Endless Analysis #1: The Damage Done

It's Thursday, and I'm feeling halfway decent after the Endless Ascent. Over the next week or two I'm going to go through a few different categories of experience I had during the recent 24-hour climb for the dZi foundation: Damage, Math, Nutrition, Training, Gear, and other stuff as I think it through. The whole experience was one of the best of my life, and one of the worst (funny how the two ends of the experience spectrum are so close sometimes...). I can't stop thinking about it! Again, a huge thanks to everyone one who helped out, from the people on the bridge at single-digit hours in the morning to belayers to friends to the dZi, thanks! James Biessel photo to left, thanks!

Anyhow, here's a list of the damage done:

Lungs/Nose

I keep having bad nosebleeds, and my lungs are still sore. After about 12 hours of climbing I started nose-breathing a lot, a trick I learned from Kim years ago. Breathing only through your nose is a way to stay roughly below your anaerobic threshold, and it moisturizes the air going into your lungs a lot more. I did this from about hour 16 on because I was already coughing some; I've noticed this problem before when going really hard in the winter for more an hour or two, but it was worse in Ouray than I've ever experienced, likely due to the huge load and time span I was asking out of my body. So I started nose-breathing, which worked great, but the high-altitude cold air really thrashed my nose and lungs instead of just my lungs... I think that although the relative humidity in Ouray is probably pretty close to the relative humidity in Canmore the actual quantity of moisture molecules available is likely lower due to less oxygen etc. to hold moisture in the air... Someone with better science than me feel free to step in, but the end result is that my nose and lungs are seriously thrashed. Both are improving, but still a little annoying. Interestingly, I found this on the New York Time site today.

Feet

No blisters! I climbed for about the first 16 or 18 hours in my Scarpa Phantom Lite boots. I've used these boots a lot, they are super warm and comfortable for me. But the soles of my feet started to hurt a lot after about 14 hours. I'm mostly blaming my sock selection; I normally wear these reasonably thick socks, but for some reason I wore a little thinner and lower quality socks, which compressed out more. I switched them out after 16 hours and put on the fruit boots and new socks. After the event I couldn't walk in my bare feet on hard floors, it was just too painful. Still hurts, but not too bad.

Fingernail

Yeah, I'm gonna lose a fingernail. It makes typing painful. Whine, whine, but it's funny how much much one fingernail can hurt! I don't remember what I did to cause the blister disaster that's seeping out from under the nail but there it is.

Hand blisters

I have never, ever heard of anyone getting blisters on their hands ice climbing. I switched gloves something like nine times in 24 hours, maybe more, but I've got blisters from ice climbing. I never would have believed it possible.

Harness rash

Not too bad, but tight pants are out for a bit. I think I did most of the damage in the last hour, when I wasn't taking the time to adjust my clothing properly. That's really important! I have had worse rash aid climbing for a few hours really.

Calves

Bloated, painful and hard like rocks for two days after the climb. OK now, but I'm not going to be doing calf raises or climbing ice for a few more days. Nope.

Sore hands

Back in the day when I was sport climbing a lot I had a sure-fire system to figure out how messed up my hands were: if I couldn't close the pads on my tips to the joints on my palms I was over-trained. I still can't do this. Creaky tendons, no "injury" pain, but seriously worked.

Right Knee

I was asking for a pretty quick lower when possible, and boy was I getting it! Amazingly, 194 laps I only had one "bad" drop moment, and I banged my knee pretty good during that moment. It's OK, but I feel it walking around for sure.

Neck

I think I looked up for tool placements and down for foot placements so many times that I just wore my rubberneck out. Better, but I had about the range of motion of a lineman for a few days.

Weird eyeball ding

During a training session a guy unintentionally knocked a small piece of ice down, and I looked up just as it hit on the white part of my eye. That's still hurting, but getting better.

Dehydration: I drank at least 18 liters of water during the event and four more after, but I wasn't even close to hydrated until 24 hours after the event... More on this in the nutrition section, I think I blew the hydration thing a bit.

General

Sore pretty much everywhere! I waddled through DIA on the way home on Monday, but I always feel like this after pushing too hard.

But I'm definitely "OK" overall, which surprises me. I have had some chronic problems with my elbows over the years for sure, and I was icing every night for months before this event. I was mentally completely prepared to tape my elbow at 90 degrees and keep climbing, or do anything it took to keep moving. In fact, while training I repeatedly thought about how I was going to keep moving on one foot, with one arm, whatever I had to do. When I could just keep climbing with no deep chronic pain or shooting new pain I was really psyched! More on training in a later piece, but it worked well enough to keep me moving, and I don't think I did any lasting damage to my body on this effort, or at least nothing new.

I hit the gym last night for a light workout (ten minutes rowing then 30 of yoga stretching, followed by five rounds of thrusters, pullups and situps, a combo I like), and then a slow skin up a local ski hill this morning before taking a few runs. So I'm OK.

http://www.alpinist.com/doc/web10w/wfeature-gadd-endless-ascent-ouray

PS on the Math--My personal belief is that Pic of the Vic, the route I was on, is at least 40M high as Vince Anderson's excellent guidebook suggests and my personal experience backs up (you couldn't TR it with a single 70, the rope is well past 1/2 when lowering in on a 70M). Others think it's 45M or maybe a bit more. Me, I'm going with the lower number of 40M until someone actually measures it. It's better to err on the low side than the high side in this sort of thing I think.

Endless Ascent Ends

I'm back home, sitting at a desk and trying to type with (seriously) blisters on my hands and a fingernail on my right hand that protests every time I use it to hit a key... Who gets blisters on their hands ice climbing? I've never heard of it before, and would not have thought it possible...

But the 24-hour push is done. Over the next few days I'm going to write more about different portions of the climb, from the nutrition successes and failures to the physical damage to the training and so on. There's just too much to put into one post, and I had a lot of time to think about things while doing the climb...

The main thing I'm feeling this morning is that I was incredibly lucky to be involved with such a fantastic group of people. Twenty three belayers, three "team managers," the dZi, the hundreds of people who showed up in small or large groups to cheer and keep me moving, so much incredibly positive energy from so many people. Today there is just no room for anything but an incredible sense of appreciation for everyone who was even in the smallest way involved with the Endless Ascent. What I'm going to remember most about the whole experience is not how much ice I climbed (I'm actually not at all sure about that number, lots of different route height guesses, comedy), how much it all hurt, but how lucky I am to be part of the community of people who came together for the dZi and the climb. It was a swirling mix of enthusiasm, support, shared love for the Ouray Ice Park, and excitement. I am deeply humbled and thankful for the experience, it will effect me for the rest of my life.

Here's a fun video clip from the Endless Ascent, thanks Yuieno!! And some nice pictures...

More later, my finger has had it with typing and it's time for another liter of water and another nap. Thanks, thanks, and THANKS!

No More Training

In two and a half hours I'm going over the edge of the canyon at the Ouray Ice Park. In the 24 hours after that I'm going to climb out as many times as I can, belayed by 24 great people, helped by dozens more, and motivated by all of you who have made a donation to the dZi foundation, sent encouraging words, and just plain old been enthusiastic. Thanks!

We think we've sorted a live web cam on the https://www.endlessascent.org/ site so you can follow along with the battle. There's a functioning donation button there even if you're Canadian (postal codes threw it for a loop initially).

I just finished a huge breakfast after an early breakfast. Calories in, effort out. Here we go!!

Better...

The Ice Park emptied out yesterday--I always see the park in the midst of the ice festival, when hundreds of climbers attack the hundreds of routes (Hundred? There sure are a lot!). But by about 2:00 yesterday things were slowing down, and Jason N. and I got in there for some speed laps. 20 minutes on, 20 off, giving it! Three sets of that, then I did a solo session into the dark for a bit to up the distance. I bought a new ascender thing from Ouray Mountain Sports which made the whole process much smoother. Did about 30 laps again, but the difference in how I felt from the last session was huge.

For starters, don't dry your socks with fabric softener--this makes them incredibly slippery in your boots, which sucks when standing on frontpoints... Figuring out why my heels were lifting so much and why my calfs were cramping so bad in the last session was positive, way better to figure that out now than during the climb! I was also low on calories last session I think, but a huge burger the night before along with some other food plus a concerted effort to get a whack of calories down my throat during the day. In the last week I've been sick, traveling, eating irregularly, it just hasn't been that good. But it doesn't take all that long to put the pieces back together if given some time and quality food (I don't normally eat hamburgers, but the burger at Drake's in Ridgway is the absolute best thing I've eaten in months, insane!). I'm also already much better adapted to the altitude--you wouldn't think going to 8,5000 feet from 4,500 would make that big a difference, but it does when you're going hard. Plus seeing more friends and just getting the mojo going is worth a lot, the energy is building.

I'm training today and Wednesday and then I'm done with that, it's game time on Saturday at high noon.

Ouray!

I'm back in Ouray, Colorado, home to the most extensive collection of ice climbs in the smallest area anywhere in the world. And the approaches are under ten minutes from the town! The Ouray Ice Park is the best place to climb a lot of ice in the world I think, a truly remarkable expression of ice and human enterprise coming together. Plus the San Juans spike above the town into the blue sky, it's just a stellar place to be and one of my favorite spots of all time both for the geography and people who live here. I have a lot of history here over the last 15 years or so both from the ice festival and summer outings, it's a home away from home for me really.

Anyhow, yesterday I went out and ran solo laps on the route I'll be climbing during the endless ascent effort, Pic of the Vic. It's a great line, everything a good ice climb should be. Bit of a shaky pillar start, varied, just really nice climbing. I only did 30 laps, but the climb is about 140 or 150 feet high so that's around 4,000+ feet (I'm going to use imperial units 'cause this is the USA). I felt lousy. No way around it. Every athlete has good and bad days, for me yesterday was brutal. My feet kept blowing, everything hurt, it was a sucker punch to the head kinda day as far as the climbing went. But it was good to see some old friends, and it's hard to maintain a bad attitude in such a beautiful place, with so many psyched people swinging tools. By the middle of the session I'd just accepted that today I was going to suck, and sucked it up. As the park emptied of people my headlamp and I moved through the darkness on our own yo-yo path, and there was some peace. I was surprised when I hit the top of the canyon a couple of times; I'd just been climbing, moving, not thinking too much. I was on a self-belay so there was no one to talk to once the last people were gone, just the canyon and me. It hit me that I'd never been in the canyon without lots of people; in the darkness it felt different, closer, larger. Yet another side of a special place.

I walked home in the dark a happy man. A bad day of training in a beautiful place beats hell out of a good day of just about anything else. I have seven days before I try and climb as much ice as I can in 24 hours. The thought is, honestly, horrifying. I know that special circumstances bring forth special efforts, but yesterday's effort took me about four hours give or take. That's one sixth of what I'm up against in terms of time. As I sat in a nice restaurant eating shrimp with a glass of wine last night I thought about the fact that I'd still be climbing if yesterday were the first 12 hours of the climb. As I lay in bed with a small child jumping on my head I thought about the fact that I'd still be climbing. Hell, as I'm writing this it's less than 24 hours after I was climbing yesterday. I simply can't imagine what the Endless Ascent is going to feel like. Bring it.

Unknown: Endless Ascent Math

Unknown. I love that word. The pursuit of the "unknown" keeps me interested in life, getting out of bed in the morning, and motivated to sleep fast so I can get back at it in the morning. First ascents of climbs, first descents of rivers, attempts to do things differently (climb icebergs, fly over a big ditch on my paraglider), it's all about getting off the square of my mind that is "known" and setting a course for the place where things get weird.

Which brings me to the endless ascent. The goal is to climb as much ice as I can in 24 hours, and raise money for something that matters, the dZi foundation. Why climb ice for 24 hours? Because I don't know what will happen. I know what will happen when I go out ice climbing in general, but I have no idea what's going to happen after about 12 hours of ice climbing.

Everyone wants to know, "How much ice do you think you can climb?" Warning, longer answer ahead... In my training I've done some days around 2,100M/6600 feet, or roughly two El Capitans. I've been training in mostly 20-minute blocks; longer blocks would be better probably, but when it's butt cold 20 minutes is long enough to get your heart rate way up, and your belayer to still be warm. So I go like hell for 20 minutes, the belayer stays warm pulling rope in, we switch as fast as reasonably possible, repeat for up to eight hours. Plus the Plice sessions...

In roughly ten or tweleve 20-minute sessions with some bonus laps I have done 50+ laps on a 35M/120 foot grade 5+ climb (Tokkum Pole). But that's spread out over roughly seven hours, so that's a little under 300M/an hour when counted against the total time. It's about twice that on an "hourly" basis. This is of course extrapolation; the difference between doing 20-minute blocks for eight hours and climbing for 24 hours is of course HUGE.

I've spent a lot of time looking at the results for 24-hour ski races, mountain bike races and other 24-hour events. Things definitely slow way down after about 12 hours (with rare exceptions from people who really, really know how to pace themselves). And that's going to be the trick--pacing myself so I go slow enough at the start. I'll really want to go hard, but that will NOT be helpful. I've done a lot of very long "days" in the mountains, it's definitely a rule that the slower you go at the start the faster you go at the end. Even going too hard for an hour or two early in the day will ruin you late in the day...

So how much vertical is possible? My biggest training day so far has been about 3100M/6600 feet. Double that would be about 150M/500 feet an hour for 24 hours. That's my first goal: 3800M, or about 12,000 feet. That would be a HUGE day in my book. I've never heard of anyone climbing that much. Someone probably has, and that's cool 'cause it would be big. Skiing, sure, I've done close to that, and done easy climb/scrambles/traverses that had around 3,000M of vertical gain (that took 12 hours just to go up...). Vertical water ice is a lot more intense than skiing up or even easy mountaineering style climbing/scrambling. I often hike 1,000M/3000 feet to the paraglider launch behind my house; that's casual compared to climbing near-vertical ice. I didn't think the difference would be so large to be honest, but it is. The unknown strikes again.

So there's the math. I figure I can do 3,000M most likely. It will hurt, and that's something like 70 laps out of the canyon. Ouray is obviously in the USA, so you in feet I'd be stoked to do 12,000 feet measured in local units. 15,000 would be huge I think, but that's almost triple my biggest training day...

And when I run all these numbers and think about the unknown it always comes down to this: if I'm not moving I'm not moving. All the "exterior" numbers are just that, and in a way irrelevant. What matters is pacing myself well, working with the great group of people I've got helping, and grinding away. I know I'm going to feel lousy, my tendons will hurt, my shoulders will ache, everything is going to suck so bad at some point that I'm going to want to quit so much... The trick will be to keep grinding. The math? Can't control that. Move.

My life on TR

My friend Ian made this, didn't even know it... Kinda cool to see, need to work on my form. 50+ laps in one day, 115/35M high, so blasted, yeah! It's all about this now... If you're Canadian and have tried to make a donation I'm sorry about the hassle, postal codes should be sorted out pretty quick.

"Secure" vs. OFF!

"Secure." This is a common word here in Canada meaning some version of "off belay." Or it can mean, "keep me on belay here, but I'm OK for now." Or maybe it can mean, "I don't have a clue what I'm doing and neither do you so let's both be confused about what we're doing/not doing." I've seen it used for all three of these scenarios and a few where I had no idea what was going on at all. Now let's contrast this with the command, "OFF!' I don't think I've ever seen the meaning of that one screwed up.

To me belaying is binary. On/off. Black and white. I much, much prefer the words "ON!" and "OFF!" to this "Secure..." business, and I really wish Canadian climbing schools and guides would stop using "Secure." I have simply seen too many climbers arrive at a belay, clip into it, say "Secure" and then expect to be lowered off while their belayers are off having a smoke or whatever. "Secure" also sounds a lot like "need beer," "send gear," "Oh Dear," "Can't hear," etc. etc. "OFF!" is a terse, single-word sound that's hard to confuse with anything, and has only one meaning, ever.

"Secure" has an implied meaning; the belayer has to figure out what the climber means. "OFF!" from the climber means he's OFF, no more belay required. The meaning is clear in the word. Saying "Secure" is like yelling, "Falling Object!" Yelling, "ROCK!" makes a hell of a lot more sense, and that's why we use it. "OFF!" is like "ROCK!" The meaning is clear in the word, you don't have to ponder what is meant (unless you're a linguistics nerd or philosopher).

Safe climbing with a partner is often about communication, and many climbing accidents occur because of poor communication. Why use a vague word when there is a concise alternative?

"Secure" is also rather wussy, a sort of Morrisey-style word that sounds kinda whiny and unsure of itself, like a self-help session for insecure leaders. I mean, if you're "secure" now then you must have been "insecure" earlier, yeah? Sorry about that, get over it and use "ON!" and "OFF!" for god's sake.

I'm on a mission to get this word chucked out of our Canadian climbing lexicon. "Secure" is a word thought up by an verbally insecure desk-riding bureaucrat. "OFF!" is a word thought up by a climber 'cause it works.

OFF!

PS--and, if in doubt, always leave the climber on belay. Worst-case scenario you have to feed the entire rope through your belay device. That's a much better worst-case scenario than taking the climber off because he or she uses some BS "secure..." and then gets dropped on his not-so-secure head.

Lacelle, Laps and Ice Climbing (edited with link )

Yesterday morning was really dark for me. Another friend gone. This shit is getting really old. But we went out anyhow, and used black humor, sarcasm, anger, and physical effort to burn away some of the black cloud. I would not have gone yesterday without Guy in my head; he wouldn't even have bitched about the temperature. I tried not to. I'll write more about Guy Lacelle eventually, but not right now. The man deserves some thoughtful words and not my usual slap-the-spaghetti-on-the-wall-and-see-what sticks writing style (holy hyphen, don't think I needed all those). Here is a video about Guy's accident scene primarily from a snow-science standpoint, but very well done. Thanks to Doug and the others for doing this video.

The temperatures here in Canmore have been cold. Cars won't start, dogs refuse to leave the house, small children rebel at the quantity of clothing they have to put on to go outside kinda cold. But we've been training. The best system so far seems to be 20 minutes on, then the timer on the phone (gotta keep it in an inside pocket) goes off, switch. Everybody stays warm and gets the same climbing time.

I've been training with a horde of different people; one of the things I love about climbing is going out with a crew of people and having fun. Doing long climbs with just one person is great too, but there's something to be said for the social aspect of climbing and bullshitting summer or winter.

Today is a "reset" day. My house, garage, truck, business, and pretty much anything else I can think of or see from this table is a complete gong show. Nothing really bad, it's just that from where I sit I can see three duffels from three different trips that need unpacking, there are four ropes and three pairs of boots (all mine, crazy!) drying by the fire, and I can't count how many jackets, gloves and hats are loose, along with empty single malt bottles and RB shots. It's like a delivery truck to MEC (REI for y'all down south) crashed and was raided by tribe of feral drunk monkeys. I gotta get this scene back under control before the rest of the family comes home.

It sounded so simple...

Most of the really good ideas I've ever had in life are simple. Climbing for 24 hours seemed like a good idea, and it is simple. But in the last week I've discovered that doing anything for 24 hours is, ah, more difficult than anticipated, and ice climbing for 24 hours is a lot more difficult. In the last 24 hours I've done about 5,000 feet of ice and plice. I could have done a lot more I think, but at the end of every training session I've thought, "Gee, it's nice to be done with that."

Today it was -23 when we left the house, and I don't think it warmed up much. If I didn't have the endlessascent.org goal for the dZi I would not have gone climbing, it's just too cold. But in one month it's game on in Ouray, and I do not want to be found lacking. So I trained, fortunately with a great crew of motivated people. But around 5:00 in the evening it was getting dark, it was cold, and I'd pretty much had enough fun. We started running laps and climbing around 12:30 (we wanted to let it warm up some, it's COLD here lately!). So, after four and half hours, I was feeling like a warm fire and a cold beer would be a great combo. In Ouray I'm going to have to go for another 19 or so hours. Not to whine, but I'm scared of what's gonna happen. Can't imagine how ice climbing is going to feel after even 12 hours...

I've done some big links of ice climbs, but a lot of the time on those links you're resting. Belaying, eating, driving, hiking, reasonably simple stuff. In Ouray it's going to be climb, lower back down, climb, repeat for 24 hours. I'll take some breaks to eat and whatever, but damn is that going to be hard! Fortunately I have some good people to help out from the dZi Foundation and around the world, but I just feel the weight of it all. This is good I think, pressure is motivational for me even when it's mainly self-produced pressure...

I've done a fair amount of "crazy" stuff in life, but this is a whole new level of personal abuse. The only thing to do is to keep training, ice the damaged parts regularly, and do my best. Yeah!

Training in Texas, Endless Ascent

I spent a few days down in the heat of central Texas. The locals were calling it cold, but it was T-shirt weather for any ice climber. I could have trained in a gym and did a little bit of that, but I really need the specific movements of ice climbing, and a lot of 'em. The video below shows the depths I had to sink to. Combined with a ring workout it was pretty good training.

The reason for all of this specific training is the Endless Ascent effort, to benefit the dZi foundation. The site is live, very nice work from Faction Media, thanks!

I'm in Whistler briefly for a show then back home to train more. 36 days to go, yeah!

It's come to this: The "Plice"

Normally there's a lot of ice in the Canadian Rockies by this time of year. And, in general, there is enough now for most people. But I need dead-vertical big chunks of it, and there's not much of that around yet. The normal pillars haven't formed, and most of the bigger routes aren't that steep or are under some horrendous avi hazard. But I'm on this 24-hour ice climbing kick at the moment, and I need to climb a lot of vertical ice... Bitch bitch, solve the problem: my own ice training wall in the backyard!!

Now I could have hung hoses and messed about, which might have been neater looking and cooler, but I wanted to train later that day and it was nine in the morning. The solution was to bust out some power tools, duct tape and go-juice. My dad helped, and I was training on this thing by noon. Ten laps, swing at one round of wood, repeat.

If I get my butt on the ground (literally) and climb a little into the tree at the top so my hips get over the top of the wall I'm doing 16 feet up and 16 feet down, or 32 feet a lap. Thirty two laps is pretty close to 1,000 feet... I'm up to about 60 laps a session at the moment. It's incredibly, no, stunningly boring to do that much climbing in my backyard, but I can see the mountains the whole time, and it's pretty exciting when the wind blows really hard and my tree starts swaying around.

I am so stoked! Especially after driving for eight hours in the last two days and climbing exactly two meters of ice. There's lots of ice out there, but I'm after something specific...

Total cost of the Plywood Ice wall? $76. Love it.

Thanks to Margo Talbot for the iPhone camera work!

See ya Tomaz!

Tomaz Humar recently died in Nepal. He was a character. Some of my friends thought little of him, others quite a lot, and both were right. A good obituary is found here. My friend Bernadette MacDonald wrote an engaging biography of Tomaz as well, interesting man and read.

Me, I'll remember him dancing on legs still so weak from multiple breaks that he could barely stand. I had been warned about his aggressive handshake, but I didn't have the heart to yank a man out of a wheelchair so I just fell on him... Those who knew him will know what I mean.

One night, after a few beverages, he spent an hour in a locked room grilling me about dry-tooling training and hard rock climbing. It was all very secretive, maybe reflecting his origins. When I asked him about high-altitude training he told me to run down from every climb like an animal, never once slowing down until I hit the road. And some other stuff that seemed crazy but somehow made sense. He went hard.

I wish his family the very best, my profound sympathies to them. Tomaz was never an easy man, but he was definitely a man charging at life for all he was worth.

This is also good.

It's official: Let the 24 hours of ice suffering commence..

Climbing a lot of routes in a day is fun. I've done some engaging one-day linkups over the years, ranging from climbing the Diamond on Long's Peak and paddling Gore Canyon in a day to climbing an alpine route, an ice route and a rock route in a day, but I've never done one sport for 24 hours straight. How much ice could I climb in 24 hours (on a TR, no need to die here)? Well, I'm going to get to find out, and raise some money with the dZi foundation, which does great work in the mountains. I look at my daughter and think of her in a very, very poor village; basic health and schooling would be a real help. If I can help the dZi foundation provide some of that help then I'll be proud to. I've know the dZi's director, Jim Nowak, for years and trust him. We'll have a fundraising site up in the next couple of weeks called "Endless Ascent," which I'm sure this is going to feel like by about the second hour.

So I'm heading down to Ouray December 26th to train until January 8th, then it's game on for 24 hours. Over the years I've spent a lot of time in Ouray; I like the people, the place, the climbing and the scene that develops around the Ouray Ice Festival. Positive people are a great force in the world, Ouray has more than its share.

Thanks to everyone who is helping on this, I'll do my best!

Now it's maybe clear what I've been training for.... With my dang elbow injury I couldn't train as I "normally" would, but I spent all summer paddling long distances and beating around in the mountains a fair amount, then the late summer and fall doing CF to strengthen my legs and continue elbow rehab. Now my training is getting very specific--lots of ice climbing, lots of time out in the mountains. My elbow is good to go for ice climbing, my legs can bang out squats for a long time (a squat is pretty much exactly the stand-up part of an ice climbing move), and I've take some other radical training steps including getting a heart rate monitor, drinking electrobytes and even cutting down on scotch. Hell, I even gave up all forms of nicotine (I was a Nicorette fiend for years plus snuss) six months ago to help my body recover faster... I feel pretty fit, I just need to get very specific about my fitness for the next two months and then grind for 24 hours. I have no idea what's going to happen, but I sure am fired up to find out!!!

Best,

WG

Congrats to GM, Crossfit Training from a personal perspective

First off, congrats to GM, who just won a drytooling competition down in Colorado Springs. Nice one. I've been heckling/coaching GM a bit over the last few months, nice to see him succeed.

Now on to training:

I've spent a lot of time on here talking about training in general. Now I'm going to get specific about what I've been up to, which has generally been Crossfit for the last three months and lots of kayaking before that. I'm now in the midst of training for the rest of 2009/2010, which will be a lot more sport-specific.

Right now I have three big goals: A 24-hour climbing session in early January (more on that soon), then trips to Norway and Japan. This is all ice. I also have a far-off goal in June involving a whole lot of uphill hiking.

First off, here are my thoughts on Crossfit based on several less-than-committed go-arounds over the last five years, and the last three months of full-on committed Crossfit. If you've never heard of CF you might find some of the following difficult.

Positive Observations

-I was able to train through CF with some elbow issues, and those healed up during the program.

-Overall, my body feels far better today than it has in the last couple of years. Despite lots of squats, deadlifts, shoulder presses, etc. etc. I feel damn good.

- Progress at Crossfit workouts is measurable, and fun.

-I am a classic "ectomorph," meaning I don't gain muscle easily. I'm 12-15 pounds heavier after the last three months of going at CF, and almost all of this is muscle. I'm not sure this is a positive, but as someone who generally doesn't gain much muscle at all this has been really interesting to me. My body has changed a lot.

-I have a more engaged perspective on moving heavy weights in space. Doing Olympic lifts changes your viewpoint. Throwing a kayak on top of my truck is now a lot simpler both because I understand the motion and am stronger at that movement. This is very useful, and I'm grateful to understand more about moving weights. Not lifting, moving. Big difference, and cool.

-Crossfit is big on "general physical preparedness." This means throw any physical challenge at a Crossfitter and he or shell will be OK with it. Broadly, I agree that CF does this. Lift a box of books, move a set of snowtires, chase after someone, lift an axle, whatever, CF is great for general life stuff. I'd say CF kicks ass on anything else I've ever done for general life fitness. If I only had six hours a week to train and no idea what I was training for I'd chose CF. It's effective. I can honestly say that I will never go into a gym and do five sets of five exercises and think I'm working out. If I ever get stuck in a 60-hour a week desk job I will still CF, it works.

-There is great community of people involved with CF. The videos, forums (main site and Brand X), it's all bit Apple-like in terms of support and openness.

-CF is "agnostic," meaning that it encourages examination, discussion, and experimentation. Many fitness routines are monotheistic, meaning you MUST DO 5 SETS or whatever the deity of the month is or something like that. I like the introspective, questioning nature of CF.

-CF is inclusive; it doesn't matter if you're 75 or 15, male or female, fat or ripped, you can get in and get it on. That's cool.

-You can do CF with very little equipment. I did a month-long cycle with rocks and playgrounds. It worked. Most gyms are full of equipment that just isn't all that useful compared to what could be done with the space the equipment occupies.

The above are the general "plus" points I see out of CF. Below are "neutral" observations:

-CF is not sport-specific, nor does it claim to be. Doing CF to be a better sport climber, runner, swimmer, kayaker, or whatever is a waste of time. Doing each individual sport will produce better results for that sport. Overall, CF is not about sport-specific training at all, nor does it claim to be--Glassman makes this point repeatedly. Some adherents try to make CF sport-specific, but that's fitting a round peg in a square hole. You're always better off training specifically if specificity is your goal.

-You need to drink the Kool-Aid and do several cycles of CF to get the point. It's very, very different than working out in a "normal" gym. Sometimes things seem very weird, but it's very hard for me to argue with the results. It's hard to do CF and also do sports specific training.

-Many CFers start to think CF is a sport in its own right. They may actually be right, but it's kinda funny that training becomes a sport. Or is it? I'm still not sure how I feel about the CF games (I am impressed with the athletes, holy shit!).

And here are the negatives as I see them:

-CF needs more agility exercises to be considered complete GPP. Why are we always running in a straight line? Why don't we do some old-school wind sprints with direction changes? Lateral box jumps? Side lunges? I guarantee that these basic dry-land ski training exercises would severely destroy most CFers, and that is something we all enjoy so why not include them?Gymnastics is only one form of body-weight training...

-Almost every single exercise in CF is a "split down the middle movement." By this I mean most movements are balanced on either side of the mid-line in nice organized manner. This is not life. We don't always lift straight on. We don't alway sprint in a straight line. Often we have to pick things up and throw them to one side or the other. We do pullups with our hands staggered. In keeping with the randomness of life I'd think doing more near-random movement in CF would be a very good thing. I see sandbags and so on in the CF games; why not take the creativity I see in the CF games and apply this to the workouts? How about a lateral wall-ball throw? So many options, and I may put some of this into my next CF cycle (I'm going to use CF as my bridge workout between seasons for the future).

-CF is based around the idea that most people are solid, decent people, and will do a good job if given the opportunity. This is a positive actually, as I believe it too. But, unfortunately, I do not think one weekend of coaching is going to produce people with a solid enough knowledge base to effectively program workouts and coach others. Maybe if they have gone through ten years of intensive training for their own sports and now want to coach others, but all you need to open a CF "box" is your level one certification. I don' think this is very good quality control. That said, I haven't gone to a level one certification and could be wrong.

-There is a serious quantity of pretentious bullshit in various aspects of CF. "Forging Elite Fitness" is a great tagline, but come on. People with Elite Fitness win medals and set records. Doing Fran in ten minutes is not "Elite" except in reference to other CF athletes... I would put a good runner up against most any CF athlete in a run, no contest. Same with skier, climber, boxer, gymnast, etc. etc. A true elite athlete has many years of dedicated training and competing behind him or her; there are very few CFers with more than five years of CF behind them. Claiming to possess elite fitness is bullshit without a long chain of results that support the claim. CF is becoming its own sport, like the firefighter games or the logger games...

-I am concerned about shoulder injures and CF. I do not have any good scientific study to base this on, but I know a lot of people who do CF for a year or so and then have shoulder surgery. Maybe hard training promotes shoulder problems; if so this is a problem. I'm not sure CF is any worse than other protocols, but this needs to be studied at some point.

So there's my thoughts on my own CF training for the past three months. I am going to go and do a level-one CF cert this spring after I finish up some of my own projects. Broadly, I believe in CF and think it's effective for what it promises to be. That's incredibly rare in the training world. Over the last five years I've inserted some of CF's main principles into my own sport-specific workouts with very good results. Now I've done a relatively short but definitely full-on go-around with it, and I'm stoked. If nothing else it's damn cool to have a clue what those Olympic guys are doing with the weights. Now I'm moving into a sport-specific training cycle. I sure am going miss the WOD. Might sneak it in occasionally...

Next: Training for a 24-hour suffer fest...

More Ice, and sliding snow

Early winter in the Rockies is a dangerous time of year; we're all fired up to get out in the snow and on the ice, but the situation is often pretty dynamic. Two good climbers from Canmore recently took a relatively short ride and wrote about, very worthwhile reading and thanks to John and James for the report.

More ice yesterday--three hours of walking to and from the climb, four nice pitches, a great day out. It's on around here now! My elbow is holding together, so stoked!!

Happy winter,

wg

First Blood, first ice.

Today was my first day of ice climbing. I've taken my tools for a walk a few times and done some scouting, but due to travel, weather and some other lame excuses today was my first day out. My partner showed up on time, but with a bone-deep cut in her hand. A few stitches later and we were on our way to local classic, Amadeus. Watch out for kitchen knives. It was my first day climbing on the new BD Fusions (I climbed on bunch of protos obviously, these are the production version), first day on ice, and my partner had a numb hand from the anaesthetic. She led the first pitch just to get things going. Fun drytooling, the Fusions worked as well as I thought they would on the rock. I'm always awkward drytooling until I get a few pitches in, that action is just wrong until it's right.

The next 30M had some super nice ice--kinda thin, kinda detached, kinda dry, kinda wet, kinda steep, kinda lacking in pro, kinda what I needed. The new Fusions handled it well, but I'm going to change my picks out on those tools if I do any more serious ice climbing. The picks on the tools are made for drytooling so they have teeth on top; this makes 'em get stuck in the ice, which is not really what you want when run out on marginal gear. For hard drytooling you need the top teeth, and even on the M-whatever stuff low on the route the teeth were great for stein-pulls etc. Overall I was really happy with the tools, I'll need to put some more miles on the rock to really have a feel for them. But they climb ice a hell of a lot better than the old Fusions, that's for sure! We even had to pound a pin back in, they actually work for that. That's a key function on an ice tool for me, especially in the Rockies--pins are often the only solution. I think the Fusion will become my top choice for hard dry-tooling and multi-pitch mixed routes. It climbs ice well, drytools well, and you can beat on gear. I like it, I'll just switch picks around with my other tools depending on what's needed.

Tomorrow I'm heading out again, so stoked that the season is ON!!

WG

Things you see in the woods, Ice

I was out for a hike in the mountains yesterday and saw these tracks. Five or six animals, lots of deer in the area, hmmm... I'm going with wolf.

The temperatures around here have absolutely spiked, all the way to the summits. When the big melt ends we'll have the big freeze, and things are likely to be very, very good for icicle hunters in the Canadian Rockies. Until then it's rock climbing season again...

The Gravsports Ice pages are up and running again too, lots of people out and about!

Happy Winter,

WG

Randomness

I often hear comments such as, "I only climb/fly/paddle/walk/whatever for myself." While this is ultimately true, the same people always immediately know their best onsights, longest distance flown, most impressive route climbed, etc. etc. If you ever want to see some competitive attitude come out among climbers just suggest that the local favorite 10c is really 10a... So people do measure themselves, and care about the results. This is why weight-room training is so seductive; you get measurable results, you can compare your results, and it's all very controlled and nice.

I'm still stuck on this idea of people, myself included, measuring what we did or didn't do in alpine or winter climbing. Maybe because there's a tremendous amount of posing in these genres of climbing, and no real quantifiable definition of success other than reaching the summit and/or surviving. The tales that come back from these trips often read like the participants succeeded due to fantastic ability, toughness, training, etc. This interests me; I know I've come back from alpine climbing trips with the feeling that the climb took everything I had to give. But was that feeling real or had I just set my own limits and then bumped against them? And when I or anyone fails on a mountain/alpine/whatever climb we usually pull out all kinds of justifications. Too much avalanche hazard, too little snow, not enough ice, wind blowing the wrong direction, etc. Usually these "reasons" are presented as absolutes. "There wasn't enough ice to go up."

I suspect that often my and others achievements on any given day are not all that special in the mountains or on the ice, and our failures often more mental than real. By that I mean that if you put a large field of people on that face in the same conditions times would drop dramatically, success rates go up, etc. etc. Ueli Steck has shown this with his North Face ascents in the Alps. Now Ueli is my friend and a very talented guy, but he's not special genetically or even mentally (well, a bit special mentally). The fastest time on the Grand Teton is held not by any of the guides or well-known alpine climbers who have lived and worked in the range (and gone fast on a lot of routes) but by a runner with enough climbing skill to handle the technical challenges of the Grand.

I'm dancing around an idea here, trying to figure it out. Perhaps the most obvious example of a large pool of talent showing the actual potential of a mountain situation comes in paragliding. A competition day can be lousy for flying distance; weak thermals, bad wind, overcast, etc. etc. But if you set a competition task someone often completes it. Even on a day when the local pilots would all say no cross-country was possible. A little of the positive result comes from the field working together, but it's often one or two pilots who go off alone and make it to goal. Those pilots show the real potential of the day; if only a few pilots were sitting on launch they would be lazy and the day would be written off as "not good." How many climbs have I failed on for lack of vision?

To me this realization is cause for great optimism about the future of many mountain sports. 5.9 used to be hard; the rock hasn't changed, our raw strength hasn't changed dramatically, but now 5.9 is commonplace, a beginner can do it in street shoes. The north face of the Eigre was the be-all end-all route, worth dying for. Now a guy runs it in under four hours. Running a 30-foot waterfall was the absolute edge of the sport 25 years ago; now people are regularly going over 100 feet, and the "record" is closer to 200.

When we're in the mountains we're likely limited more by how we perceive the situation and our abilities than we are by the reality. If we put 100 top or even good athletes on a route in the same conditions the results would be mind-blowing, even in less than ideal conditions. A few years ago we tried to climb a north face in the Himalaya, and never really got going. A few other climbers showed up and sent it in four days, easy. I'm not arguing for pushing harder in the face of "stupid" danger, but trying to understand why the hard routes of yesterday are easy today, and why the impossible is often the easy when enough people put energy toward it.

This blog is likely to slow down for a bit, it's climbing season and I am so stoked to go and mess with my own limits and headspace, breathe clean air, move, smash some ice and get it ON! Happy winter!

Everest Dash for Cash (and gloves)

I'm over the pig flu and back training, hopefully climbing a lot more soon!

My bud Kelly Cordes put some info on gloves here, with comments from various people. It's good, different perspectives, interesting.

I recently had a long discussion with a group of friends about types of climbing, ethics, and what accomplishment in climbing means. In sport climbing it's pretty simple; you climb harder than anyone else, or you win the big comps. Either way you're bad-ass, and there's an obvious record of it. There are still disagreements and bitching, but by and large it's clear who is climbing at a very high level in sport land. Or you could be the person who climbs 200 days a year for 20 years; that would be cool and a major accomplishment to me too, maybe the coolest. I don't think you have to be having the most fun either; climbing is nonsensical, but it's often not fun, and that's fine with me. But what if you wanted to find out, say, who was the "best" alpinist? Would you look at summits climbed, new routes done, articles written or times on popular routes? All of these things to me are markers, but they are not direct forms of comparison because of varied conditions and a hundred other variables. Alpinism is a weird game because a lot of people are vying for the public's attention as being "noteworthy" without having any sort of empirical comparison method. No, if you wanted to compare alpinists you would have to have them all compete on the same objective at the same time, as in any other form of sports competition. This would put a group of people in a true competitive environment, and would produce meaningful results. So, if I had an unlimited budget, I'd have the following event:

1. Everest Dash for Cash. Invite 20 of the "best" alpinists in the world to Everest by offering all expenses paid. Have a start line, and a guy sucking oxygen on the summit with a stopwatch. First one to the top wins a million dollars. First one back to basecamp wins another million dollars. No oxygen, use the fixed ropes, don't, whatever, haul ass up. Most alpinists of course won't show up, as they don't actually compete. They just write articles and pose about their accomplishments with little to no data to back the claims up. It's easy to "win" an event where you define the rules, the time, the participants, the place and the objective. In fact, incompetency or bad planning is often rewarded or celebrated in alpinism. A few alpinists climb at a very high level (Ueli Steck comes to mind--nearly onsights El Cap, excellent Himalayan climber, and my friend Steve House finally climbed solid 5.13 so he's definitely trying). Steck holds the record on the Eiger, Matterhorn, etc. I'll bet he would play the Everest Death Race game. This is all hypothetical and a little bit sarcastic, but what if? Second place is of course a set of steak knives.

2. The Mountain Decathlon

A lot of us take it easy on ourselves by saying, "Well, I'm a generalist, not a sports-specific kinda guy." Bullshit, sucking at everything and claiming to be a good generalist still means sucking at everything. But, in the interest of finding the best generalist (and I know a few men and women who could give a solid showing in all of the below), how about a comp with:

1. Mountain Running

2. An AT ski race.

3. Sport climbing.

4. Crack climbing (use an artificial crack).

5. Ice climbing.

6. Mixed climbing.

8. Kayaking (creek race).

9. Mountain biking.

10. Heinous road bike climb maybe, but more like likely would be a Loppet-style ski race. Road biking is not really a mountain-specific sport (Hell, look at the road-bike capital of the world, Holland--the place is flat).

I'm leaving out paragliding 'cause nobody but weirdos do that sport, but if we could get enough of us together that would be cool to have too.

Anyhow, I'm thinking about all of this as I look at a few events I'm planning for the next nine months. My "events" are about heading off into new mental or physical zones, pushes to the convoluted edge of my own physical and likely mental limits. In a way I'm coming up with "Alpine" objectives, in that I'll define all the variables I can. Hmmm, what if I write about it too? You know, I really over-think the hell out of things sometimes.

Right, back to "real" work, the computer calls...