Yosemite tweetup Trip Report, Insights, and reflections

I like to think about climbing, a lot. I must, I do it daily whether I’m climbing or not. On the other hand I have never taken many photos of my climbing adventures and written only a few trip reports. It’s somewhat unique that this is the second trip report that I have posted here. There are a couple reasons for this. One, I want to make an effort to remember all the great people I have climbed with and the places we have been. Memories fade despite our best efforts. Only way to keep it fresh is to put it down somewhere for future reference.

Second, I tend to reflect on my experiences. Some trips feel really good and no questions linger. Other times you’re left wondering why the trip felt slightly out of place or why you weren’t “in the zone” on some climbs. Kinda like a guitar that is almost in tune. I was left with that feeling following this recent trip. I never attribute any of my feelings or perceptions to the actions of others. Whatever the world feels like is all me, that I know. I’m writing about my colors of perception. Those perceptions are the result of the lens through which I view things, nothing else. I guess that’s a disclaimer of sorts. Bottom line, I love all you guys.

Our trip was the result of conversations about a Jtree tweetup. During those conversations @nsmonkeygirl said she had a campsite in Yosemite all lined up but no one to occupy it. Didn’t take long to find five willing souls to head to the valley and help her out.

Seems everyone arrived on Friday except me. I got there around 9AM Saturday and camp already looked pretty lived in. Breakfast activities were under way and few introductions were necessary. I had met and climbed with @nsmonkeygirl and @katiebeth. I had yet to meet @sudarkoff, @lizzy_t, and @lstefurak. You’ll notice that I use the twitter user names. This was all possible because we all met through twitter. Really, a great way to meet others with similar interests. May be just me, but it always feels a little odd going to a party where you don’t know anyone. At least that wasn’t the case here. We all had plenty of tweets between us to get a feel for each other. I find it really interesting when you put a face to the tweets. It demonstrates just how limited electronic communication can be. Meeting people fer real is far more satisfying and interesting

Luke and Lizzy are southern California sun bunnies for the most part. Lizzy recently relocated to the Bay Area to attend Stanford. Seems she picked the right field for a climber, Geology. George and Nina are also Bay Area residents, and Katie came up from Fresno. Me, I’m a “mid” California resident, more mountain than valley. Yosemite isn’t that far so I had the luxury of sleeping in on Saturday. Anyway, it wasn’t long before everyone was together and wondering where to go. I think it was Luke that suggested we head to Pat and Jack Pinnacle. I’ll have to take him at his word that he isn’t a “valley rat”. I will say his instincts were good and P&J Pinnacle was a great idea. I hadn’t been there in years, and only once before.

I was pretty psyched to climb. I set my sights on Knob Job a nice 10b crack. It looked pretty straight forward with good gear. KB was gonna belay while I led. We had climbed After Six together some months before. Her first multi-pitch trad climb I might add. She’s a quick study and climbs in the gym regularly, so I felt pretty good about tackling Knob Job with her. There was a day when climbing it would have been pleasant outing and not a challenge. Many reasons for the change. The point is to be successful climbing close to your limit requires certain things to be in place. I found out that not all things were for me.

Knob Job runs vertically up a series of parallel cracks. A couple of switches gets you through the pitch. The crux is about 2/3rds the way up. “The crux can be done three ways: insecure and delicate climbing in the flared finger crack, the usual technique of liebacking the (hard to spot) right crack, or perhaps the easiest way, by transferring entirely into the right crack and cranking to the jugs” (courtesy of Supertopo). I climbed most of it without incident, ran out sections I could, and set decent pro when I needed it. It was the crux bit to the big jugs that gave me fits. In reflecting on the trouble I had there, I realize a number of factors at work.

I was a little surprised that I was running out of gas near the top. I have been bouldering on a regular basis all summer. The lesson seems to be all that short stuff doesn’t prepare you for a full pitch of crack. I have done very few long routes in recent years and it showed. On a personal note, I am tired of climbing well below what I know I’m capable of, and had previously been. This little climb proved to be a real wakeup call. Its gonna motivate me to get off my butt and do something about it. I also realized something else. In other posts I have touched on the subject of leading and fear. I learned something about comfort, confidence, and committing as it relates to conditions around you, and how those things impact your performance.

The crux section had a good crack out right, slightly hidden from view. I made several attempts to climb this section straight up the thin bottoming tips crack without use of the crack to my right. I didn’t see it. I was already slightly burned, and my failed attempts made it worse. By the time I realized I had a bomber crack to work with my arms were really pumped. It also required a high-step to a knob. That’s a challenge for me anyway since my back was fused. So there I was, decent pro, flamed arms, and doubt. Doubt, fear, call it what you want. What I needed right then and there was a serious commitment to make the move. You know how it is. Climbing requires all-or-nothing commitment at certain times to make difficult moves. Often we blow ourselves away when we make the most improbable moves because we commit fully.

This wasn’t really a case of mind blowing. I just needed to go for it to make the move. It started with the pro. I didn’t have exactly what I wanted, but I had two pieces. Still there were reservations. Second, I had a belayer that I had climbed with just once. Fear is an irrational thing at times, but insecurities were creeping. Factors are additive and it affected my level of committment. I was limited mentally as much as physically. The point about belayers that I would like to make is this; familiarity. I have old partners that I climbed with for years, and you get to a point where having them hold your rope is as comforting as clipping a 1/2in bolt. You never second guess it. A lack of familiarity is one more small thing, not immediately apparent, that impairs committment.

Belayers are part of the protection chain. Many of us can be hesitant to fall on good bolts. It could take many falls to become comfortable that these things will protect us. Why should our belayers be any different? This is a revelation to me because I’ve had the luxury of climbing with the same people for years. The gear was an issue but I’ve dealt with crappy gear before. In retrospect, it was a good thing that I fell about six times. It gave me an opportunity to develop comfort and trust with my relatively new partner. She caught me every time I had no reasonable fear that I would be dropped to my death. Like I said, some of this can be irrational.

It was also my responsibility to make sure my signals were clear and understood. I took it for granted (because I always could) that yelling “Take” would get a certain reaction as “Falling” would get something else. When it got difficult I lapsed into a kind of auto-mode. I couldn’t reasonably expect anyone to belay me in the manner that I had been used to with partners of 10 years, no way. Nor is it reasonable to think I would be as comfortable. It just added to my lack of committing to the move. So I flailed, badly. It got to a point where I saw Luke coming up and asked if he wanted to finish the pitch. I’m glad now that he was busy climbing something else.

Something inside got really pissed off at that moment. I could climb this stupid thing. I’d done routes grades harder in the past. Now I’m one move from the money jugs and I wanted to bail? That’s what it takes sometimes. I heard a quote that I’m gonna keep close from now on. I heard it in an interview from Peter Croft “you can have an epic fail or a mediocre success”. It’s a little out of context here, but letting Luke finish it would have been less than mediocre. So I went for epic fail. Gear pulls, belayer drops me, screw fear and doubt just go for it. It was all irrati0nal anyway.

Then I did the move. Fully flamed out, barely able to pull the money jugs down, but I did it because I committed fully. Kinda anti-climatic in a way. KB followed, climbed and cleaned the pitch like a pro. She even got the nut out that I fell on six times. Not easy as it sounds. We rapped and talked briefly at the bottom about signals, but I think I left some details out. I hope my experience didn’t impact hers. It doesn’t matter if your climbing with experienced climbers or not. New partners need to sit down and go over all the details before a climb. Taking things for granted gets folks hurt. Its just one little factor that may have consequences when other factors are added. It may also help with the familiarity issue.

That’s enough of my postmortem reflections. The rest of the day was spent around the base. Everyone took a shot at TR’ing a 12a that Luke led with style. Gotta say, that dude can climb. I heard he just did Free Blast twice in the same weekend. That’s funny because I remember him saying he was strong, but might not be ready for those long routes. Nice try luke, I didn’t buy it for a minute. I’m not sure that attempting something that far above one’s current abilities is very useful, but it is fun to try. It also turned out that I was on the cusp of getting sick, which I have been all week. As we were standing around my energy levels went south. I just figured it was sleep or stress. Possibly another factor in my flame out on Knob Job (ya that’s it).

All in all it was great to build on new friendships and spend time getting to know everyone. We headed back to camp and Lizzy and Luke generously made some delicious curry dinner for everyone. Thanx guys, you’re hired We sat around the campfire, played cards, had some music, talked and got some snow later that night. The snow was unanticipated (by me at least). I scoffed at the Wx report. My experience says they’re usually off when calling for 30% chance of anything. Okay, one for the Wx man.

There were plans to climb Sunday, but that was shelved when we woke up to snow. It was actually kinda nice. As I was sharing a cup of coffee with KB that morning things felt quite peaceful. It was kinda cold so maybe the coffee just tasted better. I hope we do it again next year. There is the JTree tweetup coming and it looks like about 15 – 20 folks are signed on. That should be a blast. Now I just gotta figure out how I can make it. If I do make it, I hope KB will be there. If she’s belaying me I know I can commit, assuming all my other doubts are in check. On second thought, it may be time for me to belay her. Yes?

I still don’t take many pics, but I’m working on it. See if you can guess who the skydiver is in the photo.

See ya’ll next year