Mountain Girl: Notes on Rock Climbing

Zion Wilderness

**As Always- Remember to click any of the photos to see a bigger, better version!**
Whew! I made it halfway thru my season at Zion!! And what a bumpy ride it has been- from magical afternoons hiking in the backcountry to miserably long days of chiseling a singe-jack into a rock for 8 hours this has been one of the most amazing and trying experiences of my life. Getting used to working 40 hour weeks in the intense southwest summer heat has been a whole other battle after frolicking in single-digit temps in Bozeman this winter. But everything is relative and before you know it you are thankful for the days when 98 is the highest temp and you don't need an entire tray of ice cubes to accompany your water- just half. : ) And, just in the nick of time, monsoon season swept in to wash away the hottest days and the thick, lofty clouds pushed south from the northern ranges of Utah sheltered us from the blistering sun for almost a month and provided some of the most spectacular sunsets I have ever seen. With the rain came flash-flooding on a daily basis and at least some canyon in the greater region was washed out. The sandstone rock here retains no moisture and does not soak up water like regular soil so when a micro-burst storm occurs a five-minute downpour can turn into a raging torrent of water colliding down steep canyons and gullies endangering anyone exploring below. To see an EPIC, short video of a local flashflood click HERE.

Zion had a record number of SARs (Search & Rescues) for the month of July and it seemed almost daily that we were hearing about someone falling off a rappel in the backcountry or being trapped by high flood waters. Canyoneering can be an extremely dangerous sport and a lot of tourists seem to take it too lightly. They don't understand that 30% chance of storms means DO NOT got into a canyon, that sometimes you just have to accept the facts that maybe you don't get to go canyoneering if you visit Zion in the middle of monsoon season which happens to be the middle of summer. I have been quite content with my hiking, biking and rock climbing, which also have their risks, but hearing about all of the SAR incidents happening all over the world during the seasonal height of outdoor recreation during the summer time has definitely made me stop and think about all of the adventuring I am doing and how much I want to keep myself safe while doing risky things. In fact, I had my own little micro-burst of injuries during the past several weeks and have made more trips to the doctor this summer than I have in 3 or 4 years. I had a nasty encounter with a seemingly nice Golden Retriever who took a chunk out of my leg while I was out for an early morning bike ride: I was biking up a steep hill to get some exercise and because of my slow pace, the dog was able to bite my leg before I could successfully maneuver the bike back down hill. I had four stitches to accompany the tooth hole in my leg and luckily everything has been healing up nicely.

Earlier in the season I injured my left knee after a bad landing jumping off a trail to access our work-site in Zion. For almost a month I had to rely on my right leg to get me through my long days of hiking in the mountains but my ability to utilize the strength of my right leg really allowed me to continue recreating while recovering. And then there was the friction burn, probably my most painful and scary incident that occurred after I took a 15 foot fall leading a rock climb in Crawdad Canyon on an extremely humid day. While I love monsoon season, WOW, did we have some humid days that reminded me of Tenneesee so frizzy hair and all we decided to climb the sweating rocks, leaving wet handprints of the walls as we went.

I will begin the recount of the story by saying that I fell at the absolute WORST time right as I was clipping into the anchors.
For those of you unfamiliar with this lingo, let me explain- in Sport rock climbing one person has to lead the climb. The belayer uses an ATC to connect the rope to their harness and the climber creates a double firgure-8 knot to secure the rope to themselves. The climber hooks quickdraws onto their harness which are 2 caribiners connected by a short piece of webbing.

Figure 8 Knot


ATC

Quickdraw

The climber begins the route by taking a quickdraw and clipping one of the caribiners to a bolt that has been drilled into the wall by the route-setter and then clips the caribiner on the oppsite end of the quickdraw to the rope that they are attatched to. Hmmm....this sounds more confusing than it is. Pictures would be better. Anyway- so the lead climber is protected from hitting the ground (in case of a fall) because they clip into these pre-established bolts on the wall. They are usually anywhere from 3-8 feet apart and when you are leading if you fall right after you have clipped into a bolt you don't go far because you are so close to a bolt, but if you fall right before you clip into a bolt then you fall further because you will fall down to the last bolt you clipped which could be anywhere from 3-8 ft below you. In climbing you are using a dynamic rope which means that the rope has a lot of stretch so in case of a fall you will bounce, whereas a regular rope would immediately pull taught and you would smash into the wall. So when you fall during a lead climb you are going to fall the distance of feet that you are away from your last bolt(x2) because of that dynamic rope. The stretch in the rope + the force of your body makes it so that you actually fall twice the distance. Clear as mud?

So on this particular occasion I was at the very top of the 40-50ft route ready to clip-in to the last bolts which are called "anchors" and usually have a set of chains coming off of the bolts to make it easier and more secure for you to finish on. The last section of this climb was on a bulged out section of rock right above a large pocket- envision the #8 and looking at the number notice how the number is pinched in the center then bulges out to the top- that is how this section of rock was. I had taken 3 or 4 little falls just trying to get up to the anchors, probably no more than 2 or 3 ft down the wall back into the pocket, and my adrenaline was running high. It was a scary spot and the bolts had been poorly set because the holds were small to get up the bulge, but because of the bulge your body is pushed forward while your feet are still in the pocket below the bulge which leaves you feeling very exposed. After I fell a fourth time I was starting to get riled up. I knew I could do this maneuver and I was SO close to the end! I must have been within arms reach of the anchors every time- arg!! I was totally pumped (meaning my forearm muscles were huge and hard as rocks) but I had the mental determination to finish it so I decided to make one last go at it knowing I would just have to ignore the momentary pain that was about to be induced. I pulled myself back up to the final section and YES! I made the grab for the hold that I needed with my left hand. I felt like my left arm was solid on the hold so I made to move to clip into the anchors. To do this you have to pull the rope up to you, because gravity is naturally pulling it down, so you put the closest bit of rope in your mouth to free up your hand to grab more slack to reach up and set the rope into the anchors. One, Two handfulls of rope came up from my buddy Josh belaying from below. Perfect! I was there, I was putting the rope into the anchors and inside my head I was estatic! "YES!! You have it, you have it, you have....."

WHOOSH!
My left hand slipped off of the hold.
The culprit....
HUMIDITY! Even though I was pumped and holding my entire body weight with my left arm there is no way in hell I was going to let go of the rock with all that slack I had just pulled. The moisture content in the air was so thick and combined with my sweating palms, my hand just flew off the hold in the blink of an eye and the next thing I knew I was dangling a solid fifteen feet below the anchors in disbelief. In the distance below me I could hear people from another party of climbers yelling "OOH", "Oh my god", and "NICE FALL!", my friends were silent though, waiting for me to give the next direction, hoping I wasn't going to come off the rock with a dislocated shoulder. I remember nothing from the actual fall but judging from the wounds I fell hard into the bulge with my right arm causing extensive bruising on my upper arm and my right elbow was pounding from clearly taking the brunt of the fall and is still the most lingering pain of them all. Because I had the rope in my mouth, part of it whizzed past my upper lip and the rest caught my shoulder and under to my armpit where a pretty intense looking rope burn left the most volatile evidence of the fall. My knees were pretty banged up as well.

Once I was back on the ground the surge of energy and adrenaline from the entire episode was running high and the pain didn't really set in for a while. My heart beat was soaring and my head felt a crazy rush like I just didn't even know what to do next. After about an hour of recouping though, I went back to climbing on top-rope (not leading) and had a successful day of climbing. It wasn't until 24 hours, and then even worse the 48 hour mark where the pain really set it. The burn was SOO painful and putting on any kind of clothing was awful. Any time my elbow touched something a sharp pain surged up my arm and I was nervous that these scars might last longer than I wanted. Amazingly enough though, after 2 weeks of epsom salt baths and triple antibiotic you would not believe how fast the wounds healed!! The human body is amazing!

This experience has taught me several things: Always wear a helmet when lead climbing (the fall could have been really bad) and DO NOT climb in humid weather. While climbing can be very dangerous it can also be much safer than most people realize and I think all new climbers have to have those teachable moments where they learn from their little mistakes as to prevent future disasters. That being said, since then, I have been performing really well on my climbing excursions (minus the inevitable carpel tunnel from chiseling 40 hours a week) and I have been taking every precaution to be safe in every aspect of my life so I don't end up on the wrong end of a Search and Rescue story.