Escaping The Rains

While the Interior of BC, and, in fact, much of BC, soaked in record June rainfalls, Doug and I headed south for a rock-climbing trip and, instead of going moldy from too much rain, got baked by too much sun.

First stop was Q'emlin Park, a kind of mini Skaha climbing area in a sizeable city park in Post Falls, Idaho where we climbed for a day. The rains, however, chased us south, so we drove a full day south to Boise, and spent two days climbing on the steep basalt columns of the Black Cliffs. Continuing south we drove through the tiny town of Almo to City of Rocks and Castle Rocks, two of the best granite sport climbing areas in the USA.

We stayed almost two weeks, climbing just about everyday. The heat, however, was intense and climbing days started with an early morning wake-up at 6 am so we could climb before it got too hot. Walking back in the scorching heat of the day was energy sapping.

Worn out by the heat, and maybe too many back to back climbing days, we headed north, stopping to climb at Spring Mountain in northeastern Oregon for three days. The climbing at Spring is steep and sustained, and, after three days, the fatigue and the northward migrating heat chased us back to Canada. Driving home past Taghum Beach Park, just down the hill from our house, a black bear strolled across the road - welcome to Canada. 

Doug on the uber classic Wheat Thin

Go Pro, Go Boring

It seems you can't go anywhere lately without seeing at least a dozen people with POV cameras mounted on their helmets. The footage is everywhere, on Facebook, YouTube, Vimeo, various bulletin boards, chat rooms and personal web-pages. I'm surprised we aren't seeing POV footage live streamed into public toilets.

Almost without exception the products of the POV camera are boring. And I mean, deathly boring. Imagine yourself watching paint dry and amplify the boredom about 6 million times and you are getting close to how boring the footage is. Particularly bad are the videos where someone has the head cam running while they ski a run - any run - all you see is one pole going forward for a pole plant, then the other, then the first pole, then the other.... Now that takes boring to a whole new level.

Then there are the videos of people out climbing. Sadly, but inevitably, the people who decide to film themselves are either teetering on the brink of incompetence or have long since fallen off that particular precipice. You could make a fantastic "how not to" series from these videos as you watch people rope up in stupid places, build and use dodgy belays, stagger their way up the normal route on some peak somewhere and, finally, rappel off some super manky rappel anchor.

On a bulletin board recently, I saw someone post something along these lines: "waiting my turn to summit Pelion." Turns out the dude posted this while waiting in a line of climbers on the summit ridge of Mount Pelion in the Tantalus Range for his "turn" to go up the rope (super-dodgy belay) to the summit. As you might guess, not long after, the POV footage showed up.

What happened to climbing just because you loved it?

Not doing anything worth filming, just looking up at the moon

Perspective

Some people grumble that roses have thorns; I am grateful that thorns have roses. Alphonse Karr.

I am suffering from house stress these days as we wait (impatiently) for our house to sell, or, more appropriately wait, hoping it will sell, but, each day feeling a little less hopeful. Given that my life is actually incredibly easy - I have a wonderful husband, a lovely house in a beautiful area of BC, suffer no ill-health, have lots of hobbies and goals, and, have no job to interfere with the pursuit of my hobbies and goals - I'm always dismayed at how stressed I can feel about things that are really insignificant.

Then, I start to wonder if living an almost zero stress life as I do, a person starts to lose the ability to deal with stress. Or, perhaps I never was able to deal with stress. It's been over 10 years since I last held down a job - the usual biggest stressor in the developed world - and I don't really remember whether I was stressed out then or not.

A good way to get your priorities straight is by listening to Amy Goodman's "Democracy Now" radio show (or Depress Me Now, as it is sometimes known). I listened today while I was climbing on my indoor wall. The show finished with a piece about New York housing and a new piece of legislation that will evict people - the poor, obviously, why are the rich never evicted - from subsidized housing because some rat-brained legislator has decided that subsidized housing doesn't reduce homelessness. How stressful is that.

Summer storm approaching

Short On Information On Short-Roping

I rarely short-rope in the mountains and never short-rope on glaciers. I find the technique most useful on moderate alpine routes where there are good stances - behind boulders, over ridge-lines, etc. - or horns, fins, boulders, etc. to quickly sling for added protection. In other circumstances, such as climbing steep snow slopes, I find the idea of tying myself to another person without any reliable protection in place (deadmen, snow pickets, etc.) tantamount to playing Russian roulette with a loaded gun. One person slips and doesn't immediately self arrest, and we are all sliding down the mountain. A quick, remarkably efficient way to turn one injury or fatality into a massacre.

Some research conducted in New Zealand after a high profile accident where a guide and both clients were killed after one client slipped on easy terrain, led to some research on holding power and holding forces. The results were not encouraging. The average recreational climber might, if they happened to be carrying a "guide-loop" which most recreationalists do not, be able to hold a short fall on soft snow up to 40 degrees, on harder/firmer snow and with no guide-loop the chance of holding a fall diminished rapidly. Sobering data. Further tests in Europe confirmed these findings.

Yet, you still see people short-roping glaciers and/or snow slopes. Short-roping on a glacier has to be reserved for the truly witless, as, not only will you/your party have no chance of holding a fall if someone slips, but, if one person happens to punch through a snow bridge and fall in a crevasse, the rest of the party is likely to follow the leader in. In other words, you've compounded your risk by short-roping - you have no protection against crevasse falls and no protection against another member of your party falling and pulling you off. Dumb meet dumber.

Roping up on snow slopes, unless you are going to place bomber protection is also fool-hardy, but most climbers seem to recognize this and don't do it. Short-roping on glaciers, however, seems to persist. If the glacier is so steep that a fall is possible, the only thing you can do to increase your safety is to choose your partners wisely. Do what I do and don't tie onto the rope with anyone who does not have a solid self-belay or self-arrest and can't demonstrate solid snow climbing skills. Generally, these folk are pretty obvious. But, be careful, the incompetent snow climber could be you.

Easy snow climbing, pointless to tie everyone together

It's Called A Workout

Today was Toonie day in Nelson, and, as it was raining yet again, I did my Crossfit work-out for $2 at the local community recreation centre. This was the first time I've worked out in a "globo-gym" for years and years, and, yes, years. All I can say is, nothing has changed. I felt like I'd flashed back to the 70's and the days of Jane Fonda aerobic classes and leg warmers.

My workout today was three rounds for time of:

• 400 metre row;
• 50 back extensions;
• 10 A2B.

At the end, I threw in some pull-ups, medicine ball squats (although the medicine balls at the recreation centre are way too light being half the weight of my home made one - a basketball filled with sand), and some balance work.

The one piece of equipment I don't have in my home gym is a rowing machine and so I was stoked to use the one at the recreation centre. I set the dial to 10 - recommended is 3 - but in Crossfit, you don't use no girlie weights, and rowed as fast as I could. Awesome workout.

Pretty soon I had the familiar Crossfit grimace and the sweat was flying. Off the machine and run over and pump out the back extensions as quick as possible. Unfortunately, the equipment they have at Nelson recreation centre for back extensions is easier than mine, so I really should have added some weight as 50 repetitions was too easy. Then, race over to the pull-up bar and pump out the A2B.

The rowing machine is in the area with the other "cardio" equipment, and the people there just gawked at me as I rowed as if I were fleeing the sinking Titanic. No-one uses the rowing machine, only the ellipticals, the bikes, the treadmills, and no-one was working very hard. They were all just casually turning the wheels, stepping, walking or jogging while watching TV or reading. Here is your first clue that you are not working hard enough - you can read or watch TV while you do "cardio." Remember the word "work" is a more than half of "workout."

In the weight room area, where the other equipment including the back extension equipment and the underused pull-up bar is, no-one was using the free weights or the medicine balls (too light in any case), or the big bars (also too light), or the pull-up bars. Most people were either using machines, standing around - perhaps preparatory to using machines - or doing some half-arsed knee bends that I can't in all honesty call a squat (knees should be below hips).

I felt pretty spanked by the time I finished and did the standard Crossfit cool-down which is collapsing on the floor in a sweat soaked heap. Everyone else was looking surprisingly fresh. I am embarrassed to admit I once worked out the way everyone else was and thought it was useful.

Once I'd recovered enough to stand up and look around me, I wanted to unplug all the machines and shout, "Step away from the machines." Or, as the Crossfitter's like to say "Don't use machines, become one."

Alpine bouldering in the Selkirks

Monsoon Rains

Our backyard rain gauge recorded 121 mm of rain in the past three days. That's a whole lotta water. The morning was dry but foggy, and it began raining again in the early afternoon. June is always a wet month in this part of BC.

I joined the KMC on a pleasant hike through forest around the area of Duhamel Creek during which we managed to avoid the rain.

It was the usual scene. Everyone but me started out at a sprint as if the starters gun had gone off, while I started off at my usual pace, the one I can keep up all day. Within half an hour, I went from the back of the line to the front of line as the sprinters inevitably slowed right down, and, by the time we were walking back at the end of the hike, I found the pace too slow. Now what was that about the tortoise and the hare?

 Trail apparently built by Doug

Nobody Said It Would Be Easy

No, it doesn't ever get any easier. You wouldn't want it to either. Greg Glassman.

I admit I am a Crossfit junkie. Difficult, continually novel workouts that you never quite master and leave you gasping on the floor are somehow fun. As Marc Twight said "it doesn't have to be fun to be fun." While Crossfit has spread in popularity and garnered support among big name climber types - Will Gadd for example - Crossfit will never be for the masses.

Nor will the Crossfit corollary - the Paleo diet. Both run counter to conventional fitness and nutrition "wisdom". Imagine, not eating grains and eating fat - nuts, seeds, avocado, olives, all types of oils and nut butters, even butter - and fueling your workouts, climbing days, ski trips on a diet heavy on protein and fat and light on carbohydrates. Almost like asking the Pope to shack up with a couple of gay guys, practice contraception, and take off that ridiculous head piece he wears (he could ditch the robes while he's at it). Just ain't gonna happen.

For those of us that have been fully assimilated into the Crossfit work-out ethic and the Paleo lifestyle, we can't understand why people - particularly people who want to excel at their sports - don't train hard Crossfit style, eat Paleo, and find themselves crushing their sport. Probably there are a multitude of reasons, but a big one, I think, is not being willing to be humbled. Crossfit workouts are hard, you will suck at them - especially at the beginning - you'll have to learn a lot of new skills, most likely, you'll find that you aren't the big shot you thought you were. After all, a goldfish looks big swimming in a pool of tadpoles.

So don't come out with this excuse - or any variation thereof - "I can't do the workouts/moves/exercises, so I quit." No shit, Sherlock. No-one said it would be easy.

Starting A Sierra Ski Traverse, 7 day pack, skis, walking, 

good thing you did all those killer workouts