The Seasons are a'changing....

My friend dD has this theory that we "push" the seasons. In the fall, while it's still OK for rock climbing, we're itching for ice. We trash our ski bases on junk snow, then don't take advantage of the season's best conditions in late March and April 'cause we want warm rock... It's like we need to re-calibrate our seasonal aspirations about a month later, so we get the most out of each season. But no, we're not like that, and I'm out lusting after warm rock even though the ice hasn't melted out. I had hopes to get one more big ice rig done this season, but it has by all reports melted out, and, ah, I wanna go rock climbing... And fly my glider, and paddle my boat. In short, I'm fully over winter. OK, maybe a few ski turns on a warm spring morning when the corn is perfect, but I do not want to feel the claws of winter again. That said, this is Canada, and it can snow in August and probably will.

Happy Spring!!

Showing up, getting up.

The last blog article prompted some really good words from people, thanks for that. I started writing this in response to those comments, it grew into what follows...

I will NEVER look down on anyone in the gym or who is just breathing hard because anyone who has simply shown up and truly tried has done a great thing. All of us are athletes when we're moving, the relative level of that athleticism is far less important than the act of moving. I have been very unfit, injured, depressed, stressed-out or just plain non-functional an annoying amount of my life. I've also been so psyched and motivated that nothing else but the session mattered. But no matter where you are mentally or physically just showing up in the gym or simply breathing hard is a statement of hope, an expression of, "I'm gonna fucking try." And that's cool. Most of the "developed" world is devolving into couch ornaments, so anyone who just shows up to breathe hard is truly a hero in my book.

In the gym I train at most regularly there's an older lady who comes occasionally. She moves slowly, stiffly, but she's my hero because she moves, and because she's in there. I sometimes think of her when I'm a bit stiff or tired, and I know she would still go, so I do too. There's a great group of young kids who train so hard that I often train at the same time just to watch them and try and to keep up with their energy. There's an older guy (well, not much older than me!) who has taken low-income living to an art form; he's too cheap to buy a chalkbag, but he's my hero because he's in there. When I see a truly fat person running or just hiking up a hill I invariably want to start cheering from the bottom of my heart out loud, but I don't 'cause I don't want to scare 'em or make them feel bad somehow. Some little pretzel dude running along like a damn gazelle? That's cool and all, but moving athletically with an extra person strapped to you? Now that's an athletic accomplishment I can't dream of but that truly inspires me. Maybe these people don't "train" in the same way I look at it, but they are busting a move, and that's powerful. Winning isn't always about winning something. Often it's about just showing up, and anyone who shows up and does his or her best is my hero.

But if anyone is actually training to be better at whatever level then I want them to not waste the time I have doing useless repetitions of useless exercises. I also believe time spent doing any sport should be fun, exciting and challenging. If it isn't some combination of those things then nobody is going to keep at it. There must be a million barely used treadmills put into landfills every year. The following edited lyrics from Fugazi sum up a lot of things in my mind:

I am a patient boy
I wait, I wait, I wait, I wait
My time is water down a drain

Everybody's moving
Everybody's moving
Everything is moving,
Moving, moving, moving

Please don't leave me to remain
In the waiting room

Sitting outside of town
Everybody's always down
(Tell me why)

Because they can't get up
(Ahhh... Come on and get up)
(Come on and get up)

But I won't sit idly by
(Ahhh...)
I'm planning a big surprise
I'm gonna fight
For what I want to be

And I won't make the
same mistakes
(Because I know)
Because I know how much
time that wastes
(And function)
Function is the key

-Fugazi

I hope everyone found what was needed today, be it sore lats, time with their kids, or just a smile out of something new in life. Now I gotta go train, thinking about all this just got me too fired up. Get up!

Training, Sickness (not the good kind)

Training thought of the day:

I travel a lot, and get to see a lot of climbing gyms. This gives me an insight into how people are training not only at my local gym but around the world. I could write about climbing gym fashion (England loses, the USA wins, Canada does well), but I'm personally annoyed at the moment. I'm annoyed because wasted effort, especially my own, annoys me. Sometimes wasted time and effort can be funny to watch (my dog chasing sticks), but if the goal of training is to get better then wasting time is just that. It just grates on me to see people "training" who won't get any improvement out of what they're doing. I can't help it, and find it funny to make this realization even while being powerless to reduce the feeling of annoyance. I'm like a dog with a stick...

Anyhow, here's how the training scene at many gyms works: The women walk in, talk to the guys, then sit down and stretch for 15 or 20 minutes. They are often very flexible, and show it off. Then they boulder for a bit on the longer endurance problems or lead on the less-steep walls, and often can't hold any reasonable body tension to save their lives. They rely on their relatively good contact strength (often women are lighter and have relatively good contact strength) and endurance to climb. Often they won't dyno, and stay away from the steeper terrain in the gym.

The guys walk in, talk to the women, and then stretch for about two minutes before jumping on the big rungs of the campus board, Bachar ladder or the steepest terrain in the gym with the biggest holds. They then do pullups, pushups, and join the women for a few rounds of ab crunches or some other useless maneuver that will result only in more buffed abs. And before someone his thong in a knot, there are many women who can do a front lever and many men who can do the splits. I'm working with the stereotypes I see.

Now, I might be missing the entire point of "training." Maybe it's to build better abs and look manly/womanly to the opposite sex in the gym. Henry Rollins does a good skit about this. But what the women usually need to be doing is training true core strength; this means the ability to put their feet onto holds and keep them there on overhanging terrain. They also could use some more bicep/lat power, and learn how to dyno. The men could use front-lever style training too in general, as well as more contact strength, better flexibility and always, always loads more endurance... Seldom does a man fall off a route because he can't pull up with his arms; it's almost always because he can't hold onto the 20th hold on the route. If you're a man think about the last time you fell off; was it your forearms or biceps that weren't working?

But we never want to train what we're BAD at. Women are good at stretching in general, so they "train" by stretching. Men are often better at arm burl, so they "train" that. Last night I saw a guy with buff biceps and lats crank laps up and down a ladder; but he couldn't do an endurance problem that should be piss-easy for him if he had anywhere near the relative endurance that he had power in his arms. I watched a woman repeatedly flail at putting her foot on a small hold at waist level while hanging on small holds... It should be an "easy" move relative to what she could hang onto.

Jim Karn once berated me (he likely doesn't even remember the day) for training my strengths. That lecture stuck, and it's been reinforced over the years by many more high-end climbers and personal experience. I used to be terrible at holding onto pockets, like many North Americans of the era. I then spent months hanging onto pockets on a finger board, and today I'd say my pocket strength is slightly better than my crimp strength. My power endurance still sucks; I now train primarily on crimps and non-crimped "contact" strength power endurance when training for rock, 'cause that's what I suck at relatively speaking... The trick is to recognize your ever-evolving weaknesses and work primarily on those. Yeah, we all need to stay well-rounded, but most of us roll far more like triangles than wheels while climbing if we make an honest assessment of our climbing strengths and weaknesses. Even if we try to focus on our weaknesses we'll still probably end up training our strengths too much anyhow. My goal is to be able to walk up to an overhanging jug fest or a gently overhanging Rockies limestone slab fest and get to the top at roughly the same grade. If I can reliably on-sight 5.12 cave routes and yet fall off pimpy 5.11 routes then I'm not the climber I want to be...

That's today's rant. After two weeks of feeling like a one-person mucous factory I'm coming back at it. I'm still focused on ice and mixed climbing, but spring is calling, and my spring resolution is to build my contact strength up. I'll also be seeing my shrink about my annoyance problem, and some other weaknesses in my life that would take 50 blog entries to cover. I'm constantly training to remove weakness both from my body and mind; sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't, but that's why training today is as interesting as it ever was. The challenge is the challenge...

Hunlen Photos

Hunlen Falls: 280M, 5.9 A2* Tweedsmuir Provincial Park, BC.
Will Gadd and EJ Plimley, with help from David Dornian, Andrew Querner, Scott Simper and Christian Pondella.
*5.9 A2 is the standard Canadian Rockies grade for any climb. How the hell do you even begin to grade something like this? It just makes no sense with traditional ice, rock or M grades. Maybe 5.10 A2, it was kinda hard.

Still haven't had time to write about the rig, but here are a couple of Christian Pondella photos:

Two down, one to go

I'm the kind of tired you only get after a week of non-stop going as hard as you possibly can. EJ Plimley, Scott Simper, Christian Pondella and I just got back from Hunlen Falls, located between Williams Lake and Bella Coola. Google the rig, it's big. We sent. I'm up against it with all the life stuff that's accumulated over the last two weeks of travel (four days after being in Japan I was sitting on the side of a frozen lake in Tweedsmuir park with a huge mound of gear and wondering, "What the hell just happened???), but I'll post up with some photos etc. once they are loaded off the computer. It was the best climb of my life for many reasons--people, place, effort required to get it done, climbing (no bolts, all natural gear, full madness on overhanging spray ice), just the full-meal deal on a big rig.

That makes two (the still-"secret" Jimmy Skid Rig was the first February 20th edit: Not so secret anymore) out of three for the big routes I wanted to get done this season. There are three options for the last route, conditions and travel tolerance will determine the final effort. Last year I was injured, I am fully determined to make this year the best climbing season I've ever had. It already is--getting just one of these monsters done would normally be enough, but I have this complete psyche for winter climbing right now that's pushing me to blow off all sorts of responsibilities and get out CLIMBING. The one thing I can't blow off is my family, I'm glad they understand the madness on a personal level, and that I will recover some degree of sanity when the ice melts.

Game on! I just need a bit of sleep first...

PS--The current issue of the ESPN mag has a story on some ice-climbing poseur. Don't believe the hype, but the author did a good job in my opinion, or at least he didn't make the poseur or ice climbers in general look more psychotic than we usually do... Nice one Tim.

Japan Cup, and real fitness

Japan Cup:

This was a great event, full of life, energy, good climbers (strong!) and a great sporting attitude. One of the very best things about climbing for me are the great people I get to meet around the world. The Japan Cup was full of positive energy, psyche and love for the sport. It's not easy to be an ice climber in Japan; if you live in Tokyo you're driving for at least three hours to reach ice, and more likely five or so. The ice on Hokkaido is reportedly easier to reach, but still not "easy." To be a Japanese ice climber is to truly love the game of ice climbing.

In brief, the comp is held on 40-foot tall scaffolding built around the remnants of an old charcoal factory. It was a warm year, but there was still enough ice to get the job done, and the wall was massive and very well-built. The village, Kuni, is really supportive of the event and the structure. It's a bit like a Japanese version of Ouray--there's even a really nice hot spring!

I'm still jet-lagged after the short trip, but very happy to have been involved with such a great event. I set routes, taught a huge clinic and gave a show, but mainly came back with a strong appreciation for Japanese climbers. I am FOR SURE going back, thanks very much to everyone who helped me so graciously. Fantastic! I'm going to write an article about the event and will post a link when that's up.

Fitness:

A friend sent me this link. Insane. Totally insane.

The bags are now packed for the long drive north and west to the super-secret BC rig... Drive 12 hours, fly in, climb. I can't wait to get there and see if it's frozen up a bit more! More on that later, like in a week when  we get out...

Play safe enough,

WG

One down, two to go

February 20th edit: Not so secret anymore

For the last three weeks I've been hard at work with some friends on a new long mixed route. It's sick--long, hard, cool ice, wild place. On Friday we pretty much got it done, but we need to go back and sort a few things out to call it legitimately done. Leaving ropes and gear strewn all over the place does not constitute a successful ascent in my opinion, we need to clean our mess up. I'll post up once that's done, but I thought I'd share a few experiences on the route:

When I drop a tool I expect that it will stay dropped. As we rapped in the near-darkness I tied an orange Fusion onto a white 80M rope and lowered it toward the snow (the route overhangs so much that you're not anywhere near the route!) so I could see if the end reached. Normally I'd know it reached 'cause I'd rapped from the same stance before, but part of the rope was still hanging over my head 'cause it was attached to another rope that was very stuck somewhere farther up... I saw the tool land on the snow, turned around to help my bud start to rap, and turned around again to see the tool hovering in mid-air like some sort of bad science fiction horror movie. A few rocks swirled around with it; rocks! I have never seen rocks get ripped off reasonably flat ground and levitated into the air before! Later I read the historical weather from a weather station on a ridge close to us; the wind was gusting to over 160K (100MPH). We were in the lee, and the wind roaring up the face was still strong enough to cause chaos. I've never felt wind like that in the lee before, it was kinda frightening.

My partner rapped first, and I helpfully clipped my pack onto his harness so clearing out the belay cluster would be easier. Unfortunately the Fusion on the end of the rope managed to get stuck into something way off to the side, which resulted in some fun antics to get it unstuck. I watched my partner get blown through about a 100-foot arc and slam into the wall with two packs on, it wasn't good. His knee should heal soon, sorry about that!

The crux pitch is long, hard, and aggressive. Lots of lockoffs, front-lever style tension and general giving it all-out. I've been training for this route and another one for months, but it still took everything I had to get it done. Every lockoff, every one-handed deadhang from my tools and every front lever I'd done at the Vsion played a part in keeping it together on the redpoint. I was skipping clips, breathing like a horse and wobbling like a drunk when I finally reached the ice. I had to stand there on the vertical ice for ten minutes before I could swing a tool. I haven't been to that state of climbing in a while; where you decide that falling doesn't matter, clips don't matter, all that matters is GOING UP. The training, the psyche with my partner, it was all there in spades and worth all of it.

Now we just have to get the stuck ropes unstuck (actually, I think there are no less than NINE up there) and the other bits down. We ran from the base in the dark in a totally disorganized state as we were terrified of the rocks that were getting blown off the route, or maybe off the ground and then up and then down on our heads, it didn't matter which if one hit us. I watched a heavy 70M static stream directly up past my belay at one point that day, it sure was wild!

More on that route later, there's some unfinished business up there to clean up.

I'm off to Japan tomorrow for the 5th Japanese Cup competition, a show, a clinic, etc., back on Monday. Seems bizzare to go so far for so short a time, but there are two more routes here in Canada I'd like to finish up this season so the clock is fully ticking. One of them is a ski-plane ride and a long drive away, the other is right off the road... It's good to have projects, we'll see if they go down. And my friend Andreas Spak just emailed me from Norway--they're having an EPIC season there, the photos from one of his new routes might just drag me over there in March if I can still swing my tools...

The season is ON!

Carabiners: my opinion...

Carabiners are literally the pieces that hold all my climbing hardware together. Good carabiners are critical pieces of gear, but I see a lot of junk out there. Here are some of my thoughts on what works well for winter and summer climbing carabiners. I primarily use Black Diamond carabiners as that's who I work with, but invariably I end up using bits and pieces from other people's gear. The following is based around BD's line of 'biners but applicable to most carabiners

Locking Carabiners.

Screw-gates rule. Carabiners that "auto-lock" are great in the store, but hideous in real use most of the time. Do NOT use any neato self-locking carabiner in winter, doing so will only annoy the hell out of you and could be dangerous if it permanently freezes shut. It's easy to operate a screw-gate even with reasonably thick gloves on, but try to set up your belay device with an "auto-cluster" 'biner and you'll likely have to remove your gloves. You'll definitely have to remove your gloves if there is even a smidgen of ice or hard snow stuck into the mechanism, which there often is with auto-cluster biners. 

If you're doing a multi-pitch route and have to deal with a minimum of three locking carabiners (two on your ATC to belay the second, one on it to belay a leader, plus all the other uses for locking carabiners) per pitch you'll likely stop using auto-lockers after a few pitches due to the annoyance level. They are also a huge waste of time, even if they don't freeze shut. Figure an extra ten seconds per biner to sort it out with gloves on and that's an extra minute per pitch (six locking/unlocking cycles per pitch minimum). On a ten-pitch route that's ten minutes, or more if even one of the damned things freezes shut.

You're also more likely to drop your belay device or yourself--trying to open the auto-lock with gloves on while holding the rope and your device is an epic. Many "auto-lockers" totally cease functioning in wet and cold conditions, or at least stop locking  properly. With a basic screw gate these problems are almost always pretty quick to solve (whack the sleeve gently with a pin or ice tool, worst-case scenario hold the carabiner in your hand for a few seconds until it warms up), but with an auto-lock I've had to untie or cut cord to get the problem sorted before I froze to death or became so angry I hurled the whole mess off the cliff.

In summer I still like basic screw gates over auto-lockers, for many of the same reasons. It's common when doing multi-pitch routes to have to sort out various pieces of rope, cord and the anchors; this is near-impossible to do while holding the auto-locker open with one hand, rotating it, etc. I know many schools like to teach or guide with auto-lock biners, but if you're not a student then auto-"irritaters" are just that. Hint--if you're hanging at a belay and tighten your screw gates while hanging on them they will be hard to open. Loosen the screw gate before unloading the biner.

I do have a couple of smallish "pear" biners for belaying with, the rope runs smoother and belay devices tend not to get "stuck" in the angle. I keep these biners with my belay devices. I also have one weird old carabiner with a wide "spine," that one works well when using it with an ATC or other auto-block, if the ropes not totally loaded it's easier to feed slack by turning the 'biner.

Some people use the big auto-lockers for fixing ropes, as a screw-gate can be opened by contact with the rock.  When I'm climbing for myself with friends I generally use two non-locking carabiners with the gates reversed--nothing beats that, and it's still manageable if I have to move it around. For film or industrial rigging I use super-heavy steel biners, often auto-locks. In this situation I'm not pressed for time (even if I am), and want something ridiculously bomber in case of a very weird of very high-load situation, something that happens occasionally when working with power winches or hauling systems. I also won't be watching the rigging sometimes, so overkill is good. The auto-lock carabiners also deter people from messing with them...

General use carabiners:

Wire gates rule for most types of climbing. Anything else is too prone to blockage with ice and snow, and also reduces the span between the gate and the "spine" of the biner more than necessary. Most of the time I use the smallest, lightest biners I can get my hands on (the BD Oz or Neutrino). I carry a few huge wire gate biners to rack pins on (screws are racked on ice clippers). Sometimes old-school ovals are nice for racking on or clipping pins in confined locations, but an Oz will fit just about anywhere an oval will and some places an old-school oval won't. Aid climbers and other bondage fans also like ovals; enough said then.

The difference a rack of Oz biners (28g/1oz) makes to the total weight of a big rock rack can add up to several pounds. For example, if you're doing a big rock route you might have 48 or more carabiners between you and your partner (biners on two sets of cams, quickdraws, biners on slings, etc.). If you use an oval or other heavy (2 oz or more) biner your rack will weigh at least three pounds more. That's 1.5 liters of water, a six-pack of beer, six hamburgers, a huge belay jacket, you get the idea... 

For sport climbing I like draws with no "gate catches" on the bolt end, and a big-mouthed wire biner on the rope end. Cleaning draws off overhaning routes with gate catches sucks, they catch on the bolt. Big-mouthed wire-gate biners are really easy to clip the rope into, which is what you want. As an aside, any route where your belayer can still accurately toss you a beer after you've lowered off is a slab. Just wanted to clear that up.

I have a silly quantity of carabiners that I've gathered over the years. I just really like having the right tool for the job. Not to brag, but I probably have 200 biners and use 'em all. Even with all that I don't have enough to have the exact perfect setup for everything. I find myself building sets of quickdraws for alpine climbing (Oz biners on both ends, skinny long slings for the webbing), then rebuilding a set for sport cragging (Positrons and Live-Wires), and then yet another for mixed climbing (fat webbing that will take the abuse of tools stuck through the biner) with positrons and Live Wires, and then yet another for long free rock climbs... If I could only have one carabiner for everything I'd go with all Neutrinos, they are big enough to use for most things and light enough not to be a waste of metal. Hey, that's it, using fat carabiners isn't just heavy, it's an environmental waste too.

If I'm going new-routing I try to always bring a few "POS" biners to leave for raps. These 'biners will work for other stuff, unlike rap rings or Maillon Rapides (quicklinks), and make pulling the rope a lot easier.

That's how I see it. There are a thousand safety discussions to be had about carabiner choice, but this is what I've found works over the years. I've broken three carabiners over the years, and seen another half-dozen fail for one reason or another. Good carabiners are important, and remember that two non-lockers is better than about anything else for high-stress or "weird" situations. I've never seen two non-locking biners with the gates reversed fail.

Outliers

I'm in the midst of reading a very good book, Malcolm Gladwell's "Outliers." Although I'm only half-way through this book, it has already taught me a few interesting things (to be great hockey player you'd best be born in the first three months of the year). The first half of this book is much better in my opinion than his previous two books, both of which I read but didn't find much in that reading to inspire me. Outliers is different. Many of the ideas are, like most good ideas, seemingly obvious at first glance,  interesting with some thought and brilliant after some reflection (I read that math theorems also follow this progression of opinion). 

The best piece of information in there so far is the idea that to be really good, approaching mastery, at something you have to put in about 10,000 hours at it. The second is that there are thresholds for natural ability; to be a successful lawyer you need to be "smart enough," but not necessarily brilliant. To be a good athlete you need to be good enough, but not necessarily the most talented. They are plenty of smart people doing very poorly at the game of life. There are plenty of climbers with natural talent who do very little with it. Most of the really good athletes I know in any sport were not the most naturally talented when they started, but they practiced like demons. Maybe for about 10,000 hours... 

This is something to think about. If you want to be a really good skier you likely need about 10,000 hours of thinking about snow, skiing in snow, rolling in it, whatever it takes to get to that level of understanding and skill. 

Another idea in the book is that successful people also have unique opportunities, and the desire to involve themselves in those opportunities. Bill Gates had access to a, for then, high-end computer to play with, and play he did--for at least 10,000 hours. I had access to a lot of rock and ice, and while I wouldn't claim to be remotely "successful" in the sense of Bill Gates, I've been both lucky enough to have had early opportunities and to have wanted to use those opportunities. If I had been born in Manitoba to a stockbroker I doubt I would have taken up climbing or river kayaking, at least not at as young an age as I was able to by having parents who were into the mountains and lived there. Wait, maybe if I'd been born to stockbrokers I would have had better money sense...

Anyhow, it's a good read and worth thinking about in terms of not only athletics but also life. What are we truly successful at, and why? Those of us on the backside of 40 are likely realizing that some doors are now closed simply because we don't have 10,000 hours to put into something new, nor are we likely to have the opportunity to pursue certain things. If you're 20 you're already way too old to ever be a great basketball player, but there are a lot of professional avenues still open to exploration. Interesting.

WG

Destroyed

Walk in lousy snow for four hours. Work on a cool new route with two younger guys for six hours. Get kinda scared and very physically pummeled. Rap in the dark. Walk two hours back out in the dark. I haven't been so destroyed in years, great day!

I've joined in on an existing project to help get 'er done. Two pitches of cool mixed, two of moderate but very nice drytooling, then one really hard pitch to the ice, then a couple of pitches of ice above that! It just doesn't get any better than that. Thanks to W. and B. for a solid day, the old man is feeling much older today but will recover.

I was enticed to this route with the following description: "Oh, it's great. Perfect rock, golden huecos out huge roofs, we've pretty much cleaned and bolted all of it, you've just got to come up and work it!" The part about almost being done the bolting was true, the rest was pure fabrication. The rock is classic Rockies choss, there's not a "golden hueco" in 200K, and there's a lot of cleaning to do. But it sure was an effective description to get me up there, and the route is truly world class. It's long, exposed, and fantastic, just have to get back in a few more times and get 'er done. Congratulations to B and W for working on it, lots of motivation went into the rig already!

Training is just that. Days like yesterday are where it gets real, and you see if all the training actually worked. A lot of people get stuck in what I call the "training trap," where the training becomes more important than the actual action you're training for. It's easy to see results when training; it's all nice and organized, improvements are consistent and measurable, and the training environment is generally pretty comfortable. But strap on a big pack, beat through the snow, haul your way up a couple of hundred meters while just giving it all-out and see how you function during the day. That's the reality, and that's what we train for.

I need to train a little harder. Game on.

Auto-Block Belay Devices and Other Winter Thoughts

There was recently an ice climbing fatality near Cody, Wyoming. This story hit me hard because I can see myself making some of the poor calls that led to the fatality, and that started me off writing this long post. Please read the story at the link above, the following won't make much sense without the full story. My full respect, condolences and sympathy to all involved, fatalities are the worst part of mountain sports.

I do have some thoughts on the accident. In short, the leader was at an anchor while the second approached the anchor, big avalanche, leader was OK, second unfortunately found dead after the avalanche passed. All the rope had slipped through the leader's belay device, so the second fell/slid the rope's distance while being pounded massively. The leader had two screws at chest level and was belaying off the anchor with a non-blocking belay device. 

A few thoughts on this:

-First, I won't be surprised if the facts of this accident change with time. It's early yet, and things may not be as they seem. Mainly I'm sorry the accident happened, condolences to family and friends. This was an accident. Accidents are the worst thing about mountain sports.

-I highly doubt any belay device or configuration would have made a difference in this situation. It was a massive slide likely with enough debris and force to kill anybody in the way. But a smaller slide or a smaller slide that also hit the belayer could have been fatal to the second not due to the trauma but due to the belayer being unable to hold the rope while he was being pounded, and the second falling the rope's distance as a result. An auto-blocking device would be a better idea.

-I don't think belaying directly off the anchor with a non-blocking belay device is a good idea. Especially if that device, as is reported, was likely at or higher than the belayer's waist. I can't see it being easy to hold your arm up to generate sufficient friction to hold the fall, as would have happened in this case. I can hold maybe 50 pounds over my head with one hand for any length of time, and that's in the gym with a very controlled weight directly over my head. Not a rope whipping around with all sorts of weird vectors. The moment the belay  rope isn't pulling "up" on the belay device is the moment it starts sliding, and is then more difficult to hold...

-If the brake side of the rope is less than 90+ degrees off the loaded end of the rope then there just isn't likely to be enough friction to hold a high load. If the two ropes are parallel very little friction will be generated. Even a top-rope load can be hard to hold until the rope is pulled into proper position by the belayer. Anyone who has held a climber from above while top-roping for any length of time with a non-locking device knows that it takes some careful positioning of the rope to make this comfortable. I don't think the belayer has much chance to hold a more powerful fall with the device above waist-level, and while pulling "up" on the rope. The belay device would have to be at knee level or below to be effective, then you could pull "up" on it. 

-The solution for me is straightforward: use an ATC Guide or some other auto-block belay device when belaying the second off a solid anchor. In Canada and Europe this is the common method of belaying the second, but it's still less so in the USA for some reason. This is changing, maybe due to international guiding standards, but I still see a lot of people using a non-blocking belay device for the second when it would be far more suitable to use an auto-block to do so (90+ percent of the time while ice or rock climbing, less so with alpine climbing). 

-If you're going to use a non-locking belay device for the second then it should be on your belay loop. Not clipped to the anchor, not extended off the anchor with a sling, but on you. That way you'll always know which way to pull even if you're getting pounded, upside down, getting pulled off the stance, whatever. There have been several bad accidents where the belayer was injured seriously but held the belay when it was off his harness. 

Again, I don't think it likely would have made much difference in this accident how or what type of belay was being used, the situation was just off the charts in terms of power and violence. An auto-blocking device could even have generated enough force to blow the primary anchor and kill both climbers; this sort of situation is just drastic. I had one large slide go over my head while in a cave once; even while totally protected I couldn't breathe, couldn't think, the power was just insane. But I do think there are a range of situations below the magnitude of this one where an auto-block belay device rigged to a solid anchor would be a better choice and might might make a big difference.

There are situations where belaying the second with an auto-block doesn't make sense, but part of being a good climber is understanding enough to recognize those situations and build your belay system appropriately. Most of the time when I use a belay device for the second straight off my harness I do so because I'm concerned about the strength of the belay and want to take as much force as possible on me and my stance. I keep the rope very tight in this situation and recognize that I'm doing something dubious, or at least well outside what is commonly "safe."

There are some other things in this story that bother me precisely because I've made the same bad calls:

-Not being aware of the avalanche hazard. "Hey, it hasn't snowed much, should be good." This is not a good assessment of avalanche hazard. Read the avalanche forecast, look for the signs, understand enough to make a call.

-Assuming there is no hazard just because "this area has no hazard." Almost every ice climb I've ever done has enough snow above it to be a hazard. Snow is heavy.

-Not being able to see the top of avalanche terrain while moving through it (cornices, wind loading, etc.). If you can't see the wind loading and terrain above you then you have no idea what's going on. 

-Not paying attention to the obvious signs of instability (debris piles on the route, etc). We all want to go up, and it's easy to rationalize things so we keep doing that. 

-Not thinking about the terrain trap nature of ice climbs. This has killed at least two friends; even "small" slides funneled into the wall of an ice climb can be lethal.

Right, not sure why this story hit me so hard but it really did. Maybe because I can see myself making some of the same errors. Again, the facts may change, and this is absolutely not meant as a critique of the accident at all, just things for all of us to think about as we go ice climbing.

The Long Walk

I just did the second biggest travel and walk to a non-existent climb I've ever done. The all-time record for hours of travel vs. hours of not climbing was on a route in Nepal, but the trip up north over the last week was pretty close in terms of travel time (16 hours of driving) walking (three days) and amount of climbable ice (very little). But it was still a great trip, and we're thinking of heading back in later this year if the temperatures remain cold. It was really nice to get out into the woods for a week, even if camping at -25 is a little chilly. There's just something fundamentally satisfying about living out of a pack for days at a time, and sleeping like a log every night from the day's efforts. We saw no people at all where we were, and I don't think many people ever go in there during winter. I hope to get back. And no, I can't tell you where this non-frozen route is... But it sure would be cool if it ever froze up properly! Thanks to the team who went on the trip, great fun despite the lack of ice.

I have two other big projects on the go for this winter. I've decided to focus on finding big new water ice first ascents for the rest of the season. These are generally a long walk from the road, but I've done everything I want to close to a road so GAME ON!

Best,

wg

Happy New Year!

The quantity of writing on this blog is directly proportional to the amount of time I have and how inspired I am. When I'm psyched I can get a lot done when under life's fire, but when I'm down, well, not much gets done. The temperatures have been ridiculous here in the Rockies, and I gotta admit I'm down about that. Some friends from France are going back a week early because they've had it with these disastrous temps. I asked if I could go back with them but they told me I had too much to do, and they're right. So the lack of posts reflect both temperature-induced torpor syndrome (five points to whomever figures that one out first) and the quantity of stuff I've had going on. Two magazine articles, a journalist inhabiting my life, Christmas, kid, parties, shoveling the walk, feeding the fire and a whole list of other excuses for the limited climbing and posting I've done lately. I have stayed on the training bandwagon though, getting stronger! See the picture for my latest training tactic, it's a triceps workout from hell combined with kid care!

But there are going to be even fewer posts for the next week, as I'm packing duffels and and clanking gear like mad. The quest is on, and we're off tomorrow morning. I can't say much more about it than that, but there's a big route out there, time to go hunting for ice!

Best,

wg

Minus 35 (Edit: -42 last night!)

Cold weather always makes me feel excited in a, "I sure am glad I'm not on a climb!" sort of way. The squeaking crunch of the snow underfoot, the sudden numbness in an earlobe, the hyper-real sound transmission in the air and of course the, "Just how cold is this going to go?" feeling all combine to make cold weather something I really look forward to. I know there's no way in hell I'm going to do anything except hike in this weather, which is sort of liberating.

Fortunately I climbed the last two days in a row before this "cold snap" blew in. I say fortunately because I give up on ice climbing below about -20, I just don't enjoy it. I've done some days at -30, it's just too damn nasty. I also feel like the line between survival and total chaos is much closer when the temperature is so low; break a leg at -5 and you'll have a shot at living until help shows up, but at -30, well, good luck. But I still feel invigorated by extreme cold, it's just such a clean, sharp feeling every time I step out the door to get more wood for the stove. Overall I'm pleased with the wood stove addition to the house, and we haven't had to turn the heat on yet. All the wood cutting in the fall (standing dead trees only, they have very low moisture content and so are OK to burn now) is paying off! 

Minus 35 isn't that bad compared to the cold I've felt in the far north, but just a week ago it was warm enough to climb rock outside in the sun! Amazing transition.

Training:

Mostly outdoors on one long route and a few drytooling days, although I did get sucked into a wicked session at the Vsion two days ago. I went in for a quick evening slam after a short day out in the morning; I had clear-cut goals (front levers, power pulls) but the Junior team had a new toy: A speed system... Stand on the little pedal, punch it to the top, hit a buzzer. The Juniors were going fast and it looked like fun, so I had to play. Before I knew it 45 minutes of desperate yanking laps had gone by. I lowered my initial time of seven seconds (short wall) down to just under 2.5 seconds but couldn't get it any lower despite trying as hard as I could. The record is 1.91 seconds (nice work Eric!) to go from standing at the bottom to the buzzer on the top of the roughly 20 foot wall. Basically three power moves in a row to the top, so maybe it was a good power workout after all! 

One thing I know now is that when you get a groove on in a training session it's way better to go with that than to try and force the original plan. Staying fresh mentally is as or more important than anything else. If you're not motivated by your workouts then you ultimately won't go. So next time I hit the front levers and power pulls I'll be feeling extra aggro and psyched, and the speed didn't hurt my forward progress. If anything the psyche pushed me to try harder and go deeper, which is what good training is often all about.

Stay warm!

PS--the temp is now -36, could we hit -40 tonight? I haven't seen -40 in many years in the Rockies (apparently neither have the pine beetles, one reason they are expanding their range so dramatically to the north). Cold, cold, let's go -40! The sun doesn't come up until 8:38 tomorrow, so lots of time left tonight...

11:20 PPS--Now we're down to -37! Time for bed, but I'll check the stats from last night in the morning, this is getting really, really cold!

The temp dropped to -42 last night. I can't remember the last time it was -40 something around here, nice to see.

Inspiration

We all need inspiration. I find a lot of mine outdoors, from friends and family, but also in music and reading. If you're looking for some inspiration here's what I've been abusing my ear drums and eyes with:

Books:

Raw Shark Text: This is about the weirdest thing I've ever read, and one of the best. There's this idea that words can become alive, and eat us as "sharks." Brilliant stuff, I wish I were half as smart as the author.

Five Novels: Phillip K. Dick. This guy saw the world so very differently. I picked this lunker of a collection up in some airport on the way to Europe because it had the most words per Euro of anything on the rack, and it then took over my mind. Dick defined so many pre-cursors to things we take for granted today (cyber punk, the ascendance of the electronic over the physical, viruses, electronic propaganda, etc. etc.) up to 50 years ago. Cool read.

Music:

MGMT: Evil good pop.

Buck 65. So many good lines... 

Old Crystal Method: I was playing some of this in the office today after a good Nordic workout when my daughter wandered in and started grooving like a glam queen. Hard to argue with that, I was too.

The reason I'm thinking about inspiration is that I can sense it's time for winter climbing to change for me again. Ice climbing isn't going to look the same in 20 years as it does now; sometimes climbing evolution is incremental, other times a new idea comes along that completely shakes things up. Mixed climbing did that for me, and changed the sport around the world pretty dramatically. Standards on both ice and mixed have shot up massively in the last five years, and that's cool. I saw that yesterday while teaching a clinic; two guys I didn't really know came into Grotto and climbed brilliantly up the ice. Their technique was obviously refined well past the usual "X and grunt" method of ascending; nice body position, safe, fast. It would have been impossible to see that 20 years ago as that technique didn't exist. Now the question is, "What next?" I need a shot of Phillip K. Dick's futurecasting to find the path of most interesting resistance and drop into the groove of new possibilities.

Training: Did some more icicles of late, having a ton of fun just climbing ice with the odd mixed bit throw in, plus it's the start of the ski season. Nothing like pounding for an hour with a 30-pound kidlet on my back, killer workout and fun for both of us.

Give 'er.

WG

Icicles

There's finally enough ice and time to get out, yeah! Last Wed. I headed up to the Stanley Headwall with my favorite philosopher, David, who moonlights as some kind of oil-patch bidness man and general outdoor organizer. We've been climbing and attempting to climb together for over 20 years, so it's always good to get out with him. Anyhow, we left the car kinda late (8:40) with vague plans to do Killer Pillar, but there was a party on that. Plan B was to do Suffer Machine, but there was a party on that. Plan C was to climb anything without people on it, and somehow that made Nemesis the goal. Nemesis is one of those all-time classic ice routes, something that novices wonder about, up-and-comers epic on, and the experienced tell two-beer stories about. It's about 160M of very steep ice, and back in the day it was a very long day at best and a bivouac situation. Times change.

At the base David was looking nervous about the time; I'd had to stop and duct-tape my heels together (first time skiing in ice boots that season, joy) so now it was going on eleven, and David had to be back in Calgary to give a slideshow that evening. My wife, Kim, had done the route pretty fast with Scott S. back in the day, and we had 80M ropes so I figured we could do the route in two pitches (normally 4). We wouldn't be slowed down too much by placing protection as I'd kinda only brought eight screws, a bit light. I know David can move, so I semi-jokingly said, "We'll be back at the packs in under three hours, no problem." I figured we'd probably rap from the first anchor but what the hell, I'd never actually done the climb (put me in the "up and comers having an epic back in the day" category for sure) and really wanted to!

Swing, kick, swing, kick, kick, kick, gee that screw is a long way down there, anchor 80M later. David raced up despite somehow taking a softball sized chunk to the helmet; I know how big it was 'cause it left that sized dent in his helmet. He wasn't feeling too hot but was still game, so off to the top, crux move fighting through the soft slab and finding an anchor, back down at the packs in under three hours, David made his show and reportedly did well despite the head injury. Sure was a nice day, thanks!

Also had fun at Hafner yesterday; I love thin ice climbing, the kind where it's just thick enough to hold your pick but thin enough to show the first tooth. This type of climbing is just provocative, like a strip tease show but more interesting; what you can't see is what it's really all about. A nice day out with old guard again. I like going climbing with people who have a sense of humor as black as their coffee, plenty of both going around. Nice crowd in Hafner despite the fact that it rained all the way from Canmore to about 10K from Hafner. I was sure we were on a drive to a coffee shop with a detour toward a climbing area but the temps and ice were fine if a bit wet. There is just nothing like pulling the crux of a climb with a shower of ice-water in your face and running down your neck, I will NEVER whine about the temps while sport climbing again.

So the season is on around here, lots to do, yeah! And today there is snow outside my window and the temps are down to -10 finally, I was starting to think global warming had finally arrived.

Training: Yep. Had a wicked session with Dr. Simon in the gym the other night. 15 minutes of big offset pulls and front levers turned into something more than that, thanks for the motivation. Today I took my kidlet to kidlet gymnastics (she's going well!), and managed to almost hold a front lever on the rings for a second. It's coming! My workouts haven't been perfect, but they have been as regular as I can make 'em, and the results are starting to show.

Hope you're having fun outside wherever you are!

wg

Winter

I've been out wandering a bit in search of new ice, but not much success. Normally this time of year I'm climbing a fair amount, but there isn't all that much ice in at the moment, or at least ice I haven't climbed. I'm always up for climbing just about anything, but given a choice I'd rather wander the woods in search of something new than climb something I already have. So more wandering will take place!

Training: Good gym sessions. Spoga, offset pulls, bouldering, lots of laps up and down the wall locking off on every hold and reaching up, some front lever training. It's going.

I hope it's game on wherever you are!

Training and Logging

Had a wicked session in the gym today (well, yesterday as it's late at night now), and a decent one Wed. Plus I did some solid logging recently, very nice dry wood from standing trees with Keith, and scored a whack of wood from Alpine Precision Tree Removal (Thanks Jeff and Chad!). The picture is of me being a tree hugger, all proud of the very dead tree that went down cleanly. Oh, cutting that thing up and then splitting it was a bad-ass workout too--knotty-ass tree, I had to resort to the new chainsaw a couple of time to win. Kinda weak but that's how it goes sometimes, all of it is very nice firewood now. New saw required a new chain too, knowing how to sharpen ice tools does not translate directly to sharpening chain saws. It is possible to remove too much of that little tooth that sets the depth of the cut. Bought a guide thing.

Training Wed: Good warmup, then bouldering, then kinda got psyched to work with the Vsion Junior Team for a bit on some skills, then blasted myself on the system board for body tension and power moves. Wicked.

Training Friday: Solid warmup, sent some problems that had been beating me down, wore my soft skin out then got on the dry tool campus board. Big offset pulls, new season record (I'll take any victory I can get), half levers, worked. Full Spoga set in there too, never stopped moving except when I had to gasp like a new-born for breath. Love that.

Plus wrestling a couple of tons of wood, some walks with live weight on my back. A good week, beat some long-standing office stuff into at least a stand-off, the kind of work that just keeps piling up and piling up then it's really late so it's even worse to deal with so I didn't until this week. Lame, but fixed now.

Winter and Weather Change

The ice season is on around here, but the temps have been really warm. Only the relatively high and north-facing ice (Ranger Creek, Replicant, etc) has stayed in. The last month has really reminded me of winter in Colorado--highs above freezing most days, warm enough to rock climb in the sun, a few degrees below freezing at night at most, pretty stable weather in general. While this has been pleasant, it's not right for mid-November in the Canadian Rockies. It rained here in Canmore last night, and the most snow we've seen this season was in August. WTF? I've decided "global warming" is a misnomer; what the term should really be is, "Weather Fuckitedus." It may be colder, warmer, windier, wetter, dryer, sunnier, cloudier or just generally totally unpredictable compared to any pattern you might once have recognized.

Training: It's fallen apart a bit due to weather-induced lassitude. It's hard to get really psyched to mixed climb when it's sunny and plus five, or raining. But these little lulls often lead to better results in the end. I'm likely tired from all the mad travel, and my motivation is the first thing to suffer when I'm not fully in the game mentally. I expect things will come back with a vengeance here shortly. Over the years I've found that pushing through demotivated periods often leads to injuries, or severe and long-lasting demotivation. Better to focus on things in life that need to get done, stay healthy, train when the energy is there, and know that it will come back when it's right. That was a hard lesson to learn for me...

Walking in the woods

Yesterday I went for an all-time fugly walk in the woods. We went the wrong way repeatedly, mired ourselves deep in the debris of an overgrown logging slash, fell down, groveled, cursed and were rewarded at the end of this experience by not finding any ice to climb. But you know what? It was a pretty good day of it. This is what's funny about climbing; you can not climb anything and still have a good day. If I'm working in the office and, say, the video editing system implodes it can ruin my entire day. But I can sweat and grovel for three or four hours in the mountains and it's pretty fun. This just confirms my basic idea that office work is evil.

The day did end well when I scored a bigger chainsaw in good condition for a fair price. This things should wail through the bigger logs with aplomb (can you use a word like that to describe a chainsaw?). I had a dream last night that I used it to quarry a huge cave in my back yard, it was going through solid rock like butter. This is likely a man dream that women will not relate to, but I was stoked, sad to wake up and find out it wasn't true. My backyard is cobbles for at least a hundred feet of depth anyhow.

Training: See above, with some time spent hanging by the tools in the garage. Getting stronger!