Climbing in "The City" and "The Castle"

Leaning backwards off the tiny ledge into the open air, 100 feet up on a vertical granite wall, there was only one thought running through my mind. “This is gonna make a great blog entry.” 

There are a LOT of rocks to climb here. All the rocks in this picture are less than half of the rocks in the park. 

The sun blazed down on me that afternoon as my long-time adventure companion Geoff and I worked through the two-pitch sport climb known as, “Between Heaven and Earth” in the Hostess Gully at Castle Rock in South Central Idaho. 

Geoff and I started our adventures together by joining each other’s Boy Scout troops on snowmobiling and snow-cave camping trips into the Island Park, Idaho area when we were both about 12. As time went on, we gravitated towards backpacking, and managed to pull off some fantastic trips, each worth their own blow entry. We summitted the Grand Teton, Mt. Borah, and too many other places to mention right now.

So, when Geoff suggested that this summer, instead of our traditional purist, intense backpacking quest for a mountain peak, we try spending a few days at the rock climbing Mecca known as “City of Rocks” I was skeptical.

There were tons of little crags and places to boulder and play around on.

He explained that instead of taking everything we needed in on our backs, we would simply put stuff in a vehicle, drive to a pre-arranged campsite, unpack, and then drive to different rock formations and climb to our hearts’ content. 

“You mean car-camp?” I asked, my voice obviously tinged with skepticism. RV’s, KOA campgrounds, and the like don’t normally qualify as “real camping” with Geoff or I, and I was worrying just a bit about the friend with whom I had logged so many miles on the trail. 

Geoff. Good guy. 

But, I admit, the idea of having a cooler (which meant we could take a huge variety of backpacking-prohibited foods), a big tent, foot-thick air-mattresses, a sun-shelter, a big propane cooker, and various other normally contraband commodities eventually started appealing to me. Maybe I’m starting to get old. 

Sometimes though, you really can have your cake and eat it too. Adventure was never in short supply on this trip, and adrenaline rushes went arm-in-arm with warm showers and drinking water we didn’t have to filter from a remote mountain stream. 

When we arrived at Almo, Idaho, the tiny one gas-pump town that caters to visiting climbers, it was night. Despite the nearly full moon, it was hard to distinguish anything out of the ordinary in the fields beyond the barbed-wire fences. Then, after a couple of miles driving down a dirt road, the first one crashed into view. The size of a three story mansion, Camp Rock, where hundreds of passing pioneers signed their names, loomed imminently in the suddenly eery moonlight. 

The next quarter mile of driving made us feel as though we had been entered the world of “Honey I Shrunk the Kids” as dozens of rocks, some larger, some smaller than Camp Rock, engulfed the black and white view of our new existence. And it wasn’t just the sheer size of the rocks, but their shape and character that made our jaws drop. Some rocks jutted defiantly at odd angles into the air, others looked like giant pancakes stacked high and waiting for their colossus makers to come eat them. Others were pocked and smoothed like swiss cheese. Our campsite itself was cordoned off on one side with a granite wall that could have been designed by a whimsically dreaming Fernand Petzl himself. 

The rocks next to our campsite. Yeah, they were pretty fun. Maybe too fun...

Back to the tiny ledge where I stood a hundred feet up, working hard at concentrating my abundant adrenaline on belaying Geoff as he started up the face while the sun worked hard at trying to get through the SPF 50 sunblock all over our necks and arms. On this, the third climb of day two of our adventure to City of Rocks and Castle Rock, I was trying to avoid thoughts of what might happen if my anchor, a couple bolts epoxied into the granite wall, were to suffer an unlikely catastrophic failure and pull loose. Soon though, Geoff let me know he had anchored into the top and I was too busy remembering my knots and adjusting clips to think about anything else.

At several points on the way up to where Geoff now waited, it honestly looked like it would be impossible to keep moving up. But with some lay-backs, heel hooks, fingertip holds and the occasional faith-filled lunge and grab toward a hoped for hold, I found myself emerging onto a small, scoop shaped repository where Geoff and the top of our climb waited. The view from the top vindicated the climb’s name for me. Earth, or the base of our climb, was a jumbled, narrow, chasm full of trees and bushes. Heaven, or the top of our ascent, gave us an elevated view of the entire landscape on either side of the narrow stone spine, and the feeling at having reached the peak was exhilarating. 

Looking back, it was during that climb that I started trusting the rock, my climbing partner, my equipment, and especially myself. There is a lot to learn from those silent, unforgiving, but steady rocks. For example, if there is no possibility of complete failure, can there be any true chance of genuine success? Facing that possibility made learning how to use our tools, partnership, and faith, essential. 

Another key element of managing that risk and reaching the top was learning how to look at the circumstances presented in the environment one finds oneself in as opportunities instead of impediments. I was amazed at how much physical energy seemed to melt away when I allowed myself to entertain thoughts such as, “Well that’s a horrible arrangement for those rocks...” or “How am I supposed to get up there without a solid hold?”  When instead, I commandeered my reactions and dictatorially proclaimed to myself that I would not stop until I reached the chains at the top, I was surprised at my increase in energy and the boldness of my moves on the rock. 

Geoff had me lead my first climb. This was a 5.8/9 and was a blast.

Rappelling down off my philosophical perch, the rest of the trip was better than I had expected in a couple ways. City of Rocks and Castle Rock are technically two separate parks and a five dollar per vehicle entrance fee is charged for Castle Rock (no charge for City of Rocks). Despite the entrance fee and being geographically smaller, Castle Rock features a greater concentration of bolted “sport” climbs than City of Rocks, and the entrance fee also gives the occupants of your vehicle exclusive potty privileges at the nearby RV campground with its shower facilities. Nothing feels as nice after a scorching day of climbing as showering off the dirt, sweat, and sunscreen in a real, hot shower. 

Driving from place to place (our longest hike was probably around 2 miles one way), access to running water, hot showers, and cooler chilled Powerades may not be my idea of a purist backpacking adventure. But, going to City of Rocks and Castle Rock was sure a great guilty outdoor pleasure that I now heartily recommend.

Happy 3rd of September! Oh, wait...

Yes, I know, I'm late on posting this. But, since this is still kind of the Fourth of July weekend and I really didn't want to wait a year to post it, here it is. 

The fourth of July is a strange holiday in many ways if you stop to think about it. In a Cinderella style upset worthy of any NCAA Final Four series, a loosely knit, mostly untrained alliance of small nation states challenged the most powerful nation on earth, pulled off the win, and we’ve celebrated ever since. You might imagine that the date remembered for generations would be the date of the final victory, or maybe the date the loser officially conceded defeat. This holiday, however, is as exceptional as America itself. 

There probably is not one reason everyone would agree on as to why we celebrate our Independence in early July; after all, the subject here is history, not math. But why not early September instead, when the British gave up by signing the Treaty of Paris, or October when Washington won the last major battle of the Revolution at Yorktown?

One reason is the Declaration of Independence, whose eloquent wording has inspired generations, and still causes awe today. “People don’t talk like that anymore,” quips the character Ben Gates in Disney’s National Treasure. And it’s true. 

But Independence Day is for more than paying homage to a bygone era of promulgatory excellence. In America content has often trumped form, and that is certainly the case here, despite the noble embodiment of the Declaration’s ideals. 

Some might say celebrating the fourth of July instead of some other significant date is kind of like Babe Ruth’s famous calling his own shot. With two strikes and a booing opposition, what’s remembered isn’t so much the amazingly long home run hit, but the fact that he called it. The Founders were bold enough to declare their intentions to a world that justifiably had its doubts.

In the end, the pessimists may have a point. None of those reasons quite seem to justify blowing up millions of dollars worth of colorful explosives every summer. And it’s still true that there would be no celebration on the 4th of July if Washington had not taken Yorktown, which would have been unlikely if the French had not come, or if a thousand other things hadn’t happened just so. 

But there could have been no end without a beginning - a beginning where men and women put incredible faith and effort behind ideals and a God that may have seemed then to only exist on paper and in their hearts. And that’s where the Declaration and the fourth of July get their staying power. 

People in tough situations, and that could be many of us nowadays, want to believe that despite the odds they can come out on top, that despite the depravity around them that God and good exist, and that their sacrifices can make a difference for their children. And so, the Fourth of July is a celebration of the future as much as of the past. To celebrate those ideas is to express faith and hope for what can be and how we are a part of it, not simply commemorate what already took place. 

It would be hard to find a better reason to celebrate. 

Falling with Style: How to handle finals and life

(originally a column in BYU-I's Scroll newspaper)

Pixar has given us some pretty memorable lines, including, “I can speak whale!” and “With this GPS we’ll never get lost!” But, the most memorable for me just might have to be Woody’s exasperated exclamation that Buzz Lightyear can’t really fly, he’s just, “falling with style.”

That phrase, and Buzz’s endorsement of it at the end of the movie, has made me think a lot about how much the idea of “falling with style” applies to real, everyday, non-animated, non fairy-tale life. 

All that goes up must come down. Except for those few satellites that get exiled into outer-space forever, gravity rules. Cars that are new today, will eventually be rust buckets, buildings crumble like sandcastles. 

This lack of perfection shows up in stuff before it’s even finished too. Any first semester engineering or chemistry student can tell you that you that all measurements made on anything (other than whole number counting) are, at best, guesses that are “close enough”.

Or, for the more artistic, the closer you get to a painting, the more you realize that even the Mona Lisa is just a bunch of swathed brush-strokes plastered onto a canvas that is slowly aging and degrading - think of the song, “dust in the wind.” 

Even biologically, our bodies are in a slow, losing battle against the entropy of disease, slight cellular mutations, oxidation and other “aging” effects. Added stress from things like finals week and breakups only intensifies these processes. So, if it’s all going down-hill from here, what are we supposed to do?

Fall with style my friends. Fall with style.

Take a break from concentrating so much on the next case-study and help your neighbor with the papers she dropped. Get up and go on a hike at 5:30 AM to see the sun rise over someplace you’ve never been. Learn how to cook something Italian or say, “I love you” in Italian, (both could come in handy). Go all out on your humanities presentation even though you had never even heard of a “harpsichord” before. See what it feels like to go an entire day without complaining about a single thing, just for fun. Bake a cake with some friends, knock on a random door, sing Happy Birthday, and walk away without offering an explanation to the recipients.  

Even though “Falling with style,” may just sound like a nice way to state the inevitable, I’ve come to believe what Buzz realized. Contrary to popular opinion, pessimism does not denote intelligence. Just because life isn’t a scripted fairy-tale, that’s no reason not to shoot for the stars. And who said that this life was everything anyways? “To infinity, and beyond!”