Date: January 27th, 2010
Stuff I ate: 1/6 of an amazing, salty, peppery, mouth-savoring steak. One slice of pizza. About 10 or 15 Clif Blok packages (love the 3x Sodium!). Two or five Clif Bars of various types, maybe more. A nice pastry or two (thanks Matti and Ines!). A french fry or two. Maybe 5,000 calories all-in with the breakfast on the day of the event?
Stuff I drank: Eight Red Bulls. 18 liters of water/electrolyte mix plus another six or so after the event. An entire tub of Clif Electrolyte mix. Two coffees (thanks Java for the java!). One small but real hit of single malt scotch in honor of Guy Lacelle (who didn’t drink so that’s kinda funny, thanks Bill B., I took the bottle to the memorial in Canmore and shared it out).
Successes: Bloks, RB, electrolyte mix.
Failures: Steak (puked it up on the bottom of the canyon, no big thing, I was impressed with the color at the time…).
What could have been better: Fresh fruit, more simple sugars in the form of minty stuff, more simple sugars in general. The protein and fat are critical for me after about six hours, but I over-planned that and didn’t have enough super-simple sugars on hand. When you’re burning a whole truckload of calories every hour you need incredibly simple sugars, or at least I sure do. Because I was often on the edge of puking (anaerobic burns or close to it each time, a sure way to get close to your puking limit) I had to be very careful with what I ate and drank. A Clif Blok a lap, solid food at the start of the rest period every hour (about ten minutes if I was doing OK), just riding the edge of calorie absorption and intake vs. rejection. I’m stoked I only puked once, and it was pretty benign really.
What I did right:
Thanks to Dave Marvin, Aaron Batte and Jim Nowak I drank enough liquids in general. They had the bottle on top, I hit it up every lap pretty much, slightly warm water with lots of electrolyte mix in it. I am certain, based on past experience with long climbs and some really stupid planning that I would have imploded without the electrolyte mix in the water. That is critical. I was sweating despite the freezing temps, I wanted salt a lot, which for me is a sure sign that I need to drink more sodium…
I quit almost all caffeine and RB for two weeks before the event, and didn’t take my first RB until at least four hours into the ascent. Every single can I drank had a strong impact on my performance, it just works, that’s why so many guides are carting around cans in the mountains for both themselves and their clients. I buy the stuff when I travel, hundreds of dollars every year just so people are clear that I do fully use and believe in the stuff, it’s not just a logo on my head.
I had a whole whack of different boxes of Clif Bars (I paid for these, pro deal, but I have no deal with Clif), the different flavours, products and tastes really worked for me.
What I learned that applies to other super-endurance stuff:
More heavy-sugar liquids. This was working well for me, I’d up my intake of those. Fudge, cheese, peppermint patties. I wanted each one of these “foods” so much at various points! More of an effort to consume “X calories/hour,” and have that tracked by someone. I really blew it a couple of times, and while I never bonked I did lose my focus until I got a 100 or so calories back into the system. That’s all it takes to get back into the game, kinda cool… I figure I must have burned at least 10,000 calories in the 24 hours, quite likely a lot more based on my heart rate and time spent climbing vs. resting. Who knows, hard to figure out, but interesting to guess.
I’d also pay more attention to how I was loading my energy systems in the days leading up to the race. I think I was likely taking in too much carbohydrate and not enough high-quality protein and fat, especially in the morning of the event. I’ve found over the years that I perform better when I’m careful with my diet in general, and especially in the few days leading up to a huge push or whatever physical torture I’m enmeshed with. I was a bit distracted in Ouray, and got hungrier than I should have a few times before the Endless Ascent started. I also had the stomach flu two weeks before the ascent; I honestly think that hurt me. Little things matter.
But, given my lack of adventure or 24-hour racing experience, it worked out pretty well thanks to everyone who helped directly or indirectly. You can’t measure words of encouragement in calories, but they are just as important. Thanks.
Posted in: Blog
Date: January 25th, 2010
Training for dZi Endless Ascent
First off, today was my first day back on the ice, two weeks to the day since we finished Endless Ascent. I’m losing one fingernail, and the soles of my feet are still bruised. No more cheap socks ever!!!!! Other than that I’m OK, and it sure was fun to mixed climb today!
So how do you train to climb ice for 24 hours? That was the question I started asking myself in about June, and for once the internet was short of answers. I had a further problem in that I had some elbow tendonitis that was still clearing up. Or not clearing up, depending on the day… But the idea slowly took over my head, and the following is how I trained.
In April and May I rock climbed a ton, then had some elbow problems… In June and early July I was primarily kayaking with a few rock sessions mixed in, but paddling always starts the healing process in my body. I got way into kayaking again, great sport! Rodeo sessions, big days on the river, beating about in the woods but always going at it pretty hard. I reached a level of skill in kayaking I hadn’t had since about 1999, which was a ton of fun. Thanks to Patch, Becky and many others for the motivation.
Around the middle of July I added in the Crossfit main site (www.crossfit.com) workout of the day or “WOD.” I’d been messing with the WODs for a while and done CF cycles in the past, but in July I’d do these workouts on the days when I wasn’t too worked from paddling, mountain biking, hiking and flying or whatever, and do “catch-up” workouts as part of the warmup if I missed a session. Just the standard CF warmup is a lot of work, and the improvements in my ability to handle the sessions came quickly. Plus it’s a whole lot of fun! Lacking direct coaching I put in a lot of time looking at the exercises on the web videos etc, and learned a tremendous amount.
In August I was still kayaking some, but put more of my emphasis into Crossfit. My elbow was steadily improving–unless I went rock climbing and pulled on ropes to belay… For some reason that was guaranteed to set me back a week’s worth of careful icing and rehab. I was also doing once or twice weekly sessions of ART with Torben in Canmore, that felt effective to me (ART seems to work the best for me, thanks to James McIntyre in Calary for the original rehab). I primarily trained Crossfit at Athletic Evolution in Canmore, thanks to Brad for the motivation. Athletic Evolution isn’t a CF affiliate, but they had the bars and bumper plates, it’s a damn good traditional gym. Ya gott love a place where the owner gets psyched to blast the WOD with you.
In early September we did the first descent of the Atnarko, a tough river that flows from Charlotte Lake down toward Bella Coola. It was a real bitch of a run, four days instead of the planned two, and a lot of very difficult boat wrestling around log jams, etc. etc. Magical place, great trip! I felt a lot stronger even after only a couple of months of Crossfit–I think that at my advanced age (42) I had a host of weaknesses in my body’s basic function (jumping, squats, presses, etc. etc). Crossfit put the light on those weaknesses, and helped correct them. CF isn’t perfect, but it’s damn effective for general physical fitness. I have no affiliation with CF.
In mid-September I fully committed to the 24-hour ice climbing idea. My elbow wasn’t perfect, but it was holding up with regular maintenance and careful use. I wasn’t sure it would hold up for 24 hours, but if you don’t commit you don’t find out.
Kayaking and ice climbing share a surprising amount of movements; hanging onto a paddle isn’t wildly different than hanging onto a modern leashless ice tool, and repeatedly pulling and pushing on the paddle is a lot like doing the same with ice tools. Crossfit was taking care of my legs and the rest of my body, as was all the hiking I was also doing. Although I didn’t know it at the time, I think those long river paddling sessions built a huge endurance base in my upper body and even mind.
From mid-Septmber to mid October I just did Crossfit, but added some specific climbing exericses (flicking tools overhead, subbing one-arm pulldowns for pullups, a few other additions) that fit into my Crossfit warmups. I also did a lot of hiking up hills and wrestling a two-year old at night to work on my sleep deprivation. Seriously.
In late-October we were having real problems with ice here in the Rockies; normally there’s lots, but it just wasn’t happening. I further tuned my Crossfit workouts to reflect the sort of workload I thought I might experience climbing for 24 hours. One-arm lat pulldowns on a rope (my elbow was doing well enough to handle this load) in sets of 50 (that sure is fun…), lots more air squats. The basic move of ice climbing is a staggered hands low-weight pull-up with the balance of your weight in a basic air squat. Feet at the same level (this is the most common mistake in ice climbing–your feet should always be at very close to the same level), hike feet up with straight arms, push up with legs, place high tool, repeat to the top. Feet always at the same level, tools never at the same level, twice as many foot placements at least as tool placements…
In early November I got out on the ice a little, but there just wasn’t that much that was in that was steep enough for good training. I hit what there was (Nemesis, etc. etc.), but doing a three-pitch route just does not offer the required volume of movement, nor does it take enough time (with modern tools and gear Nemesis can be done pack to pack in under two hours, with only about 30 minutes of actual climbing–the hiking likely provides more training, as does climbing mixed routes in the area). I moved farther away from Crossfit and more toward developing the specific strength of vertical or near-vertical ice climbing (hanging onto my tools for long periods in my garage, calf raises, etc). I then built the Plice (http://gravsports.blogspot.com/2009/11/its-come-to-this-plice.html), which was great, and did more specific workouts in Texas during US thanksgiving. I was also doing some very long days out in the woods hunting for ice and generally beating around. Lots and lots of early starts, late nights, long walks.
By the last few days of November I was finally able to run laps in Haffner and Marble Canyon. Initially 1,000M (3,000 feet) was all we were hitting. Temperatures were really, really cold, so we were doing 20 minutes on and 20 minutes off. This meant basically sprinting on top rope for 20 minutes, climbing anywhere from 300 to 700 feet as we got better at climbing fast for 20 minutes. Without Brad, EJ, Gordon, Scott, Ian, Keith and everyone else who sessioned the Endless Ascent would never have happened! Having good training partners is truly essential to success.
I tried for a basic day on/day off schedule as my body allowed or felt good about, and got a solid 12 ice sessions in by Dec 31 plus a lot more on the Plice. The Crossfit and Plice were savagely effective; I wasn’t getting sore on the ice at all, even as we bumped the days toward 6,000 feet of climbing. The 20 on/20 off was fair to my partner and me; if I were going well I could pump out 6 and sometimes 7 laps before the alarm on my phone went off… I would be thrashed after each of these sessions, truly sick of climbing, cold, and just done. This was not a comforting realization when contemplating climbing for 24 hours. I was also worried that the 20 on/20 off format would not be effective for long-duration climbing. But you simply can’t climb slowly enough on vertical ice to make it “easy aerobic,” your arms and calves pump out. You need to climb, rest, repeat. In retrospect I worried way too much about the lack of long-duration low-intensity climbing-specific movement, doing 20 on/20 off was excellent. Or maybe it was the long kayaking days in the summer that provided the base? Hmmm…
I learned a lot about ice climbing fast and efficiently through all of these thousands and thousands of feet. When you’re doing huge volumes of ice little differences in movement patterns add up quickly. I developed huge calluses on my little fingers from hanging onto the Cobras and new Fusions. I learned so much about dynamic movement on ice, momentum, and a subtle hip push very similar to the finish of a good squat that, when combined, really helped a tremendous amount. I’ve now been ice climbing for over 25 years off and on, and perhaps the most important thing I’ve learned is that being a good ice climber is all about mileage on ice. This training program took my mileage and understanding of movement on ice to a whole new level for sure. I was never bored while running laps believe it or not, it was always a game to climb better and better, and figure out what that meant. I know my heart rates pretty well from years of wearing a monitor, the spikes were violent.
On January 1st I did some easy solo laps then some TR laps in Ouray, followed by bigger sessions on roughly January 3, 5 and 6th. I rested on the 7th and 8th except for teaching a clinic (thanks for the fun to all who came!) and a bit of media posing. On January 9th I went into the hole and had at it. I figured I’d done more than 150,000 feet of ice and Plice plus all the off-season training, long kayaking days and Crossfit.
On January 10th at noon we all (THANKS!) finished. 194 Laps, 13 or 14 in the last hour thanks to a “bonus” offer for the dZi foundation. I kept moving for an average of at least 50 minutes an hour for the entire 24 hours. My longest break came when I attended Guy Lacelle’s memorial.
I know I could have trained better, but I think my biggest mistakes came during the actual climb, not in training for it. This was a complete stab in the dark, a total shot into the unknown for me, and broadly I was able to hit my goal and keep climbing. So, in short, the physical training worked. It wasn’t easy, and more on that later, but my body did its job far better than I thought it would. I wanted to climb about 11,500 feet, and by a conservative estimate did at least 25,000. I was amazed at what my body could do, I genuinely never thought that possible. And my arms are still smaller than my wife’s for Christ’s sake!
My mental training consisted primarily of visualizing horrid situations, and how I would deal with them. If I broke my ankle and could still hop I visualized how I would do my best to keep climbing. I practiced climbing with one tool in case I hurt a hand or arm, and with my elbow locked in case my tendonitis got so bad I couldn’t bend my arm. I hopped some pitches on one foot to simulate climbing with a minor or serious broken lower leg. My one over-riding mental image was that, unless I was unconscious or totally unable to function in the opinion of those around me, I would keep climbing no matter what. I spent so much time visualizing moving in extreme pain, with bad stomach cramps, with injuries, and wanting to quit but punching through anyhow that during the actual climb I always felt sort of OK. Yeah, I puked, yeah, I wasn’t all there mentally and it sucked at times, but I had put so much mental prep into deciding that no matter what happened I was going to keep moving that I never seriously doubted I could keep going for one more lap, and those laps added up. Plus I could never have looked any of the great people who were helping out, cheering, heckling or just being there in the eye and quit. No way.
I often thought that it would be very pleasant to stop and stop hurting, to get some sleep, to slow down, but my mental state was always based around the basic premise that unless I was seriously injured or completely out of it that I was going to keep climbing. So I did, that was my standard.
I always put a tremendous amount of negative thinking into my gear, nutrition/hydration, clothing, etc. etc. I’m going to write about what I used for all of that in future pieces, but I solved a lot of potential problems by running really negative scenarios and then solving the wild problems my mind could come up with. In my shows I talk about the “Positive Power of Negative Thinking,” and I really believe in doing just that. Yeah, think positive, but only after a tremendous amount of critical and detailed preparation. Negative thought and planning yields positive outcomes in critical situations.
I have some designs on other 24-hour stuff unrelated to roped climbing, and writing this stuff down now may help me in planning that. More to come, this is one epic blog post!
Posted in: Blog
Date: January 21st, 2010
I’m supposed to be writing about the Endless Ascent, and will get back to that, but I keep getting off on tangents. One thing I’m very interested in is stretching, and how to stretch effectively. Many of the same questions that plague/make “fitness” interesting are also in the mix for “stretching” and flexibility.
What is our goal with our stretching? Do we want to be more “flexible?” Have a better range of useful motion (meaning the athlete can move his or her body through the range, not just sag with gravity as is commonly done)? Prevent injury? Be able to do the splits like Jean Claude Van Damm (
Bloodsport: if you haven’t seen it and are an athlete you have to watch this movie, Van Damm was rad back in the day!). What does it mean to be adequately flexible? These are all good questions that I don’t think I’ve asked myself enough.
I alway start with my personal experience when evaluating any protocol. I’ve done static stretching (hold a position for some time between five seconds and minutes), yoga (interesting), and some dynamic stretching.
My personal results can be summed up like this: Dynamic stretching seems to result in increased useful range of motion. Very long (two or more minutes) static stretches seem to result in increased range of motion, but not as clearly ROM that I can control. My current version of speed yoga seems to result in feeling better and more conscious of my body, but without huge increases in ROM. I hurt myself too quickly in ashtanga Yoga classes to judge how well that worked, but it was fun playing until I got hurt repeatedly. Bikram didn’t put me in a position where I injured myself, but I don’t have regular access to Bikram.
The most flexible people I watch, at least in terms of ROM that I’d like to have, are dancers (ballet, break and modern), gymnasts and various martial artists. All do a lot of dynamic stretching (and also have a lot of injuries, but I suspect those injuries have more to do with massive over-use than stretching). Yoga people are often flexible and some are very strong (doing L-sit to handstand or various plange maneuvers), but often as a group that I’ve seen relatively weak at holding a limb up or in a stressed position. Not all, and all you Yogis are going to get your matts in a bunch, but compare Bruce Lee to any sort of Yoga type–who would you want to be? I thought so, but peace, let’s do a few sun salutations, I’m into to it too.
After watching a lot of climbers, kayakers, and other athletes I’m starting to think that “flexibility” (ROM in a non-muscle activated position) has little to do with either one’s skill at most mountain sports or direct injury avoidance if done shortly before the game/event. I’m starting to think that training useful range of motion dynamically may be the way forward based on the two articles above and a bunch more research I’ve done. And this is a huge departure from how I’ve been looking at stretching over the years…
What this means for me personally is that I’ve got to learn some new information on stretching, really think about it, and modify my habits to be more effective. I am holding my range of motion as I age, but it’s sure not increasing. I also think some of my injures of late (adductor groin pull, leg flexor pull) have been due to poor range of motion, and muscle imbalances brought on by weight/gym training to fix muscle imbalances…
The more I train and act on goals the more I learn about what doesn’t work, but the more I also learn to trust what I see works, and what I see the best athletes in a given sport doing to succeed. I know of no better principle than “Specific Adaption to Imposed Demand.” Even for stretching…. Makes sense: if you want to increase the range of motion in movement then do the movement to the point where it stops, repeat. Interesting idea, it just goes against 20+ years of training. I love it when I think I understand something and then it changes. This is the moment when faith gives way to searching for a deeper understanding of a problem. I’ve got a problem with stretching, time to figure out how to do better.
Posted in: Blog
Date: January 17th, 2010
In the last 25 years I’ve spent a lot of time formally and informally teaching climbing, kayaking, paragliding and a few other sports. I’ve taught some very diverse groups, ranging from the very unfit to the uber-fit. I also do some sports performance coaching, and enjoy the hell out of that. I really love seeing and helping people with both the mental and physical gymnastics of sports on a competitive or recreational level.
Out of all this I’ve come to realize that fast and safe non-technical movement in the mountains is not all that basic, nor instinctive for most people. Relatively few people can move well across a chossy hillside, over talus, across a rounded and slippery river bed, or feel secure on a short step of higher-angle loose terrain. But the acquisition of these skills can be sped up immensely with a little coaching. I’m now working (slowly) on a book about mountain movement that covers pretty much everything from running talus to staying warm in winter. I want to test some of my theories and ideas this spring, and this is where you may come in…
Want to spend five days in the Canadian Rockies in early July having a lot of fun, falling down, getting wet, suffering and generally being outside a lot? I’m going to run a five-day mountain movement course, open to anyone but aimed mostly at the relatively new outdoor sports enthusiast. No more than five people, five days, either bare-bones or you arrive at the Calgary Airport and stop thinking about anything but movement. I’m working up a syllabus based on my book right now,
drop me an email and I’ll send it out if you’re interested.
Also, if you have good tricks for helping people move in the mountains (non-technical movement) I’d love to hear them, thanks!
Posted in: Blog
Date: January 13th, 2010
It’s Thursday, and I’m feeling halfway decent after the
Endless Ascent. Over the next week or two I’m going to go through a few different categories of experience I had during the recent 24-hour climb for the
dZi foundation: Damage, Math, Nutrition, Training, Gear, and other stuff as I think it through. The whole experience was one of the best of my life, and one of the worst (funny how the two ends of the experience spectrum are so close sometimes…). I can’t stop thinking about it! Again, a huge thanks to everyone one who helped out, from the people on the bridge at single-digit hours in the morning to belayers to friends to
the dZi, thanks!
James Biessel photo to left, thanks!Anyhow, here’s a list of the damage done:
Lungs/Nose
I keep having bad nosebleeds, and my lungs are still sore. After about 12 hours of climbing I started nose-breathing a lot, a trick I learned from Kim years ago. Breathing only through your nose is a way to stay roughly below your anaerobic threshold, and it moisturizes the air going into your lungs a lot more. I did this from about hour 16 on because I was already coughing some; I’ve noticed this problem before when going really hard in the winter for more an hour or two, but it was worse in Ouray than I’ve ever experienced, likely due to the huge load and time span I was asking out of my body. So I started nose-breathing, which worked great, but the high-altitude cold air really thrashed my nose and lungs instead of just my lungs… I think that although the relative humidity in Ouray is probably pretty close to the relative humidity in Canmore the actual quantity of moisture molecules available is likely lower due to less oxygen etc. to hold moisture in the air… Someone with better science than me feel free to step in, but the end result is that my nose and lungs are seriously thrashed. Both are improving, but still a little annoying. Interestingly, I found
this on the New York Time site today.Feet
No blisters! I climbed for about the first 16 or 18 hours in my Scarpa Phantom Lite boots. I’ve used these boots a lot, they are super warm and comfortable for me. But the soles of my feet started to hurt a lot after about 14 hours. I’m mostly blaming my sock selection; I normally wear these reasonably thick socks, but for some reason I wore a little thinner and lower quality socks, which compressed out more. I switched them out after 16 hours and put on the fruit boots and new socks. After the event I couldn’t walk in my bare feet on hard floors, it was just too painful. Still hurts, but not too bad.
Fingernail
Yeah, I’m gonna lose a fingernail. It makes typing painful. Whine, whine, but it’s funny how much much one fingernail can hurt! I don’t remember what I did to cause the blister disaster that’s seeping out from under the nail but there it is.
Hand blisters
I have never, ever heard of anyone getting blisters on their hands ice climbing. I switched gloves something like nine times in 24 hours, maybe more, but I’ve got blisters from ice climbing. I never would have believed it possible.
Harness rash
Not too bad, but tight pants are out for a bit. I think I did most of the damage in the last hour, when I wasn’t taking the time to adjust my clothing properly. That’s really important! I have had worse rash aid climbing for a few hours really.
Calves
Bloated, painful and hard like rocks for two days after the climb. OK now, but I’m not going to be doing calf raises or climbing ice for a few more days. Nope.
Sore hands
Back in the day when I was sport climbing a lot I had a sure-fire system to figure out how messed up my hands were: if I couldn’t close the pads on my tips to the joints on my palms I was over-trained. I still can’t do this. Creaky tendons, no “injury” pain, but seriously worked.
Right Knee
I was asking for a pretty quick lower when possible, and boy was I getting it! Amazingly, 194 laps I only had one “bad” drop moment, and I banged my knee pretty good during that moment. It’s OK, but I feel it walking around for sure.
Neck
I think I looked up for tool placements and down for foot placements so many times that I just wore my rubberneck out. Better, but I had about the range of motion of a lineman for a few days.
Weird eyeball ding
During a training session a guy unintentionally knocked a small piece of ice down, and I looked up just as it hit on the white part of my eye. That’s still hurting, but getting better.
Dehydration: I drank at least 18 liters of water during the event and four more after, but I wasn’t even close to hydrated until 24 hours after the event… More on this in the nutrition section, I think I blew the hydration thing a bit.
General
Sore pretty much everywhere! I waddled through DIA on the way home on Monday, but I always feel like this after pushing too hard.
But I’m definitely “OK” overall, which surprises me. I have had some chronic problems with my elbows over the years for sure, and I was icing every night for months before this event. I was mentally completely prepared to tape my elbow at 90 degrees and keep climbing, or do anything it took to keep moving. In fact, while training I repeatedly thought about how I was going to keep moving on one foot, with one arm, whatever I had to do. When I could just keep climbing with no deep chronic pain or shooting new pain I was really psyched! More on training in a later piece, but it worked well enough to keep me moving, and I don’t think I did any lasting damage to my body on this effort, or at least nothing new.
I hit the gym last night for a light workout (ten minutes rowing then 30 of yoga stretching, followed by five rounds of thrusters, pullups and situps, a combo I like), and then a slow skin up a local ski hill this morning before taking a few runs. So I’m OK.
http://www.alpinist.com/doc/web10w/wfeature-gadd-endless-ascent-ouray
PS on the Math–My personal belief is that Pic of the Vic, the route I was on, is at least 40M high as Vince Anderson’s excellent guidebook suggests and my personal experience backs up (you couldn’t TR it with a single 70, the rope is well past 1/2 when lowering in on a 70M). Others think it’s 45M or maybe a bit more. Me, I’m going with the lower number of 40M until someone actually measures it. It’s better to err on the low side than the high side in this sort of thing I think.
Posted in: Blog
Date: January 12th, 2010
I’m back home, sitting at a desk and trying to type with (seriously) blisters on my hands and a fingernail on my right hand that protests every time I use it to hit a key… Who gets blisters on their hands ice climbing? I’ve never heard of it before, and would not have thought it possible…
But the 24-hour push is done. Over the next few days I’m going to write more about different portions of the climb, from the nutrition successes and failures to the physical damage to the training and so on. There’s just too much to put into one post, and I had a lot of time to think about things while doing the climb…
The main thing I’m feeling this morning is that I was incredibly lucky to be involved with such a fantastic group of people. Twenty three belayers, three “team managers,”
the dZi, the hundreds of people who showed up in small or large groups to cheer and keep me moving, so much incredibly positive energy from so many people. Today there is just no room for anything but an incredible sense of appreciation for everyone who was even in the smallest way involved with the
Endless Ascent. What I’m going to remember most about the whole experience is not how much ice I climbed (I’m actually not at all sure about that number, lots of different route height guesses, comedy), how much it all hurt, but how lucky I am to be part of the community of people who came together for the dZi and the climb. It was a swirling mix of enthusiasm, support, shared love for the
Ouray Ice Park, and excitement. I am deeply humbled and thankful for the experience, it will effect me for the rest of my life.
More later, my finger has had it with typing and it’s time for another liter of water and another nap. Thanks, thanks, and THANKS!
Posted in: Blog
Date: January 9th, 2010
In two and a half hours I’m going over the edge of the canyon at the Ouray Ice Park. In the 24 hours after that I’m going to climb out as many times as I can, belayed by 24 great people, helped by dozens more, and motivated by all of you who have made a donation to the dZi foundation, sent encouraging words, and just plain old been enthusiastic. Thanks!
We think we’ve sorted a live web cam on the
https://www.endlessascent.org/ site so you can follow along with the battle. There’s a functioning donation button there even if you’re Canadian (postal codes threw it for a loop initially).
I just finished a huge breakfast after an early breakfast. Calories in, effort out. Here we go!!
Posted in: Blog
Date: January 4th, 2010
The Ice Park emptied out yesterday–I always see the park in the midst of the ice festival, when hundreds of climbers attack the hundreds of routes (Hundred? There sure are a lot!). But by about 2:00 yesterday things were slowing down, and Jason N. and I got in there for some speed laps. 20 minutes on, 20 off, giving it! Three sets of that, then I did a solo session into the dark for a bit to up the distance. I bought a new ascender thing from Ouray Mountain Sports which made the whole process much smoother. Did about 30 laps again, but the difference in how I felt from the last session was huge.
For starters, don’t dry your socks with fabric softener–this makes them incredibly slippery in your boots, which sucks when standing on frontpoints… Figuring out why my heels were lifting so much and why my calfs were cramping so bad in the last session was positive, way better to figure that out now than
during the climb! I was also low on calories last session I think, but a huge burger the night before along with some other food plus a concerted effort to get a whack of calories down my throat during the day. In the last week I’ve been sick, traveling, eating irregularly, it just hasn’t been that good. But it doesn’t take all that long to put the pieces back together if given some time and quality food (I don’t normally eat hamburgers, but the burger at Drake’s in Ridgway is the absolute best thing I’ve eaten in months, insane!). I’m also already much better adapted to the altitude–you wouldn’t think going to 8,5000 feet from 4,500 would make that big a difference, but it does when you’re going hard. Plus seeing more friends and just getting the mojo going is worth a lot, the energy is building.
I’m training today and Wednesday and then I’m done with that, it’s game time on Saturday at high noon.
Posted in: Blog
Date: January 2nd, 2010
I’m back in Ouray, Colorado, home to the most extensive collection of ice climbs in the smallest area anywhere in the world. And the approaches are under ten minutes from the town! The Ouray Ice Park is the best place to climb a lot of ice in the world I think, a truly remarkable expression of ice and human enterprise coming together. Plus the San Juans spike above the town into the blue sky, it’s just a stellar place to be and one of my favorite spots of all time both for the geography and people who live here. I have a lot of history here over the last 15 years or so both from the ice festival and summer outings, it’s a home away from home for me really.
Anyhow, yesterday I went out and ran solo laps on the route I’ll be climbing during the
endless ascent effort, Pic of the Vic. It’s a great line, everything a good ice climb should be. Bit of a shaky pillar start, varied, just really nice climbing. I only did 30 laps, but the climb is about 140 or 150 feet high so that’s around 4,000+ feet (I’m going to use imperial units ’cause this is the USA). I felt lousy. No way around it. Every athlete has good and bad days, for me yesterday was brutal. My feet kept blowing, everything hurt, it was a sucker punch to the head kinda day as far as the climbing went. But it was good to see some old friends, and it’s hard to maintain a bad attitude in such a beautiful place, with so many psyched people swinging tools. By the middle of the session I’d just accepted that today I was going to suck, and sucked it up. As the park emptied of people my headlamp and I moved through the darkness on our own yo-yo path, and there was some peace. I was surprised when I hit the top of the canyon a couple of times; I’d just been climbing, moving, not thinking too much. I was on a self-belay so there was no one to talk to once the last people were gone, just the canyon and me. It hit me that I’d never been in the canyon without lots of people; in the darkness it felt different, closer, larger. Yet another side of a special place.
I walked home in the dark a happy man. A bad day of training in a beautiful place beats hell out of a good day of just about anything else. I have seven days before I try and climb as much ice as I can in 24 hours. The thought is, honestly, horrifying. I know that special circumstances bring forth special efforts, but yesterday’s effort took me about four hours give or take. That’s one sixth of what I’m up against in terms of time. As I sat in a nice restaurant eating shrimp with a glass of wine last night I thought about the fact that I’d still be climbing if yesterday were the first 12 hours of the climb. As I lay in bed with a small child jumping on my head I thought about the fact that I’d still be climbing. Hell, as I’m writing this it’s less than 24 hours after I was climbing yesterday. I simply can’t imagine what the
Endless Ascent is going to feel like. Bring it.
Posted in: Blog
