Blog

Concepcion

• April 2008
• Uncategorized

About 6 years ago, Dean and I freed the Tombstone together. After that, we both felt pretty strong for desert climbing. I had unfinished business with an Indian Creek testpiece, Pink Flamingo, so I decided to use the fitness to complete that. Dean went to another longterm aid project in Day Canyon, and named it Concepcion after he freed it. Funny enough, people were so interested in the Tombstone, that no one took much notice of Concepcion. I thought it was one of the most amazing lines I’d seen in the desert.

Dean made a point of passing the original aid belay on the first free ascent, as on the Tombstone’s crux pitch, making it a 220 foot pitch to truly free Concepcion. This adds some spice to the climb, because you need to carry cams for the final wide hands-fists section, which adds weight during the lower difficult climbing, as well as the weight of so much rope out. Dean solved that problem by running it out the seventy feet or so between the anchors at the very end of the pitch, and not carrying any pieces for that part. This full-value element makes Concepcion even more special, an awe-striking splitter crack.

As with the Tombstone, Dean didn’t rate Concepcion. We have learned, over years of climbing hard cracks, that it is meaningless to rate them. They are so finger-size dependent, that it just isn’t possible to say a crack is this hard, or that hard. It’s more informative to describe such cracks as “very hard” and then specify whether they favor smaller hands or bigger hands, because they always do favor one or the other. For example, though a shade easier in the line-up of “hard cracks,” Pink Flamingo is better if you have bigger fingers. So are Concepcion, Learning to Fly and Hong Kong Phooey. Conversely, those with smaller hands and fingers have an easier time on the Tombstone or Tricks Are For Kids. A few rare cracks, like Winner Takes All, seem to be about the same for everyone, due to varying crack width. So this is the way I discuss hard cracks, rather than with numbers, which don’t give any real information about their difficulty.

When I checked out Concepcion with Dean, and belayed him, I was amazed to see that although it opens from a seam to a chimney, it skips any sizes that are best for smaller people. Dean was very pleased that it favored bigger hands, and he named the free route “Concepcion” in honor of Jose Pereya’s mother, and of Jose, our dear friend. Like Dean, Jose had big fingers that fit perfectly into 1 inch finger cracks, and was able to climb even overhanging cracks of that hard size, which he specialized in. Climbing Concepcion made Dean feel very close to Jose, who had recently died on a route in Mexico, because it was an inspiring line that Jose would have certainly wanted to climb.

It is no exaggeration to say that BASE jumping has changed my life. When I transitioned from skydiving to BASE jumping this fall, I knew the winter would be a powerful time. I was so absorbed in learning and jumping, I knew it would be hard to stay fully focused and fit for climbing. I decided to work on Concepcion, as an inspiration and perhaps an untouchable challenge with my smaller fingers, and something to at least keep me in a routine of climbing while I entered the world of BASE. That decision was a blessing and a curse.

The first season of jumping turned out to be pretty hard on me physically. In October, I came in hard on my ankle, landing my canopy at the bridge in Idaho, and was limping around and unable to twist it in a crack for two weeks. I felt fortunate not to have broken it, though. In November, a crosswind pushed me onto a sword-like branch of a juniper tree as I came in to land. It just missed the femoral artery. And some other things you don’t really want to impale. So I actually got super lucky on that one too. But I was in bed for a week with seven stitches in my inner thigh and some pretty phenomenal swelling, and was unable to put a harness on for three weeks after that–either for climbing or jumping.

I healed just in time to go on a BASE trip to Italy in December, but sprained my knee slipping in snow on top of the Tombstone two weeks after I got home. When that finally healed, six full weeks later, a rock fell and smashed my bad ankle while I was jugging a fixed line after a BASE jump in Mineral Bottom! The odds seemed almost impossible, but there you have it. Two more weeks, of limping and no crack climbing…..

So not much progress was made on my so-called project, Concepcion, throughout the winter (although I was still able to jump, ironically, limping to the exits and developing a not-so-suave habit of sliding in on landings) and not much hard climbing at all, for that matter. But the blessing of having such a “project,” even if mostly in my mind, was that every time I hurt myself, it gave me motivation to train and stay hopeful and patient. So I committed to weight lifting and finger board workouts, and to climbing on my wall.

The curse was that when I hurt myself each time I was getting better from the previous injury, I felt very sad and frustrated, because I was excited about Concepcion and wanted to be healthy to climb it. Any time I was somewhat healed, I would limp out to Day Canyon, and climb whatever moves didn’t cause pain in knees, ankles or other, pulling through sections that hurt to try. I really enjoyed just being there, and climbing to whatever degree I could, appreciating the beautiful walls and curving canyon, the gold eagles and ravens that swished by me, knowing in the smallest way now how they felt in the air. I felt pretty sure that since there had been no interest in the route since Dean freed it, I would be left to myself, and that made it very peaceful there. I always like to pick projects that I think no one will be interested in, because I love the solitude and meditative silence of unlocking their secrets alone. For me, part of a climbing project is the joy of existing inside my own little world, a place where I feel natural and clear, with no distractions.

About two weeks ago, I realized that everything was healed, for the first time since I’d started BASE jumping! And I realized that spring is around the corner, and any day can mark the beginning of “too hot to climb hard.” I felt some pressure to climb Concepcion before the heat arrived, to have the satisfying feeling of completion. I decided to buckle down, and to go out to the climb every other day, with evenings of weight lifting, until I was ready. After several rounds of that, I felt like I was strong, psyched, and ready. The energy was high, because Dean had just completed his BASEline walk, and was very revved up about it. Peter Mortimer was coming to town to film Dean, and I confided in him that I was going to give a try on Concepcion. He asked if he could come out to film.

Normally, I never feel comfortable having a film project going on when I am truly trying to climb my hardest. I feel that it would be a distraction, and also take away from my experience. I am perfectly happy to go back, to shoot when the project is finished. But Peter and Nick Rosen had shot with me this summer, free soloing the Diamond. I trusted them very much, and ended up free soloing Pervertical a second time, with Peter near me on the wall. He was so unobtrusive and nondistracting, that I agreed to let him be there this winter, for a free solo and BASE jump of Castleton. Again, his energy was completely non-invasive, and in fact, kind of bolstering. So I thought about it, and realized I might really enjoy having Peter and Nick there, as well as our good friend Jim Hurst who wanted to take some photos. I feel comfortable enough with all of these friends that it seems exciting when they all come out, as I’d seen at Dean’s BASEline, rather than being a strange work-feeling scenario.

It did feel very different at the base, with Dean, Peter, Nick and Jim all bustling around and laughing and talking. I had been there only alone, or with Slack the dog, listening to the birds or to my iPod. But I enjoyed their energy. I knew I was ready to send, and wondered if I would.

When I started learning to BASE jump, I found that my climbing skills enabled me to learn certain things very easily. Because the exit part of a jump is very specific, and almost never changing, it’s easy for me to see it as similar to redpointing. Before a jump, I run through those few seconds in my mind, over and over and over again, often even during random times when I am not jumping. I imagine standing back from the edge, arching my shoulders back and giving them a little shake, taking a deep breath. I imagine running the few steps to the edge, pushing off and out with my foot, as I arch my back and throw my hands up in the air.

I count in my mind “one thousand one, one thousand two” and then feel my right hand reaching back to my pilot chute, and throwing it out in the air. In the next second, I arch harder and symmetrically, and reach back with both hands to my risers as they unfold from my BASE rig. As I started turning my mental energy toward Concepcion, I realized that I had been sharpening my visualization skills through BASE jumping and wingsuit flying all winter. The thing is, a BASE exit only requires about four seconds of mental work to visualize–the concentration is easy, because it’s so short. Concepcion is over two hundred feet long, with countless moves. But all of that visualization with BASE has resulted in perfect exits, every time. It works.

So every time I went to bed last week, I closed my eyes and envisioned myself climbing the opening moves of Concepcion. Next thing I would know, I’d be thinking about breakfast or listening to Fletcher breathe in her dog bed! At first this quick distraction disconcerted me, but I decided not to let it stop me from my practice. I would just get right back on the climb in my mind, where I had wandered off, as many times as necessary, and keep herding myself back until I was crawling into the offwidth at the anchor.

I was worried about being nervous on the lead. Because the crack is so off-size for my fingers, it is that terrible rattly size in which it’s nearly impossible to let go and place gear. I knew I would have to run it out, and feel pumped and insecure through the business of the climb. Sometimes it’s hard not to dread the impending whipper, when trying to climb that size. For sure, I’ve disappointed myself in the past with a pitiful “Take!” as I melt out in the middle of orange and red metolius cruxes 🙂 But as I started up the climb, through the powerful bottom moves, and found myself aggressively pulling into the crux splitter, I couldn’t believe how fearless I felt. I guess falling off of cliffs every day has made me pretty comfortable with falling. And even more than a lack of nervousness in free fall, I realized that BASE jumping has trained me to take aggressive action when the situation heats up. Now when my heart races, I am conditioned to turn fierce and move.

I had to try harder than I’ve ever tried before on Concepcion, again and again. The pump and the powerful ratchet locks are relentless. In the final crux section of the rattly splitter, I was actually falling out of the crack as I jabbed between ring locks. So I just started yelling, and somehow flew back into the rock, doing move after move at maximum exhaustion, almost in a warrior trance state. I was slightly aware of Peter’s presence near me, but somehow never saw him there. Which is kind of funny, considering apparently he was almost close enough to touch during the hardest section. I couldn’t see anything but the crack.

I decided to carry two cams for the upper section past the first anchor, since it’s steep cupped hands and fists for me, and the rock is a little loose. I wasn’t planning to fall in the wide crack, but you never know.

Finally getting to climb Concepcion, after being mostly benched from rock climbing all winter, made me feel so grateful. The sudden revelation of what I have learned from BASE jumping in these months, and realizing that those lessons fit directly back into climbing, is a flip I never expected! It’s amazing to me how following my passion always brings everything together, in surprising ways.