Little Bang Theory

Yesterday I had the pleasure of being invited out by some climbing friends, and without ever putting a hand on the rock (I’m not functionally ready for that yet) I had a blast!

The crew for the day:

Tanya, Neko, Tim and Brian.

We went to nearby Farley Ledge, where there’s a burgeoning “climbing scene” with people coming from all over to enjoy both the Sport climbing (with permanent “fixed” bolt anchors) and the “Trad” climbing (where climbers place their own removable anchors as they progress.) Being an Old Fart who grew up climbing before Sport climbing even existed, I tend to prefer the “clean climbing” ethic of leave-no-trace Trad climbing. But that’s just me, and I’ve accepted Sport as a valid variation of the vertical game.

Here’s Tanya climbing one of the Sport routes, Eye Opener :

The section of the crag with mostly Sport routes was pretty crowded though, so we beat feet to an upper tier of walls where the Trad scene still prevails, and I hope it remains that way - it’s beautiful up there, cloaked in hemlocks and looking a lot less worn.

Here’s Brian starting up the unfortunately aptly named Dirty Corner :

These first few moves (and the last few as well!) were the “cruxes” of this climb, that is, the most difficult moves, which inform the difficulty rating of the climb. I misremembered the rating, having not climbed this route in perhaps twenty five years, and told Brian that it was mostly 5.6 climbing, with a few moves of 5.8 at the start and finish. Turns out it was at least 5.9, a considerable jump in difficulty from the lower grades. Sorry Folks!

Tim high up on the route:

I had a great time hanging my butt off the top of this sweeping wall - I haven’t had a climbing harness on in a year!

Next, Tim lead a really nice face climb, moving delicately on thin face-holds and finding adequate opportunities to place “protection” in the propitiously spaced horizontal cracks:

Nice job, man!

It was pretty chilly in the deep shade, and Tanya and Neko snuggled up for a nice warm nap:

Aren’t they cute?

We’d almost packed up to leave when Brian, an inveterate Crack Master, succumbed to the Siren song of Peapod Crack, one of my favorite climbs at Farley, and perhaps in all of Southern New England. It more nearly resembles Out-West granite climbing (the rock here is gneiss,) with straight-ahead hand jamming and lay-backing being the techniques-du-jour:

Having my cameras with me took the sting out of not climbing. I actually missed it less than I thought I might, and was pretty content to just noodle around snapping off pictures. I’ll be doing a lot more of that as the season progresses and I get some strength back in my arms and shoulders - I’m (insert best Deiter vioce) as weak as a little guuhl!

At work:

Naw, I’m not bored at all - why do you ask??

Back in the early ’80s, it became “fashionable” for rock climbers to wear lycra-spandex tights.

Yeah, I know, “It boggles the mind!”

But there’s more. Add to that unfathomable fad the tendency of climbers of the day to be as over-the-top as possible (at least here in The East, where the New York-based Vulgarians set the standard for hard climbing and fast living in the ’60s.)

The result: a riotous explosion of Fashion Disasters in High Places. Don’t eat the Brown Acid, kids. There’s no telling what you’ll see!

I swore I’d never wear lycra, and often quoted the respected blue-jeaned West Coast climber Ron Kauk: “John Wayne never wore lycra.” (Best said with a spit and a snarl.)

But then a friend of mine started manufacturing lycra-spandex tights, and did quite well on the retail end of it. Except that his “smalls” were a tad too small for normal people.

So rather than pitching the lot, and despite (or perhaps because of) my frequent rants in opposition thereof, he gifted them all to me.

Thanks, Ed.

Now at that time Ed and I climbed together several times a week, and… not wanting to be a cad…

I started wearing lycra.

And damn, don’tcha know, they were comfortable! And they offered total freedom of movement, good stuff for climbing. And they covered all of my skin, which high-mobility shorts never did.

So I spent the better part of the next decade climbing in lycra-spandex tights, and in true Vulgarian form, the more garrulous the better.

Well, a generation or so later, you’ll never guess what I found…

The Box!

Well, OK, some of you guessed.

So set the children up (in another room) with some milk and cookies, then come back here and give me your honest opinion:

……….

……….

……….

Ready?

The Mescaline Dreams

or The Mammalian Frog?

Had a good time this past weekend, playing Lame-O. Never put the climbing shoes on, just skulked around, clicking away and trying to make the photo look like the moment did.

My friend Jed on Sugarhouse Rock:

Jake on “When Big Joan Sets Up” at The Steelhead:

Vicarious thrills for this (temporary) bench-sitter!

Phydeaux’s recently posted video of the (B)Lair Woods got me thinking, “Don’t I have an old video kickin’ around here?”

‘Deed I Do!

Here’s my virst video effort, taken before my shoulder totally, completely shit the bed. The quality sucks, but I’ve since learned that my camera’s card can accommodate a higher-resolution vid without choking.

Hope this works:

Oh, and the sound is way down, so if ya wanna hear me grunt, turn it up!

P.S., Thanks to Mark at WordPress for the solution to my posting problem.  Their tech help, when I’m bright enough to use it, is great!

Hoo-eee, there’s pavement, and daylight, and electricity, and… my ‘puterbox!!!

Hi Y’all (pulls pine needles and dried leaves from scalp)! Good to be back (removes smoked jeans and annealed undies)! Ya shoulda been there (just kiddin)!

So my Gathering of Climbing Dirtbags was a huge success, eliciting unintelligible moans of presumed pleasure from The Flatlanders who were enticed to visit the Great North Woods, despite their preconceptions of the dismal climbing to be found in these parts.

Little did they know.

But NOW they know. I served them up a smorgasboard of lithic loveliness which had them massaging their groins in anticipation, and later, drooling all over each other in their feeble attempts to describe their experiences (as though we weren’t all there to see how it unfolded.)

The Jon snagged the best line of the day, which he named Caravan (as is the prerogative of the First Ascentionist):

Thirty feet of really steep, thin climbing. The man’s got a head on ‘em. Kudos, my friend.

Other stuff went down, including Holedondita, sent by Nate

and The Coffin, here worked by my friend John:

I tell ya, as a broken old fart, I was roundly impressed.

So despite its dismal failure as a fund-raiser, the weekend was a super get-together of climbers from the larger region. And despite my inability to participate in the climbing, I enjoyed scurrying around with my camera and watching folks enjoy the fruits of my months-long labors, cleaning the boulders and making the surrounds inviting.

I’m already psyched for next year’s gathering!

And there’s less time to play outdoors after work.

Unless you bring a lantern

Welcome Autumn, the best time to climb in New England.

And me all lame and shit.

…But I’m gonna tell you anyway

I’ve spent a lifetime playing hard: rock climbing, ice climbing, mountaineering, caving, rafting, whitewater canoing - I’ve done them all, both recreationally and professionally. And being a Safety Nazi (you have to be when you have a couple dozen sixth graders in tow) I’ve never used more than a band-aid on a client, and seldom suffer more than a sprain or strain when I’m out pushing the envelope with my Buds.

But as I age, all those “minor” discomforts are coming back to bite me in the ass (well, let me rephrase that… ) in the form of unexpected injuries of disproportional magnitude.

For instance, two years ago I did this to my left forearm by wrapping it around a door jamb on a midnight piss-run.

The interesting part is the bones, though.

Thirty-five years of teaching high adventure skills and I shatter my forearm while taking a leak. Go figure.

So at the Green River Festival this July, while dancing in the bright sunshine to some great music, with puffy white clouds floating overhead, birdies chirping and pretty women smiling all around, I hit a zero-ounce beach ball which was festively wafting from reveler to reveler, and almost friggin’ COLLAPSED with the pain in my shoulder.

The subsequent MRI looks like this:

This is my left shoulder. The white ball is my humeral head; the little dark teardrop adjacent to it at 9 o’ckock is the end of my biceps muscle.

It should be attached to the TOP of the humeral head. Obviously, it’s not.

Shoulda gone climbing.

So now I have to choose between gradual loss of function in my left arm, possibly resulting in major muscular atrophy and a change of career and hobbies, or surgery which will purportedly leave me with a year of disability and a fair chance of 80% recovery.

Thanks a lot, Hobson.

But you don’t get to the top of a mountain (or anywhere else worth getting to) by being a quitter. I’m trying to schedule the surgery for this coming January. Meanwhile I’m trying to improve my balance by finding “no hands” climbing problems, improve my flexibility by stretching on a daily basis and get my cardio up to speed by dusting off my mountain bike and pumping up the ol’ tires.

Wish me luck!

In the high country of Monroe, where it’s always 10 degrees cooler.

With the road closed due to a busted bridge and the sound of the waterfall over my shoulder, it was good.

…So there was this rock I wanted to climb, but it was really, really wet at its base, with a little bit of standing water and a LOT of mud.

Plus it had a big old rotted log across its front, apparently the iron-hard heartwood of a very large fallen maple tree.

So I brought my chain saw out there last week, cut the log into five large pieces (about three hundred pounds each) and chucked it / rolled it away from the boulder. Then I cleaned out under the boulder, dug a small drainage ditch, lined it with rocks and went looking for larger stones to roof over my little canal.

I found a perfect slab of gneiss, two inches thick by four feet long and twenty inches wide. I wished it was a foot or two longer, but hey, it was a good start, and after half an hour of lugging the thing through the woods to my work-site, I was pleased that it fit so nicely!

Another half-hour search produced another flat rock, not as nice as the first, but it was getting late, so I grabbed it and hucked it into place, and my canal was finished.

Then I went up on top of the boulders to admire my handy-work, and…Holy Cow!

It’s a miracle! A Giant Penis sighting in the woods of Monroe! Quick, take a picture, the guys down at the bar will never believe this!

So I took a picture and I’ll let YOU decide: Is that a friggin’ miracle, or what????