I Think I'm in Love

Esther and I have wordlessly worked things out. I’ve stepped back a little, gone into camping mode instead of plush van-life mode, which was a little too close for comfort for the both of us.

I’m sitting in the Mondo coffee shop in Moab after a not-quite big enough breakfast at the Jailhouse Café, where the motto is, “Good enough for your last meal,” contemplating what I’ll write for my blog to tell you all how this last week has been. Are there even words?

One: The Creek is social.

I am surrounded by people I’ve met this week. Here, at the cafe, Jeff, the surfer/8^th-grade ESL teacher from San Diego, sits across from me, showing me pictures he took of Esther on Soul Fire yesterday. Beside me sit Mike and Rob, two climbers from Las Vegas we climbed with a couple days ago. My first day in Indian Creek, Esther’s shoulder still hurt her so I bummed a ride with Sean and ended up at the same wall as Micah Dash, Cedar Wright and John Dickey, to drop a few names. They were working Less Than Zero, a .13- mixed trad route. I was lucky enough to climb with Sarah and Jimmy Haden, also very talented climbers, and got to hop on Pente and Wiggle Waggle, classic, hard cracks that served me as an introduction to Creek climbing.

Two: Everyone climbs hard.

This is T-Bones Tonight, a .12- overhanging roof crack that Andrew, one of Beth's friends, onsighted after he drove all night to get to the creek for a three-day weekend. I scour the Creek bible for .10- or thin hands and watch Beth or Jeff or some Canadian scamper up Slot Machine, a 5.12- 100+ foot dihedral – incredible and inspiring. Every day I see some amazing sends, and it inspires me to be that good. A good step on my way to the Optimist.

It’s working; I started by leading a 5.9, then The Cave Route, a thin hands .10+, and on my fourth day climbing, I led two routes – a .10+ called Tube Steak Tomorrow where I freaked and hung at the very beginning and took too much of a gear cue from Jeff, who’s 5’11” and likes to space it out. The other one, I TR’d first, a route called At Your Cervix, a 110’ 5.11- layback. Ohh, and now it gets embarrassing. I decided to lead it, racked up, had a strategy not to pump out before the rest above the roof and I was working it on lead, loving it, but I placed too much gear and just before the roof I grabbed the wrong piece, my left hand was pumping out and I chucked the cam instead of reclipping it back to my harness. Not to be outdone, I grabbed another, smaller one from the other side of my harness, placed it, climbed up to the rest and figured out I was out of the right-size gear with another ten feet to go before I could place again.

Stupid.

When I started thinking of the fall potential, I thought, don’t think too much and focused on relaxing, breathing, and what the next ten feet of route would be like, until I could place a piece.

I finished the route and was relieved to find out I’d dropped one of my own cams.

Three: People whip here. So I’m climbing harder, learning the Creek style and how to translate the guidebook from man-hands to mini-hands. Yesterday we hiked to the Optimator Wall and I tried to lead Soul Fire, another .11- thin-hands classic. I felt great, confident at the bottom, taking the stemming rests and loving the perfect hand jams, until I had to get into the crack. My ankles are killing me from jamming, they feel over-stretched or something, and standing on them made me question my sanity. I kept going, wanting the send, loving the jams, placing a #1 cam every time I stepped above the last one, and I didn’t take the route seriously enough. A couple feet above my last piece, 15 feet from the anchors, my hands and feet flamed out, and I took my first whip on lead. On trad.

The piece held. I’m still in one piece. And I went about 15 feet down to a nice, soft catch. I wasn’t even scared.

The thing I didn’t expect was the way I was so juiced I could hardly finish the route. I hung for what felt like forever and not long enough; when I finally got back on the route I climbed three feet, placed a piece, hung on it, climbed and placed two pieces and hung three feet below the anchor and stared at those anchor bolts shining in the sun, so close I could almost touch them because I just could not jam any more. It was ridiculous.

Four: Indian Creek works you. I was done climbing after one route yesterday. I didn’t want to be done, but I simply couldn’t anymore. Everything hurt. I’ve been lucky and haven’t gotten any gobies, the scrapes on the back of the hand when you peel out of a crack. OK, maybe one, but it’s nothing compared to the one I saw this guy, Chandler, get peeling off of Scarface, a sick, overhanging 5.11- classic. Half of the back of his hand was red, shiny and raw like skinned meat – and he finished the route.

According to Logan, you can climb every day here, but I try too many routes to take it easy enough to do that.

Five: Everyone is in love with climbing. That goes without saying here, but you hear people exclaim, “that’s so beautiful!” or “Ooh, look at the Bridger Jacks right now.” I’ve taken more sunset photos than anything else here, because I’m always at the base of a wall as the sun sinks behind the Bridger Jacks. I don’t mind hiking back in the dark, or cooking in the dark, for those last rays of sunlight on the last climb of the day.