Climbing the First Flatiron
I wake up at five on a Saturday morning and arrive at the Chautauqua parking lot shortly before 7am; Chris arrives moments later. We sort through our gear briefly before starting the approach. During the hike, I realize that I’ve forgotten to apply my sunscreen, and Chris assures me there’ll be plenty of time at the base of the climb. But at the base of the climb, I’m so busy asking questions and making sure I understand the answers that I forget all about the sunscreen. I’m wearing a tank top, just as I would in the gym, for maximum freedom of arm movement.
Chris, my guide and the leader for this climb, has the ropes and all the protection, while I have far less to carry - basically just my water and my shoes. The Flatirons are known for easy climbs coupled with long runouts - there simply aren’t that many spots to place protection. Chris climbs for quite a while before stopping to try some pieces on a crack in the rock. This is my first time watching a trad lead climber, and I’m learning a lot. I hadn’t realized that protection could be a matter of trying several different pieces before settling on one, or indeed that you could try several times and then come to the conclusion that nothing (or at least, nothing you have with you) is going to work.
I’d only lead belayed a handful of times in the gym, and I’d never been the sole belayer. Either the climber had been on auto belay as well, or there had been a second belayer holding the rope as backup. Lead belaying in the gym is a touchy matter of give and take, feeding out rope as fast as possible, taking up as much slack as you can, and then slowly paying it out until the leader reaches another anchor spot and you have to feed like crazy again. My experience of lead belaying Chris on the First Flatiron is quite different. In the gym, my biggest concern was not exhausting the climber by paying out the rope too slowly, and otherwise to keep the rope fairly tight to minimize fall distance. On real rock, where I can only see the leader some of the time, I am far more concerned with keeping the rope loose than with minimizing fall distance. While I obviously need to be sure that Chris can’t fall too far, most of my rope management addresses the risk of pulling him off-balance by being too aggressive about taking in the slack. In any case, indoor sport climbing of any sort moves pretty quickly, while outdoor trad has a different pace. I’m finding it much more intuitive, and less stressful, than I’d expected.
Eventually, Chris climbs to the top of the first pitch, gets his belay station set up, and we switch roles. Now it’s my turn to climb. Our route is neither the easiest nor the hardest on this Flatiron, but as with pretty much all the classic Flatiron climbs, it is sandstone slab - friction climbing. The gym has obvious holds screwed onto obvious walls, and the legal holds are helpfully marked with tape. The First Flatiron is nothing like gym climbing. You kind of make like Spiderman and go straight up a not-quite-vertical surface using invisible, sometimes intangible, finger- and toe-holds. In the gym, you might call something a pocket if you can get your whole finger into it. On this rock, you’re happy to find a “pocket” on which only the very edge of your fingertip rests. But unlike the gym, there’s quite a bit of slope to the rock, and there’s an unbelievable amount of grip to the sandstone - hence the term “friction climbing.” Chris also advised me to keep an eye out for “conglomerate” rock - pebbles and stones seemingly embedded in the sandstone surface. A pebble the size of a gumball, or even a jelly bean, is a big help on this type of surface.
All of which is to say, it’s a different type of climbing than what you typically encounter in the gym. Last year, it might have given me a lot more trouble, but I’ve been developing my skill quite a bit this year, and I’m becoming pretty good at what they term “balance-y” climbs; climbs that are all about brains and fluidity rather than brawn. So I slither up the first pitch without too much trouble; perhaps even with a bit of grace.
I make it up the first pitch, and I realize that I’m feeling pretty good about this whole thing. I’m not nervous. I’m not anxious. It doesn’t feel like an extreme sport. I’m just celebrating a beautiful summer day by being out in nature.
I do remember and regret the (lack of) sunscreen, but I don’t want to get my hands greasy, so I resign myself to burning. I also think it’s going to be maybe 3-4 hours till we’re back at the car, tops. In this, I am mistaken.
Another difference between the gym and the great outdoors: belaying from a perch some distance above the ground, tied to a tree and anchored to the rock, as well. You can’t see the climber, and the most comfortable position might be facing out from your station, looking down at the climb you’ve already completed, the trail you took for the approach, the Chautauqua parking lot, Boulder - the whole landscape. Birds are flying lazily below you. There is a stillness and a peacefulness and plenty of opportunity to take in the view. Unlike hiking or mountain biking, climbing affords moments where the only thing you can or should be doing is to be completely still, receptive to the world around you. To be a belayer is to be responsive, not proactive. Your job in its entirety is to respond to the rope, respond to the climber, respond to what you sense around you. It’s almost meditative.
At the top of four pitches - perhaps it might have been three full-length pitches and two shorter ones - we reach a moment of decision. We can scramble off the back of the Flatiron here and hike down, or we can do the “ridge walk” to the rappel spot at the top. I’m almost out of water, but it seems a waste to come all this way and not finish - and in any case, it looks like the ridge can’t possibly go very far. I text my husband, telling him that we’re almost done.
That evening, my husband tells me he received my text and then went online to read a little about this climb. Apparently it’s infamous for its deceptive ridges; each one looks like it will be the last, but as you get to it you find there’s another one beyond.
So anyway, we switch to a shorter, lighter rope, and we do the ridge walk, which is more accurately described as short sections of alternately climbing, downclimbing, and walking across easy paths with impossibly steep and long drops on either side. Falling without a rope is not an option. Chris, who has soloed this climb many times before, goes without rope protection as often as not, but he is always careful to ensure that I am either protected by rope or sitting comfortably and safely.
There is only one spot, the “crux” move of this climb, where I have trouble. You have to get up over a ledge with precious little in the way of hand holds - and the drop behind is entirely unforgiving. Chris makes it up without protection, although he later mentions that he had a moment of concern because of the unfamiliar weight of the pack on his back. I am secured by rope, belayed from above, and it’s a good thing. I spend long minutes feeling the section out, attempting to grip it this way and that, placing my foot here and there, exploring every possibility. Chris has pointed out some key spots before he goes up, but I don’t remember them exactly, and in any case every body (literally) is different. I slip the first time, and the rope stretches quite a bit, as it should, before it holds. After some more deliberation, I finally gut it out and get up over the ledge, breathing a little more heavily than can be completely explained by exertion.
As we walk/climb the ridge, we encounter more and more fellow climbers. Any illusion of solitude is broken as I find myself asking permission to duck under another group’s rope. Still, while it’s more busy than I’d prefer, it’s nicely social, and if something were to go wrong, we’d have help right away.
And as we walk/climb the ridge, the afternoon storm makes itself known with quiet grumbles and grey clouds approaching. The route Chris chooses avoids the obvious rappel spot at the very top of the Flatiron. Instead, we downclimb to a second bolt, seemingly less frequented. Again, I’m roped for the downclimb, while Chris solos. As he sets up the rappel, the rain finally starts. I’ve been studiously avoiding thinking about the rappel, because it scares me, so it’s only natural that the rain would start as I prepare for my descent. Chris will be belaying me during the rappel, so I don’t get the benefit of seeing him go first, but I do get to see him solo climb down about 15 feet of the wall we’re about to rappel, just to make sure the rope isn’t caught anywhere. Seeing him merrily navigate the rain-slicked rock without any protection at all makes me feel that I ought to be able to handle an assisted rappel down the same surface. (This is actually irrational - he’s a far better climber than me, and he has far more experience on this route - but it gets me moving, so it all works out.) I rappel down without trouble. He rappels down without trouble. We gather up the ropes and hike down to the base of Chautauqua. I, who hate Gatorade, see the vending machine and discover a desperate desire for both hydration and electrolytes. I chug the bottle, and it is wonderful.
Chris and I say our goodbyes, head to our cars, and take off, ten hours after we’d started. On the drive home, I realize how tired I am. In the house, I collapse to the floor. My husband points out the nasty sunburn on my shoulders, but I won’t start feeling it until I go to bed that night. The glowing feeling of accomplishment outlasts the burn.
All the best intentions
I have been so busy doing fabulously awesome stuff that I haven’t gotten around to writing about any of it. It’s a damn shame, and I really do want to get some of it down before my memory has been dulled too much.
Right now I’m in Cape Cod, beaching it up with DH’s family. I thought I might have time to catch up on all my blogging while I’m here. I was wrong.
… I really do need to write about all the fun stuff I’ve been doing this summer, though, including:
It’s been a good summer for me! I hope yours has been good, too.
Lifestyles of the safe and secure
I had an interesting conversation today with a woman whose parents are, at least on the surface, surprisingly similar to mine. Her parents are about the same age as mine; her mother was also born into what would become East Germany and later escaped; her parents share many of the same dynamics mine do, both with each other and with me. My father likes to say, “Who you are is where you were when.” Life experiences have so much to do with the person you become.
So this lady, I’ll call her S, and I were talking about how we are both risk-takers, or at least are perceived as such by our parents, and especially our mothers, who have a terrible time understanding why we do the things we do. In her life, S has raced cars and ridden her motorcycle at crazy fast speeds. As for me? When I told my mom several years ago that I’d bought a mountain bike, she wondered why I couldn’t just go to a gym (I think the “like normal people” was implied rather than explicitly stated). I told her point-blank: If there’s no risk of getting bloody, I’m not interested.
So my mom probably thinks I’m a little nuts, and I’ve thought my mom was unnecessarily fear-driven and unwilling to take risks.
But it took this conversation with S to start to put it together. Our mothers grew up with extreme deprivation. My mother is no stranger to hard times. As a child, she would walk a farmer’s field after he’d harvested potatoes, looking for extras so they’d have food to eat. They collected hazel nuts from trees so that they’d have oil to cook with. As a young child, she hid in bomb shelters while airplanes strafed above.
My mother had enough risk and fear in her childhood to last a lifetime.
Me? I grew up in the lap of luxury. I’ve never really wanted for anything. Sure, there have been moments, tough moments, for me, but I never feared for my physical well-being. I never wondered about my next meal.
So yes. I seek out moderate amounts of risk and small challenges to my well-being; I use them to clear my head, to test myself and to feel alive. I need that feeling of risk to balance out my reality, which has been overwhelmingly safe and secure.
I don’t think my mom needs that reminder of vulnerability and mortality. And for someone who went through real, terrifying danger as a child, it’s probably incomprehensible that I would seek it out, even in small, measured, reasonably safe doses.
Bookcase of Nerd-dom
We have a serious problem at our house - to paraphrase Milton, the ratio of books to bookshelves is too many. To partially address this issue, I bought a five-shelf bookcase just for our technical books.
I didn’t realize we’d fill it instantly.
Yes, a couple of these books are about business, and a couple are science text books, but the vast majority are, well, computer books. A lot of them are no longer exactly relevant or up to date, but it’s awfully hard to throw away some of these bug squashers.
The good news is, now we really do have room on some of our other bookshelves for many of the books that have been stacked on floors and other available flat surfaces for far too long.
I was that girl …
In high school, I was the girl who punched my male friends all the time. I don’t really know why, but I think I somehow thought it was cute. I once lost a bet that I wouldn’t punch anyone for the next 24 hours - and I lost it in about 5 minutes. My dad used to warn me that if I didn’t knock that crap off, I’d eventually get slugged for real.
It all stopped about the time I started studying Tae Kwon Do, when I was maybe 15. Mr. Kurtz, via his character Brent, suggests that women “play” punch because we know guys won’t hit back. I think it’s more insidious, and he even hints at it in the previous comic - I think we “play” punch because we don’t think that we could possibly be punching hard enough to actually hurt someone. We’re socialized to believe we’re physically weak. In the media, female violence may be depicted as cute or sexy, but rarely as a serious matter. In real life, some men put up with physical abuse rather than calling the cops or getting out of the situation because it’s considered unmanly to admit that you’re being hit by a woman.
When I started martial arts and learned how to punch properly - I stopped hitting people. I learned to take the concept of my body as a weapon seriously, and through a conscientious instructor I learned that using my body as a weapon was a very, very serious matter, only to be done when there were no other options.
Maybe yet another reason for more girls to study martial arts.
Life Is Good
I do love those t-shirts. I know, I know, they’re kind of corny, but they also speak to me. I particularly like the one with the picture of the flower that says “Grow.”
Anyway. Life is good. I spent a wonderful week with my family over Christmas; we celebrated my father’s 70th birthday on the 24th. My mom made sure there were plenty of gluten free munchies for me, and she even made me GF pancakes. They were really good. Much better than I’ve ever managed, actually.
I had foot surgery on December 30th, which made for one heck of a New Year’s bash. Or not. I like to joke that I was having a ball on Percocet, but actually my foot didn’t hurt too much, so I mostly just slept, kept my foot elevated, and iced a lot. I don’t really like pain killers, and I don’t take them unless I absolutely have to. When I did take the meds, I just slept through it so that I wouldn’t have to deal with the vertigo.
So. The surgery. I had a choice, in December. I could get the surgery, or I could give up skiing. It wasn’t much of a choice. I let the doctor cut into my foot and remove a nerve from the third and fourth toes of my left foot. I sat around for four weeks letting it heal. It wasn’t very fun, and all that time sitting around gave me plenty of opportunity to contemplate what would go wrong.
So, about a month after the surgery, I went skiing. And it felt pretty darn good. And it’s felt better every day since. The surgery worked! The first day I was back, after being virtually immobile for a month, I skied all day in a high level mogul class. I was sore, sure, but it felt so good. It’s hard to describe how the absence of pain impacts my ski day. We don’t usually exclaim about the absence of something. But it’s so profound. I ski all morning, and my foot doesn’t hurt or cramp up. I don’t fantasize about getting to lunch so that I can take off my boots. When I get to lunch, I don’t even bother to unbuckle them most of the time. I ski the rest of the day, rather than calling it quits early because I’m in so much pain. I ski better because my foot isn’t all cramped up, and because I can apply my full attention to skiing rather than to the pain. After a full day of skiing, I get back to the car, and I start putting away my stuff, and only when I start thinking about starting up the car do I realize, hey, I’m still wearing my ski boots - I should probably take them off.
It’s unreal.
I do still have minor swelling in my foot; it’s not a problem skiing or hiking, but I do notice it in the morning especially, when I haven’t been moving around. I’m doing PT, and I’m told it’ll probably be a few months before the foot fully heals. But you know. Whatever. They cut into my foot. Of course it’ll take time to get back to normal. Only, it’ll be better than normal, because - no pain!
Oh where, oh where could she be?
Man, have I been busy. I can’t remember exactly what I’ve been up to, but there’s been a lot of it.
I’m still working for the same company, but with a completely different job description and reporting to completely different people, outside of the standard engineering project flow entirely. So that’s been pretty absorbing.
I’m still seeing Mary, my hand therapist, twice a week — once every two weeks for my chronic wrist thing, and three times every two weeks for my broken finger. Yeah. She predicts that my finger will be somewhat swollen and achy for a year and a half. But happily, I have most of my mobility back, and I’m cleared for climbing. Not sure I’ll ever be able to close my fist fully (glad it’s the left!) or straighten my finger all the way, though.
Recently, I had the mother of all busy weeks. My parents came into town the Friday after Thanksgiving for about a week. The day they left, my friend Jessica flew in and crashed at the house. Friday we packed up as much as possible and moved into our second home for the winter, an apartment in Frisco. We’re sharing that with a permanent resident who, fortunately for us, was in need of a roommate. Ski Saturday, then drive home Sunday morning, because I had to fly out to meet the client and I didn’t want to get caught in the brewing snow storm. Flew out Sunday evening, arriving after 11pm eastern, first meeting at 9am. After a very full day, go to bed early, because I have to get up at 4:30am (that’s 2:30 as far as my body’s concerned) for a 7:30 flight. Drive straight home in the snow, feeling worse and worse from all the sleep deprivation. Try to work for the rest of the day, but get basically nothing done. Apparently, some people do this kind of thing all the time. All I can say is, not me.
And my Thinkpad’s wifi stopped working, and I don’t have time to figure it out.
And Christmas shopping. Need I say more?
So while all this is going on, I’ve also been seeing a podiatrist about an ongoing problem I’ve had with my left foot, especially while skiing, but lately under other conditions as well. Apparently it’s something called Morton’s Neuroma. I got a few steroid shots, supportive foot beds, and a metatarsal pad, all of which helped a little, but not enough, especially once ski season started. (Yes. It is December 15 and I’ve already skied five days. Neener.) This weekend, skiing, my foot was bad on Saturday and worse on Sunday. It became clear to me: I had to do the surgery to remove the nerve.
Sounds drastic, but there are worse things, like being in pain all the time and not being able to ski.
So now, on top of everything else, I have a series of pre-op visits, then the trip to visit my parents, then surgery less than 24 hours after I fly back home. After which I won’t be allowed to ski for four weeks, basically the month of January. Which sucks, except that if I weren’t getting the surgery, I probably would be in such crippling pain that I wouldn’t be able to ski anyway, so really it’s a good thing, honest. Just why did it have to come to such a head this year? Oh, right, probably because I’m skiing so much.
Skiing. Let me tell you, Colorado Pass + Breck Unlimited Lesson Pass = bliss. Now, some silly people think that lessons are just for the novice. Those people are flat-out wrong. Not only do you get good solid instruction that helps you enjoy the experience more (and be less sore), but - you get to use the lesson lanes instead of the main ski lift lines. You get a guide (instructor) who knows the mountain way better than you ever will. You get to really know the whole community, instructors and students both; it’s a real community.
Anyway. We’d been targeting 30 days this season. It’ll be tough to make that happen when I can’t ski all of January. I’ve been rocking on skis this year; advancing through the lessons and getting a lot of confidence and skill. That’s on hold, and I won’t be able to work my way up through the terrain as it opens. I’m trying to tell myself that this is good for me, not just for this season but for the rest of my life. I’m telling myself that there’s never a good time to be off your feet and out of your activities for a month. I’m telling myself that I can catch up on paperwork, rest up, and after the first two weeks I can explore Frisco and Breckenridge with Cooper.
But still. It sucks.
Hi. My name is Monique, and I’m a feminist.
This post was inspired by Mel at [M]etabrain [E]ntry [L]og. I felt that if she could do it, I could — and should — do it, too. Her post is Hi. My name is Mel, and I’m female… and feminist.
So here’s my post. For Mel, and for me.
For the longest time, I didn’t think I was a feminist.
In college, I thought that feminism equated to the belief that women are better than men. I certainly didn’t believe that, so instead I rejected the concept of feminism and called myself an individualist.
I was young. I was arrogant. I had never failed. I had buckets of unexamined privilege that allowed me to believe that my experiences were simply the results of my own hard work and innate abilities. It never occurred to me that my experiences were only possible because others had fought for them before I was even born.
Maybe I can be forgiven for my ignorance. There was no Google. Altavista may have existed, but I didn’t know of it. And even if it did, there was no thriving blogosphere, or even really nearly as much data out on the ‘net as there is now. I must have heard the word feminist at some point, but I can’t recall my mother ever saying it (more on that later).
To be honest, I identified more with guys than girls, anyway, and I was something of a traitor to my kind in that I wanted to distance myself as much as possible from whatever it was that women were supposed to be. If the concept of feminism involved embracing and elevating those values traditionally associated with women, well, I wasn’t really interested. (And of course I didn’t have access to Figleaf’s awesome and not at all safe for work blog, Real Adult Sex, where he so excellently explains why feminism is good for everyone, not just women.)
It took both privilege and ignorance to be where I was, who I was, without realizing how much I owed to feminism. I wasn’t a feminist; I simply wore whatever I wanted without any concern about being punished or shamed for it. I wasn’t a feminist; I simply expected to be treated as the equal to my male counterparts in every endeavor. I wasn’t a feminist; I simply didn’t see marriage in my future, or any reason why it should be. I wasn’t a feminist; I simply made it clear to my male friends that “rape” was not an acceptable metaphor for whatever suboptimal event they were discussing. I wasn’t a feminist; I simply expected to enjoy sex, to have it how and with whomever I chose, and to not have it when I didn’t want to have it. I wasn’t a feminist; I simply expected to get my prescription for birth control filled with all the difficulty of buying a tube of lip balm.
In other words, I was living in a post-feminism fantasy world that many women in the US, let alone other parts of the world, would love to have the luxury of living.
So back to my mother. I don’t remember if she ever used the word “feminist,” either positively or negatively, while I was growing up. But I do think that she tried very hard to teach me a feminist world view, so much so that maybe I didn’t even realize there could be another way. As far back as I can remember, my mother would tell me that “You can be anything you want, even President!” I didn’t really understand; I thought it would be silly to want to a job with so much responsibility and public criticism. My mom taught me that nudity was no big thing, and on the topic of private parts, she told me “Hey, if our noses were taboo, we’d cover them, too!” She taught me that the definition and perception of nudity was a cultural construct. As a teenager, I unthinkingly parroted the idea that raising a child is the most important job a woman could have, and she stopped me cold. No, she told me, women can do anything they want; they don’t have to have babies to be fulfilled and successful!
My mother is German. When she moved back to the US after marrying my father in the 70s, she was shocked to find that a married woman couldn’t get a credit card without her husband as co-signer. How could the supposed land of the free be so backward?
Just a couple of years ago, I asked my mother why she periodically asks me how many women are on my team. I assumed that she was concerned for me and wished that I could work somewhere where I could be surrounded by fellow women.
No, no, no, she said. No. She asks how many women are in my office because she is so proud of me, working in a male-dominated profession. She herself had also worked in predominantly male environments. She thinks it’s really cool that I’m doing the same.
So I guess I could also title this post, “How I constantly misunderstand my mother.” But anyway.
Let me say it now, so that it’s clear. I’m a feminist. I believe in a better world, a world where women and men are both far more free to follow their individual bliss and live the lives they choose. That’s what feminism means to me.
White Privilege
I was walking through the local megaTarget when a small sign stopped me in my tracks. I’d been walking past a rather long aisle of hair products. The last two or three feet were marked off as “Ethnic.”
“Ethnic.” It seemed an odd word choice for what, apparently, were products marketed to black women. When I hear the word “ethnic,” the next word to come to my mind is “food.” But I had trouble picturing an “ethnic” restaurant that caters to black people. (And I suspect that the term “ethnic food” has kyriarchical implications; it sets up an us vs. them perspective.)
So at first the word choice caught my attention. But then I noticed something else - something it would take a white person not to notice. There was no sign to distinguish “white” hair products. There was simply the category of hair products, and within them, a small sub-section labeled “ethnic.” The message is clear: the default is white.
And as I noticed this, I realized that I’d probably never noticed this before. I like to think of myself as being pretty aware; pretty socially conscious. But that’s just what privilege is about. It’s about not having to think about social context. It’s about your environment catering to your demographic so that you never even have to think about how that environment affects everyone else.
It’s how, in a novel, the white characters are never described as white. I guarantee that if you read a story where the protagonist is “5′7 with dark hair,” the author does not mean someone who is black, native American, Indian, or Asian. It’s just understood: the character is white.
I’d been meaning to sneak this link into a blog post or tweet anyway, so here goes:
White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack
I found the article eye-opening. And this quote frames it so well: “I was taught to see racism only in individual acts of meanness, not in invisible systems conferring dominance on my group”
Rainy days
Rainy days are good for:
Rainy days. Actually kind of awesome.