Training for the Creek
Hi Steph!
As is the case with all of your writers, I’m a huge fan. All of your climbing accomplishments are truly inspiring to me, as well as your lifestyle choices (I’m also vegan 😀 ). I’m from the flatlands of Illinois, going to school the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign in the central part of the state. Despite this disadvantage of location, I’ve been an avid climber for about three years, and have a fair amount of experience with trad as this is my preferred style of climbing.I’ve been to Indian Creek twice now and I’m planning a trip for the end of May. I’m looking to push the grades and get on a couple of 5.11’s this trip, which I’ve never done on gear before, so I was wondering if you had input on training. I know that the main struggle at the creek for me is always endurance so I’ll definitely be working on that with laps etc in the gym. But I was wondering if you could share a little bit about some of the weight training that you do, as I know you’ve mentioned on your blog that you lift weights. Other exercises that are a part of your training routine that might be helpful to me would also be greatly appreciated!
Additionally, if you have any recommendations for your favorite 5.11-‘s at the creek, I’d also love your input on that. I’m looking at Scarface and possibly coyne crack because i’ve top-roped both and they worked out well because I have thin hands (loved watching the guys struggle on these haha).
Thanks!
Rae
p.s. You have chosen a wonderful place to call home, Moab is the best! And if you’re ever in need of some new vegan recipes, the ultra running community has some great ones between Scott Jurek and Rich Roll.
Hi Steph,
I hope you are well and enjoying the holiday season! Come April, I will be making my first pilgrimage to the Creek, and was just wondering what sort of preparation you would recommend in order to arrive their in top form. I live in Squamish, and so of course when weather permits I’ll log hours on cracks, but apart from that any suggestions? The gym here is a bouldering one, so I’ve been focusing on lots of traversing, but any recommendations you might have for a better focused training regime or exercises would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks and I hope to hear back from you!
-Riley
Hi Rae and Riley,
I used to lift weights in the winter, but I switched to more finger-specfic training with a hangboard, campus board and systems. For me, finger strength seems to be the biggest weak link, so targeting it is really productive (more so than big muscle strength). That being said, Indian Creek does seem to be more about big muscle strength, though strong fingers are never a liability. Endurance is the real key for Indian Creek. For the most part, no move is that hard, it just gets hard to keep doing them forever, and letting go to place gear. If you are training in the gym, I would give a couple days a week to endurance training, where you make a point of stopping on jugs and shaking your arms out one at a time until you have eased the pump and can continue climbing.
My friend Pee-Wee Ouellet who is a rad desert climber thinks that campus training is good for the more powerful finger cracks in the desert.
It’s hard to recommend routes, because they are all so good….beware of focusing on number grades to make your choices. As you know, the difficulty of many cracks is very size dependent (though many are more variously sized), and you will waste your time and energy if you get caught up in what difficulty someone else thinks a particular climb is. As someone with smaller than average hands, it may become annoying to have larger people going on forever about how you got hand jams when they didn’t. (It may also be annoying to watch the same friends get perfect fingerlocks in your most difficult rattly finger size as you hold yourself back from going on forever about how they got fingerlocks when you didn’t. There are undoubtedly better conversation topics, like for example the environmental impact of the rubber string inside golf balls or, do dogs get wear wax?…)
If you like the consistent splitters, figure out what size is fingers, rattly fingers, ratchets, tight hands, good hands, cupped hands or fists for you. This will give you an idea of what to expect, based on how comfortable you are in each of those ranges.
If you are looking for tight hands splitters, Scarface and Coyne Crack are definitely the mega-classics. Quarter of a Man has a lot of tight hands in a corner, as does the Cave Route at Battle of the Bulge. You will also like many routes at the Cat Wall, especially Mad Dog and Nine Lives if you are feeling full of endurance. Pente and Excuse Station at the Reservoir Wall are shady. Unfortunately Cat Wall and Reservoir are closed in the spring for birds, so you will need to save those for your fall return.
If you have time, it sounds like you should check out some of the trails too for running: there is a really nice new single track addition to the Amasa Back trail in Kane Creek Canyon. It starts with a detour called the HyMasa Back, and then you cross the creek and get onto the Captain Ahab trail. You can make this into a loop, coming down the Jackson Trail. The new trails are beautiful and perfect running grades–you just have to keep an eye out for incoming mountain bikes.
Enjoy 🙂
Steph
