The Rest Day That Almost Wasn’t

Seriously, I almost climbed four days in a row on my first trip to Indian Creek. What really happened is we had a rest day planned (and well-deserved, after three days of pretty hardy climbing in the sun, on long corners, up heinous finger and fist cracks) and then Beth,

one of Esther’s Creek friends from last year, wanted to do a tower on Bridger Jack

and invited me along. How could I refuse?

This was still the night before.

The first day at the Creek, E bailed with a hurt shoulder, and found me a set of hard-climbing partners who didn’t mind a tagalong. However much they said they didn’t mind, I felt like an outsider who didn’t belong. Partially because of my lack of experience and fitness (my first day at the Creek compared to these locals who’d been coming for years, who were working a 5.13-), and partially because I’m not sponsored and my entire life is not climbing with everything else in the peripheral. Later, after the day was done and I back to being myself instead of the uptight, tense, afraid of criticizm or of being criticizing wanna-be I felt like amongst the Giants, I realized how our perspectives differ. The are Climbers. What they do is Climb. In between they deal with life. I am a climber. I deal with life and then I climb.

The second day went better. E decided, with the added incentive of having a good friend around, that she had to climb, so we tagged along with Beth and Jeff

to the Scarface wall, which has some truly classic lines (what walls here don’t?) and I even got in a lead on some 5.9+ that felt awkward and burly and set my head back on straight. Meanwhile, Beth and Jeff started on .10+, allowing us to TR their lines as they moved on to bigger, longer cracks.

I made myself a pair of tape gloves that by the end of the day I’d reinforced twice and I still had raw skin, but no gobies. Taping seems to be a pride thing here, but I’m not too proud; I know my newbie status and that two weeks is not long enough for me to grow callus and improve my climbing fitness.

That’s what I’m learning it’s all about here, is efficiency and fitness. The cracks just keep going in the same size and you have to be confident and straightforward in your climbing so you can get to the top after making the same move 40 or 100 times, depending if the route’s 40 or 100 feet long. Thankfully the gear is easy to place and you just have to gauge the size and plug it in and hope the cam doesn’t walk or get wedged, and keep moving.

My climbing style’s changed since I got here. That efficiency I’m talking about? That’s my new focus, along with trusting my hand jams, finding the right cracks to fit my hands (‘thin hands’ in the book might as well say ‘Anchen hands’), trusting my foot jams (yes, I do wedge my feet into the crack and I love it, even though after day three of climbing my ankles are so stretched and sore I can’t trust them not to roll), breathing in sync with my movements, and not letting the grade of the route dictate what I believe I’m capable of. I’ve found my niche here and I can’t wait to get into it.

However. It takes two people to climb, and E and I have different expectations of climbing partners, apparently. I think I’m cramping her style, expecting to go climbing on a fairly regular schedule, looking to her to know a little about the Creek, but I also feel cramped. I came here with a partner for a reason – so I wouldn’t have to look for folks to climb with – but I’m realizing that I’m gas money and now that she’s here, she’d prefer if I didn’t hang around so much.