Category Archives: Climbing

Memento Mori

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.”
– Steve Jobs

Free soloing is by all measures a contentious practice. Climbing without ropes at a height guaranteed to be lethal stirs up all manner of controversy amongst climbers and flatlanders alike. The main charge leveled against the free-soloist is that of irresponsibility. Specific critiques include:

The soloist does not really understand what he is risking. Here is the assumption that most soloists can’t truly feel or understand how close they come to death. The common image is of a person who is brave as long as his illusion of invulnerability goes unchallenged, but as soon as this bubble is burst, a fear and regret will take hold. If only they really understood the risk, they would not solo. (See the comments on this thread as an example)
The soloist is suicidal or otherwise lacks respect for his own life. In this light, soloing is cast as an act of sadness, desperation, or (most condemnably) selfishness, disregard for the living who will be left behind to mourn.
The soloist makes trouble for the rest of us. If a climber gets stuck or falls to his death, search and rescue professionals will be dispatched. In the course of their job, it is possible that they also will be injured or killed, and even if they escape unharmed, just think of the financial cost! (An example here)
The soloist sets a bad example. For the impressionable of all ages among us, the soloist (and the media enamored of such feats) offers a dangerous message: climbing sans protection is the purest form of the art, the most exciting, and the most impressive. The soloist’s actions, especially high-profile climbers like Alex Honnold, John Bachar, Peter Croft, Michael Reardon, Dan Osman, etc., entice others less skilled to give it a shot, often without a good understanding of what it is they’re actually doing. (Another example here)

But for all these complaints, many of which contain facets both valid and poorly reasoned, the real source of free soloing’s taboo lies in the observer as much as in the soloist. The free soloist is a living memento mori, a reminder of our own mortality and the fine line that divides life from death. We are attracted to the spectacle of the free soloist as an act of freedom, but at the same time it’s easy to be offended by it — we picture our children, spouses, or friends similarly risking everything. We want to be safe. We want our loved ones to be safe. Mortality is something we are loath to face.

The Latin phrase memento mori can be traced to ancient Rome. The Romans believed that awareness of mortality helped instill humility, important for a prudent life. It was adopted by early Christians as a way to warn us off sins of the transient flesh and keep us focused on the afterlife. In either case, contemplation on death was accepted as an important part of life. (Little wonder, considering life expectancy in those days was less than half what it is today.) Up through the 20th century in America, it was not unusual for families to keep close quarters with the deceased, washing and tending to their bodies and housing them until the burial took place.

Today, most of us are spared the sight of death and dying. The modern medical system transports the sick and elderly to sterile rooms as the end of life draws near. When an accident occurs, victims are immediately shuttled to the hospital or morgue. When my girlfriend, now wife, and I encountered the corpse of a fallen climber in the Flatirons of Boulder, Colorado, it was as if a curtain was pulled aside. A stark patch of drying blood and awkwardly twisted limbs lay before us. We had never seen anything like this firsthand. Later, it struck me as odd; surely people were dying — of old age, of disease, in accidents or homicides – around us every day. How was it they had been so effectively hurried out of view? Kristin and I were eager to move on and forget the incident at the time, but in retrospect, it seems somehow valuable — the original and once ubiquitous memento mori.

I choose not free solo myself; it grips me with an almost paralytic fear and offers little joy in return. And as someone who knows many climbers who free solo at varying levels of difficulty, I admittedly feel a sadness at the thought of losing my friends and acquaintances. But the memento mori reminds us of our shared and universal fate. When we lose sight of this, it becomes all to easy to imagine ourselves living forever, or that our success and wealth will somehow shield us from mortality. Death is the ultimate context, and we must live and act accordingly, whatever that means for each of us.

In the end, the motivations of the free soloist, just like the motivations of any individual in any walk of life, will vary greatly. It is certainly possible for a person to solo out of a desire to end it all. Or to solo without fully understanding the risks at hand. But it is just as possible to solo out of joy, because proximity to death makes the act of living all the more vibrant … or just because it feels right.

In ancient Rome, the memento mori was meant to warn against hubris. In the Christian conception, it played a moralizing role. Perhaps in our time, one in which death is held, for as long as possible, at a “safe” remove, the image of the soloist — or anyone who risks his or her life for reasons not immediately evident — serves as a reminder not just of our own precariousness, but also that there is no time to waste.

Like any concept, Memento mori implies its own opposite — in this case the phrase memento vivere, “remember to live.” Remember to live particularly because we must die. It’s funny to think that we need such reminders, but, especially now, we do.

On Balance

Balance is central to the act of climbing; it allows for controlled movement, for rhythm and flow from one hold to the next. Balance between a pushing foot and a pulling hand, between two feet pressing against the sides of a chimney, between the downward pressure of a foot and the equal and opposite upward pressure of the rock.

Without balance, climbing becomes nothing but a test of strength: who can haul his poor bones farther up the wall before exhaustion sets in. One who climbs out of balance looks, in climbing parlance, “thrutchy,” which is as graceless as it sounds.

To climb with balance is to climb efficiently. For every degree of misalignment, you must pay with strength. Out of balance and you are out of control, at the mercy of gravity, easily pushed and pulled about in its unrelating warp.

“In the practice of tolerance, one’s enemy is the best teacher,” said the Dalai Lama. In the practice of climbing, gravity is both adversary and instructor. Balance is the language of gravity. The climber speaks it with his body. Fluency comes only through time, study, and relentless practice.

A strong climber might appear impressive, but a climber in balance makes difficult things look easy.

I have a very athletic friend who routinely asks me, “I want to climb 5.13. What do I have to do to get stronger?”

I always tell him the same thing: Don’t worry about getting stronger; work on your technique, your balance. Strength is my friend’s crutch — he thinks it will solve his problems to have more and more of it. In reality, he could do with a little less, as it’s confusing the real issue. He can do many moves using mostly strength, but really, he could do them much more easily if he relied less on his muscles and more on his balance.

The lesson is replayed every time a young couple visits the gym for the first time. The man climbs with his arms, as if trying to pull the wall down to the ground. The young woman dances up the wall, balanced over her feet. “The softest things in the world overcome the hardest things in the world,” wrote Lao Tzu in the Tao de Ching.

Of course, both strength and balance are required to climb. Too much of one and not enough of the other is its own kind of imbalance. Likewise, the mental and the physical must be balanced. Activity and rest must be balanced.

In climbing and in the rest of life, it is easy to forsake one thing for another while completely passing over the Middle Way. Many of my climber friends have let promising careers and relationships stagnate in exchange for more and more time to climb. Many of my career-oriented friends have let their bodies and their senses of adventure atrophy in exchange for advancement or money. These just are a few examples of lives lived out of balance.

I have found it is helpful to constantly monitor balance and to adjust whenever things fall out of line.

From Chalk to Salve: Crap Climbers Put on Their Hands

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You might have noticed that rock climbers are obsessed with their hands. Hang out at any crag, and you’ll observe people constantly examining the epidermis of their hands for damage, tamping their tips with the end of the thumb to test the skin’s resilience, trimming nails, filing calluses, taping sore digits, and otherwise tending to wounds that might impede progress on future climbs. It is a scene from some depraved, chalk and dirt coated, self-serve manicure salon.

Little surprise, then, that in pursuit of ideal skin conditions, climbers also apply a wide array of substances to their battered mitts. There is a veritable medicine cabinet worth of crap we dab and slather on our hands so we might climb better, climb longer, climb more often. Below, an abridged list in three sections: drying agents; salves, balms, and oils; and moisturizers. If I’ve left out anything, which I almost certainly have, please add in the comments.

DRYING AGENTS

In climbing, moisture is friction’s enemy. Sweaty fingers or humid air can reduce your ability to crank by up to 32% (I just made that up). Accordingly, we climbers are constantly looking for ways to dry out our skin and maximize our ability to stick to small, sloping, or otherwise shitty holds. Below are several specific brands of drying agent, for illustrative purposes, but keep in mind that many companies make chalk, liquid chalk, resin powder, and even scented chalk.

Gym Chalk (aka, the classic)

Claims: Helps absorb moisture, non-toxic
Ingredients: Magnesium carbonate
Downside: Leaves unsightly white marks on the rock and your clothes.
(Link: amazon.com)

Herbal Chalk

Claims: “Calm your mind and ignite your power to make the move with this spice powered herbal chalk” and “Sooth your sore finger tips, worn thin from days of throwing yourself at a rock, so the last pitch is as fun as the first!”
Ingredients: Magnesium carbonate, organic extracts, natural sources of menthol.
Downside: Um…
(Pictured: Joshua Tree Fire Herbal Chalk)

Colored Chalk

Claims: “Selected to match common rock colors. The result is a chalk that provides performance climbers demand but does not leave behind unsightly white stains. Rock Chalk is all natural, nontoxic and washable.”
Ingredients: Magnesium carbonate blend with all natural pigments.
Downside: Requires a separate chalk bag for each rock type you tackle.
(Pictured: Terra Rock Colored Chalk)

Liquid Chalk

Claims: “solves the issue of keeping your skin coated with chalk on long boulder problems or intense routes were it is impossible, or too strenuous, to take a hand off for a dip in the chalk bag” and “And then there are the environmental benefits – use liquid chalk and the normal trail of white paw marks will be greatly reduced.”
Ingredients: Alcohol, magnesium carbonate, magnesium hydroxide, colphonium, hydroxypropylcellulosum, styrax bezoin.
Downside: Alcohol component can over-dry. Some liquid chalk contains resin (rosin; see below).
(Pictured: DMM Liquid Chalk)

Rosin (or Resin)

Claims: Improves grip (couldn’t find any claims with this particular product, but that’s the long and short of it).
Ingredients: Powdered pine resin (colophane), often with additional fillers.
Downside: Creates a glassy (read: frictionless), black coating where used (Fontainebleau, anyone?) . Over time makes the rock almost unclimbable unless you continue to use rosin.
(Pictured: 8c Plus Colophane)

Antihydral Cream

Claims: “One little dab of the cream, rub it into your hands and your hands will stay bone dry for hours or days” (from foosdirect-store.com). “Methenamine is a condensation product of formaldehyde and ammonia and in solution it releases formaldehyde at a rate depending on the acidity of the medium. The resultant anhidrosis is essentially the result of precipitated protein plugs in the sweat duct” (from a scientific study found here). “This stuff has been a game changer by helping me keep my largest organ in better nick” (from Andrew Bisharat’s review on eveningsends.com).
(Active) Ingredients: Methenamine.
Downside: Danger of extreme cracking and splitting due to over-dryness. Unless you live in Germany, you’ll have to mail order from shady foosball e-commerce site.
(Link: foosdirect-store.com)

SALVES, BALMS, OILS

While drying agents help you perform on the rock, climbers turn to this class of hand schmutz to help their poor, battered hands heal. Split tips, bloody flappers, and weeping tips? No problem! Just rub on some herbal compound, and you’ll be cranking like it never happened! Truth is, the only cure for truly damaged skin is time, but these various treatments might speed the process a bit…

Joshua Tree Climbing Salve

Claims: “Effective in treating dry, chapped skin, chafing, abrasions, scrapes and cuts” and “moisturizes and promotes healing without softening calluses that the body produces for protection.”
Ingredients: Beeswax, sunflower oil, jojoba, lavender and tea tree oil, freshly brewed extracts of calendula, echinacea, chaparral, comfrey, myrrh, and benzoin gum.
Downside: Oily consistency leaves anything you touch with a sheen for the first 10-15 minutes after applying.
(Link: jtreelife.com)

Tip Juice

Claims: “It soothes. It calms. It nourishes. It relieves. It promotes skin renewal. It keeps you climbing.”
Ingredients: Unlisted on the website, but is made by hand with “no machines, just pots and pans. Using only the finest natural and vegan ingredients”
Downside: You just put something called “tip juice” on your hands. It was made in some British dude’s “pots and pans.” And you paid to do it.
(Link: tipjuice.co.uk)

Metolius Climber’s Hand Repair Balm

Claims: “Antiseptic blend speeds healing and promotes new skin growth.”
Ingredients: Beeswax, almond oil, apricot oil, Shea butter, cocoa butter, mango butter, St. John’s wort, calendula, chamomile, chickweed, plantain, comfrey leaf, olive oil, aloe vera, jojoba, wheat germ, and a blend of tea tree and lavender essential oils.
Downside: Like Joshua Tree Climbing Salve, can be oily.
(Link: metolius.com)

Climb On! Bar

Claims: “This one product can soothe burns, cuts, scrapes, rashes, cracked cuticles and heels, tissue nose, road rash, diaper rash, abrasions, poison ivy…any skin issue that needs deep moisturizing and nourishing.”
Ingredients: Yellow beeswax, apricot kernel oil, grapeseed oil, wheatgerm oil, essential ois of Citrus vulgaris, lavender, lemon, vitamin E.
Downside: Potent herbal scent.
(Link: climbonproducts.com)

Crimp Oil

Claims: “Produced especially for climbers who are healing injuries” and “will keep your fingers in good form and less susceptible to tweak when applied after each session” and “quickly eases pain from sore tendons, joints and muscles and supports the daily abuse of hard climbing and solid crimping” and “It can be very effective in case of sprains for example for boosting micro-circulation in addition to cryotherapy” and “Crimp Oil is also very effective in cases of migraine.”
Ingredients: Helichrysum italicum, peppermint, lemon eucalyptos, lavindin super, wintergreen, geranium, equisetum arvense.
Downside: Extreme hippyfication.
(Link: crimpoil.com)

MOISTURIZERS

Common climbing wisdom has it that lotions can soften the skin, leaving you more prone to damage in future outings. Personally, cold weather and constant chalk application make my hands so dry, I’d be cracked and bleeding if I didn’t apply some sort of lotion routinely throughout the fall and winter. I’m not alone. Many climbers have found a use for moisturizers in their arsenal of skin-case treatments. Since dry skin is by no means limited to the vertically minded, there are dozens, if not hundreds, of acceptable lotions out there. Here are a few that I like or that have been recommended to me by other climbers:

Mane and Tail Hoofmaker

Claims: “Originally developed for horses to moisturize dry, cracked, brittle hooves. Since applied to the hoof by human hands, over time many of those using Hoofmaker on their horses noticed dramatic improvement in the condition of their hands and nails.”
Ingredients: Water, distearyldimonium chloride, cetearyl alcohol, stearyl alcohol, glycerin, stearamidopropyl dimethylamine lactate, cocos nucifer oil, cetyl alcohol, Polysorbate 60, Steareth 20, Glycine soya oil, DMDM, hydantoin fragrance, methylparaben lanolin, PEG-150, stearate propylparaben, hydrolyzed collegen, PEG-25, castor oil, sodium chloride, allantoin, olea europaea fruit oil, benzyl sallcylate, citronellol, geraniol, hexyl cinnamal, butylphenyl, methylpropional, limonene, linalool, hydroxyisohexyl-3-Cyxlohexene, Carboxaldehyde, Yellow 5 (C1 19140), Yellow 6 (C1 15985).
Downside: Look at that ingredient list! May lead to uncontrollable snorting, neighing, and desire to run wild through the hills.
(Link: manentail.com)

Eucerin Intensive Repair Extra Enriched Hand Creme

Claims: “Repairs and gently exfoliates dry, cracked skin on the hands and fingers.”
Ingredients: Water, glycerin, urea, glyceryl stearate, stearyl alcohol, dicaprylyl ether, sodium lactate, dimethicone, PEG-40 stearate, cyclopentasiloxane, cyclohexasiloxane, aluminum starch octenylsuccinate, lactic acid, xanthan gum, phenoxyethanol, methylparaben, propylparaben.
Downside: “Contains alpha hydroxy acid (AHA), which may increase your skin’s sensitivity to the sun, and particularly the possibility of sunburn.”
(Link: eucerinus.com)

Kiehl’s Ultimate Strength Hand Salve

Claims: “Allows skin to actually draw and absorb water from the air, forming a “glove–like” protective barrier against moisture loss” and “helps protect against and repair the appearance of severe dryness caused by heavy industrial work, manual labor, neglect, or exposure to harsh elements.”
Ingredients: “A blend of botanical oils including avocado, eucalyptus, and sesame seed, as well as a natural wax derived from olive oil.”
Downside: Super greasy. Super expensive.
(Link: kiehls.com)

How to Spot a Climber in the Wild

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As a budding young climber from Ohio in the early ’90s, I was eager to define myself as more than just another Midwestern suburbanite who bled scarlet and grey. Perhaps to feel more like a member of the tribe, I took pride in identifying climbers on the street, Sherlock Holmes style, based on telltale aspects of their appearance — chalky hands, a prAna T-shirt, a rope-worn biner for a keychain. There was something affirming in just knowing… and maybe getting a curt nod from a fellow climber who’d just performed the same analysis on me.

Two decades later, I no longer care whether other people climb or know that I climb. Nonetheless, I’ve refined my aptitude for picking out one of my own from a crowd. Below and in no particular order, a list of climber traits you can use to profile folks based on looks alone when they’re nowhere near a crag or a gym. Spot the Climber can be a fun game to play while people watching, or a good way to strike up a convo at a boring social event with someone who shares your love of the vertical. But take heed! One must exercise caution when making assumptions, as all of these traits on their own have crossover with other activities, making them “false tells.” And, of course it’s always important to remember that our generalizations are easily shredded by those folks who don’t particularly look like climbers (too tall and lanky, too short and stocky, too much fat, not enough muscle, “wrong” clothes, etc.), but who will teach you a lesson when it comes to moving over stone and ice.

Obviously, this is an abridged list. What are some of the traits you use to identify a climber in the wild?

Battle-Damaged Hands

The hands are the most critical body part in climbing, and they get used and abused to no end. Climbers are constantly gripping sharp or highly textured rock surfaces, leading to all manner of scrapes and flappers. Climbers’ digits often grow thicker and more knuckly with age, until they take on the appearance of overstuffed sausages and are so bound up with scar tissue and tendonitis they can barely sign the credit card receipt for a new hang board. Crack climbers’ hands are perhaps the most unsightly, with patches of raspberry-textured scabbing from getting squeezed and screwed between two immovable planes of sandpapery stone. Climbing in cold weather, plus the use of drying agents like chalk, liquid chalk, and antihydral, can lead to cracked and split skin. Finally, holding the rope while belaying transfers dirt and fine metal particles onto a climber’s hands, leading to black streaks across the middle of the palms. Oy vey!

False tell: mechanic, construction worker, craftsman

How does that saying go? The hands are a window to a climber’s soul…

Wears Approach Shoes

In order to sure-footedly scramble over rock slabs, teeter across talus fields, and even edge up sections of moderate fifth-class, climbers purchase a special sort of sneaker. From the outside, many of these “approach shoes” look no different from trail runners or even skate shoes, but a true climber knows how to spot the brands (Five Ten, La Sportiva, Scarpa, Evolv, Mad Rock, etc.) that make real approach shoes, and the gluey black rubber (with names like Vibram and Stealth) that give them their secret sticking powers.

False tell: Non-climbing outdoorsy types who shop indiscriminately at the REI sale rack, parkour practitioners

Chalky Clothes & Face

First used by gymnasts for grip on various apparati (pommel horse, rings, and bars), chalk, aka magnesium carbonate, serves as a drying agent on sweaty hands. Little surprise, then, that John Gill, godfather of modern bouldering, adopted chalk for climbing way back in 1954. Over the years, chalk has become ubiquitous enough that pretty much every climber at a crag or in a gym carries his or her own bag full of the stuff. Now every popular route and problem has a heathy trail of the stuff leading to the top, and every climber has chalk compacted beneath his fingernails, dusting his hair, forming ghostly hand prints on his clothing, and rattling around in his alveoli (“I think I’m getting the white lung, pop!” *cough cough*). One friend of mine has a funny habit of chalking up immediately before putting the rope in his teeth to make a clip, leaving him with a chalky lip that screams, “I plundered the powdered donut jar.”

False tell: Baker, cocaine addict, gymnast

The tell-tale chalk prints of recently active climber.

Carabiners on Person

The climbing carabiner as we know it today was devised by a guy named Otto around the turn of the 20th century. Originally used to connect to anchors, biners have come into popular favor and are now put to use connecting any two things that need connecting. Many climbers use retired biners to clip a leash to their dog’s collar or hold their keys. Less experienced climbers (or non-climbers) can often be seen using large, heavy, and expensive locking biners for such non-intended uses. A common sight on college campuses, for example, is a $20 locking carabiner dangling from the faux daisy chain running down the side of a The North Face backpack… you know, just in case.

False tell: Pretty much anybody

Careful there, that biner’s only rated to 22kN! (Oh, and your gate’s open…)

Lives In Boulder

The small college / mountain town of Boulder, Colorado, is one of the most climber-dense regions in the world. If someone says they are from Boulder, it is a pretty safe bet that they have a “project” at the “crag,” know how to sharpen an ice screw, or are preparing for an “objective” in the mountains.

False tell: Cyclist, endurance runner, perma-stoned college student, super-wealthy bleeding-heart liberal

**F*#$ed-Up Feet**

For maximum performance, rock climbers typically downsize their rock shoes. In extreme cases, this crushingly tight, down-turned footwear amounts to little more than a form self-inflected foot binding. But even when climbing shoes aren’t tight, climbing itself is a foot-intensive pursuit. Multiple pitches of tiptoeing up granite edges or torquing toes into splitter cracks will take its toll. The result is bruised, missing, or fungus-infected nails, swollen toe-knuckles, and skin discolored by the climbing shoes’ dye. Alpinists and ice climbers subject their “dogs” to a different form of abuse: frostbite. In extreme cases, this can leave toes black and necrotic, resulting in permanent damage or even amputation.

False tell: ballet dancer, endurance runner, dogsled racer

The medical term for this condition is “Climbers Foot.”

Ripped Back, Lats, and Shoulders

Under the constant strain of a rock climber’s pulling motion, shoulders, back, and latissimus dorsi muscles often tend to grow large — especially in those who boulder or sport climb. Due to this powerful upper-body physique, climber dudes are incredibly prone to removing their shirts, even when it’s cold enough for them to wear a knit beanie. Likewise, climber gals will opt for open-backed dresses or even underwear masquerading as, uh, overwear (see: Verve).

False tell: Gymnast, rower, fitness fanatic, Bruce Lee

Popeye Forearms

It is common knowledge that rock climbing’s constant grip-release motion results in overdevelopment of anterior flexor muscles of the forearm. The result is a large, veiny ”Popeye” forearm that makes it difficult to roll up one’s shirtsleeves. Big forearms, though in many cases genetic, are taken as a point of personal pride amongst the climber set, as they are emblematic of the all-important grip strength.

False tell: ice-cream scooper, professional arm wrestler, body builder

Drives a Subaru

For their generous internal capacity (think: room for packs crammed with gear, crashpads, beer coolers, and all your bros and brosephinas), off-road capabilities, high reliability marks, and relatively good fuel economy, Subaru wagons have become the chariot of choice among climbers nationwide. An informal survey suggests that “Subies” account for a full 67% vehicles in the parking lot of the Boulder Whole Foods. (Toyota pick-up trucks, Honda Elements, Audis, and fixed-gear bicycles make up the remaining 33%).

False tell: Tree hugger, liberal

Go Ahead, Eat the Mystery Meat

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Mystery Meat at Petzl RocTrip Mexico

“Good Luck,” said the skinny French waiter with bulging eyes and a bad comb over. His accent was thick, so it came out sounding more like “Gewd lock,” but the meaning, and the meaning behind the meaning, was clear. We were screwed.

We’d walked into the uninspiring back alley restaurant in the tourist/climbing town of Fontainebleau, France, with low expectations, but it was late, and as my traveling companions and I had just arrived via plane, train, and automobile from the United States, we were well past picky.

Four of us, there were: my friend Jack, his girlfriend Wendy, and Wendy’s sister, Katy. The girls ordered salads Niçoise, while Jack and I scanned the manly meat section of the menu. I’d studied French for years and was ashamed to admit I had no idea what the hell I was looking at, so I just ordered the agneau, which I knew was lamb. Jack got the bœuf. We sipped cheap Pinot noir and waited for the food to arrive, mute with hunger.

At long last, the server dropped our plates on the table and quickly departed. Before me lay not the glistening, browned rack of lamb of my dreams, but an array of pink, flaccid, strips of raw meat, arranged in a soggy semi-circle around the plate. No garnish or sides. Nothing to trigger my already primed Pavlovian salivation response. Jack’s plate looked much the same.

“So is it, like, tartar?” I asked, hoping someone at the table had seen something like this before. Blank stares from the girls.

“I think so,” Jack said, sounding unsure.

“Shit.”

We gazed down, weighing our hunger against the likelihood of food poisoning. Jack ate a bit of his beef first. Then I tasted mine.

“Hmmm… It’s pretty good!” he said, relieved. It was good, or at least good enough. We began to dig in.

I’d eaten about half the plate of uncooked lamb when the waiter returned, carrying a heavy black block. He looked at Jack and me as he set the block down on the table and then proceeded to reach across and tong a strip of my lamb, laying it across the block’s surface. The meat sizzled merrily. It was now clear that the hot stone was meant as a cooking surface, with which we would add flavor to and kill the colonies of food-borne bacteria cavorting on our meat.

“Ahhh!” our table collectively cooed with embarrassed agreement. “Or course! We get it!”

The waiter’s eyes seemed to bug a little farther from his skull as he saw my half-empty plate. “Good luck,” he said, and then turned and walked towards the kitchen, where the busboy and another waiter loitered. They huddled together to exchange bets on the fate of the foreigners who had just consumed the uncooked and heretofore unrefrigerated meat dishes of dubious provenance. Jack and I could only cook and eat our remaining meat strips and then brace for what I assumed would be a night of intestinal pandemonium.

Back at our gîte, I had a hard time falling asleep. I lay in bed, head spinning with hypochondriacal anxiety, monitoring my stomach’s every gurgle like a volcanologist examining the peaks and troughs of a seismograph readout. Eventually, exhaustion overtook me and I sank into a listless slumber.

Sunshine, birdsong, the smell of a coffee and baguette with jam, no wrenching stomach pains — this is what greeted me as I awoke the next morn. I felt fit as a French fiddle and ready to climb on some of the finest sandstone ever formed. The waiter had wished us good luck, and good luck we had. All my worries had been for naught. Looking back, I mark this experience as the beginning of the end of my longstanding food neurosis.

* * *

When asked how many times he’d had food poisoning, writer, chef and host of my all-time favorite food & travel show, No Reservations, Anthony Bourdain answered thusly:

Just a few. Nothing too serious. My crew — who are more careful and fussy about street food, get sick more often — almost invariably from the hotel buffet or Western-style businesses.

Likewise, I’ve visited rural Mexico and rural China, eating whatever was put in front of me, and managed to escape Montezuma’s Revenge and its equally debilitating Chinese corollary. In my travels, I’ve learned that there’s an important difference between thinking something looks or smell gross, and the likelihood of that food actually causing you harm. This bears out my belief that it’s surprisingly hard to predict when food poisoning will strike. Alongside the expected poultry and ground beef on the CDC salmonella-outbreak list, you’ll find such unusual suspects as mangoes, cantaloupe, pine nuts, alfalfa sprouts and even turtles and hedgehogs (I do not believe the last two were ingested, but you never know…). This year, nearly a dozen people were sickened by, and one has already died from, a listeria-tainted ricotta cheese. Ricotta cheese, for Pete’s sake! You just never know.

And like Bourdain’s camera crew, every time I’ve gotten really sick from food, it’s been at some run-of-the-mill American establishment, the most notable instance being a Wendy’s in Athens, Ohio. My cheeseburger, a tad pink in the middle, tasted fine, but that night I was gripped by the irresistible need to purge my stomach contents. I spent the next six hours shivering and groaning on the floor of a toilet stall, taking turns sitting on and driving the proverbial porcelain bus. So weakened was I by the unforgiving onslaught of beef-bourne bacteria that my friend had to drive me home in my own car. It was years before I could bring myself to eat another Wendy’s burger. Bourdain, who identified the most stomach-churning thing he’d eaten in his travels as “lightly grilled warthog rectum,” avoids American fast food whenever possible. And he never eats chicken nuggets.

All of this is just to say, there’s not much point in worrying. One of the wonders of the climbing lifestyle is the many places it takes us. Foreign lands, forgotten backwaters, wild deserts — the dedicated climber will often find herself in places that she otherwise never would have visited. And in those places, she will have to find food. What is available, what the locals are eating, will not always be familiar or appetizing — heck, it might not even meet the most basic food-safety guidelines — but it is part of the adventure. All the hand wringing in the world won’t sanitize that street taco or that mystery-meat kebab, so either don’t eat it and live with your gustatory boredom and ravenous hunger, or chow down with your friends and relax, knowing the chances are good that you’ll be fine.

Still, I’m going to have to pass on that warthog rectum. Thanks.

Climbing Gyms and the Power of Plastic

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Brock bouldering at Vertical Adventures in Columbus, OH

Brock climbing with a mind of play. Vertical Adventures, Columbus, Ohio.

This weekend I brought my nephew, Brock, to Vertical Adventures, a climbing gym in Columbus, Ohio. Brock is seven, and Vertical Adventures — Vert, as some regulars know it — is one of the first places I ever climbed. It’s also one of the first places I worked, where I met many good friends I keep in touch with to this day, where I learned how to set a route, smack talk, belay, use proper footwork, train… . It’s also where I first developed that love of the vertical that binds a motley subset of humans into a strangely vibrant community.

Brock is still new to climbing, but he clearly has the bug. At Vert, He climbed with a mind of play, not much interested in following the specific routes or problems. He grabbed whatever holds looked good, cutting his feet dramatically every couple of moves and then dropping to the pads and rolling around. He watched the other climbers, tried out some new moves, and even brushed chalk off the holds for his aunt Kristin. When I asked if I could get a dip of the white stuff, he offered generously, “You can use my chalk; I don’t mind!” Kristin and I left after a few hours, but Brock and his dad stayed on to climb until dinner.

Alexis and Carrie Roccos opened Vertical Adventures in January 1994. At that time, gyms were just starting to sprout up around the country and were especially novel in the heartland. (Vertical World, widely regarded as America’s first commercial gym, opened in Seattle in 1987.) Together with a friend, Alexis constructed the gym’s walls out of plywood and two-by-fours, paint and elbow grease. It was a leap of faith for the couple, who moved to Columbus from the East Coast.

I started climbing at Vert as soon as it opened. I was so excited to have a real climbing gym in town, I shadowed Alexis for my freshman year career day. I helped him pound T-nuts in the sawdusty warehouse space near the Anheuser Busch brewery. Later, in the summers when I returned from college, Carrie and Alexis kindly hired me on as a temp worker, which helped pay for gas, food, and CDs.

Vert and the people I met there over the years played an important role in my development as a human being. Not long before the gym opened, I’d gotten in some trouble hanging out with what you’d call bad seeds — kids who used drugs, huffed paint, stole, fought, basically did whatever they could to numb or lash out against the pain of their broken, abusive households or emotionally absent parents. In great contrast, my parents, loving and supportive, helped me through my own poor decisions in those angst-filled years. Meanwhile, the community that gathered on the walls of a small Midwestern climbing gym offered examples of what healthy friendships were like, what it meant to live a life centered on something you love rather than reacting to things you fear, hate, or resent.

Community is the best word I can conjure for the group of regulars that developed at Vert during the years I climbed there. We not only climbed, but socialized together, watched the Super Bowl together, attended each other’s weddings. When one of our own, a strong young climber named Jeremy, was injured in a car accident one night on the way home from the gym, a group of his friends organized a fundraiser at Vert to help offset some of his heavy medical costs. When Jeremy needed a wheelchair ramp, the crew from Vert, among others, came together and built one.

“I think that people will meet in a variety of settings. Church, on a bike, at a climbing wall, in a pub, at work, etc.,” Alexis wrote to me in an email, but added, “The gym does make that process easier. (Kind of like lube.)” Personally, I felt Vert was more than just lube: it was a hub, a catalyst. But perhaps that was due in part to its location far from natural crags. Still, there are many, many towns similarly situated, and for them, gyms really can create a community of climbers that wouldn’t have existed otherwise.

A lot of climbers talk trash about gyms. For some reason, they like to remind others and themselves that climbing outside is real climbing, and climbing in gyms is practice, for gumbies or for kids. Now, I’d be hard pressed to trade time on the rocks for time on plastic, but the truth is, gyms are the biggest thing to happen to climbing in decades. Gyms are the wide end of a funnel through which people of all backgrounds and walks of life can access the climbing life, not just those lucky enough to grow up close to Yosemite, the Gunks, Southeast’s bouldering goldmine.

I started climbing in a gym, but I’m not alone. So did Alex Honnold and Beth Rodden, Sasha DiGiulian and Chris Sharma, and many other climbing heroes today held up as exemplary in the media. Plenty of kids escape the frustrations and pressures of adolescence at their local rock gym. A lot of folks make lifelong friends in the gym, not to mention partners who one day will accompany them up big walls or high peaks. Plenty of busy working parents find the time to keep climbing thanks to the convenience of gyms. Without gyms as training centers, few of today’s hardest climbs would have seen their first ascents. Gyms and the competitions held in them may well be the key to climbing’s future inclusion in the Olympics. The list goes on…

Brock is young yet; there’s no way to tell if he’ll be a lifer or if he’ll move on to other pursuits and forget about climbing. Either way, he has already found a rich new activity through which he can bond with his dad and other kids his age. Lately, he’s been learning to tie knots with a strand of cordelette he bought at Vert, and has plans to come visit Kristin and me in Utah, where I hope to take him out onto the beautiful sandstone in the south of the state — an experience he probably wouldn’t have been so excited about if it hadn’t been for the humble climbing gym.

Climbing Is (Not) The Best

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Everyone is first

When Banzan was walking through a market he overheard a conversation between a butcher and his customer.

“Give me the best piece of meat you have,” said the customer.

“Everything in my shop is the best,” replied the butcher. “You cannot find here any piece of meat that is not the best.”

At these words Banzan became enlightened.*

Many moons ago, a friend of mine with a hankering for a good, chewy argument asserted that climbing is the best sport. (I’ll use “sport” here, even though we all know that climbing is a “lifestyle,” or a “way of life,” or even a “metaphysical journey” — it’s just easier this way.)

“That’s a ridiculous thing to say,” I said. “Climbing is only the best sport for those who love it. What about all those people who prefer surfing, or football, or golf? To them, those are the best sports.”

“Those people are wrong,” he said.

“You can’t be wrong about something that’s totally subjective!” I cried.

“Climbing is, objectively, the best sport.” He stated, and then proceeded to tell me why: Climbing is not a competition with others or with a clock; it is a battle against one’s own limits and fears. Climbing combines intense physical and intellectual challenges into one activity. Climbing is inherently dangerous, requiring fortitude and focus in the face of ultimate consequences. Climbing often requires an understanding of physics and weather. Many forms of climbing embody the ideals of exploration, adventure, and self-reliance. As descendants of primates, we have climbing in our DNA. Climbing is a form of communion with the natural world. And so on…

I couldn’t argue with one thing he said. I could only explain that none of that changed that fact that many people – most people – don’t care about much about climbing. You could easily build similar arguments to elevate a thousand other pursuits.

“Whatever. You know I’m right.” He said.

But I didn’t know he was right. I only knew I loved to climb. Over the past 20 years, it has played a role in my social life, my identity, my job… Still, I just couldn’t believe in the intrinsic superiority of one pursuit over another. After all, even within the climbing microcosm we can’t agree: Mountaineering is just glorified hiking. Climbing on plastic isn’t real climbing… come to think of it, neither is aid climbing. The only pure climbing is done naked, free solo, and without shoes or chalk. Bouldering is just practice for full-sized climbs. Friends don’t let friends climb crack. Sport climbing is neither… . If climbing is the best, as my friend suggested, which kind in particular? The farther one follows such an argument, the larger the logical holes become, until there’s nothing left but opinion and empty space.

At the root of this disagreement was something we seem sadly unable to escape in this world: the idea of mutual exclusivity — for one thing to be right, the other must be wrong. If climbing is the best, well, then, something else can’t be the best, too, now can it? Our society, with its irrational fear of relativism and its “unhealthy obsession with winning” does little to dispel this troubling belief.

Here’s a common example a very powerful and subjective feeling against which no one would argue: My wife thinks I’m the greatest guy in the world (or at least, I hope she does!). Obviously, I am not the greatest guy in the world to those billions of women who have never met me, nor to the handful of fine ladies who have dated and dumped me. These differing opinions, luckily, have not the slightest bearing on my wife’s feelings for me or mine for her. We each hold the other to be the best for us.

Most of us are pretty good at accepting the subjective nature of love and relationships. But sometimes – too much of the time – we have a hard time recognizing the subjective in our tastes. Religion plays on this very human weakness – there can be only one truth, say the holy texts of nearly every belief: Our Truth. This is without doubt religion’s most dangerous aspect. Invested in such misconceptions, people of one religion have oppressed and killed people of other religions for millennia. Likewise, belief in the supremacy of one race or nationality over another has spurred genocide. Luckily, in the case of climbing debates, things rarely turn violent… although I have heard tales of punches being thrown and threats being made over issues as objectively piddling as bolting, red-tagging, and chipping.

Looking back, I’m sure my friend was playing the role of devil’s advocate, deadpan as he may have been. Even if some part of him believed that climbing was truly the best of human pursuits, he accepted the fact that not everyone agreed. Just like my wife’s love for me, he knew his admiration for climbing wasn’t mutually exclusive with other people’s equally fervent love for other things.

And in a way, my friend and I were both right. Climbing is the best… but so is mountain biking, ice skating, and sure, why not, cup stacking. As long as there are people to love them, there is no sport that is not the best, thus rendering moot the very idea of “best.”

This type of open thinking underlies Alex Lowe’s ever-popular (and much-debated) quote, “The best climber is the one having the most fun.” If we all spent less time worrying about who or what was best, and more time doing what we love best, well, I believe we’d all be a happier and more fulfilled lot.

I’m also willing to admit you might not see it that way.

*This story, called “Everything is Best,” and many others like it can be found in the exceptional Zen Flesh, Zen Bones, by Paul Reps and Nyogen Senzaki.

Attention Climbers: $500,000 Up For Grabs (Sort Of)

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Brian Arnold swinging through one of many climber-friendly obstacles on “American Ninja Warrior.” Bill Matlock/G4.

Want to know how to use your climbing skills to earn a cool half-mil? Ok, here goes…

Step 1: Climb pretty hard (at least V8). Step 2: Find a parkour training facility and make sure you’re reasonably fit and nimble. Step 3: Submit your audition video for “American Ninja Warrior,” the American version of a Japanese obstacle-based game show called “Sasuke.” Step 4: Get accepted to compete in “American Ninja Warrior.” Step 5: Make your way through the regional qualifier and semi-final competitions… Step 6: …and the four-stage national competition. Step 7: Collect $500,000.

This was Brian Arnold’s approach, anyway, and with it, he got pretty damned close to the jackpot.

Of course, this is all much, much easier said than done, but for all the hype “American Ninja Warrior” has received lately, it might be worth considering that climbers are among the few athletes who are uniquely suited to competing on the show’s obstacle courses, many of which involve gripping ropes, bars, wooden edges, and even standard-issue plastic climbing holds to maneuver across stretches of water.

Arnold, a 34-year-old rock climber with problems as hard as V12 under his belt, completed roughly 90% of the seven-step process outlined above on his first try at the show. An athletically gifted maintenance director at a nursing home, Arnold currently lives out of his van in Boulder, Colorado. He first caught wind of “American Ninja Warrior” the same way millions of other Americans did: the TV.

“I was watching an ["American Ninja Warrior"] marathon with Brian Capps. One of the contestants, Paul Kasemir, was on the show, and he’s from Longmont, near where I live. We were watching and were like, ‘Any climber could do this stuff.’”

Arnold happened to know Kasemir, as the two climb at the same bouldering gym, The Spot, so he made contact to learn more about the show. Tryouts were coming in February, Kasemir told him, and encouraged Arnold to make an audition video. Arnold took his advice.

Arnold’s audition video shows him doing an apparently casual dead hang from a mono pocket, bouldering on a steep wall, pulling two-finger moves up a campus board, and even one-arming a pinky-finger pull-up. The autobiographic talking portions take place in front of an oversized Bruce Lee poster.

But Arnold didn’t submit the video right away. First, he needed to build up some confidence. He entered a competition via APEX, a local parkour gym that holds regular Ninja Warrior-themed events. (Parkour is “about efficient movement,” said Kasemir, who also trains at APEX, in this interview with CBS Denver. “Finding a way over an obstacle, over a fence, over a box, jumping from rail to rail, balancing … basically getting from one place to another as fast as you can.”) Arnold won the local competition and got bumped to a “pro” division, where more experienced competitors face off. He took second place there.

In a region that has already produced several strong “American Ninja Warrior” contestants, Arnold was among the top athletes. That seemed like reason enough to send in that audition video.

The folks at the show recognized Arnold’s talent and invited him, along with 100 other hopefuls, to Dallas, for a regional competition. He placed a respectable 15^th and moved on to the semi-finals with 30 competitors. In semis, he placed 3^rd, his ticket to Las Vegas for the finals.

“As a climber, you have a huge advantage,” explains Arnold. “Most of the other guys who were in Vegas were pro parkour instructors and stuntmen. It suits the parkour guys, because the earlier stages are a lot of running and jumping, but the farther you go, it starts to suit climbers.”

Brent Steffenson, the highest-placing “American Ninja Warrior” competitor in Season 4, on the “Hang Climb,” which he did not complete. Photo from the Tempest Freerunning website. Steffenson is on the Tempest team.

In Vegas, Arnold passed the first stage, but fell off a tricky rolling-cylinder passage in the second. After that, only one competitor passed the second stage, Brent Steffensen, a freerunner hailing from Salt Lake City. Stephenson was eliminated in the third stage, on an obstacle called the “Hang Climb” (a very steep 15-foot section of climbing on juggy holds that Arnold likely would have completed with ease), thus, no one claimed the show’s $500,000 prize.

Only three competitors, out of more than 2,700, have completed the final course in the history of the American and Japanese versions of the show (the courses are identical in the two versions), and not one American. Still, with the intense popularity of the competition and scores of motivated, athletic people anxious to throw their hats in the ring, it seems like it’s only a matter of time before someone from the States pulls the sword from the stone.

For his part, Arnold is confident that his climbing skills give him a real shot at the big prize. “Physically, you’re swinging on ropes – it’s all grip strength,” he says. “A lot of parkour guys fell on the ropes – their hands just opened up. The globes, in semi-finals, they were jugs. For climbers, it was easy, but if you don’t climb regularly, you just don’t have the endurance.” He made it through the first stage of the finals this time around, and that was with a torn calf muscle, injured during a practice run at home – next time, if everything goes well, he could go all the way.

In the meantime, how does Arnold plan to prepare for the next season of “American Ninja Warrior”? “I’m going to build an obstacle course and practice,” he says. And don’t be surprised if you run into him bouldering and sport climbing in areas across the Western US, of which, Utah’s cobble-choked Maple Canyon is one of his favorites. “I love that place,” he says, “the climbing is just so weird!”

50 Shades of Plaid: The Unofficial Uniform of Outdoor Retailer

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The Outdoor Retailer Summer Market (ORSM) is, according to the website, “the world’s largest outdoor sports industry gathering.” For this much-lauded trade show, thousands of brands, athletes, non-profits, retail store buyers, media outfits, and so forth gather at the sprawling Salt Palace Convention Center in Salt Lake City every summer to do business of one sort or another.

Whatever the reason a person attends the OR Show, almost everyone – every male, at least – will at some point don the “OR uniform”: a plaid shirt, probably short-sleeved, with khakis or jeans, and either approach shoes or flip-flops.

After years of administering lighthearted ribbings to my friends and co-workers for their unconscious adherence to the OR dress code, I decided to pick up my camera and document just a few of the tartan-clad attendees walking the red-carpeted walkways of the Salt Palace, which, one busy year, an event goer referred to as looking “like a table cloth.”

If you look carefully, you’ll find 50 different plaid (or near-plaid) shirts pictured in the gallery below. These I photographed with a modest effort – maybe 15 minutes over the course of Sunday, the final and slowest day.

With this, I hope to draw attention to a curious fashion phenomenon for which I can conjure no reasonable explanation. I have also included an image of myself, pre-show, in a plaid shirt — proof that an awareness of the plaid plague offers no immunity.

The Rotpunkt Method

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Last week I wrote about climbers who are afraid to admit they care. It’s a phenomenon especially common in teenagers, but many adults struggle with this fear, too. To care is to open yourself up to the frightening possibility of failure. It’s safer not to care — send or fall, you’re meh either way. Of course, most people who pretend not to care do so because they care too much. If you really want something, then you run the risk of being embarrassed, demoralized, or otherwise disappointed if you don’t succeed. Better to keep the world at arm’s length and pretend you’re all good just where you are.

My friend Charley recently told me about a kid — let’s call him Billy — on his gym’s youth climbing team. Billy was naturally strong, but he never worked routes. Instead, he’d get on a climb, look good up until the crux, fall, and then move on to something else. One day after doing this, Billy’s coach asked him why he gave up. “I don’t need to get back on that route; I know I can do it,” was Billy’s reply. The coach called bullshit and ordered him back on the climb, where, not too surprisingly, he fell lower than on his first attempt. It was exactly as Billy had feared — he wasn’t that close after all. But the part I want to stress is that Billy could do the climb. Maybe it would take him one more try, or maybe 10, but if wanted to prove himself the route’s equal, he’d have to enter the difficult, frustrating, and ultimately rewarding world of the redpoint.

The german climber Kurt Albert coined the term Rotpunkt while climbing in the Frankenjura region in the 1970s. In a 1994 interview with Will Gadd, Albert recalled that climbers in the Frankenjura aided all the routes. “If you saw a piton,” he explained, “you grabbed the carabiner or put [an aid] ladder on it. So there was no free climbing for the sake of free climbing.” But after a trip to the Elbsandstein area, where people had been freeing routes for decades, Albert started climbing the routes of the Frankenjura without the use of gear for aid. When he freed a route, he painted a small red dot at the base, to let other’s know it was possible. Rotpunkt in German means simply “red point.” The name, catchy and with a colorful history, remains a staple of the climbing lexicon. For our purposes, the redpoint’s most important aspect is the process of working out the sections of a challenging climb — memorizing every crux, rest, and clipping stance — and then linking the sections into a whole, as a dancer executes a dance.

In life, there are few big challenges that don’t require a redpoint mentality. Alison Osius, Executive Editor at Rock & Ice, used a redpoint-like strategy when tackling her book, Second Ascent: the Story of Hugh Herr. “I really just focused on it chapter by chapter,” she said. “If someone ever asked me where I was in the process or how much more was left, I would say I couldn’t think that way. Or it would have been overwhelming. If the person would ask if I could say that I was halfway, I wouldn’t even touch that.” It’s how we must approach any project that, on its surface, is too big to swallow. The best way to eat an elephant, as the adage goes, is one bite at a time.

When a climber approaches the limit of his or her ability, the rehearsal period required for a redpoint grows longer. Martin Keller, for example, spent three years and over 100 days on a single boulder problem in Chironico, Switzerland. In a less extreme example, I worked Tuna Town, a long, pumpy route in the Red River Gorge, over the course of two seasons, failing, often miserably and near the end, dozens of times before succeeding. When I finally clipped the anchors for the send, the route felt easy and I couldn’t for the life of me understand why it took so long to happen. It is one of redpointing’s greatest wonders when a climb once so difficult comes to feel almost easy. Small holds feel bigger, big moves feel smaller, long sections climb themselves, scary clips lose their fangs… . In his blog post, Keller describes his feelings after sending his longstanding project as “something you can’t buy anywhere and there is no number to express it.”

There are few things more satisfying than a long-worked-for redpoint. You feel like you’ve done the impossible, almost like you’ve become someone else entirely — the type of person who can do a climb that difficult, or, thinking more broadly, get into a school that good, or get that job, or what have you. When I climbed my first V10, Squeenos, in the Gunks, my friend Jason swatted me on the shoulder and exclaimed, “You did it, man! Today, you are that strong!” But I only made it there through a long and frustrating process of getting to know the problem — how much pressure to exert on each rough little crimp, which way to turn my hips, where to drag my toe for extra friction… . There were days when I couldn’t do two moves in a row on Squeenos, days when I couldn’t do the crux moves, and days when I couldn’t even get my ass up off the ground. I had to remain open to failure, unsure of success, and willing to keep trying. Working towards such seemingly distant goals can feel, as Keller describes it, like an act of hubris, but I can think of no other way to achieve anything worthwhile. It’s what we do when we care. But first we have to admit we care, and then we have to do the work.

It’s a simple (and as complex) as that.

The Stone Mind

Exploring the intersection of mind and stone