Climbing – Page 8 – The RV Project

Day 22- Writing on a Rest Day

By SpenserBirthday Challenges, Climbing, Trip Journal14 Comments

Since the last post, I’ve done a few things. Day 14- Win and Lose I fully expected 30 free throws to be the hardest (least likely) element. Not so much when I first thought of it, but upon subsequent thinkings, it only seemed to get harder and harder. Will Wolcott kindly pointed out that, if shooting at an 80% rate, I stand a way-less-than-1% chance of succeeding at 30 consecutive free throws. I countered that each shot was not an independent event, statistically speaking. There is such a thing as being “on fire” and “in a groove” and whatnot. F the haters. I’m gonna make baskets. I spent an hour looking for an indoor basketball hoop in this icy land of hockey, and found one at the Totem Hall, a community center for the First Nation folk of Squamish. I shot free throws in an empty gym for the next 2.5 hours. At first I improved. I went from streaks of 8-10 to streaks of 12-15, hitting 18 in a row a couple of times. Then it all went to shit. My eyes stopped working properly and my focus waned. Best to call it a practice round. Besides, I had another challenge to attempt. So that was the lose part. The win part is way better. When Jeremy and I did our “test” run up the Grand Wall a few weeks back, it took us 5:40 because we were stuck behind slower parties. We figured that if we hustled and…

August 6, 2014

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BDC Update- The Suffering Begins

By SpenserBirthday Challenges, Climbing2 Comments

Seems like I manage an update every 4 days. Sounds fair, I suppose. I mean, 4’s a pretty cool number. 2+2 is 4, 2×2 is 4, 2^2 is 4. It’s a nice neat number. Birthday Challenges have been in the air lately. There was Pat Campbell’s leiderhosen-clad challenge. And then on Saturday July 26th, Lizzy Asher (who was born in a completely different month) celebrated her birthday by going for 28 V-points’ worth of Squamish highballs. They were all climbs she hadn’t done before, and were on her list as climbs to do before leaving Canada for thesis writing in California. On her list were Ride the Lightning (V8), Teenage Lobotomy (V7), Funeral Arrangements (V6) and Black Slabbath (V7). She managed to “bop” her way through each one, though I’ll leave it at that and suggest instead that you wait for the EpicTV episode we’ve got coming. Oh yeah, BTW, we filmed it. If you need attorney for reckless driving claims, you can get them from here! We also filmed last year when a few people tried the same lines. Click the link to watch it. But what of the Spenser Challenge? Ah yes, here we go… Day 9- Reeling from 360 V-Points So yeah, I slept in. Got up just in time for Toonie ($2) swim at the rec center. Because it’s summer and it was raining and it costs $2 for a jacuzzi, a diving board, and a shower, lots and lots of climbers filled the pool area, campusing around on the wooden play thingy…

July 29, 2014

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The Final Countdown to My Birthday Challenge

By SpenserBirthday Challenges, Climbing, Training7 Comments

I’m not normally the kind of guy to spray the world about my birthday. I’ve never been one for huge laser tag parties or making all my friends invite their friends to a big group takeover of some moderately expensive restaurant. Birthdays are weird…the only time I’ve felt compelled or entitled to a big gathering of any sort was when I turned it into a charity event. Interestingly, that one was also a birthday challenge. This time, I’m spraying for a few reasons. I’m stoked. I’m kinda marketing for our EpicTV series, and my challenge will be part of it. I have trouble following through with audacious personal goals unless other people know about them. I have a lot less trouble with audacious goals if others expect me to at least try really hard. One more thing: if I can, in some way, inspire others to do something similarly audacious (physical or otherwise), that’s all for the better. I really, really hope this isn’t spilling over into obnoxious narcissism (my parents are psychologists, so I’m very self-conscious about this sort of thing). But I digress… Last night I hiked a tripod up to the 3rd peak and stashed it, so that Vikki will only have a camera bag to carry with her to film my first element on Tuesday. It was my second time up there in two days and my legs are feeling it today, but I’ve got three days to rest and a killer set of recovery tools in the…

July 14, 2014

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My BDC- Long Term Beatdown

By SpenserBirthday Challenges, Bolt Clipping, Bouldering2 Comments

“Just so you know, Georgie, I’ll be sprinting this one as fast as I can, since I’m training and all that.” “No worries, you can go ahead of me.” And so I sprinted up the first set of stairs on the trail that eventually gains 700 meters of elevation, bound for the 3rd Peak. About 150 stairs later, I was cooked. My legs felt like molten slag, and the air I was sucking didn’t seem to contain any oxygen, despite being at sea level. What began as running quickly turned into plodding. “I think you’re hosing yourself by not warming up” No shit. And so Georgie and I huffed our way up to the pinnacle of the 2nd Peak, arriving exactly 36 minutes after we began the hike. There is a trail, you see, that goes directly to the 3rd Peak, but it is vicious. Roots and rocks. The type of terrain that eats inferior ankles for breakfast. There is no moving quickly over that kind of trail. I think that, physically, the single hardest part of my birthday challenge will be this run, 36 minutes or less to the 3rd Peak. So why did we go to the 2nd? To see if the trail was faster, if longer. And it was. Despite lingering on the top of the 2nd Peak for a few minutes and dawdling over to the 3rd, we made it to the 3rd Peak in 51 minutes. That’s 1 minute faster than when I did the 3rd peak trail…

July 7, 2014

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Kelowna | The Boulderfields

By VikkiClimbing, Local Beta, Road Trip Beta2 Comments

Last summer was all about Squamish, but we knew British Columbia had more boulders to offer. When we found out about the 2nd annual Rock the Blocs Boulderfest outdoor bouldering competition in Kelowna, we decided to take a mini road trip East and give’r a go. The town of Kelowna is located on the eastern side of the massive Okanagan Lake. The Boulderfields are just south of town and take about 45 minutes to get to by a windy dirt road. There’s some rocky spots, but we took it nice and slow and were able to make it with the trailer. The Boulderfields have a seemingly endless expanse of gneiss rock (think Chaos Canyon at Rocky Mountain National Park). The area is highly concentrated but some hiking is involved, many choice areas require a bit more of a commitment to get to with some scrambling over talus à la Chaos Canyon. Contrary to Squamish bouldering, there are holds! Tiny crimps, textured slopers, good edges- whatever your heart desires. In previous years, a few sport routes have been put up across the area and now, with the hard work of a few developers, there’s also the up-and-coming bouldering playground. Both Spenser and I had a blast at the comp, quickly forgetting we were running on just an hour of sleep. Spenser got the second and third ascents of a couple spectacular steep lines, while I struggled a bit with some of the top cruxes and fell off more climbs than I finished. Nonetheless, I took in as many easy and moderate climbs as the…

June 25, 2014

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Hair on Fire

By SpenserBirthday Challenges, Gym Climbing, TrainingNo Comments

I’m not ready to turn 30. The saying goes that time flies when you’re having fun. Strangely, I find that time flies when I’m standing still. Take the past two months for example. The RV Project moved its headquarters into my parents’ house, where we soaked up the comforts of a house and a doting mother and father who love to cook delicious food. A 2 month hiatus from the road seemed like a great chance to catch up with the videos we’re making, do some needed maintenance on the trailer, see our non-nomadic friends, and for me to prepare for my upcoming Birthday Challenge. The problem is, it feels like I’m just starting to train, and we’ve already left. It’s now less than a month from my birthday, and I am already dreading many of the elements I’ve set for myself. I’m not in poor shape, but the list of challenges is long. Time is fast dwindling, moreso as I’ll want to taper for a week or so before the challenge. I spent most of my time in the gym lifting weights and gaining endurance. I followed the format of Phase 1 of John Long’s Workout From Hell. I’d done the entire cycle once before, and remember feeling much pain and suffering during the 30-rep phase, but I also recall that my body felt as solid as a tree, as though bullets would bounce off my chest. I figured this would be a good way to train for my 300,000-pound lifting day,…

June 19, 2014

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SF in the SE

By SpenserBouldering, ClimbingNo Comments

Climbing is about trying hard, pushing your limits, and getting out of your comfort zone. Right? By surrounding ourselves with climbing all the time, we sometimes conflate the importance of our sport. Sometimes we forget that it’s also about fun. That’s why it’s refreshing when our hometown homies come out for climbing trips. We don’t know many crews as tightly knit and as motivated to just have fun as our San Francisco friends. On top of that, they also climb hard. You may recall Highball Day, in which Mark Heal, Josh Horsley, and literally dozens of other climbers sessioned on 7 of Squamish’s best tall problems. Despite many different strengths and ability levels, the SF crew has the uncanny ability to work together and stay psyched, rain or sub-zero temperatures be damned. This past winter, the crew descended upon Chattanooga. On one particularly frigid day at Rocktown, a day that also happened to be Josh’s birthday, the San Franciscans swarmed all over the classics and dispatched a whole lot of stars’ worth of boulder problems. Please take a few minutes and check out the video we made for Organic Climbing, because it’s never too soon to get psyched and start planning a Southeast Sandstone Bouldering Rampage for the upcoming season! And when you’re done with our video, check out Will Wolcott’s awesome edit. More shenanigans, more sending, and some epic fails on Flying High.

June 10, 2014

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Birthday Challenge Episode 1: Alex Johnson

By SpenserBirthday Challenges, Bolt Clipping, Bouldering, Film2 Comments

EpicTV’s newest series, Birthday Challenge, went live today! Episode one follows Alex Johnson as she hits the quarter-century milestone with grace, humor, and optimism. She also manages to climb 25 routes and enough boulder problems to amass 25 stars in Las Vegas’ incredible Red Rock Canyon. Check it out below, and share with your friends, because we want as many people doing birthday challenges as possible this year! (Speaking of which, if you have done, or are going to do a birthday challenge, let us know! Also, there’s a BDC group on Facebook you should probably join.) We mentioned earlier that this year was going to be quite an adventure…all of a sudden we are making films…professionally! We dove into this one. Drove across the country to one of our least favorite cities (Las Vegas), and spent a couple of days filming Alex, interviewing her and her awesome mom Trish, and gathering some ridiculously cute footage of Fritz. When it came time to edit, we wanted to tell a story. We wanted to inspire. We wanted to give you Alex in the raw. Several long nights yielded a great 8-minute film we were proud of, and better still, that Alex was psyched on. We sent it off to EpicTV. EpicTV responded that they wanted something a bit more “action-packed.” So it was back to the editing station to chop it up again. The result is a totally awesome 4 minute video showing some of the gorgeous sport climbing in Red Rock, classic boulder problems from…

May 23, 2014

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Climbing to Repair a Child

By SpenserClimbing, Stuff We're Psyched OnNo Comments

People climb for many reasons, and there are so many appealing reasons to climb. It’s fun and satisfying. For the die-hards, it’s a way of life, a lens for examining philosophy, a medium of self-expression. I’ve always loved to climb, but there was something about it that grabbed me in a deeper way that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. I think you climb, and therefore I think you know what I mean. On the front page of the SF Chronicle (April 29), I saw an article that hinted at exactly what I’m talking about. A therapist by the name of Dr. Clifton Hicks was having success treating children with PTSD by taking them rock climbing in Glen Canyon Park. I admit that part of me felt a bit of pride upon reading the headline, as though I were somehow ennobled by the therapeutic benefits of the sport I’ve chosen. But we know that – adventure-based therapy is not exactly new – but here was a psychotherapist running climbing-specific outings to treat a specific condition. I wanted to learn more about this utterly cool phenomenon. I was able to get Dr. Hicks on the phone. He was fascinating to talk to, and he’s the only person I’m aware of to write a dissertation about rock climbing. He explained that when a trauma occurs, it severely damages relationships in the child’s life that are critical to development. The child has been robbed of safety and security, and treatment involves reestablishing…

May 14, 2014

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Top Rope Tough Girl

By VikkiBolt Clipping, Climbing, Staying Healthy, The Interior, Trip Journal5 Comments

Who can forget this amazing climbing classic?! I have a confession to make. I’ve been toproping. Frequently. I feel as though I’m cheating on bouldering. It’s been my obsession for years- unfortunately, my bouldering confidence wanes at times. One day I feel like I can climb to the top of anything I set my mind to. The next day, I can’t seem to shake the feeling that I totally suck. How well you climb is directly linked to your confidence level. There’s no way around it. Just like with any other discipline, knowing that you can do it is a vital to success. I’m very aware that everyone has bad days, but I’ve come to the conclusion that my mental (and physical) struggle is not based on probability: it’s my lack of endurance. I’m embarrassed to admit that I’ve been living on the road, rock climbing, for over 2 years and have gained little endurance. I am certainly much stronger than when we began the road trip, but I still get the feeling that one, or both, of my hands will spontaneously open up if I’m on the wall for over 30 seconds [not an experimentally acquired measurement, but a good estimate]. I also do not have a good gauge as to how long I can hold on once that inevitable pump sets in. I’ve never committed to climbing past it. Yep, I’m a sucker for letting go. This is further detrimental to my climbing since I am predominately a static climber who…

April 18, 2014

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