I bounce lightly in my shoes, following the edge of the White Rim, careful not to lose my footing as I look out over a vast sculpted landscape of red sandstone. I imagine I’m running along the surface of Mars. It might as well be Mars considering how cold I am! I swing my arms trying to get the blood flowing.
15 minutes later I scamper down below the Rim to where my new friends Chris Lile, John Kasaian and Lindsay Hamm are playing on the first section of the intimidating horizontal crack. I stare down the line, down the crack I’ve been training for all season and thinking about for a couple years now. Necronomicon was originally discovered by Rob Pizem, freed by Jean-Pierre Ouellet and popularized by fellow Wild Country climbers, Pete Whittaker and Tom Randall. The route’s first and only female ascent came earlier this year by another teammate Mary Eden.
After two months sea kayaking and establishing big routes in Greenland, I returned home to Squamish, BC in early September and slept for a week while I pondered what the next project might be. I caught rumour that a friend had built an elaborate roof crack training set-up in his shed and excitedly went to check it out. This was it! I’ll train for two months in Jeff’s Crack Shack (while I work the tail-end of the rock guiding season) and then head to Utah in November to try Necronomicon.
Then my friend Pim and I found a training facility that was an even better match for Necronomicon: a 30m uniform thin hands roof crack on the underside of a concrete bridge. The slippery surface meant that you couldn’t relax even for a second or you’d slip out, so you really had to stay focused with all muscles engaged. This would be the perfect endurance training for my thumbs and ankles! The rack was an outrageous 18 red Friends and 4 green ones. At first I could barely make it a quarter of the way, but we kept going back. By the end of October I’d managed to pinkpoint the bridge (with pre-placed Friends) and came close on a couple occasions to sending the full redpoint. On Halloween I hit the road for Utah.
Chris, Lindsay, John and I have been camped out on the White Rim for four days now. We have two days left. I rested yesterday in hopes of feeling fresh today, but in truth I feel exhausted. Maybe from camping in the cold for the past month, maybe the intense beta-rehearsal sessions on Necronomicon the previous couple of days, maybe I hadn’t given my body enough time to recover after Greenland… But I had to push those negative thoughts aside.
I knew what to do. I can draw confidence on past experiences. If there’s one skill I’ve honed from my big wall free climbing pursuits, it’s how to perform well when the time counts and when my body is fatigued. I love this stuff: the mental process. I’d been visualizing the sequences in my head over and over. As I tie in, I focus my mind on the flow of the movements and deflect away any thoughts of outcome or success. Keep my mind in the present. I hold on to this as a mantra.
Check my knot, belay looks good. You got me? Chris replies enthusiastically and I launch into the crack. I make it through the wide hand and fists into the middle of the roof, where I pause to recover in a good hand jam pod before blasting into the crux. Five moves later my thumbs are powered out and I can’t squeeze hard enough. I loose focus, my foot cuts and suddenly I’m dangling on the rope. Bummer. I try to not get too discouraged. We scramble up on top to eat lunch in the sun. I allow myself to fully rest and recover. Two hours later I lace up my running shoes. It’s hard to keep warm out here, but I also don’t want to waste energy warming up too much. Everything is strategic. As I go through my routine I ponder how to arrive more fresh at the crux… I make two crucial changes.
Tactic 1: I’m going to wear crack gloves over my thin, single-layer tape gloves for the first half of the crack (wide-hands). Then I’m going to ripe them off with my teeth one at a time and clip them to my harness. Once in the kneebar after the crux I’ll put them back on again for the wide-hands finish! This will protect my poor bruised hands and allow me to relax a bit better.
Tactic 2: Instead of shaking out at the last hand jam before the crux, I’m going to rest alternating on fists in a wider pod nearby. The fists feel less secure and more strenuous, but I will be using different muscles meaning my thumbs will get a break. Then I can blast fresh-thumbed into the crux!
I tie in for a second burn and I never weight the rope, 20 minutes later I step onto the pedistool at the far end of the roof. Only then does the emotion flood in and I allow myself to celebrate. The tactics worked, the strategy paid off, and gosh I adore the mental game in this sport! In exciting reflections post-trip, if I can send my hardest trad pitch in 5 days, I think I could dream bigger for the next one.
