Idaho

Rock climbing is alive and well in the United States.  Nowhere is that more evident than the City of Rocks.  Virtually everyone here climbs, including the park rangers.  There are old climbers (like us and many others); families climbing with small kids; teenagers with their parents or aunts and uncles; and hard men/women knocking off the toughest routes.  Climbing here is more like climbing in the UK where it is almost a mainstream sport instead of being viewed as a fringe activity pursued by adrenaline junkies.  This is the most relaxed and collegial scene of any destination climbing area that we have visited.  Yosemite has more rock and a beauty that transcends probably every other climbing destination, but it comes with crowds, traffic and a 6-month waiting list for campsites.

Idaho traffic jam

Local flora

Our campsite in the City is the best we have had on this trip.  It is private, protected from the elements, doesn't get blasted by the early morning sun and is shielded from the moon.  The views from it in all directions are breath taking.  We are already making plans to come back. 

Best campsites around

Camp Life

View from camp in one direction

Twin Sisters view from camp

Yesterday we climbed in 90-degree weather with not a cloud in sight.  We went to bed tonight with several inches of snow at our campground after a day of howling, wind driven precipitation and temperatures in the low 40’s during the day.  Snow in June is the reason I don’t live in Idaho.  Today was still enjoyable, even if it was spent doing mundane activities.  We took our first showers in several days (delicious), washed clothes, posted to the blog, went to lunch and saw the new Snow White movie in Burley before 4-wheeling it back to our campsite in the mud and snow around 11 PM.

Snow!

 

 

 

We wake up the next morning to a spectacular sunrise, and are treated to our second full-moon rising of the trip. The forced rest day turned out to be well timed as yesterday was Kick Jeff’s Ass Day.  Up until now I have been climbing with good technique and suffered none of the normal hand wounds that easily distinguish climbers.  That all changed on our third day in City of Rocks.  After an easy 5.9 warm-up I jumped on a 10C sport climb that had several pumpy cruxes.  The third and final of them was one move from the top, but I managed to fall off it five times as a result of having spent so much energy lower down.   I donated several pieces of skin and a ration of blood from numerous fingers and my reconstructed ankle in the process.

After that I dragged Babe up an easy 5.8 crack climb, but managed to fall on it as well as a result of not paying attention to my feet and slipping on easy ground.  Unlike the earlier falls which ended with me dangling in space, this one hurt as I hit a ledge with my hip after about eight feet.  I finished the climb and Babe cruised right up it on a top rope.  It was not my best day despite the fact that I have been climbing well and feeling strong.

Sunrise

Full Moon Rise

The bad weather drives almost everyone out of the park except for us; talk about having your own private Idaho!  Babe tried out the new Massif knee pads in a non-climbing activity that left her boyfriend gasping for breath.  I had used the knee pads earlier to both climb a chimney and reciprocate the extracurricular pleasure, and am very impressed with the comfort, protection and flexibility they offer.  Kudos to Mike Munter for developing them; there are way better than any knee pads I have climbed with previously.  Babe wanders off to explore the caves and extraordinary rock features that surround us while I spend the morning working on this blog.  I spy her an hour later, sunbathing au naturel off in the distance amidst the rocks.  Damn that girl is pretty!

Blogging

Troll cave

Rock Nymph

The storm front blows through and the temperature climbs into the 60’s with sun, so we venture out of the main climbing area to do some multi-pitch routes on the fringe of the Park.  We climb two long alpine routes on the largest cliff in the City, Steinfeld's Dome.  The climbing is moderate, bolt (over) protected, and the scenery is stunning.  While belaying Babe, a large golden eagle soars lazily beneath us, effortlessly riding the wind as if were surfing a wave.  That is one skill we both covet.

Steinfeld's Dome & the Thumb

Cruising

Rappelling off Steinfelds

Afterwards we hike back to the car and drive into the town of Almo where Babe is planning to treat me to dinner.  Guess she was getting tired of my campfire cooking.  Headed down the road out of the Park the old California Trail spreads out beneath us, the same path taken by early settlers with gold fever.  I am overcome with a feeling that I have only experienced a few times in my life: a complete oneness with the land and all that surrounds me.  Barely able to speak, I whisper to Babe that I felt the hand of god; both humbling and completely rapturous at the same time.  Despite being raised as an atheist, it brings tears to my eyes to feel so connected to life and nature.  I realize once again that there is a level of connectivity that binds everything together, even if I am not normally aware of it on a conscious level.

Pre-bliss moment

California Trail

I like to work and have been exceedingly lucky to have worked at several great companies with phenomenal people, doing meaningful work that I loved.  But one of the thoughts that has crystallized for both of us on this trip is that like most Americans, too much of our lives has been spent working and not enough time has been spent connecting with our spiritual beings.  While some may be able to make that connection through church or organized religion, that never worked for me.  I can only seem to find that inner peace and understanding of my place in the greater cosmos when I’m in the wilderness.  Bill Gore, the founder of Gore, used to tell me that the key to life was finding that balance between work, family and whatever helped you find that spiritual center.  He found his in the outdoors as well.

Our last day, we decide to visit Castle Rock State Park which adjoins the City.  Thanks to the Access Fund this area opened to climbing a few years earlier and contains some of the best rock and finest routes in the area.  We climb a 5-pitch sport route and find ourselves rappelling in the first drops of rain from approaching thunderstorms and another weather change.

Castle Rock

We are off to the Tetons.  Along the way we stop off to visit Babe’s mother Ree in Idaho Falls.  If there is one word to describe Ree it would probably be extra-terrestrial; she is a free spirit to say the least.  At one point she was stopped crossing the Canadian border because Babe had filed a missing person’s report on her as she hadn’t been seen or heard from in nearly a year.  But Ree has a good heart and is very happy about our visit.  It is cold and blustery when we drive north to Montana.

City of Rocks

We spent today at City of Rocks in Southern Idaho, climbing all afternoon.  Climbing here is like going to climbing heaven, everything about the place is stellar.  If there is a better place to hang out and climb in the world, I haven’t been there.  The rock is incredibly friendly with great friction but easy on your hands and bomber pro.  The campsites are some of the best in the country; it is remote but not isolated, the views, weather and land are spectacular and everyone you meet is nice.  This is the Idaho I grew up with; laid back, unpretentious, conservative but live & let live.  Frank Church country back in the day.  Up until now we have seen most campgrounds populated by retirees in RV’s.  Here it is almost all young climbers camping in tents.  There is still hope for the human race. 

City of Rocks Campsite

View from our campsite

  We will be here for a week, having spent the last week in Moab and Salt Lake City not climbing due to some unexpected events.  On Memorial Day I received two offers on the house I have been trying to sell on Bainbridge Island for the past 3 ½ years.  Those were the first two offers I’ve had in all that time as I dropped the price from $1.4 M to $775K.  OUCH!!!!  By the time I’m done paying off my ex-wife I will net next to nothing after 30 years of mortgage payments.  I’m starting to think that being homeless has its advantages. 

Bainbridge house

View of Puget Sound from the house

Needless to say, dealing with the sale of my house took precedent over climbing.  When we did try to climb at Wall Street in Moab, neither of us made it more than 18 inches off the ground.  I stick clipped the first bolt on our first (and last) climb there, and then couldn’t make it up to the bolt to pull the carabineer when I realized I was never getting up that climb that day.  Fortunately, a local in flip flops saved us by zipping up and pulling the beaner for us.   Oh well.

Moab area

Ute Indian pictographs from about 1700

Arches National Park

Nevertheless, we got to see the best and worst that Moab has to offer, from stunning landscape to extreme winds (60 mph) and dust.  After the wind cleared up we were treated to typical Moab perfection; sunny warm days and stunning views, with world class climbing, kayaking, mountain biking, hiking and photography available.  The place is surreal in its beauty.  We walked in to Delicate Arch at Arches National Park for the sunset and were feeling awfully reverent, even in the midst of a constant stream of other tourists.  Far less crowded but equally beautiful was Canyonlands National Park.  By this point I had paid for my Golden Eagle national park pass several times over.

Canyonlands

Desert light

White Rim road into Canyonlands

Hike into Delicate Arch

Delicate Arch

Babe trying to fly

Crowd at Delicate Arch

On the way up to Moab we paid the entrance fee and drove through Monument Valley so that I could show Babe what Bandito country looks like.  This was the first time I had ever paid to go into the park, as it was the sight of numerous, illegal ascents of sandstone spires by the Bandito clan.  Probably the most infamous of them was the first ascent of Never Never Land on the Totem Pole by me, Stan and LB.  We did this over 3 days in the winter of 1978 when tourist season was over and we could climb undetected by camping behind the spire, out of sight from everyone.  The weather was cold, windy and snowy, which we counteracted by eating LSD.  Foolishly, we sent LB unsupervised to grocery shop before this particular climb, so we had nothing to eat for 3 days except lemon pudding, pop tarts and beer with maybe a can or two of beans thrown in.  To make it worse, Stan’s beater of a car got stuck in the sand, stuck in drive, was almost out of gas and had to be started with a large screw driver by shorting across the starter solenoid.  I hiked out to the road after we climbed the route and ran into Beverly Johnson who pulled us out of the sand.  When we got to Kayenta for gas, we ran into some hikers who were being hauled off to jail for illegally climbing on the reservation.

Totem Pole

Stan's stuck beater

If you don’t know about Bev, she was first woman to solo El Cap and the first person to solo the Straits of Magellan in a kayak, first person to pilot a gyro-craft in the Antarctic, she skied across Greenland, windsurfed across the Bering Straits, led all-woman team to parachute into highlands of New Guinea and was the first female smoke jumper,.  She also filmed the Russian-Afghanistan war with her husband Mike Hoover.  Did I mention that she was also beautiful and unfailingly considerate and nice?  She was killed several years ago in a helicopter crash along Frank Wells, president of Disney at the time.  At her memorial service outside of Jackson Wyoming which I attended with John Harlin, we ran into Tom Brokaw and Clint Eastwood to give you an idea how important Bev’s contributions were to the outdoor adventure and film communities.  Her life has been chronicled in the book “The View from the Edge” by Gabriela Zimm.  Babe would have loved Bev for sure.

In Salt Lake we stayed a couple of nights with a long-time (25 years) friend Duncan Edwards and his wife Anne.  We called them about 30 minutes before crashing at their home in the nicest area of Salt Lake up by Westminster College.  Duncan and I worked together in the 80’s to tie up all the Gore-Tex footwear manufacturers with a licensing program that to this day enables Gore to own that market.  We had to.  It enabled us to introduce all the technology required to actually make waterproof/breathable footwear.  Before that it all leaked and wasn’t breathable at all.  My kids both spent their infancy in the same crib as Duncan’s kids: one that Duncan bought in Korea when he lived there learning how to put together licensing deals with the masters of “knock off”.

Anne is a doctor, so I got a referral to see someone about the pain in my groin that has been bothering me for months.  Unfortunately, the cause was not the extra large Johnson I wish I was packing, but turned out to be a torn labrum in my right hip.  With all the climbing and hiking it has painfully locked up several times on this trip and I needed to know what I was dealing with.  If I was smart I would go see an orthopedic doctor now but that would probably end this trip, so I followed standard American medical advice and started taking non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (ibuprofen, naprosin) to control the pain.  I have been able to avoid those drugs completely for the past few years and am loathe to start taking them again.

But the bottom line is that I don’t think I can stomach another surgery.  I have been under general anesthesia 12 times and have over 50 inches of scars to show for it, many of them brought on by climbing.  Two hernia operations, two shoulder operations, an artificial knee, a reconstructed knee (ACL), a reattached bicep tendon, reconstructed ankle and traumatic wound closure every year until I turned 40.  My most recent surgery took place at the end of October where I had a tendon pulled from the bottom of my foot and transplanted to replace the largest posterior tibial tendon, largest tendon in the body.  They put a 4 inch screw in for good measure and cut away one of the three attachment points of the Achilles tendon on the calf.  This is a very delicate and difficult surgery that included two months with no weight bearing post op, so I am more than a little pleased that my foot has worked superbly all trip even in jam cracks.  Dr. Patrick Code in Medford did the surgery and I can’t say enough about great the job he did.

So fuck it. I’m climbing, hip or no hip and dealing with the consequences next month.

But staying off the rock for a week gave me the opportunity to review some of the gear we are using.  I am not a gear freak despite having run some of the preeminent outdoor clothing and equipment businesses in the world, and tend to use my personal gear until it disintegrates.  But I do constantly test new stuff, am technically competent and most willing to call a spade a spade.  So here goes:

• Audi S4.  Best car I have ever owned.  We have beaten it over rough, 4-wheel drive roads on this trip and cruised at 100+ loaded to the gills.  Flawless.Escort 9500ci radar detector with display hidden in the rear view mirror.  Ditto.  No tickets.
• MSR Mutha Hubba tent.  Supposed to be a 3-person backpacking tent, works fantastic as a 2-person car camping tent.  Jim Giblin designed this tent and it is bombproof and well thought out on every detail.  Best tent I have ever owned and I’ve owned dozens of tents.  Even the tent stakes that come with it are best of class.
• MSR Reactor stove and cookware.  Best stove ever made (including Jetboil) for boiling water quickly and efficiently.  Not affected by wind and very compact.  Uses radiant heat to cook instead of a flame, and utilizes the exhaust gases via a heat exchanger to heat the pot.  Redwood Stephens designed this stove and it is simply an engineering marvel.  Can’t really cook with it, but it is hell on water.
• MSR Duralite cookware.  Extremely well tricked out, lightweight, easy to use and clean.  Kudos to Drew Keegan.
• Therm-A-Rest Dreamtime mattresses.  Big, bulky and so comfortable you think you were sleeping in your bed at home.  Doug Jacot is the person most responsible for this product.  He is a very big guy, so he probably had some incentive to get it right.
• Therm-A-Rest Alpine Blanket sleep system.  First conceived of by Jim Trombly.  We were looking for bedding that would work for two people side by side, but this system leaves large cold gaps when hooked together for two people.  The concept is stellar and it may work well for a single person, but it just doesn’t work well as executed for two people.  You are better off going to Target and buying traditional bedding (as we did).
• Platypus GravityWorks filter system.  By far the best way to purify water backcountry; gravity does all the work.  John Burroughs of Cascade Designs was right to champion this idea, while Lee Gestwich was a key contributor to its development.
• Platypus Big Zip water reservoir.  Easily the worst closure system ever invented to hold water.  It doesn’t work, leaks like a sieve, don’t’ buy it.
• Black Diamond Camalots and Stoppers.  If I had this stuff when I was in my 20’s I would have been sending 5.13 with relative ease.  Fabulous.
• Black Diamond Spark pack.  Babe loves the fit and comfort of this pack, but it trades lightweight for durability and doesn’t hold enough for anything but a day hike.  Main compartment doesn’t access well.
• Cold Cold World Chernobyl rucksack.  Is there a better rugged climbing pack?  I have beat the hell out of mine for over 20 years, hauled it up several big walls and still prefer it to every other pack I’ve tried for climbing and backcountry skiing.  Elegant simplicity and bomber construction.
• Arc’Teryx B-360a climbing harness.  Wicked expensive, but no other harness compares.  When I went shopping for my last harness I had an extensive list of must-have and like-to-have in a harness.  This harness met every criterion and is extremely comfortable, lightweight and fully featured.  I’ve taken several long falls in it and all were fairly comfortable. 
•  Massif Breeze and Cool Knit t-shirts.  Great climbing shirts for hot and cold weather respectively.  Tough, great moisture management and extremely comfortable.  The fact that they help protect you from Improvised Explosive Devices (IDE’s) is a bonus if you decide to go climbing in Afghanistan.
• Lelo Siri vibrator.  Compact, quiet, holds a charge for a long time and guaranteed to put a smile on any girl’s face. 
• Nikon D300 camera.  Whip me, beat me, drop me, abuse me.  This workhorse is dependable, easy to use, takes great pictures and holds up to a pounding.  I can see now why Nikon dropped the D200 body.  I love the 18mm-200mm zoom lens and am also carrying a 50mm, f/1.4 fixed lens.  Both Nikkor, both excellent.
• Crown Royal Black whiskey.  My vice of choice.  We are nearly 2/3 of the way through the bottle we bought in California for less than half the price of what we could get it for in Oregon or Washington.  Even Babe likes taking a swig now before going to bed.
• Ex Officio clothing.  Well made, well featured, comfortable.  You may look like a tourist in them, but then you probably are.  I have pants, a long-sleeve shirt, socks and a bandana; all with permethrin to keep the bugs away.  Good stuff.
• Arc’Teryx softshell jacket.  Their clothes fit me well, are extremely well made and durable, and I like their minimalistic approach.
• Boreal Ace climbing shoes.  I’ve had mine resoled three times.  They are a great all around climbing shoe.  Once I quit buying shoes that were three sizes two small, I ended up with this pair that are also very comfortable.  Probably can’t lead 5.12 in them, but then I probably couldn’t lead it with suction cups attached to my feet.
• La Sportiva approach and climbing shoes.  Everything they make is well made, fits me and has been superbly designed for the task at hand.  Maybe the best outdoor footwear company out there.  Babe loves her La Sportiva approach shoes as well.

So much for the gear review.  Tomorrow promises to be another great day here in the City.

Still alive & kicking