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Route 100 #granville #blackandwhite #greyscale #vermont #802 #snow #winter #backroads #route100 (at Route 100, Lower Granville, VT)

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Boom! Shaka Laka #pretty #sunset #beautiful #mountaintown #mountainliving #crestedbutte #crestedbuttesunset #cb #colorado

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Crested Butte #cb #co #colorado #mountaintown #mountainsociety (at Crested Butte, CO)

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Very rare new Belgium townie. #bikecb #bikeco #townie #newbelgium #fattire

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Gothic Mtn in the distance #rockymountainhigh #cb #co #mountaintown (at Crested Butte, CO)

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My Hands

My hands aren’t like a woman’s hands.

A woman’s hands are small, delicate and gentle.

My hands aren’t like a woman’s hands.

My hands are rough, hard, and callused.

My hands are strong.

My hands are tough.

Though my hands are that of a woman they aren’t a woman’s hands.

My hands aren’t a woman’s hands because of a man.

A man…

A man made my hands not like a woman’s hands because I was shown something.

Something that most women don’t do.

Something hard.

Something tough.

Something Intense.

Something breathtaking.

I am a woman but my hands aren’t that of a woman’s.

My hands….

My hands are that of a rock climber.

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Hunger

Tired

Hungry

Nothing to eat but pork and beans.

I eat it slowly

It tastes like watery gravy

Take some sips of water

Careful not to drink it all.

Stomach groans, I’m still hungry.

Nothing else to eat.

I’m cold

I lay my head down on a pillow and close my eyes.

I doubt I’ll sleep tonight.

My stomach groans again.

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Happy 4th! #skiinjuly #4thofjuly #america #co #paradisedivide (at Paradise Divide)

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Tales from the Tent #4

Well this past week has been rather boring.  With the release of another issue of Kronicle Magazine in four weeks I’ve been busy proofing articles.  Needless to say, this last week as given me a new found perspective on what schoolteachers go through and a newly regarded respect for them.   Especially when they give up their evenings to grade papers; I could never do that. 

I’ve also booked my flight to southern California in August to get some beach days in and hopefully climb and bike while I’m there as well.  I’ve never been to California or seen the Pacific Ocean so I’m very much excited for this trip as well as getting to see someone who I haven’t seen in almost a year.  Culture Shock and nothing like Vermont are words I’ve heard about California so I shall enjoy the people watching quite a bit.  

The campground has been rather full the last week so I’m hoping I don’t get asked to move if I stay over my limit.  I’m hoping that if I move my tent 20ft to the south that the park rangers will be ok with it.  Otherwise, I will have to pack up and move completely unlike what I have been doing which has been dragging my tent on a tarp to my next site. 

Other than that my days have been mundane and boring full of long hours on my laptop typing.  Kind of what I’m doing now.  Tomorrow I plan to hike purple mountain make some desperately needed turns on my skis.  Then I will be able to say I skied on the 4th of July.

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Evening clouds #crestedbutte #colorado #mountains #mountain (at Paradise Divide)

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CO Sunset #nofilter #co #colorado #crestedbutte #cb #sunset #drifter #peaceinnature #paradise #beautiful #beautyinnature #coloradoliving #mountaintown #mountainliving #mountainsociety

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Tales from the Tent #3

There is a thief among us.  About a week ago a man from Pennsylvania arrive at the campground.  He was alone and accompanying him was a Rottweiler ironically named Thor.  When I first showed up at camp and saw him unloading his gear at the site next to mine the air stunk of marijuana.  Not that it’s a bad thing, I mean we are in Colorado after all and I on occasion will smoke.   Anyways, it wasn’t until last night that I thought something was up with my neighbor. 

I had left out a 6-pack carton of Sierra Nevada to use as a pot holder for my mini- herb garden.  I had 4 plants and two beers in the six-pack.  I had abandoned these last few beers because beer and heat doesn’t mix well so keeping beer without a fridge to store them in is not a good idea.  If you know anything about beer its that when it is heated and cooled rapidly it will cook the yeast in the beer and ‘skunk’ the beer causing a awful taste. 

So this morning I awoke and exited my tent and walked over to my picnic table to notice that my 6 pack had been turned over and my beers missing.  Now I really don’t care that they took my skunked beer.  I mean it’s skunked after all, yuck! The thing that bugged me is that someone had entered my campsite and taken something that was mine without asking first.  Since my neighbors happened to be my only neighbors the culprit’s were easy to spot.  Now confronting them over the subject is not likely going to happen unless my 800-dollar skis in my tent go missing. Why? Well Thor is a big dog and from what I’ve seen since meeting my neighbors is that Thor knows what attack means. 

I hope they enjoyed those skunked beers and that they tasted and smelled extra rank because a month in the beating Colorado sun will do that.  It’s just a shame because if they had actually attempted to be nice to me and make friends I probably would have shared the fresh beer I had in my car with them.  I think as a test I’ll rig my GoPro in tree aiming at my tent and leave a note in the tent so if someone comes back for more they will be greeted by a note that says, “Despite the fact that this is public land, this tent is my personal space and you sir, are trespassing.  You have been filmed in the act and you should either return/ replace what you have stolen or vacate this campground fast before the cops are called.  Sincerely, nice neighbor who does like to share when people are nice to her.”

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Why do I Climb?

I came across a video on the interwebs asking people why they rock climb.  The answers differed from adrenaline rush to freedom.  Everyone had a different answer. The thing about climbing that makes it different from any other sport is that its not just physical exertion like running, biking or swimming.  Climbing is as much physical as it is mental.  Maybe even more so mental.  I’ve done all the usual sports, track, biking, and swimming but none compare to the feeling I get when I’m Rock Climbing.

So, Why do I Rock Climb?

            Picture being 300 feet up a shear granite rock face.  You are connected to a single rope and clipped into a steel bolt not even a centimeter thick.  Remember, you are hanging 300 feet off the ground, your feet dangling below you and the ground seems miles away.  As you hang there you listen and to your amazement the sound of silence meets your ears and know I’m not talking about the hit song by Simon & Garfunkel.  Just pure, unaltered, beautiful silence.  Not once as you hang there does it occur to you that you are very far off the ground or possibly in danger.  Ok, maybe once it flashes through your mind but that’s not the point.  The point is that you’re not on the ground but you’re also not in the air; you’re in between.  And rarely do humans get to experience in between.  Here on this cliff face you find peace, solitude and comfort.  You are both safe and not safe at the same time.  In that moment your only worry is to reach that next hold and to clip that next bolt.

            If I’m angry or frustrate I’ve found that a lonesome crag and a trusting friend are all you need to feel better.  It doesn’t even have to be outside either.  Just the other day I was feeling out of sorts but was at work.  Luckily for me I just so happen to work at a indoor rock climbing gym.  I know that climbing has helped me relax in the past so I hop on the wall and start to climb.  For some reason though, I couldn’t get my mind to calm down and focus on the task at hand, later realizing that it was because I wasn’t pushing my climbing limit.  A woman walks in wanting to climb so I harness her up and give here the safety procedures rundown.  She had clearly climbed before so it was pretty straightforward.  She proceeds to climb a route on each rope one by one then comes over to where I’m siting (my gym uses auto-belays which works as a pulley system for the climber, eliminating the belayer need) I then find out that she has flown in to visit her sick grandmother in the hospital.  She had a small break from the hospital and had come to climb to relieve some stress. She explained how she use to do this when she was younger and was frustrated or stressed and that even though she was only climbing for thirty minutes this really helped her forget for a little bit all the bad stuff that was happening in her life.  After she had left I thought, wow she has a lot more stress in her life than me so why am I having so many issues climbing today.  Finally, I returned to the right mind set thinking, OK I can do this and proceeded to walk over to the wall.  I choose a 5.10B route (a 5.10B is a moderate to hard climb) I designed named Iron Man as a challenge that I had yet to completely climb.  I was struggling on the last two moves, a dyno (A dyno is when you jump upwards from one hold to the other and as you jump your body completely leaves the wall) to a left hand crimp with an awkward balance finish.  Determination and some Daft Punk finally allowed me to finish.  Though some grunting, weird looks from passerby’s and light swearing got me here the ultimate reason was that woman’s story and her words that she had come here to climb so that just for thirty minutes she could let go of her worries, stop stressing and focus on what was in front of her.

            Climbing isn’t just about the release you get though.  Climbing is unique because it uses a lot of willpower and mental focus to complete a climb.  To climb efficiently one must allow their body and mind to find sync and work in tandem.  If you can’t find this then you are going to have issues as you climb.  I think this is the reason that I meet so many climbers who have troubled past’s, but once they found rock climbing as an outlet they got their lives under control.  Why is climbing mental? Well it’s different for everyone.  My take on it is this; I have to focus on a very specific challenge; I have to exert a certain amount of energy; oh, and I’m 60 feet off the ground so if I fuck this up I’m going to fall a very far ways before my rope takes the slack, and trust me falling 30 feet and slamming into a rock with a good deal of force is never fun.  So, as you’re up there focusing on your next move you have to calm down your mind and you have to forget that you are very high up.  It’s a human instinct to be afraid of heights, so for a person to be able focus at a high height takes a lot of mental focus and training.  I just recently got over my fear of heights and still sometimes I get nervous. Once you are able to sync your mind you can do anything. 

            Once you have your synch and focus you can climb like a god.  A rock climb route is like a puzzle you have to put your hand in the correct place and your foot in the right spot or you’re screwed.  So before you even begin the climb you have to plan where you are going to move once on the rock.  Then when your on the rock you have to focus move by move and not overthink the climb but not under think it either.  Under thinking results in fear and fear while climbing will cause you to hesitate, forget what your were focusing on and then eventually tire out before the end of the climb or fall.  This is why the mental- physical sync is so important. 

            But climbing isn’t just about stress relief, and the mental focus its so much more and honestly as I sit here typing this I’m struggling at how to explain what rock climbing really means to me.  It’s so hard to explain because it is so many different things for me.  And these things are for me only, because someone else is climbing for a completely different reason.  If you were to climb with me you might get it but then again you would be doing it for a completely different reason.  But climbing for me in a list of words is this: stress relief, the mental focus, physical workout, challenge, adrenaline, the people you meet, the judge free zone (the people and the rock won’t judge you because its all you and know one else), being amongst nature, and lastly the freedom I get when I climb.

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New lunch spot #boulderingintepark #lunch #lunchclimb #boulder #cb #crestedbutte #climb #climber (at Rainbow Park)

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Holy Mountains Batman! There's still snow! #tstorm #rain #water #mountains #mountainliving #mountain society #drifter #peaceinnature

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Just another day in the office. #rockclimb #climb #climber #colorado #gunnison