Turning the Corner

Jan 12, 2010 | Stories | 0 comments

Jan 12, 2010 | Stories | 0 comments

Winter is always a difficult time of year for me. Thank god there is football, although even that was difficult for me to watch. Seeing the proud Giants start out 5-0 only to fall apart like a bunch of pathetic cowards made me feel like I was reliving every terrible disappointment from my childhood.

Thankfully, the days are now getting longer and longer, and I am optimistic for 2010. I’d spent the last two months of 2009 like I spend the last two months of any year: eating and drinking as much as physically possible, and wallowing around like a sad sot. Oh well. At least I have 10 additional pounds of training weight.

The last few weeks have been pretty fun nevertheless. Here’s a quick re-cap. Also, stay tuned as I will be posting my training schedule for anyone who is interested in the next post.

 

New Year’s Eve

Vegas, baby! After a nice Christmas in Carbondale, despite my overcooked duck, Jen and I took for Hurricane, Utah. We went to see my good friend Jorge Visser, and stay at his house.

I brought Jorge a bottle of scotch, like I always do, though this particular one, Glenmorangie, was a bit nicer than the usual bourbon I bring. I’m way into single malts currently, and wanted to share some fine swill with Jorge, since I know he shares my thirst for such things. We reached Jorge’s house, and I popped the bottle, pouring a glass for Jorge and his roommate Seth Giles. I was planning on sipping the scotch by the fire and catching up. Instead, Jorge pounded the whole glass like a shot. I thought, “Oh, it’s going to be that kind of night.” We then proceeded to drink the ENTIRE bottle of scotch. I think Jorge had most, but I certainly helped.

What’s amazing is, the next morning, neither one of us was hungover at all. All day I was dumbfounded, unsure of whether I should be scared or thankful or what. I still don’t know what to make of it. I think it was just a gift from the universe that neither one of us should question. Jorge thinks it has something to do with our proximity to Zion, one of the navels of the earth. There’s lots of iron in the rock, and he thinks that it has some kind of strange magnetic power that influences humans in ways we don’t understand, like preventing hangovers from drinking a whole bottle of scotch. Maybe it was just good scotch.

After climbing at the Hurricave–a pretty fantastic little wall with about 8 routes in the 5.13 range–we headed down to Vegas to meet our good friends Danny and Wendy for some shit show climbing at Red Rocks.

I’d never been to Red Rocks before, and I was amazed by what a scene it was. The camping is pretty good–nice amenities, and comfortable. The sport climbing I saw is pretty easy and straightforward, so it was a great mid-winter confidence boost to go and just mindlessly pull up on sandy crimpers till you reached the anchors. I’m psyched to return to Red Rocks and sample the longer routes, because that seems like that’s what that place is really meant for.

I wish I had brought a bunch of copies of my book to the Gallery, because there were a lot of people there who really ought to read it. I’m amazed that people can get away with some of the sketchiest maneuvers. I’m not judging, because when I first started climbing, I did the same stuff!

On NYE, the four of us rented a hotel room at the Orleans. We got gussied up, and went out to dinner at Postrio, a Wolfgang Puck restaurant in the Venetian. It was quite good. Danny had just won about $300 at black jack–I lost $100 in two minutes–so he paid for all of our wine and booze, which was a lot. I had a $60 steak, and it was delicious. The waiter liked us and gave us tickets to the Christina Aguillera-hosted party, which was just about the dumbest thing I’d ever seen. I ninja’d my way into the VIP section, and started dancing up on top of these stairs, but the bouncers took one look at me, and threw me out onto the regular dance floor with all the peasants.

The Vegas strip was nuts: people were puking everywhere, and getting rowdy. I almost got into it with some British guy in a casino. The exchange went like this:

Me: “This casino is Bullshit!”

Guy: “Chill out!”

Me: “Mind your business!”

Guy: “Touch-y!”

Me: “Ohhhh, Bri-tish!”

It was fun. The next morning, we went out to Jen’s car in the parking lot and found a big ol’ melted-chocolate-ice-cream of a dump right next to her front tire. We found it really disgusting, obviously, but at the time it was pretty funny. Soon, it was time to go home. I had some good onsights that week, had a great New Year’s with good friends (though I probably don’t need to do the Strip again), and kicked my motivation into gear to start training.

 

Ouray Ice Fest

This past weekend was the Ice Fest, and I was really excited to see my homie Sam Elias compete. He has been training really hard for this event all fall–like, campusing at Movement for five hours a day–and I know that he’s a great competitor and was psyched to see him win.

Sam has climbed 5.14c and I can’t remember the last time I saw him fall on a 5.13a–he onsights easy 5.13 pretty regularly now. Needless to say, the announcers at Ouray were pretty impressed with his sport climbing accomplishments, but because they’re still such an old-school trad crowd, they couldn’t help themselves from tossing in a few mildly snarky remarks while Sam was on the route. I was nervous, because if Sam didn’t do well, I could already hear the banter from the old-schoolers, saying, “See, sport climbing doesn’t help you in icy offwidths!”

Sam was so hyped up as this really strong rock climber (which he is–not hype at all), but he only stood to lose, and that would’ve set back The Cause–the one in which sport climbing finally gets the respect it deserves. Fortunately, Sam crushed the route–the only other competitor to do so. I was literally jumping up and down, screaming at the top of my lungs when Sam was pulling the ice bulge at the top. He tagged the top with 2 seconds left on the clock, and put in the performance of the day.

It’s sort of unfortunate he didn’t win, but I was happy to see Josh Wharton, another good friend, win. Josh has had a rough year, so it was good to see him smoke the route. Man, he crushed it too. There’s a definite advantage to going last–the ice is picked out, and you know what time you need to beat. I can’t help but wonder if the tables were turned–if Josh went before Sam–if the outcome wouldn’t have been different.

So, in the end, the two competitors who spend a majority of their time clipping bolts at Rifle were the only ones to top out the mixed climbing comp. This doesn’t surprise me, of course, and I only mention it because there’s still such lingering stigmas against sport climbing in this world. But I am hopeful things will begin to change in the future. Bring on 2010!

 

About The Author

Andrew Bisharat

Andrew Bisharat is a writer and climber based in western Colorado. He is the publisher of Evening Sends and the co-host of The RunOut podcast.

Free Climb. Free Thought.

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