Partner Trust

The last week’s been work work work. I opened the Cone Stand yesterday with a fellow climber, and we scooped banana splits and sundaes, prodded hot dogs to check temp, and filled giant paper cups to the brim with vanilla ice cream balls and root beer. Truly, I work in a diabetic’s nightmare. A dietitian’s as well.

I’ve been climbing a little bit since last week. The old excitement is coming back, still flickering, still holding. I wonder if anything’s changed about it.

I’ve been climbing with some sketchy characters from work. Colby, my coworker, and Joe, the I.T. guy and I went after work one day, to go do Jam Crack. I’d told them both I’m a 5.8 leader, and I guess I’m shortchanging myself because I feel pretty comfortable on single pitch .10a. Multipitch is a different story.

So we got going at 6pm, walked five minutes to Sunnyside Bench, one of the wonderfully short approaches here in the Valley, and arrived at a beautiful slabby 5.7 hand and finger crack. Immediately I wanted to lead, but because I’d outlined my abilities as being such, Joe and Colby assumed I’d be following.

What is it with guys and taking the lead?

Do they automatically assume that since I’m a girl I don’t want to get on the sharp end? That I don’t have the confidence? That I’m just here for, what? A free ride? They didn’t even ask me if I wanted to lead. Yes, there were only two pitches. Yes, Joe did invite the both of us to climb, thus he assumed some responsibility in getting the rope to the anchors. I felt like I was imposing by insisting on leading, so I just shut up and followed, taking my sweet time and enjoying each movement, placing my hands just so, and critiquing the anchors at the top. I felt like a bitch.

Remember that post about climbing partners? So far I’ve been lucky. This night was the catch-up, the way the other kind of climber does it. Joe belays lazily with a grigri, sitting with his back to the wall, unsure of which hand is on the brake and never really aware of what he should be doing. He’s more concerned with seeming like he knows what he’s doing. At least he uses a grigri correctly and five piece of gear in his interestingly-equalized anchor. At least three of those piece would have held.

Colby, on the other hand, just goes for it. On the second pitch, he ape-armed his way through a third of it before placing his first piece, and that was after I realized if he fell it would be a factor 2 on the anchor and we’d all plummet to our deaths, and I yelled, “Jesus Christ, Colby, place a piece! Do you want to factor 2?” I felt like his mom, and really annoyed, pissed off that he would endanger us all like that instead of putting in a simple little directional.

Later he said he would’ve free soloed it except for one move.

Good for you, asshole, but I’m not about to. So don’t take my life for granted even if you do yours.

I got to the top of the second pitch, belayed up on the grigri again (off the anchor, thankfully) and rapped down first.

Why are climbers so lacksadaisical about their lives? Do they assume it’ll all be OK? Is ignorance bliss for some of them? Is thinking too much work?

One of the things I really enjoyed about climbing with Mason and Christian was the way they assumed I was in it with them. We swapped leads, made safe, took care of each other. Joe and Colby were clueless, Colby more so because he just didn’t think, and Joe was too concerned with what we thought of him to be a good climber.

My challenge this summer could very well be finding a partner I trust rather than climbing anything hard. I'm just trying to make peace with it all in my own mind.