The Road Weary Traveller

Being on the road is so great. Life is distilled down to the simplest tasks and I find myself pulled into an entirely different rhythm than I follow at home. I am awake at dawn or slightly before. I get up, pull on some clothes - whatever is handy and bunched at a ball by my pillow, more than likely exactly what I wore the day before - and crawl out of the tent. I give Benny a scoop of food and pee behind a juniper tree. Rummaging through the food bin in the truck I find the coffee, the cereal and I hunch down over the stove in the sand, making coffee. It is not what I am doing which is very remarkable or different from "home life", it is what I am NOT doing. I am not washing my face, brushing my hair, carefully picking out clothes, changing my underwear (OK OK, I don't entirely abandon this sanitary practice, it is just relegated to a less than diurnal occurrence), looking in a mirror, eating at a table, using running water, flushing a toilet, making the bed, taking out the garbage, getting ready for work. When on a road trip, it's as if I am taking a scalpel to my life and scraping away all the fluff, leaving behind the sinew, muscle and bone of eating, sleeping, playing and the barest minimum of chores and menial tasks. You will note that I have lumped 'going to work' in with the 'fluff' which shows my firm belief that if you don't want much, you don't need to work much. Unfortunately I am a bit past this point with a car, a dog, a mortgage, a student loan and all the fabulous trappings that keep me grinding out the work days (actually I really love my job and would be lost without it).

After the month that has passed since my last post I have climbed, drove, hiked, played with my dog, slept in a tent, slept in a truck, and crisscrossed five states and one province. It's crazy, but already, only a few days after being home it has all blended into one blurry memory. As far as climbing trips go, it was a pretty good one. I climbed quite a few new things (routes I hadn't done before), I got to read a bunch of great books, I took my dog on some beautiful hikes, I got to climb with some fabulous female partners and I got to spend a ton of great time with my husband Evan after a busy guiding season.

The crazy thing is, by the end of the trip, I was craving home so strongly that I didn't even really care what I climbed. Getting back to my own luxurious pocket of space in the universe was what I wanted more than ticking a route or struggling my way up a multipitch. Now that I am back here in Squamish in the rain I ask myself if I am crazy to have wanted to be back here. But the bottom line is, it just feels good! I have no shortage of things to do here, between training for my ski guide program by running, tuning up my beacon and crevasse rescue skills, and trying to get out on my skis before my guide training (and somewhat of an ACMG pre-test) begins on November 28. I also have yet ANOTHER iteration of my thesis to format which involves scanning through a 180 page document looking for spacing and heading mistakes. Attending yoga classes is also high on the list. Since I started doing yoga a few years ago, I have found it makes me feel SO GOOD to do regularly, but I fall out of practice periodically and going to classes makes me inspired to continue. Finally, some indoor training is in order for me. My power and strength slowly dwindled away this fall and I am psyched to train, possibly at the Squamish Bouldering Co-op if I can justify the steep membership fee.

Finally, some photos from my trip. You will notice there are hardly any. That's because my camera stayed in it's safe place under the seat in the truck for most of the trip. At least it didn't get any sand in it.

Me on Freerider
Chillin' at the Alcove on El Cap
Evan pre stomach flu at the Alcove on

Starting up the West Face of El Cap on a frigid day
(we had to bail cause we couldn't feel our fingies and toes)


On Beggar's Buttress


Emily Stiffler posing on Beggars Buttress


Benny getting busted inside the tent


Evan cuddling Benny while Benny winks at me

Indian Creek sunset from our campsite

Sunset at Indian Creek


Sunrise at Indian Creek




Evan basking in the sunrise on one of our early start mornings to beat the heat on our projs


Sunrise over Reservoir Wall

Indian Creek Crack Attack

Celebrate good times, come on!

To celebrate the successful defense of my master's thesis: "Environmental controls on the stable isotopic composition of laminiated tufa in Red Butte Canyon, Utah", I spent a week pretending I was still a climbing bum living out of my car in Indian Creek. Except... when I really was living out of my car it was a Chevy Corsica not a sweet Tacoma truck, and I had WAAAAYYYY fewer cams and way less cash for wine and rest day extravagances like breakfast at Eclekticafe in Moab. So I guess that means that life has gotten better over the past few years, although my heart is telling me right now that I would trade all these material things to not be sitting in front of this computer wading through mind numbingly tedious revisions on a 150 page thesis that I am ready to huck straight into the Great Salt Lake.

Jeremy contemplates The Optimator

The climbing was fun. When my arms and head finally came back after the first few days of being gripped and tired on 5.10s, I climbed some amazing pitches that I had never been on before... and my future tick list grew in length yet again! But what really made me want to stay down there and continue living the rhythm of eat, climb, eat, climb, drink, eat, sleep repeat was not just red sandstone spitter after corner after splitter. For the past week my life became so simple, yet somehow more rich than any week I spent in Salt Lake this year. I was with friends almost all day, laughing, joking, clowning around, dancing and doing yoga on the slickrock of our campsite, cooking burrito feasts on the tail gate to be washed down by cold beer in front of a flickering campfire as the stunning desert starscape drifted overhead. Not every moment was shared though; tucked into my bed in the back of the truck I read a novel, something that had nothing to do with isotopes, and loved every word of its frivolous text. I often was the first to rise, and I sat in my lawn chair in a sliver of sun with my sleeping bag piled in my lap as I waited for the coffee to bubble out of the espresso maker, filling the cold air with its delicious aroma.

Jeremy sending the SH*T out of Disco Machine Gun

I could wax on forever, believe me... anything to keep from pecking away at some stupid isotope mass balance calculation that somehow has to find a way into the text of my thesis. But I will spare you from any more of my emotional outpourings for today. It is just great to know that as I wrap up this grad school phase of my life, I will hopefully be making room for many more weeks just like the one I have just spent living simply and fully with friends.

Kinley getting psyched for her lead

Jer and Mando hide from the sun

Even the early residents of Indian Creek knew that it is all about the meat capes... biceps get you nowhere!

Kinley and Kitt dancing to Kinley's pumping subwoofer to get warmed up before some serious crack climbing.

Just to prove I was really there!!!

After a week of wading through thesis editing, I was ready for a break. On Thursday night, the relief came when six people, 2 dogs, the makings for many burritos and lots of beer, wine and tequila piled into 2 vehicles and made the pilgrimage to crack mecca aka Indian Creek for the weekend. After a full winter of sweaty ski gloves, my hands weren't in their usual leathery, calloused, scar tissued state and they took a major beating. I thought about posting a photo of them... but that would just be gross. You can take my word for it when I say that after 2 full days of sandstone splitter climbing, me and my hands were ready for a change of pace. Luckily for me, I wasn't the only one in our crew feeling this way, so on Sunday morning we drove into Moab, fueled up on coffee and pastries at the Red Rock Bakery, then headed up into the La Sal Mountains for some multipitch mixed sport and gear climbing at Lower Mill Creek. Luckily for us, my husband Evan used to be a Moab local and established a few of the routes in the area, so he knew his way around. All the routes require rappelling to the start, so not knowing what you are getting into would have been intimidating. Spring had only just arrived; snow still coated the shady side of the canyon, but we were in the sun and loving the juniper infused breeze as we climbed crimps thankfully interspersed with amazing patina jugs. After the first three days of climbing for the season, my body was battered and my mind was sharp; time to tackle the home stretch of the thesis.