Film Diary

Having spent two months indoors on a diet of candy bars and beer working on the business aspects of this film, I decided it was time for a climbing vacation, and the choice was Tahquitz.

Next thing I know, it’s a little before ten pm, pitch dark. I find myself 700 feet up, in the grips of a mid-sized squeeze chimney (my er, ‘least favorite’ type of climb) with two more pitches before the summit. I’m sunburned everywhere except my kneepads, and everytime my skin touches rock, rivulets of pain shoot through me. To top it off, my headlamp’s broken swivel angles it 20 degrees away from my line of vision, I’m out of water, a mosquito flies into my ear, and I’m hauling a huge pack up from the abyss as I go. And I found myself asking the question that climbers have been asking themselves in a pickle since the dawn of time: What the hell am I doing here?

(Hoping to land in some medical book for symptoms of pedalicus chimney crackicera)

After getting to the top, a two-hour descent down a loose and unknow dark north gully, losing my sweatshirt, losing my mind, tired, thirsty, feet cramped in climbing shoes…

…I finally topped out back at ol Beasty at one thirty in the morning.

Beer, water, and sleep.

The next morning, my sweatshirt revealed! I know this picture looks fake, but honest this is exactly how I found it, hanging snagged perfectly middair between a branch and a boulder.

The point of the trip was to learn how to use my fathers medieval jumars (circa 1970)…

…with my brand new untouched etriers.

Despite the bruises, the ridiculous sunburn, the fatigue, the bleeding cuticles, the uncertainty in the dark…or maybe in spite of them…graceless, yes, but it was a bonafide Tradventure.

I don’t see how hanging on the end of a rope to send a big numbers route sixty feet of the ground can compare to the experience of a real climbing adventure. Tahquitz oozes with the history of tough routes being done in big bulky shoes with questionable ropes and handmade gear by real adventurers. It’s great to climb.   To get stuck and lost.  And it’s great to just look up, read the FA in the back of the guidebook, and wonder.

Why we don’t get along:

As much as I like being comic fodder for the sport climbers skipping by on their way to delicate face climbs, I do genuinely dislike chimneys.

this is an ok size for a chimney…this is not the type of chimney I hate most of all. I just happen to have this pic that my friend Alex drew.

My last trip to Jtree, my friend/crew member Alex and I got stuck on the summit of a climb for a long time before finding [making] a descent route which involved descending at least 3 fifth class chimneys. This, of course, was in addition to the crux pitch of the actual climb, which ended on an ugly squeeze chimney itself.

The result? Alive, yes.  Butt suffice to say, unless assless chaps make a comeback, I now have three pairs of designer Goodwill pants that are retired from the public circuit forever.

Chimneys: 3, Oakley: 0.