The Clear Waters of Tahoe Are Calling My Name

Last time I left you with a bunch of photos of my Alaskan Adventure; hopefully, this post will have more words than pictures, but lots of pictures too!

We arrived in Squamish on a sunny Thursday afternoon which was much welcomed after all the cold and rainy weather we encountered throughout the past month. The first thing you see entering Squamish is The Chief which is a 500 foot tall granite dome overlooking the town and we were instantly drawn to the base. We rented a guidebook for the day and settled on the climb “Snake” (5.9) which was supposed to be similar quality to the 5 star route next to it (Diedre 5.8), just slightly harder and much less traffic. We rack up and head to the base of the climb. We meet a duo who are repelling down because they got off route onto a much harder route that they couldn’t finish. We were then met by another group wanting to climb the same route. Dan and I started feeling rushed to get up it and that’s where the mistakes started. We planned on linking the first two pitches together but Dan stopped half way through the second pitch and I wasn’t quite sure why. Upon linking up with Dan, it turns out the beginning climbing wasn’t quite as easy as we were under the impression of and there was too much rope out for Dan to feel comfortable. We reset the belay and Dan is going to shoot for the chains but is once again stopped by a combination of moves that he didn’t feel comfortable maneuvering without proper protection. He set a belay on a tree to the climber’s right and I met him at the tree. He explained to me that the moves looked sketch and that there was no pro. There are now two parties waiting behind us and I am feeling the need to rush to get out of their way. I was looking at traversing through roughly 30 feet of “5.7” unprotected terrain from the tree. I take one look at it and in the back of my mind I’m thinking “how hard can 5.7 be?” and tell Dan “I’ll just go for it.” Right off of the belay I found a small nubbin to throw a sling around and Dan asks “what the hell that’s going to do?” I didn’t think it would hold either but it was a bit of mental duct tape and I told Dan “well, this is just a no fall zone.” I start to move through the traverse; I look at my different options and start to work my feet out. I can see where I need to get but all I have to work with is sloped hands, which I can barely even palm, and two nubbins to stand on. I can see a good foot hold about another 2 feet out and make a committing intermediate move to get into position to get to that hold. I realize my sequence is off and I can’t get to where I want to go. I am basically being held to the wall by one toe on a tiny nubbin and I’ve got Elvis leg. I start to panic but close my eyes and start to breathe slow and deliberately. My leg stops shaking and I can here Dan yelling “Just breathe man you got it, you can do it, stick with it!” I try to reverse the intermediate move I just made but I just can’t hold it anymore. I don’t have it. I could tell my foot was going to blow and I just went with it into the “no fall zone.” I don’t know what happened between there and looking up at Dan but according to Dan I fell down about 15 feet missing a large flake directly below me and landing on my feet on a more slabby ledge. When my feet hit, they gripped and I flipped head over heels and fell another 10 feet landing/slamming into another wall on my back. Somehow, the sling that I slung as “mental duct tape” had held and saved me from falling another 5-10 feet and decking on a pointy horn that would have surely landed me in the hospital. Dan immediately started yelling to me to figure out how bad I was. I was in a lot of pain but I knew I was in one piece and good enough to be lowered and make my way down. I could tell by the look on the two parties below us that the fall must have looked horrible. Even when I tried to make a joke or two while passing by the other climbers they just looked at me slightly confused and in shock probably thinking WTF is wrong this guy?

I had to take it easy the rest of the day and the worst part was that I couldn’t sit, stand, or lie down without being in an immense amount of pain. It was starting to get to the point where Dan and I started debating if I actually needed to go to the hospital. I figured if I wasn’t peeing blood that I’d be ok so we skipped the hospital and I just tried to take it easy. Later that night in camp we were talking to other climbers who have done Snake and they were telling us that there are two ways to do the unprotected traverse: the easier way (5.7) is to stay low and find a foot hold way out left, which I didn’t see because I was rushing; the second way (5.10) is to stay high on shitty feet and no hands which is what I ended up doing. The following day I decided I needed to just sit around and Dan went climbing with others from the camp. The whole day I couldn’t get the sequence of events out of my head. This was the first bad fall I have ever taken while climbing and I didn’t know how it was going to affect me. We have run into multiple people that use to climb until they took a fall that was too much for them and quit. I have only been climbing for roughly 2 years and I’m debating trying to make a career out of climbing and now I don’t know what to think. I’m not invincible. What I’m doing is dangerous. One wrong decision can leave you in a hospital or dead. These thoughts keep swirling in my head. I wonder what my mental head space will be like when I can climb again. What if I get to a scary point and freak out and can’t keep calm? When Dan meets back up for dinner we start discussing what’s going on. Dan still has 2 months of travel and climbing planned with me and I don’t want to let him down; I want to keep climbing. Dan was talking to a local friend of his and we told him we were on Snake and he says “Oh, Snake I took a bad fall on that climb 5 years ago and haven’t been back to it since.” I thought about the prospect of skipping this climb but I think that it would then just haunt me; the climb that got the best of me. I decided then that I was feeling good enough to climb the next day. Dan asked me what I wanted to climb and immediately I told him Snake. He was a bit surprised but said he was hoping I would say that. I had to conquer this climb to keep my head in check. It was decided: Snake was going down first thing the next morning.

We get to the base of Snake. This time we have the route to ourselves with no parties waiting for us. We know what we are getting ourselves into. We free solo the first pitch and set the belay. Dan climbs to directly under the traverse and sets a belay which is a much safer position than from the tree way out right. I follow up and start to look at my options. I find a number 2 cam placement on a flake out right which is super bomber but would still produce a long fall. I climb up to the beginning of the traverse and start to look around. There has to be gear placement somewhere. I find a little nook that looks like I could shove a pink Tricam in and although super sketchy, if it held, would make the fall much safer. I don’t think it would have held so it was just more “mental duct tape.” I look out to the same holds I used on the last go around. I stop and take a deep breath and look some more; I take my time. I see the lower left foot that the other climbers had told us about. I look down at Dan and tell him to watch me closely. I commit to the traverse. I move my foot out left and being lower than my last chosen path, had better hand holds. I balance out onto my left foot so I can make a reachy move to a side pull. There’s no turning back from here, but once I hit that side pull, I knew I was fine. I pulled through and clipped the chains. I let out a huge sigh of relief and belay Dan up. It felt really good to pull that move clean but this was just the beginning of the climb. We still had 4 more (5.9) pitches to go and I needed to lead 2 of them. I decided to take this next one right off the bat; another traverse: this time about 45 feet straight left with almost no gear and a difficulty rating of 5.9. I took my time and worked my way through finding sparse gear along the way. Dan flew up the next pitch of bomber hand crack with a slabby face. Now it’s back to me, another sketchy traverse! I had to climb about 50 feet of demanding crack until I made it to a tree that marked the beginning of this traverse. It moved about 20 feet to the right but under a roof with no feet and semi decent hand jams. This was physically demanding and much harder than the two traverses before but it was a clean fall with no worries of hitting anything. The wind started to kick up half way through the traverse but I powered my way through, up and around the corner of the roof and clipped the chains. Dan followed up and finished out the last pitch. We had conquered Snake and I had conquered my fear.

I am still mentally dealing with the repercussions of the fall. The following week of climbing proved to be extremely mentally challenging for me and I had to really focus on keeping my cool while leading. I think in the end this experience will strengthen me mentally and also make me realize the dangers of what I’m doing and to take more precautions while doing it. I know that I’m not invincible and I know that I want to keep climbing.

After Squamish I lived in a junkyard in Vancouver for 2 days while swapping interiors of my van. Westfalia made a full camper that was only available in Canada and I just so happened to stumble upon one with a near perfect interior in a scrap yard. I hadn’t gotten that dirty working on my van nor have I been in a junkyard in a while so it felt good to be back in my element.

We were lucky enough to have the opportunity to enjoy mandolinist Chris Thile and upright bassist Edgar Meyer perform at the Chan Center for Performing Arts at the University of Vancouver. From here we made our way down to Bellingham to meet with Peter and Jan who are friends of Dan. Peter is a sailing enthusiast and decided he was going to take us sailing through the San Juan’s for the weekend. Jan precooked food for us which was the best food I have had in quite a time. First we sailed to Vendovi Island to meet with Peter’s friends. We spent the night docked at Vendovi then sailed to Cypress Island the following day. We hiked out to Eagle Rock and enjoyed a beautiful sunset. We spent that night anchored in Eagle Harbor. Next up was more catching up with old friends of Dan’s in Duvall. Dan lived and went to school in Duvall for a year when he was 18 and some of his classmates are still in the area.

We were itching to climb again so we moved on to Smith Rock. We met up with our friend Mary who we met earlier in the trip in the Tetons. Mary writes for Earth magazine and has been living on the road for 9 years. It’s really incredible to think about all the places she has been. Even her dogs have visited more states than me. You can read her blog here:The Blonde Coyote which has a sweet write up of our adventure here: Smith Rock Adventure I'll be looking forward to reading part 2! We spent the week climbing at the birth place of sport climbing. This place has some very unique climbing on some kind of super solid volcanic rock. The climbers at Smith are super chill and respectful to the point where you can leave your phone at the outlet outside of the bathroom without worrying about someone swiping it. We finished our stay at Smith with an ascent of Monkey Face which is the iconic classic route of Smith Rock.

I can’t count the number of beautiful sunsets we got

Dan and I made it to the base of monkey face just a few minutes after another party of 3. They were telling us that they have never done a bolt ladder before and Dan and I were thinking we might have to wait in line to get on top. We decided we were going to try and climb past this party on a decent looking crack to the right “how hard can it be?” Sound familiar? Dan climbed Monkey Face 2 days prior with Mary so I was given the opportunity to lead most of the pitches. The first pitch was super quality 5.9 crack to bolted anchors so we knew we were on some kind of decent route. I took the second pitch as well which looked like a sketchy traverse. It was instantly a flashback to Squamish. I slung a chock stone and made my way out. Luckily I found a bolt at the end of the traverse but unluckily it was a rusted 1/4” POS. I clipped a double length to the rusty bolt and looked at the large corner above me. I made my way up into the corner and was standing on a solid horn. There was a bomber number 2 C4 placement behind the horn but I had already used my number 2 and only had my number 1 so I looked around and all I could find was a number 5 micro-nut. I decided there was better gear up higher and moved into the unknown. I made it to a sketchy stance about 10 feet above the micro nut and looked for gear placements. There was none. I looked down and realized I’m 25 feet left of my belay and 25 feet above my last bomber piece. If I fell, the micro-nut would surely blow and I doubt the rusted ¼” bolt would fare much better. This fall I would not walk away from and I am past the point of down-climbing. I am transported back to Squamish and have all the same feelings; I start to panic. I close my eyes and take deep deliberate breaths; my stance isn’t THAT bad. Ok, I calm down a little; what do I have to work with? I lean out from the corner and look onto the face and I see a bolt! Oh shit, it has no hanger…WTF!? More mental duct tape…I delicately place a sling over the stud that’s sticking out all of about an inch and a half and clip the sling. I take a few more breaths and commit. I climb out onto the face and another 10-15 feet above my last stance and finally find a place to slot bomber gear in. I quickly throw a .75 X4 and a Yellow DMM nut in the crack and equalize them; this would hold a bus. I can finally relax and calm down safely, 40-50 feet above my last bomber piece of protection. I later find out that I was on an X rated route which means there is no protection and a fall would result in serious injury or death. We continued the climb, still behind the party of three and finished out the route via the Pioneer Route which is the most popular route most climbers use to ascend Monkey Face. There is an A0 bolt ladder to get into the mouth of the monkey which was the first time I ever attempted something like this. From the mouth of the monkey, the climber crawls out the cave over a 150 foot vertical drop onto an easy face to the summit. Of course we were making our best monkey calls the whole way up; the perfect way to finish up our Smith Rock Experience. From the top we make a 150 foot simul-repel and I pretended I was Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible. We have a farewell/victory dinner with Mary then part ways and head toward San Francisco.

In the Monkeys Mouth (Mary in the background)

Pulling rope is better than pushing rope

DA DA DA DA NA NA (Mission impossible theme song)

I wanted to see The Good Life perform at the Fillmore and just by chance, our friend Sharah who had lived in the van with us for a few weeks was also in San Francisco. We all met up and enjoyed the show together and then went to check out the Haight-Ashbury. I was geeking out with all the Grateful Dead history all around. We spent the night in the parking lot of a harbor and enjoyed a beautiful sunny Sunday morning on a sailboat that Sharah was currently crashing at. Dan and I spent the afternoon at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival and caught Bela Fleck & Abigail Washburn and Joe Russo’s Almost Dead (A Grateful Dead Tribute Band).

We made it to Lake Tahoe the following morning and decided we needed a down day to do laundry and catch up on internet. While driving through town, we were rear ended at a stop light. We pull over and meet Devon, Dave, and Heidi who just so happen to be climbers. After assessing the damages, which was worse to their truck (nothing happened to Bertha), I decided the authorities need not be involved and that we should be friends and go climb. So yesterday was an amazing day climbing in Lake Tahoe with our new friends and I now write this post from their couch. Funny how life works out sometimes…

The horrible quality of these pictures are really starting to annoy me so once again here are links to full res pictures and more pics than posted here: September AND October

The Clear Waters of Tahoe Are Calling My Name

A New Chapter

I Forgot to Yell TIDAL WAVE

“The summit is for the ego, the journey is for the soul.”