So when I called to let him know I'd be coming along, he didn't really know what to think. I mean, all Dan had heard for the week leading up to Joshua Tree was, "Dude, my sinuses feel like steel drums," and "If we go to lunch it has to be McDonalds, because I only have $4 left." I suppose I figured, when debating the choice between staying home being sick and broke, versus being sick and broke in the beautiful big time climbing capital red rock crispy breathing place, I may as well buy bacon. Besides, it would get Tradboy off my back about seeing what It is all about.
So I got to their house at four p.m. and proceeded to clean Dan and Janice out of the better part of a grocery list, which included but was not limited to Excedrin, Theraflu, orange juice, water, tissues, toilet paper, and ultimately, paper towels. When Janice came home and saw my chalky and balmy pallor, she suggested that I take some of her medicine. I was not only able to tell her I'd already helped myself, but also that she needed to replace the Q-tips they kept in the medicine cabinet.
Off they went. With me in tow and thinking about what the hell I was getting myself into and what other things I would think about if I weren't too sick to be not thinking about them.
We arrived at night. A cold, deserty, not-as-easy-to-breath-in-the-midnight-nitrogen-as-it-suggested-in-the-brochure type of night. In the morning, my knees, back, and elbows made a sort of cranking noise as I rolled myself out of the open-flapped tent, which was left in the permanently open-flapped position on account of a broken zipper problem. It was after attempting to blow out a few bricks of mostly frozen snot and pouring scalding coffee down the throat, when the realization hit me that it was, in fact, only complete idiocy which could have compelled me to make this trip, and, may I add, poor sportsmanship on my friends' part for not attempting to talk me out of it.
I mostly hid my whining and complaining from the guys, in an attempt to front like I was rugged or something, venting periodically to St. Janice, who was also sick, but now that I think of it, didn't really mention being that uncomfortable. Boy! As I write this, it occurs to me the grand scale of wimpiness by which I must be measured. And so it was in this fashion that I sucked it up and had my Joshua-Tree-in-February experience. The guys climbed like the constricted little office bees they were… that is to say, like there was no tomorrow. I could only compare their enthusiasm to the stoke you get from surfing. They would be gone for hours climbing crazy crags and roofs and dioxohedrals or whatever they're called and come back way later than they had expected. Even after I'd seen the pattern develop over 5 or 6 evolutions, I still confidently expected them to come back exhausted, hungry, sore, and climbed-out every time.
Every time, as they approached the camp, I was shocked to hear the first words uttered inevitably aimed toward some other peak they spied on the drive back, and what the book rated it, and how it resembled something else they climbed elsewhere in Idyllwild, Borrego Springs, or some other badland. And then I understood how it was that people's eyes boing so big when they hear me rustle the tent at 5:30 a.m. to make the trek down rocky beaches to 55-degree double overhead surf.
Then Sunday came. I'd been threatening to try this insanity for 6 months now, and it was getting to the point where the excuses for me not being able to climb were beginning to annoy even myself. So when they collected me, Janice, and the gear, and headed out for the last climb of the trip, I piped up that, okay, I was ready. It was just easier to go calmly, like when a larger-than-life bouncer is showing you the door. You could tell they were not just going to let me go home without at least gearing up and hanging off some precipice or another. So, I just said I'd do it, and blocked the rest out. Beta, I think it's called. The stuff fellow climbers babble on about, thinking your interested, but really you just need to focus your energy-- or in my case, deny the rock's very existence. I still wasn't really thinking about It as we approached the mountain, but when the gargantuan, volcano-like formations started to block out the horizon and the sun too, it all sort of washed over me… this stomach dropping out, saliva evaporating, bladder leaking paradox which shouts, "YOU CAN'T BUT YOU WILL!"
Geared up and on belay, I perpetrated like the climber of my mind's eye. I was about 12 feet up when I realized, come to think of it, I don't even have a climber in my mind's eye! Where the fuck is that climber? Where is my mind's eye? I remember blocking it all out as I went. I don't mean the blocking out of extraneous thoughts such that I might focus on the situation at hand. I mean blocking out the left foot moved from this stucco patch to that bird crap textured relief, so that I could stick one last prickle from a broken finger nail into a divot the size of a facial pore while exhaling as much of the weight of my upper torso onto the maximum surface area of rock allowable by physics. This process got me from 12 to 20 feet. And then I needed to re-strategize, because there was this 10-foot long, vertical patch that protruded about 6 inches from the face with just enough of a handle to fit a hand around. That's when the "climb by opposing pressure" trial by fire ensued. And somehow I made it to 30 feet.
I paused for a long second… not so much relishing the last vestige of control or breathing a sigh of relief from the elvising, but mostly out of sheer terror that I was now sufficiently high enough to die if the rope doesn't do what Dan and Davi promised. And then I paused my pause to assess the next move. And after pausing some more while my mind processed the equivalent of fitting square pegs into round holes for 2 minutes, the thought that this was humanely possible ricocheted through my head because, after all, Davi just led the damn thing. Granted he's done it about 800 times, and granted he moves like a cat, but this climb is rated 5.6 and those guys have climbed 5.11. I can go another ten feet! It was just like the first 15 feet only a bit steeper. So I just overrode the part of my brain that's gotten me to thirty years of age and moved along. And somehow I made it to 40 feet.
Now I was the Coyote after a missed Roadrunner lunge on a hairpin turn… the lunge that overruns the chasm but does not quite clear it… Finger nails just sort of dug in… a matter of time. This was the crux of my climb. It was inevitable. I was going to fall. My arms and calves had nothing left. No holds in sight. Gravity calling. I was going to fall. Only one choice left. How was I going to fall? I call fall off. Or I call fall back. This was still left for me to decide. I think it was then I realized that the verbal diarrhea spewing forth from Dan wasn't necessarily all useless. I remembered at the last moment a comment about the counterintuitive placing of weight backwards so it rests on your toes. So I let myself fall backwards. And the weirdest thing happened. I didn't fall. At least, I didn't fall down. And so I lifted a leg. And then another. And it was in this way that I proceeded to the top, where I met Davi smiling like a hyena - gobbling on about trooper this and euphoria that. I greeted him to fuck himself and as I turned around, extended a lengthy middle finger towards Dan. I remember experiencing a curious, surprise-like feeling of stumbling upon an esoteric hand sign for the term "off belay". Like Dan, and so many climbers before him have seen so many raised middle fingers at precisely this point in their mates' journeys, that it has become a commonly accepted hand motion signaling, "You're up next." And 10 minutes later, Dan was on top too.
They were all high fives and smiles, and I was practicing Zen and the art of being the mountain. Seriously, I was melding my mass against the bitch because now that we were on our way down the back, there was no more rope. Either they did not count the descent as part of the climb or the angle seemed exaggeratedly steep due to the 120-foot drop, but I seemed to remember Dan saying something before the climb about how I shouldn't worry, because I will always be locked into the harness and rope. Then there was this Chasm. A big, gaping Chasm with a 30-foot drop, which they expected me to jump. And I did it too because I so wanted to get down. And I broke a time record for descending 120 feet on an ass.
People say they love climbing because of the adrenaline. Being close to death makes one feel alive. The control associated with doing something one should not be able to do feels powerful. They say each time they finish a climb, they swear that they will never do it again. But as soon as they reach the ground, they turn their gaze skyward and the quest begins to push another limit.
I've got to say it felt amazing to have such fear and do it anyway. And the rush I got pulling myself over the top was unparalleled. It was superfragilistic. And I have Dan, Davi, and Janice to thank for supporting me through this process. And I'm really glad I did it.
And so you ask me - am I ready to do it again? Not a chance.
Seth Chalnick
Moonlight Beach
