It’s a new year, a new day, a new president, a new moon.

I went out to Joshua Tree National Park for the first time since Fall; it had finally warmed up - in fact it was so balmy and warm it felt like an Indian Summer.  My friend/line producer Nick and I walked back to our campsite in the dark with our ropes and gear strung about us after a full day of climbing.  The moon was out and it was full and milky white, beaming down on us.  Everything else was a beautiful blue.  We were tired but happy and full of peace.  We just walked in silence, looking at our moonshadows, not saying a word.  A coyote trotted past us heading the opposite way.  A falling star shot through the sky.

It really is a new year, and it’s going to be a great year.

2008

2008 had been an eventful year for the Rock Adventure.  We’d gone to Salt Lake City for Outdoor Retailer, gone to the Climber’s Museum opening in Yosemite, been in Colorado for the Craggin Classic, made a million phone calls and a million emails, been to New York for the ‘Gunks Reunion; crashed a car, slept on the ground, slept in the van, not slept at all, partied with International climbers, met a ton of new people, been to Yosemite for the 50th Year Reunion of the First Ascent of the Nose; lost some crew, gained some crew; interviewed, in order: John Gill, Majka Burhard, Matt Samet, Alison Osius, Bob D’Antonio, Jim Donini, Katie Brown, Rob Pizem, Bob Culp, Rich Goldstone, Ajax Greene, Burt Angrist, Jim McCarthy, Dick Williams, Elaine Matthews, Al DeMaria, and Rich Romano.  This was just the beginning.

2009

We have a new mac book pro.  We have fresh faces on crew.  We’re on twitter.  We have a garageful of our favorite Duraflame logs for the storytelling sessions by the campfire.  We will be interviewing: Royal Robbins, Tom Frost, Henry Barber, John Bragg, Joe Herbst, Ed Webster, Paul Piana, John Long, Ron Kauk, Michael Kennedy, Doug Robinson, Scott Cosgrove, Sybille Hechtel, Don Lauria, Tom Higgins to name a few.   In a few months, we will be traveling to Yosemite, the Red Rocks, Colorado, Wyoming, New Hampshire to name some.  We want to meet you.  It’s a great beginning…

I know that I mentioned I was going to get around to my weekend with Doug Robinson. So finally, here it is!

Amazingly, those similarities
Reach/lurk deep in your brain
And mine.
Right in the tiny gaps
Between nerves
Your synapses, where for a moment
Your whole nervous system goes hormonal,
Shifts for a split second
From electrical to chemical.
That’s the moment when
All my alpine challenge
Leverages its alchemy.
Simple.
And profound.
It transforms the way
You see the world.

- a little piece of a guest blog (rough draft) from DR.

See, many of you know Doug Robinson for coining the phrase “Clean Climbing” in the 1973 Chouinard Equipment catalogue, for doing the first clean ascent of Half Dome (as in, using all nuts and passive pro and no pitons - you know, those huge stakes people hammered in) or for the recent hubub surrounding the controversial return to half dome to do “Growing UP” (i can’t even begin to explain…supertopo it).

But what I came to admire most about the man was an article he wrote in 1969 called “Climber as Visionary” - in which he talks about philosophical, chemical, and cognitive effects that climbing has on the body and mind. Suffice to say, this article introduced me to Aldous Huxley and completely reshaped my views on cognitive and drug research.

He’s been working on a book follow up to that article ever since, based on years of notes and research (what kind of research? i’d venture a mix of climbing, psychadelics and a lot of reading about neurotransmitters).

So as you can imagine, the trip was without a doubt, mentally stimulating. The weekend started off with a late dinner at a quirky old-hotel-become-restaurant, with a gray cat loitering around the jazz piano player, and a waiter from vegas who kept bringing us wine after our bottle had been polished. We had planned to go climbing in the Buttermilks (that DR developed) the next morning, but as our climbing, cognitive, life discussions clocked in at about 4am, I had a hard time getting up before dinner.

We did manage a pretty short hike (accompanied by DR’s green stash of perceptual enhancement) before a wonderful dinner with the McKeown family. Joe McKeown, an old school Valley climber, and Nancy and Kali (completing the family of three who’ve sailed the world) gave us such a good time. Good food, gin and T, wine…and the stories flowed flowed flowed (as did the wine and black and white photos and copies of Vulgarian Digest) and I never had such a good time with a family I had just met.

Me - “I think I saw that photo in Rowell’s Vertical World of Yosemite…”

Joe - “That book was my idea! I asked Rowell for help, and he took over the whole damned thing and never gave me any credit!”

(Or something like that…)

Something about the storytelling, the family comraderie, the world travelling, the red hair (?) possible reminded me of my own family of three and our world travels. It’s good to meet good people.

My weekend with DR was complete. He was off to the high country, with snipits of visionary climber writing I’m hoping he’ll mastermind in the film. And me, I was off to the low LOW country, the business of filmmaking, as they call it.

DR: Great? Yes. Grown up? Well…If yes, then very cool for grown up.

And you should be too.

If you don’t know, supertopo.com is a website for climbers that has area and route beta, topos, pictures, articles, and best of all a forum where any registered member can start and comment on threads ranging from first ascent stories, to booze recommendations, to bad fixed anchor warnings to polemic philosophical debates, etc.

I find this forum to be a more advanced communication model than tv or radio; it’s closer to a socratic seminar than I’ve seen in all my years of higher education.

As Doug Robinson commented in his first big expo in the epic 2000+ thread forum about the controversial rap bolt route that they put up on the South Face of Half Dome,

“I value your thoughts; this is about as good a community as I’ve found anywhere. A worthy place to work on getting more human.”

Wow, DR, intellectual heavyweight and the father of the clean climbing revolution, said this about a forum on the Internet??

The climbing community, though vastly anarchic, disestablishment, contradictory, and disagreeable with each other, is a fascinating, bona fide community. The potential for this film to establish this community to itself and offer self-reflection has been coming up more and more as I speak with the climbers who will make up this documentary.

Notes from a phone call with a certain ‘Shmon Hauk’.

I would go on a big proto-philosophical blog-pulpit spray, but I got the point from the consensus of my last blog (more pictures, less words.) So that’s all I will say for now. I have been lucky enough to talk lately with some of my biggest climbing idols, and feel the exciting adrenaline of progress.

A package from a certain ‘Schmug Globinson’.

I am now off to get ready for a fancy film premiere where I will continue to troll for more investors, or in the least, free champagne. If anyone has suggestions on how to cover up poison sumac marks from under a posh black dress, do tell.