This might be a little long winded, but its raining outside and figure someone here might read it. And I got all emotional so more things came out as I was writing.
Learning The Ropes
Part 1 The 90’s
On February 4th, 1994, I walked into Pacific Edge at the ripe young age of 12 years old. I had spent the last year or so hanging out with a clan of troublemakers spending my hours rollerblading around Santa Cruz causing havoc. Rolling shopping carts into the river, pissing on drive-thru windows at night, and much of the normal “Junior High Havoc.” We immediately grabbed copies of the required waivers and forged our parents signatures before returning a few hours latter. We just bouldered that first day, but the seeds were set for learning the ropes. There seemed to be something important going on inside “The Edge”. Little did I know the impact that walking through doors of Pacific Edge would have on my life.
The next day found us at Bugaboo Mountain Sports, at the old location above the Blue Lagoon, where we put the little money that we had down on a layaway plan for BD Bod harnesses and ATCs. After a few weeks of random money making activities the harnesses and new belay devices were in our hands. We learned to tie knots from a book and then headed back to The Edge to take our belay tests. I’m sure they took one look at us and knew they would fail us but they let us finish the test anyway. We retook the test figuring it was a mistake, but we failed again. So we spent the afternoon watching others belay then went home and taught ourselves to do it like them. We came back that evening and took the test from non other then Andy Puhvel. I looked him straight in the eye and convinced him I had the focus necessary to do this task... while barely belaying. We both passed and headed straight for the ropes, with no interest in bouldering.
After a few slabby pitches on the right side of the gym I set forth to tackle the right side rope of the main buttress. It was way over my head and spent the better part of 10 minutes swinging out into space having a great time playing around... until a one-eyed man approached. I was ordered down immediately. My first Tom Davis lecture ensued. He left the message that this place was not meant for fooling around, this was real. That realness of it pulled me in for the first time in my life like nothing had before.
Within months I had surpassed my buddy, who dropped out when I sent my first 5.11. I begged my parents for a rope, a 10.5 Mammut Flash, and then I enrolled in Tom and Diane Russell's co-taught lead class. I had been pretty comfortable until then, but something about leading made me sweat like never before. I was terrified. I was super nervous and it didn’t help when Tom insisted I catch him on some lead falls. He took a few on the upper roof that I held with ease, then he took one fall on the Tuolumne Slab that almost pulled me through the first bolt. I started leading tentatively but wouldn’t belay a leader for a long while.
A year latter I was in the Second Wave of The Edge’s Youth Program taught by James Conn. He recognized the potential in me and found a way to get me out of my belaying fears. During this class I was pushed and was able to conquer the Great Roof for the first time. Then James invited me to Castle Rock. We journeyed up to Castle Rock on an overcast day in some beat up old car with a posse of twenty something route setters from the gym which included the infamous Chris Bloch. Within ten minutes of arriving I found myself on that side-pull/layback thing you first come up to at Parking Lot Rock. I pulled the opening moves then found myself terrified and locked up above a crash-pad made of duct- tape, cheap foam, and carpet. I ask,“ You got me.”
Bloch says, “of course”, but I look down and see him attempting to light a cigarette. I pulled through the fear and made it up. The fear had crippled my technique as a I beached whaled up a top out. At this point climbing started helping me in other parts of my life. If I could push through this with no spotter then I could do anything. James and Chris taught me that it is all about fun and having a good time with friends, but also that it is about nature. The end result didn’t really matter.
Then... I started High School. Two years prior I could only do one pull up, now I could do more then 20 in the Presidential fitness competition. During the first week of classes while at the gym one night, I overheard King Human and Anna Levine talking about King’s new bully student. When I introduced myself, it turned out that he taught at my school and invited me to come by his classroom. I did and he invited me to The Pinnacles that weekend. I showed up at the gym and caught a ride with Pete King and Pete Kushner. This would be one the most formative experiences of my life. Pete King had his eyes set on Ranger Bolts and on arrival went directly too it. With no warmup he setoff with a huge rack of quickdraws. I was amazed by this man in his late fifties going for it like that. He passed the dyno and fell pulling the lip. I couldn’t climb that so I went around the other side and did Teranean Tango, Cantaloupe Death, Hawaiian Noises, and then fell all over POD. Chris Bloch and Hans Florine were working Hot Lava Lucy in a competitive manner. Things were really happening that day, one of those special days you remember forever. Audra Allen fell in love with Chris Bloch and then King Human sent Foreplay. King was so stoked he took the whole group out to dinner. Pinnacles was awesome, I went to the gym and into the Bugaboo pro-shop and bought the purple Rubine guide. But I didn’t have anyone my age to climb with and I couldn’t drive.
I was competing in the local competition circuit at this point, and was at a JCCA competition at Planet Granite. Somehow Chris Sharma’s mom was sick of watching the comp and asked my mom to take him home with us. I kind of knew Chris from The Edge but had never hung out. Mom and I waited around while Sharma made the finals without me, and proceeded to campus and skip holds out what the route setters must have thought was a desperate route. Within a week I was in a car with Sharma and the then 16 year old Justin Vitcov that was known as “Billy The Kid”. Thus I begun my sport climbing crash course. The techniques these quys taught me were not very safe but we had a blast messing around in nature. With Justin I learned a bunch. We aided Ranger Bolts, climbed in The High Peaks, and I really discovered what outside climbing could offer.
We all watched in awe over the next few years as Sharma made his way through the grades: Hot Lava Lucy, Ranger Bolts, Lardbutt, Ubermench, National Champion, World Champion, and then “Climbing is now spelled Sharma”. One particular event really sticks out in my mind as a turning point for me because of Sharma. Chris was attempting Ubermensch and Justin was belaying. Chris neared the 4th bolt, set a marginal heal hook, threw the draw on, quickly pulled up to clip, and his heal popped... within a millisecond he plunged backward. Justin pulled up ton of rope with a Gri-Gri in that half second before Chris’s brain would have been splattered all over the slab that makes up the trail around the Monolith. His head stopped less then six inches from that rock. This is when I learned how to belay, even if I thought I did before. I had this incident in mind when I belayed Sharma on his successful first ascent of Pinnacles only 5.14. You can fuck around but in the end you have to be serious. Climbing is no joke.
I was lucky enough to travel with Sharma many times in those following years. climbing began to take us to other places. We went to Yosemite with his dad Bob, and met up with Ron Kauk who showed us around Camp Four. We climbed Nutcracker with a set of nuts and 3 or 4 cams, actually Chris soloed it and then used the gear to set anchors to bring me up. That experience in Yosemite planted a desire to climb bigger things. We stood beneath El Cap in awe. I looked up The Nose and knew I wanted to climb it, but at that point I couldn’t conceive of how I would do it or if I ever would. It seemed impossible.
Then one day during a kids comp I met a fresh face who was super- enthusiastic about a problem I just sent. John Seitz had just moved from Wisconssin with a ball of energy in a 5’4” frame. He asked if knew how to lead trad, I lied and said,”Yes”. By the end of the week we were in The Valley racking up below Royal Arches as a party of three with the much younger Sam Zelver. We had a blast... and our first epic. I taught myself trad on the way up. We ran out of water at the penji and then arrived at the raps at dark only to discover we had only 2 torches between the three of us. Something told me to take the lead on the raps, maybe just to make sure I had a headlamp, or maybe because something told me I was meant to lead. We rapped 6 hours through the night, but I got us down avoiding the mistakes that other friends had made. We retuned to the car at 3 AM to find it torn apart by a bear. The ice chest we had left in the back seat was gone along with a window and a good part of the front seat. I crawled my way into The Ahwanhee to drink out of the bathroom faucet. I was parched for days, but i was more happy then ever before. I knew that eventually Yosemite would bring me back.
Around that time I was invited by Chris to climb at the Vrigin River Gorge, where he had a project deemed “Necessary Evil”. Jim Thornburg picked us up at the Las Vegas airport and we drove out to the VRG. Chris went straight to the proj and I began my belay duties. There wasn’t much to climb there under 5.12. Boone Speed took me up some of the easier climbs, but something was missing for me. I could climb rocks but I was terrified on lead, when a bolt was at my waist all I could think about was falling. I was scared to even try routes our of fear of the unknown. I was good inside, but real rock baffled me. I may have thought I was climber at this point but in retrospect I had barely scuffed the surface of what was possible in climbing. I was still just a kid without the ability to put it all in perspective. There was a huge duality in my life of school and climbing, which didn’t really exist in the same realm at all. When high school finished that world disappeared and I was free to become a climber. Climbing had taken me places but maybe not the right places or places that I was ready for.
To be continued...
Let me know if you want more.
