! High 5 for Eiger!!

I had my worst climb at the gym last Thursday. My arms were literally spent after I struggled on a 5.10 route which I cruised through at least half a dozen times before. It was so bad that I didn’t even want to talk about it. I guess every climber hits one of those low points once a while.

I was pretty excited about today’s climb at Clear Creek since I have never been to the site. 9 of us showed up. Wow! That was the biggest crowd we’ve ever had. Comparing with other sites I have been to such as Independence Pass, Golden North Table, Castlewood Canyon and Boulder area, Clear Creek routes are a bit odd. The difficulty of every Clear Creek route I climbed was not quite evenly distributed. There were one or two really difficult parts and rest of the route was like a walk-up. So, a 5.7 route could start as a 5.9 or 5.10 and then the rest of it was like a 5.4. I personally like the route that sticks with its grade throughout the most part of it. But it was still a lot fun to climb the relatively long routes here.

The highlight of the climb was Shumin’s roof stunt shown in the picture above. It was a 5.12a with a huge roof overhanging. Nobody in the group pulled it off but him. It must be his KungFu power and his incredible flexibility.

Since I was the only photographer on site this time, I didn’t get everybody’s climbing pictures. But I managed to get Shumin’s roof climb and Aaron’s overhanging climb. Oh, I finally remembered Matt’s dog’s name: Tsavo! But this time, Tsavo stayed at the base the whole time instead of greeting the climbers at the top.

Here is the clear creek climbing album.

Although the physical climbing site was in Golden, Colorado, today was truly a golden day to climb. After the unexpected snow storm and freezing cold temperature in the early week, this weekend’s weather was simply gorgeous.

Ironically, North Table at Golden is where I did my first outdoor climb back in June. I wrote a post after the climb on Mike’s heavywinter site. At that time, I didn’t have my own blog.

I can definitely tell the differences comparing with 4 months ago when I climbed here with Kevin. Back then, it was all about reaching to the top. And now it is about how I reach to the top. I start to purposely ignore some big holds and look for something harder to experiment a few moves. Hey, I am on a top rope! If I fall, so what! I finally have the skill to maintain the balance and stop at a spot to enjoy the view on the vertical surface. North Table is pretty high up there with the views of Golden and Denver under your feet. Although this is no Aspen, North Table beats most of the climbing sites I went to.

I also witnessed a pretty bad accident today. A lady was leading on a quite tough route (We didn’t have the guidebook so we could only observe). First she clipped the quickdraw in a wrong way, and then she placed her leg under the rope. When she missed her clip, she took a hard fall and flipped upside down, knocked her head on the rock and scratched up her leg pretty badly. And, she didn’t wear a helmet. Although she was lucky enough to walk away without serious head injury, that was a plain stupid act. You gotta know your shit when it comes to extreme sports. I am an indoor 5.8 lead climber and I will never attempt an outdoor lead until I feel really comfortable with indoor 5.9. By looking at how she climbed, she was simply not qualified to lead on such a hard route. In my opinion, the people who will most likely get hurt in any extreme sports (climbing included) are either the beginners who are trying to pull some stunts, or the ass-kickers who trust themselves way too much and neglect the safety measurements. So, it’s important to know your limit and believe that shit could happen at anytime to anybody no matter how good you are. My 2 cents.

Anyway, check out the Golden Climb album. There are quite a few cool pictures (Matt’s dog went all the way to the top and gave me an unexpected “job well done” congrats. That was cute!)

Once upon a time when I was still in college struggling with spoken English and public speech, a communication dept. professor suggested me to tape my presentations. She gave me a checklist and asked me to rate everything (gesture, voice, grammar, eye-contact, etc…) for a whole semester. And it worked wonders.

So, I figured I can do the same thing to improve my rock climbing skills by taping my performance. Wow! It’s amazing to see yourself on the screen from a third person angle. I can be as critical as anybody and it is so much easier to pick out the problems.

Here is the 60 second video of me climbing in the indoor gym. I figured that after talking about rock climbing for so long, you might be curious to see me in action.

Like good old time, I made a checklist and figured out my problems and how to improve:

1. I swing too much when I climb. Although I am good at turning my hip around, it seems that I don’t have a solid lower body while I climb.
2. I am still doing a wrong sequence. A good rock climber locates foot holds before hand holds. From what I see in the video, I still try to secure my body with hands. If I can trust my feet a little more and place them first then look up to find hand holds, I can climb 5.11 very soon.
3. I am doing much better to lock my arms straight while climbing. But that’s still an area I can improve so eventually I will only use my arms to lock positions and gain balance. After all, we should climb with our legs and fingers.

If you are into any kind of performing arts or sports, give it a try and tape your own performance. It’s really fun to watch yourself doing that signature move on the dance floor or smashing your face on the field.

By the way, if anyone knows a good video converter (convert .mov, .avi to .wmv, etc…), please shoot me an email or leave a comment. Thanks!

I climb with mostly guys, so sometimes the conversations can go a bit too rough for my ears… but it was all good fun…

Trust the rubber

Climbing background: Climbers wear special rock shoes to climb. The bottom of the shoes is made of special rubber that generates a great deal of friction.
We were at Deckers this past weekend. One of our climbers was on a route that’s consist of two rock surfaces with little or no foot holds. He wouldn’t commit the move so his belayer tried to give him a tip but that didn’t come out right,
“SPREAD YOUR LEGS AND TRUST THE RUBBER!!!”
The girls to our right were rolling…

Yuna’s midget balls

Climbing background: Climbers use chalk or chalk balls to chalk up their hands for better gripping performance.
I was resting on the wall chalking up my hands. I have used the chalk ball for a while so it got really small and slipped through my fingers and fell to the ground. So I yelled to the crowd to apologize,
“Sorry guys, I dropped my ball. It’s too small…. I have another one in my bag!”.
Ever since then, I earned the reputation as a climber with two midget balls.

The crack joke

Climbing background: Crack climbing is a kind of climb where the rock surface is predominantly a crack. It’s very different from the regular surface climb.
I was climbing a really ugly all-crack route where I had no way to cheat with any surface holds. I got so frustrated and didn’t think of the words that came out of my mouth,
“CRAP! I SUCK ON THIS CRACK!”
Then I heard this blast of laughs and someone asked, ‘Whose crack are you sucking on?”

Risk of Dropping Dead
Last week when I was buying snowboard bindings, I met my climbing partner Rick’s friend Rachael. I was surprised that Rick hasn’t turned her into a climber after knowing her for so long since we all know Rick tries to turn everybody into either a climber or a snowboarder. So I asked him later, “Hey, how come you are not turning Rachael into a climber?” Rick said, “Oh, because she won’t climb. Her good friend died when he was climbing Gardens Of Gods.”

You may be surprised that most of the serious outdoor rock climbers don’t think about death that much, myself included. But I can’t deny the fact that the risks are high up there. The scale of the risk increases drastically when we move through the climbing categories( e.g. from top roping to lead, from lead to trad, from single pitch to multi-pitches, from rock to ice, and from outdoor sport routes to alpine climb. ) I have only been climbing for about half a year and I’ve already had some scary moments.

Why Do We Still Climb
I was camping and climbing with a few climbers this weekend near Deckers area. When we were bullshitting by the campfire at night, we started telling each other our worst-outdoor-experience stories. One guy told us that when he and his buddies went for a snow camping trip, they had to wake up every other hour to shuffle the snow outside of the tent for an hour and then woke up another guy to guard the tent from being buried by the snow. “It was miserable.” He said. So I asked, “Why the hell did you do it then?” “To test myself and know myself better.” He in turn asked me, “Why do you climb? You know you can die.”

Why do I climb? Hmm… a good question.

Initially, I climb because of the joy after conquering a route. It’s the greatest feeling of the achievement that motivates me to climb. Now, It’s because of the 4 big letters: RISK. Because of the RISK I take, I am getting so much closer to not only the beautiful Mother Nature that only the climbers can enjoy, but also the ugly and the beautiful sides of my own nature. Because of this closeness to the truth, I have learned so much wisdom about living my life. If you have been following my rock climbing journals, you know that I’ve learned how to conquer the fear, how to be persistent, how to say NO to quitting-acts, how to believe in myself and how to be supportive and patient with others. Such wisdoms I have acquired and applied have been the greatest rewards.

I think the excitement of the RISK and the reward of taking such a RISK has to be the top reason why the extreme sport lovers do what they do.

Where Is The Equation?
So, I know I can die because of the nature risk comes with rock climbing. But this is what I love to do. So where is the equation?

Paul Shultheis once said, “Until you know the worst that could possibly happen and the best that could possibly happen… your equation is incomplete.”

Hmm… Maybe I still choose to believe that as a top roper and a moderate lead climber, the worst that could possibly happen to me are some nasty scratches. However, if I start to raise a family , or moving through the higher climbing categories, I am sure the equation will be rebalanced.

For now, let’s climb on!

If you ask any rock climbers what the most difficult part of this sport is, you might get different answers. For me, the most difficult part is not mastering the techniques nor dealing with the fear but to find a steady partner.

It sucks that rock climbing is something you can’t do by yourself. So in order to find someone to climb with, I pretty much did all the marketing work I could do to advertise myself. I didn’t even need to try that hard to find a guy.

Initially, I didn’t have any problems finding people to respond to my Ad. But once I started to climb with them and tried to make plans to climb every week, everybody became a no show like a lousy boyfriend. Most of people just won’t climb every other day. Period. I kept on placing comments and ads on websites to try my luck. Finally, a guy named Rick agreed to climb. And amazingly, he stuck around. Not only he stuck around, we expanded the team together by dragging a few more guys from work and absorbing a few more single lonely climbers from the gym into the group. Without making plans, everybody started to show up routinely on every Tuesdays and Thursdays. At one point, I had 8 climbing partners. I was the happiest climber on the planet at that time cuz I never need to worry about belayer shortage.

Happy time didn’t last long. My once rock solid climbing team started to collapse just a few weeks ago. Some left town, some had family issues and some are stuck at work. Even my most reliable original partner Rick is bailing the walls for the dancing floors. He tried to convert me to a salsa dancer too. But I still have the hots for the cold rocks.

Today is Tuesday, I went to the climbing gym as usual only finding myself standing in the middle of the gym with no belayer. Boy, this world changes fast… I don’t usually hit on guys. But I find myself in a situation that I just had to if I wanted a belayer. “Hey!..” “Hi… Do you have a partner? Oh, you do…sorry…” I started to feel embarrassed. Finally, a nice guy named Stan whom I climbed with long time ago recognized me and offered a hand.

Ok, I lucked out today but what about this coming Thursday? The guy I found on the Internet hasn’t responded yet. It’s funny that in the dating scenes, guys are usually the ones who have to knock on every girl’s E-door and sometimes have to face rejections.. In the climbing world, I find myself, a not-so-bad-but-not-so-good climber who demands multipe climbs a week is having tremendous amount of trouble finding a “rock date”.

My friends mountaincurmudgeon and Chalk Abuser have been steady climbing partners for years. They are lucky to be each other’s “Prince Charming” on the rock. I wish one day I can find my own “Harness Abuser” to climb peak after peak with me. For now, I am searching more sites and typing up more Ads…

There is not much choice other than keep trying and keep hoping when it comes to finding a partner. I guess the principle applies to any kind of partner such as mating, life long sharing and even rock climbing.

Ok, for those of you who have been reading my blog for a while probably would have a hard time believing it was me, shaking and crying on the rock in the picture. After all, I am not a bad climber who’s supposed to look like this.

I was scared and frustrated after a rope was wrapped around my neck and almost strangled myself. Then, everything just fell apart. Fearing other scary stuff would happen to me, I panicked the whole way up and had a hard time coming down. I kept screaming, “I can’t! I am higher than the anchor! I don’t feel the tension of the rope! I can’t come down!!!” Up there as shown in the picture, I dropped a few tears.

It’s amazing how we suddenly change our acts when the fear takes over. Doug, our team leader said to me while we were taking a break, “You know, fear is all in your mind and it is a conscious decision you make. You know the rope system very well and you know nothing will happen…” I guess he is right. At that moment, when the rope was wrapped around my neck and when my belayer pulled it, the choking feel sent a sharp panic attack signal to my brain. I wasn’t mentally strong enough to fight it. Or, I should say, I DECIDED that I wasn’t mentally strong enough to fight the fear.

It’s also amazing what we can do when we set the fear aside. I went back on it again an hour late and it was a much smoother climb. Although I jammed my left hand in the rock and injured my index finger, I still managed to reach to the top with only three fingers. And I was smiling down. I even danced on a cave route later that day.

The difference? I took a hard look at the logic of the rope system and my trusted belayers. I knew very well that I wouldn’t fall nor being scratched up unless I climb carelessly myself. So I tried to stick with that thought.

It’s never easy to set the fear aside when we are facing any scary situations. As hard as it sounds, one way to wear the fear down is to analyze your surroundings and focus on the logical facts. When we toss those “what ifs” and “buts” aside, things can get a little clearer for us.

Ok, enough of the mumbo jumbo philosophy stuff… Check out the complete album of my Castlewood Canyon Climb.

Half of my climbing group went to Boulder Canyon this weekend to climb some serious rocks (check out the photos). It was also my first time trying a 5.9 all-crack route. Usually the regular climbers don’t feel comfortable with cracks since you can’t hold on to the surface rock; rather, you have to stick your hands and/or toes in the cracks.

Anyway, I wasn’t really sure if I could do it. When I hit the spot where everybody got stuck, my seasoned climbers started to give me instructions on where I should put my hands. I normally would try a few times before I start to ask for some help. Since the instruction was already given, I didn’t bother to try my own way. Instead, I tried to do what I was suggested to do – jam my hand inside of the crack to hold on.
“My hand is too small. I can’t jam my hand in the crack!” I responded to my fellow climbers after my hand kept on slipping through the crack.
“Christine, stick your hand deeply in the smallest crack and try it again.” I did find a smaller section of the crack. “Boy, that really hurts!!” Despite the complain, I gave it a shot anyway. WHAM! My hand slipped again and I fell off the rock with a scratch and some loss of skin. OUCH! OUCH! F#&@ IT! I am doing it my way!!!

Ever since I started climbing regularly, I developed a habit to tilt my body 90 degree and climb side ways. I also like to pull the hand holds and stick my feet up to gain some balance while I am doing side climbing. Guess what, it works great on cracks! Looks like trying my own way isn’t a bad idea.

Sometimes the advice from experts can’t fit all sizes. We may have to add our own ingredients to make things work. Although I will never turn down advice and suggestions from the experts, I am not afraid to try my own signature moves either. (Same principle applies to anything from blogging to bedroom activities. )

Yesterday, I went for my first lead climbing training. For those of you who don’t care for the rock climbing terms, it is a type of climb that you will have to take the rope up instead of climbing with a tight rope. The difference? If you slip, lead climb can cause you to fall at least a few feet instead of a few inches.

My instructor Matt was teaching all the rookies how to take a fall. As part of the training, everybody has to go to the top and take a 5,6 feet fall to have a feel of what it is like. So I went for it too. I was the last one up, so everybody was paying attention to Matt on the ground when he was explaining to my belayer how to do a dynamic catch (a correct way to catch a falling climber). So I stood on the top for a while waiting for them to finish the conversation and forgot to clip in my rope to the last draw and the top bolt. Nobody noticed it. “Ok, Christine, Let it go… “ Matt shouted. “Ok.. here we go… “ I let go of both my hands and feet. WHAM! The next thing I knew, I was free falling through half of the wall and lifted my roockie belayer in the air. I had to kick the wall so I wouldn’t slam my body into it and hurt my ankle a little bit.

I know I will take a fall sometime down the road if I start to lead climb. But I never anticipated falling 20 feet on my first 5.7 lead. Not to mention shooting my belayer into the air. But it is all good experience. After taking that fall, I wasn’t scared of falling anymore and got my first 5.8 lead climb. Yep! A 5.8 lead without falling!

My ankle may not be happy, but I am glad that I got the first hand experience in the early phase. I did learn something important though. If you ever going to start lead climbing, PICK A GOOD LEAD BELAYER and CLIP IN YOUR ROPE! Lead belaying is much harder than climbing itself. The guy has to know exactly how much rope he is giving to you and how to catch you properly to keep you off the ground or taking hard falls. I fell that much also because my belayer gave me way too much rope than I needed. And practice, practice and practice. I don’t think I will ever lead belay anybody without a top roper or auto belaying device until I get REAL GOOD at it.