First Contact

“The use only of our bodies for work or love or pleasure, or even for combat, sets us free again in the wilderness, and we exult” –Wendell Berry

"Remember who you are, forget what you've become, create a new future” – Chad Muska

It’s dangerous for me to drive to Leavenworth in the Fall.  Explosions of color are nothing short of blinding – bewildering, mesmerizing.  It’s hard to keep my eyes on the road in the face of such beauty.  

We made a solid commitment to going to Leavenworth for bouldering this Fall; a commitment that was made much easier once we invested in a couple of new crash pads.  The massively uncomfortable to carry and unreasonably heavy antiquated tri-fold Metolius crash pad that had all at once been my bed as well as kept my limbs intact while bailing off of highballs in Bishop was now replaced by two super lightweight BD Impact pads.  

This past weekend we loaded the car up and hit the road early enough to see the sun rise, the rays of light breathing life into the trees adorning roadsides, hillsides, and the steep valleys that eventually lead us to the Icicle.  Bright yellows, oranges, and reds kept filling our view, made brighter by the contrasting year round dark greens of the sleepy pines.  

The trails leading to the boulders were blanketed with freshly fallen face sized maple leaves, the cathartic crunch sending tingles down my spine.  We were greeted by smiles and hugs, the best way to make first contact.  The lovely embrace of a sun soaked boulder surrounded by friends and laughter is enough to make expectations melt away and the present moment becomes so lucid and giving.  

Memories of countless hours spent in this area come flooding back and at the same time new memories are made – new faces are emblazoned into these zones, old beta is resurrected once more to guide us to the summit of these granite houses.  True love is not devoid of fear, it is the alchemized product of a spinning, dancing, climbing, moving force that combines it all; fear, joy, courage, defeat, redemption, progression, laughter, doubt, support – the culmination of human experience.  

I hadn’t bouldered in such a large group for a long time and was feeling nervous.  Performance anxiety always creeps in and I find myself wanting to just sit around and spray beta at people who aren’t as unnecessarily self-conscious as I am.  But as this feeling quickly dissipates I also feel a keen draw to play.  Bouldering (and really climbing in general) should always be about playing; it’s how we engage with ourselves and our surroundings in the most childlike way we know how; especially as adults with the magnetism of work, money, ego, status, possessions, and forced duty.      

The Pretty boulders are, and I assume, always have been a quiet reprieve from roadside attractions.  A couple of lazy boulders placed neatly on a small flat space perched on a steep hillside.  Above us broken rocky ridges, immovable placid domes, tendrilled scree fields, bearding valleys, and shadowy secretive crevices where Pan and his nymph’s dance naked in the moonlight (but probably not when it's this cold).

Pretty Girl is an eclectic, technical, comp-style masterpiece of natural perfection.  Quizzical feet, sideways crimping, palm pressing lip-snatching good times.  The best V.3 – ever?  And stacked right next to it is a lateral collection of horribly sloped holds and one saving grace crimp that set you up for a froggy-style perch and an off-balance lip snag.  A perfectly scary ending for such a spooky time of year.  Re-visiting these problems felt illuminating.  One felt like chatting with an old friend, and the other felt like learning how to crawl again.  

No matter how many times I’ve climbed a problem coming back to it and standing on top of the boulder in victory is a feeling money simply cannot buy.  Downclimbing into laughter and jovial congratulatory air is like jumping into a pool on a hot day.  The swig of that first beer and the subsequent rush of sedated confidence is accompanied by a small pause to breathe in the scenery and be embraced by past, present, and future all rushing by and through you like standing on the tracks of a ghost train.  

All at once the sun is swallowed by the enveloping darkness of a fast moving swarm of weather and small rain drops appear.  Rain turns to sleet, but huddling underneath the boulder is only more encouraging, awakening some kind of primal visceral urge to climb.  

Pretty Hate Machine must be one of the (if not THE) best movement style boulders in the canyon.  Easy intro moves, a deep heel hook, squeezing, crimping, and scrunching your feet underneath you getting ready to pounce to lip – it’s fantastic.  I was smacked down on the first few attempts but the blood kept getting more and more circulated, the beta more and more refined, the memory of sending more and more real.  Until I was floating effortlessly through the moves, relaxing in places, tightening up in others.  Holding my breath as I stood up dynamically and latched the lip.  

I stood around on top of a boulder relishing in the good light.  Stripey shadows were now cast about the boulder as I begged people to pull on so I could capture the moment.  A large white pole with spikes protruding out of it lay across the side of the boulder, directing you to look upwards, into the depths of the rocky cliffs and valleys above.  Meanwhile a good ole’ bouldering sesh broke out as more and more people showed up to climb on this mega line.  

Time directed us back down to the cars and we watched the fading sunlight cast beams through the shrugging shoulders of the laid out ridgeline of the canyon.  We had one more stop in us and it was a quick flirt with Mad Meadows.

Kevin and I played around on the massive movement of the power bloc Cloaca while Ruth and Billie squeezed between sidepulls and opposing feet on Occumn’s Razor.  The light continued to fade as we drove through the small town of Leavenworth, the sidewalks and storefronts just starting to light up as the darkness took effect.