Push Up Push Up Push Up Push On

It's never a bad day when you wake up to this.

 

Goddamn it felt good to be back in Squamish, and to my surprise everything was just where I had left it four years ago!  That’s right, unbelievably it had been almost exactly four years since I had been in the dark forest; this jumbled labyrinth of granite, this sea of moss and nutrient-rich rotting wood, this pantheon of risen soldiers bathed in coniferous affectitude, the bright white slabs of hardened feldspar, mica, and quartz frozen in their upheaval through time framing a jumbled mess.  But we make sense of it all with our tick marks and boot rubber.  We tame this unyielding beast with sawed logs, crash pads, and attentive spotters; hoping to find our way to the top of these sacred alters, our sacrifice: skin.

Tex can't believe his eyes.

Waterfalls (self-proclaimed 'sport climber') decided to crush the ever-loving piss out of Worm World Cave(V.8/9) on his third go.  Beast.

Billis

Kevin

This girl came for a visit!  Special K, the Colonel, Kearns, K-dawg, the list of nick names goes on and on.  I was so psyched to see this lady and bummed her counterpart could not join her on this Canadian chuff-fest.  She crushed, we drank beer, had rap battles, made fun of awkward hipsters trying to climb, and waxed poetic about RJ’s glorious abs.  Oh the life. 

K-dawg crushing the first move on Golden Boy (V.7)  She made some impressively quick links but failed to send because we were laughing too hard.

New local crusher Mason taking a different approach on the ultra classic (read: grovel-fest) Golden Boy.

 

The days wore on, and the temps were near perfect.  I haven’t bouldered this consistently in 8 months!  But to my surprise my skin actually held up quite well.  It was funny to be bouldering after such a long concentrated stint of sport climbing.  I found myself trying to rapid-fire problems and then getting exhausted and feeling as if my body was going to disintegrate and realizing that I could not stamina my way through the projects.  I had to get back into that bouldering mindset of patience and intense focus on each attempt, instead of the sport climbing approach which is usually just to wear down the climb.  With the exception of my skin, everything else kind of went the way of the buffalo; my muscles became extremely fatigued as well as my mentality.  I started the trip feeling very strong and motivated to try hard and ended the trip ready to crawl back into the womb and lick my wounds.  Besides getting pretty royally shut down on almost everything I got on I also took a nice little tumble after miss-judging a foot placement on a moss covered rock.  Luckily I know how to fall with a crash pad on and came out the other side with a heavily bruised and scraped up shin.  Squamish + beer  = messed up lower extremities.

The only thing that really stuck in my craw is falling off the very last move of Mantra, especially after seeing like 4-5 people hike it right in front of me.  I was so bummed when I reached that point in the session when I just knew I had nothing left in the tank.  Oh well, I’m not going anywhere and neither is it. 

 

And then, a massive Gibb's Cave session broke out.  HOORAY for the LAST DAY!

This chick CRUSHED.  She was working some heinous looking power endurance monster of a problem whose name escapes me, but it went at V.10 and we watched her three times in a row climb from the depths of this beast all the way to the last move and fall.  She was pissed.  We were in awe.

Kevin crushed Gibb's after using Forest's heel hook beta.

Forest contemplates his status as 'intern'.

Billis is the strongest gumbie I've ever climbed.  I have no problem admitting that she is most likely stronger than I am.

 

A lot of things have changed in Squamish since I first started going there back in 2007.  The paved climbers parking lot is pretty sweet, the extra pit toilets are divine, the slack lining area and the picnic tables that you can cook breakfast/lunch/and dinner at are awesome, the spigot for water and cleaning dishes, the spill over lots that you can park in and sleep in for free are awesome as well (even though I heard rumors of a ranger asking people to leave in the evening and possibly threatening a ticket, I slept in my car un-harassed both nights); but some things never change like running into several people I have met over the years in Bishop, the Red, or even from the gym back in Seattle, trying to figure out how to grab those Squamish non-holds just right so that they actually feel like a hold, and waking up to the looming presence of the Chief and staring out over the sound, two immaculate enormities whose presence both draws you in and intimidates you, beckons and expels.  This trip was good for many reasons but the one that sticks out in my mind is how connected you feel to the people around you and the people you climb, eat, spot, laugh, get frustrated with, and share in the joy with at the end of the day.  I love my friends.  I noticed at every breakfast we were the group laughing the hardest, we were the group taking everything and nothing seriously, we were the group succeeding and failing and moving on to the next challenge unscathed (unless of course you slip on a moss covered rock and fuck your shin up).  Home is where the heart is for sure.  And my heart is infinitely broken and mended amongst the rocks,  the dripping benches of rest day rain, the condensation of a night long sleep induced malaise of stale beer breath and re-hashed breakfast mash, the stunned brilliance of contrasting light fading into the depths of razor sharp chasms, the quick exhalations filled with relaxed energy and tense expectation, and the reincarnation of Dahli’s melting clocks that neither placate nor pretend to bend to our predestined explanation of what time is and can be for ourselves re-forged in a new dimension lost to the persnickety minds that wish to suffocate us amongst tiny boxes upon a hillside.