Sprung on Granite

Spring arrives in Seattle

 

 

Washington granite: some have said it’s the best granite on the planet.  We have all types, from that dark slick Index granite, to the bright white and shiny black salt and pepper erratic granite.  We have the dark brown to bright orange granite, usually medium grained, to the black and tan fine grained, to the almost blue colored dark grey granite that’s rough and smooth almost at the same time.  Then we have that large grained granite that is almost exactly like the texture of monzonite and just as painful.  We even have granite that is so smooth and so similar to sandstone you would swear you were in Font.  We have granite so river polished and bomb proof the holds are almost nonexistent and the problems are like sun cupped snow, crafted by the delicate forces of time and elemental creativity.  We also have shitty granite; dry flakes, cracked foot holds, and crumbly sandy slopers.  It can’t all be good right?   But the range of movement, the quality, diversity, and perfection of the holds, these ingredients all coalesce and make something comparable to art; a natural subjectivity that conflates physical strength with the mental warfare of summoning solutions to the most intricate of three dimensional puzzles. 

 

 

I have now been living in Seattle for the last two years (starting May 5, 2016) and yet I haven’t once been out to this eastern paradise I used to know and frequent so well.  When I lived in Olympia it used to take on average approx. three and half hours to make the drive to Leavenworth.  So you could imagine my surprise when it took only 2hours and fifteen minutes before we were pulling onto the Icicle Canyon road and making our way up the canyon.  Memories of course started to flood back from the times when I first started to come to this place back in 2007.  They seemed so close to me, and yet now it was like remembering an entirely different life.  I blame Leavenworth for my addiction to these short yet intricate scrambles, an addiction that ultimately lead to living in Bishop for a couple of seasons.  Everything was where it was, the town has not changed a bit, and the only difference I could see was a little more chalk on everything.  The Wenatchee was roaring, the last two weeks had brought the heat to the upper elevations and as a result the massive amount of snow melt was now raging through the canyon providing us with some of the best white noise nature can create. 

With the increasing popularity of climbing comes the inherent increase of injury to someone.  A visiting climber (most likely a college student, obviously male between the ages of 19-24) had fallen off a boulder and broke his ankle.  We were 'lucky' enough to be on scene when the ambulances arrived.  Sad part was that he had at least 6 or 7 spotters and a lot of crash pads, ignorance breeds this kind of outcome.

 

I didn’t visit any of the new spots that have now been documented in Kelley Sheridan’s latest contribution to the climbing community, but opted instead for some of the more mellow and popular roadside spots.  We started at the Carnival boulders where I got to run laps on THE best V.4 in the canyon called The Rib.  We moved over to the Sword boulders for some shade.  The temps had soared in the sun and now we looked for solace amongst the trees.  The highlight of the trip for me was seeing so many friends everywhere we went!  At the Carnival boulders it was a group from Oly I hadn’t seen in years, at the Sword it was a group from Seattle I don’t see that often because I never boulder anymore, at the Forestland we ran into another group of friends from Seattle, and the next day when we returned to Forestland we ran into an SG group who I absolutely love.  It was like this great party that followed us everywhere we went.  The love and positivity were flowing in massive quantities and there was nothing but good energy bouncing through the spaces between the boulders.  This is what I miss most about bouldering and about traveling to old and new spots.  What a fantastic escape.  The snowcapped mountains only adding to the ambience and alpine feel of the environment, and I couldn’t help but gaze out across the valley from time to time and feel lucky to live my life. 

Ruth on a dainty little V.0 and a great backdrop just up from the Sunny and Steep boulder. 

 

Molly, ex-pat Seattleite now local Leavenworth high school teacher and granite crusher along with her husband Chris, crushing a new(??) problem on the Sunny and Steep boulder.  My GF Chris (V.5/6, FA me! maybe...)

 

Molly on the tricky press top out.

 

 

Gino trying My GF Chris on for size.

 

Gino having fun in the sun!

 

 

A weekend trip like this one feels like a high that is very hard to come down from.  Now that I’m at work and most of my raw tips have started to heal the trip already feels so distant, the memories vibrant and important but fading.  I understand why people go on the road and live out of their vans and dirt bag it in order to feel this high all the time.  Its living truly and presently, surrounded by beauty and challenge, friendship, love, danger, the unknown, nature and technology.  A combination of the man-made and the natural world that makes us feel strong and comfortable yet vulnerable and ambivalent.  At the end of the trip we stood on top of this little dome overlooking Barney’s Rubble; large black and grey boulders strewn haphazardly about the granite tableau like a child’s building blocks.  The setting sun just starting to make its way to the ridgeline, kissing our already slightly burned cheeks.  I sat on a particularly large block and looked down at the valley already ensconced in shadow, at the river stampeding its way over the white polished boulders that made up the stumbling riverbed, at the snowfields clinging to the crotches of north facing scree fields in the crotches of sheer granite towers, and at the faded twisting road that would eventually carry us home.  I thought about the laughter, and the picnic table cooked meals, about our sad little fire made of scrounged wood filled with sap and dying life, the blanket of stars that covered us at night and made me feel so small, about the success I had had and she had had, about how the feeling of sun burned shoulders, dry skin, and raw finger tips makes me feel so alive.  Of course I wasn’t ready to go home, but the thought of returning was worth the demise of that feeling of freedom these boulders in this canyon had made me feel once again.