How to climb the border fence.

Suppose you were in Mexico visiting friends or climbing El Potrero Chico and needed to get home but Trump sealed the border during one of his rants. Suppose you wanted to move north for whatever reason and found a fence in your way. I have seen the border fence muchos times and only now thought of it as a climbing project.

This is my thoughts. There’s a good chance you will come to either a chain link or iron fence and it might be tall enough to make it suck if you fall from the top. If you have a harness, a lanyard, a carabiner, a scrap of carpet, and two prusiks, you can climb that cabrón easier and safer. If you know how to tie a hand harness, your trip got cheaper.

It’s a public service announcement.

You will need five meters of good rope to make a harness. Three, two meter lengths of 8 mm cord to make one lanyard and two prusiks. You will also need a chunk of carpet because they keep putting really sharp stuff on top the fence.

The harness can be a hand tied harness. I learned to tie these from Freedom of the Hills, the bible of climbing. 

To make a hand harness, first tie a loop about 1.5 meters from the end of the 5 meter rope. The loop should be fit over your thigh, snug but not uncomfortable. About 15 cm up rope, tie another loop. Put both legs in the loops like pants and wrap the ends around your waist and tie them together with a square knot. 

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Next, take a two meter strand of 8 mm cord and make a small loop on the end. Run the cord through both rope between your legs AND the strand around your waist and run the cord through the loop. Make another loop on the end of the rope and attach a carabiner. This is used to clip into chain link or clip to spikes on the iron fence. This will allow you to hang on the harness while you put the carpet on the top and while you climb over. 

Climb a chain link by sticking your toes and fingers in the chain link. Climbing the wrought iron is trickier but easier once you know. Make a prusik with two meters of an 8mm cord following this video. LINK You should have two.  Do this before you get near the fence.

Once you are at the fence wearing a harness, with prusiks in hand, this video shows how. LINK. Substitute a wrought iron bar for the vertical (green) rope. It works. You can climb any pole or bar with two strands of rope. Learn this before you are climbing a border fence. 

Put a chunk of carpet to cover any sharp junk on the top of the fence and climb on over. This is good to know if traveling north into the US or the event that we Americans need to run south.  Crossing the border is a misdemeanor but treason is a felony. Once you are in the US beware that our president is a treasonous Russian puppet. Tenga cuidado. Peace to all on both sides of that damn fence.

Lastly, you can write on your resumé that you climbed the fence using these tools to help get a job at a climbing gym. 

My blog is notorious

Capitol Reef National Park

Apparently, the National Park Service is singling me out.  I have entered infamy.

There is no other explanation. 

A Clutter of Electric Flying Spiders

In May I had shoulder surgery and it’s improving but I am still nowhere near ready to climb rocks so I cheer others that can climb. In this case I am talking about spiders that I have seen flying over the mountains. 

They don't have wings.  

Some spiders fly using static electricity and this is one of the coolest and perhaps useless bits of scientific trivia I have heard in quite some time. The fact that I just learned this last month indicates the bulk of societal priorities are caught in a web of mundanity. Darwin wrote about spiders flying a thousand at sea while on his now famous trip on the Beagle. He was curious enough to wonder even though he knew an answer was forthcoming. Science these days spends too much time trying to develop the next whizbang smartphone widget and not enough research to investigate just how cool this world is. I have seen electric flying spiders, most people have. My most poignant recollection of spiders was last summer up on Mount Juneau Ridge, I stopped to let my dog swim in a pond. Juneau Ridge has kettle ponds tucked into rocks and moss that make it possible for an animal wrapped in fur to run the ridge on a hot summer day and cool down by swimming. As Jane swam I laid down in the grass and noticed a clutter of spiders flying overhead, each suspended by a thread of silk.  I have seen this elsewhere and if you are looking, it's not that uncommon. I figured at the time they were carried by the wind but didn’t know the whole story at the time. I also didn’t know a group of spiders is called a clutter. The stuff I don’t know exceeds I do know by a fair margin. I don’t even know the size of the margin. I am not different than the bulk of humanity in not understanding the depth of what I don't know. My interest in electric flying spiders started when I read a journal article and watched the accompanying video. See https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982218306936

Juneau Ridge, same pond but different day.

Human ignorance is like Shroedinger's cat. The box contains ignorance, not a cat, but we cannot open the box because by definition, we cannot know what we do not know.  There are no metrics to measure ignorance. What we know is that spiders are known to climb to a high point on a mountain, point their abdomens skyward, shoot a few strands of silk upward, and fly away. Wind can help but spiders fly when the air is completely still. Spiders placed in a field of static electricity can move upward and will shoot downward when the direction of field is reversed or removed. They literally grab electricity from the atmosphere and fly thousands of feet up like Mary Poppins with her umbrella. Soon after scientists discovered this, they determined it highly unlikely that humans could use static electricity to fly. Flying spiders weigh less than an ounce. Knowing we can't use this info to further technology causes some to lose interest in HOW they incorporate static electricity to fly.  

That’s what I mean that we are often a mundane species. Not only are we earthbound (planes aren't human) but our research priorities suggest we care more about next year’s smartphone interface than we do about pure natural fascination.   

Spider taking off, (uploaded Cosmos Magazine)

Sir Isaac Newton conducted experiments where he timed the speed of rolling balls on an incline plane. He also timed the speed of rocks he dropped of the walls of Cambridge University. Newton determined that in the absence of air, a feather falls the same speed as a brick. How cool is that? It’s a myth that the Laws of Gravity occurred to Newton from apple hitting his head. Newton could teach us something and not just about physics and calculus. It’s not a myth that Newton reinvented how we see the world without any thought that his discoveries might one day help develop the next whizbang smartphone widgets. I worry that too many people are emotionally stunted because we are taught from youth that education and learning are useless if you can’t use it to make a buck. Too many people make fun of poets and philosophers and too many scientist forget that we are poets and philosophers first and foremost. Intellectual curiosity makes the human race spectacular and sets us apart from spiders. They have their thing and we have ours.

We are intellectually curious  for the same reasons we climb mountains. Neither learning about the strangest quirks of science nor climbing a mountain will bring you any more closer to winning at consumerism.  John F Kennedy said we should go to the moon for the same reason a mountaineer climbs a mountain “Because it’s there” but there is more to it. We climb mountains because we can’t imagine not climbing mountains. When I see a mountain or a rapid, no matter how difficult or 'out of my league' it might be, I ask wonder about potential lines. Intellectual curiosity is like that.  Darwin didn't know how and certainly didn't know why spiders were flying a thousand miles out to sea but he thought about how to answer those questions. You don't become curious for any other reason than it hurts to know we are ignorant and it feels so good to fill the gap. We should, I think, climb to the top of mountains, stretch our abdomens to the sky, and spread silk at least do so figuratively.  I can’t raise my arm above my head but my mind can fly away and it doesn’t need static electricity to do so. I am not sure a clutter of spiders knows where they will land once launch into the sky. Maybe I underestimate their capacity for curiosity. At least they don't watch TV.

I am intellectually curious as to why more people aren't intellectuals. It's a big question for me. I meet mental luggards and wonder if they were that kid in school that asked, "Is this going to be on the exam?" ... " How can I use this to get a job." I always wanted to throttle that kid. I sure as don't want to hire him.

Skiing is about as close to human flight as we get. 
 Douglas Island, Alaska

The Freaking Magnificent Great Unconformity

There is a geologic zone in the Grand Canyon scientists call the Great Unconformity but I have a friend that prefers to call it the Freaking Magnificent Great Unconformity.  I just got back from the Grand Canyon where I rafted from Lee’s Ferry to Phantom Ranch. A story is on its way about the Grand Canyon even though it's not exclusively from the Grand Canyon. I thought about this on the river often.

Redwall Cavern.

1.7 billion years ago, the earth had mostly cooled and the part of the earth we now call northern Arizona was likely under the sea but it isn't known. There strata in the inner gorge is composed of Zoroastrian Granite and Vishnu Shists, igneous rocks from the mantle of the earth. All those rocks with Hindu names haven’t done a damn thing in the last billion years or so except rise and fall with whims plate tectonics. Life wouldn't be around for a long time. When life rolled around at about 600 million years ago, Northern Arizona was under the sea. Sedimentary rocks formed on top of the shists and granites and they have microscopic fossils. As you walk up canyon the fossils get larger and more complex. There are “unconformities” in the layers that are basically places where millions of years are missing. The Great Unconformity is a place where 545 million year old Tapeats Sandstone rests on top of the Chuar group of Pre-Cambrian Rocks dating 825 million to a billion years old. Either no rock formed for about 400 million years or rock formed that was later eroded away. Either way, eons disappeared from the geologic story. There is a side canyon of the Grand called Nautiloid Canyon with fossilized nautiloids like those on my tattoo. Higher up in the canyon there are dinosaur fossils in places. After that evolution tottered. Life hasn't improved. Nothing tops the Velicoraptor, present company included. 

Nautiloid Fossil, Nautiloid Canyon.

Time moved along and the sea floor rose and the Colorado River was born as a meandering tropical river on a vast coastal plain much like the Amazon today. With time, the North American Tectonic Plate rose to 7,000 above sea level. The river stayed put at lower elevation but the land kept rising. The Grand Canyon was cut much like if you placed a knife on top of a cake and lifted the cake with the knife not moving. The river didn't cut down a mile deep but it did cut. The Kaibab Plateau rose and the river stayed put. 

Sometime after the mastodons went extinct and before the humans go extinct, I came along and rowed down the river in a rubber raft. I got back a few weeks ago. How is that act of running a river or my existence important in a grand scheme (pun intended) that includes Nautiloid fossils encased in rock for 300 million years? 

Once you find out you’re meaningless, 

you want to spend as much time under a waterfall as possible.Sydney at Stone Creek Falls

Every night I laid on the ground looking at stars so old and so far away that some of them could have died back when the velociraptors went extinct. The entire time span of the human race is VASTLY shorter than the Great Unconformity. Millions of species rose to existence and went extinct leaving no noticable trace of their existence. For a moment chew on the thought that eons can vanish from the face of the earth and that humanoids have been around for about 2 million years.

Life is short, do this whenever you can. Elevs Chasm.

All trace that humans ever existed could disappear from the planet with vastly more ease than not. What silliness it is for us to jockey for position in traffic to see who gets to work first to kiss the bosses ass? We want to build a wall to keep Mexicans out but lose sight of the fact that Mexicans and Americans share the North American Tectonic Plate for such a short period of time that it would suck to spend our short existence manufacturing differences or generating unnecessary divisions. I think once my shoulder I will learn how to play Mexican guitar. Considering how insignificant we are compared to geology, rowing rafts, climbing rocks, and camping out with friends makes a lot more sense to me than most anything else. 

My life matters a lot but only to me and to others that care about me. The universe is too big and the fossils too old to fret too much about the details.

In the vicinity of the Great Unconformity.

Tomorrow surgeons fix my shoulder but it involves considerable cutting. No climbing for me for a while. Maybe when I can climb again, I will head to one of the side canyons with Zoroastrian granite. Granite is dumb as a rock but in climbing granite that has been there for 1.7 billion years, we can gain wisdom.

I took this photo east of Phoenix near the Superstition Mountains. I drove by the sign, turned around, parked, and took photos of the sign from all angles.

Zoroastrian Granite, Grand Canyon

A hole in my arm as real as the day is long

 “Remember Bill from up on the hill?

A Cadillac put a hole in his arm

But old Bill, he’s up there still

Havin’ a ball rollin’ to the bottom.”

Neil Young, cerca 1975

I have a hole in my arm. It’s real as the day is long. I have not climbed a rock in many months. It’s sort of infuriating, especially since I have nobody to blame. I can’t even blame myself. Can I blame Obama?

Edit to add: Since I wrote the blog post I have been informed by two people. One person said this was the saddest post I have ever made. I didn’t even try for sad but it does get sadder because another person told me that I grossly underestimate the pain I am headed toward. The consensus among people that have gone through rotator cuff surgery is that it's a long and painful recovery 

Here’s the deal. The first week post surgery, exercise will be a two part scheme with equal parts  pain and popping pills. 

The second week will continue the activities of the first week but maybe add walking around gently as to not jostle my shoulder.

The third week I might be able to ride a stationary bike or walk but the pain and pill popping will continue. 

By the sixth week I can take off the sling but still it’s going to be seriously sore. By the time I can go on a regular hike, I will be hiking to the group therapy to deal with my opioid addiction. How’s that for sad? I know I am. I am kidding about the opioid addiction. 

I am serious that if you are on an inverted rock, real or gym, get a spotter. This shit’s not fun.

I get surgery on May 31st to rebuild my rotator cuff. The recovery process can take up to a year but the last few months should be minor, the inconvenience that certain lifting above the head can hurt. My doctor suggested I don’t drywall the ceiling until a year post surgery because lifting heavy things above my head might cause discomfort. I don’t know if climbing is like drywalling a ceiling  Unfortunately, it probably is. June and July of this year are going a suck a big one. There will be drugs and pain and I don’t like either. I will be in a sling for six weeks with little arm movement.  I won’t be able to put my hair in a ponytail and I really don’t want to cut my hair. Yeah, it’s silly.

In December I fell while bouldering indoors and I fell again in January. The first fall, my feet slipped off the wall and I fell about 8 feet onto my left shoulder. In January, when I slipped on ice while running. I had just got my arm out of a sling from the first fall. One minute I was upright and half a second later, I was ass over tea kettle. I landed on the same shoulder in pretty much the same way. It was probably the second fall that really tore me up to the point I won’t heal without getting cut open. Since December I haven't been able to raise my left arm over my head.

Redwall Cavern.

Raising your arm above you head is essential part of rock climbing.  Use a spotter in places like the photo on the left. Had I fallen, I would have landed on my left shoulder and torn my rotator cuff. 

I am trying to focus on the good news and sing a song in a shaky voice that is real as day is long. When my mind heads to a dark place, it helps a lot to look at the light at the end of the tunnel, even if the light is a complete figment of my imagination.

Consider chain type reactions.  They say in a crisis a man turns to what he knows best, murder to murder, thief to theft. I am a biologist so my mind turns to chain reactions, especially the starting point of the reaction. A seemingly meaningless photon of light hits a leaf and ionizes the enzyme chlorophyll, which transfers charge to a carbon dioxide molecule, which allows it to latch onto a water molecule, which sheds an oxygen molecule. The hydrogen in the water molecule forms a carbon hydrogen molecule called a carbohydrate. Once the chlorophyll transfers the energy from the light to the carbon dioxide it returns to its more stable energy state and awaits another photon. The process of photosynthesis occurs again and again until you have a redwood tree or even a redwood forest.  Huge things happen from actions that seem inconsequential.

With a messed up shoulder I can bowl or throw a javelin or lasso a wild horse if I knew how to lasso. I can binge watch TV. Kill me now  rather than initiate the chain reaction that starts with TV and ends with the comatose belief that reality TV is real. Everybody has a friend that says, “This reality show is real and not like the others!  Really.”

Mount Bullard, non technical mountain in Juneau.

jg

I couldn’t do archery if my life depended on it, I can’t wear hand cuffs or raise both hands above my head. The cops would shoot me if I weren’t white. I can’t scratch much of my back unless I use a stick. Just thinking about it makes me itch just beyond my right fingertips. I can’t climb a rock and I can’t row a raft. I call bullshit on John Wesley Powell’s claim that he rowed a row boat down the Colorado River, through the Grand Canyon, with one arm.

I was never good at the javelin.

About two to three months post-surgery, I should be able climb mountains as long as they aren’t technical. Once the bruising heals I should be able to run, provided I don’t step on ice and go ass over tea kettle again. I am thinking about a bike trip to Whitehorse next Labor Day. Who knows? These are my rescue, my lights at the end of the tunnel. Next winter I should be able to ski. It doesn't require this much hair. 

North Side of Mt Ben Stewart, Photo by Brooks Horan.

My guess is that John Wesley Powell hired a Navajo or a Paiute to oar for him and his guide knew the canyon well. Meanwhile JWP claimed to the first to see the Grand Canyon from the river up and he claimed that he oared the Colorado River with one arm. 

Rowboats simply don’t work that way.

I am going to the Colorado River in a raft in May but I am not going to oar. As soon as I get home, surgeons are slicing my shoulder and sewing it back together.  That’s for the best considering there is a hole in my arm.

I am wearing a sling in June and most of July and hopefully go running once the bruising goes down. There are some beautiful ridges to run in Juneau. Maybe if I am lucky, I can get in some mountaineering late summer. I won’t be climbing rocks until 2019. I’d like to make an icefield trip next August if we get some good weather.

Shadow of Split Thumb on north side of Observation Peak.

If you see a short haired guy wandering the Juneau Icefield this summer, yell and wave. I will try to wave back with my good arm.

Triad of love, hate, and fear.

I spent some time recently thinking about love and passion and even death. Two professional climbers recently died in an avalanche while descending north side of the Mendenhall Towers. I didn’t know Ryan Johnson well but well enough to know we shared a deep love for the mountains, particularly the Mendenhall Towers. This story isn’t about Ryan but his death colors my thoughts. Ryan’s death seems to color the thoughts of many conversations in Juneau. It’s a smaller city than most of us realize.

The Main Tower, Mendenhall Towers

Taken last August.

There is a school of thought that claims what humans do, we always do for love. This thinking contends that love and hate are opposite sides of the same coin. This notion of duality of love and hate allows this philosophy to further their argument. All nasty human behavior can be described as love run amok, otherwise known as hate. I don’t agree wholeheartedly but like many ideas, it’s only partially wrong. Time will tell what parts of my own reasoning are flawed but hopefully some of my thinking is useful.

I don’t disagree that love and hate are partners but I think human behavior is not ruled by a duality of love and hate but a triad of love, hate, and fear. Perhaps courage is the other side to fear’s coin. I haven’t thought it through 100%. We do not have to love or hate something for it to fill us with fear. That said, if we love or hate something that makes us afraid, perhaps that passion will stir enough courage to overcome fear.  One can hope. Fear is an boa constrictor swallowing the modern world while we sing Boy Scout songs.

Mount Stroller White, taken from base camp, 

Mendenhall Towers, August 2017

Perhaps climbers like Ryan Johnson and Marc Andre Laclerc pushed the limits too far.  With 20/20 hindsight, it’s easy to say that these two climbers shouldn’t have been on that wall in the winter with a storm coming in...

Now. Looking forward from before they went up, it was clear they were taking a risk but otherwise the outcome was not clear.

We are all forced to look at each new adventure without 20/20 hindsight. This is true whether we are talking about climbing a tower, skiing a slope, or falling in love, or getting our materialistic souls out of debt. Some people die from fear  that drives them to work their asses off to avoid dying poor and others die because they were poor. All good things require enough love to overcome the fear and quite frankly there is a lot of fear out there. 

I am pretty sure this  photo isn't real.

I think the globalization of materialism and media have made most humans scared shitless to move beyond any comfort zone. Most people are full of love. Maybe, probably.  Perhaps each of us harbors hate as well but we certainly harbor fear in spades. Most humans are scared to paralysis to do anything great.  I count myself among. We hear of disaster daily because globalization makes it possible to know of every bear attack, every climbing disaster, every terrorist attack, every school yard shooting, and every fill in the blank evil that ever happens on this blue ball in space.  The disasters are indeed real but the world is distorted like a fun house mirror full of horrors or like we are wearing a virtual reality helmet and the game is to dodge avalanches, charging bears, and sharks all at once.  You will NEVER see a headline that reads, “Billions drove home after work without incident!” We are literally ruled by fear and fearmongers. Literally.  The president of the United States is a reality show host that fears sharks even though he never goes in the water.  I shit you not!

How pathetic is that?

I know people that won’t go in the forest for fear of bear attack even though they know it’s a one in a million risk. They live in Alaska and should know better.  A hundred years ago people didn’t fear most of these things because news didn’t travel that fast. While there is an upside to world news, there is a downside. Social media and television remind us (falsely) that everybody is richer, better looking, and/or more talented than we are. Depression ensues.

I think Ryan Johnson could and probably should have known to wait until summer but it’s not for me to say. Ryan knew his own limits or at least he thought he did. He also knew his passions. I can't say how it was for Ryan but top end climbers can be  influenced by social media. Years ago, people learned about first ascents through climbing journals. It took a month for the climbing world to learn about a significant first ascent and now it takes seconds.  The journals are still around but often people first learn about the next gnarly climb or ski jump by Youtube or some other social media. Climbing accidents happen in real time, the climber's last words piped out by satellite phone.  Like poker, the bets and the risks get bigger with the speed with which each player must up the ante. Top end climbers are sometimes driven to surpass the last achievement at rates quicker than healthy  because their sponsor’s expectations are driven by the speed of social media. Most of the time the sponsors don’t even know the root of their own behavior and neither do the climbers. Is this love, hate, or fear?

Despite the perception, most famous climbers die of old age. As it turns out, Neil Young presented a false dichotomy. You don’t have to choose to burn out or fade away though too many people make just that choice. Some rock climbers become mega millionaire outdoor gear moguls or clothing designers, some sip Scotch with friends and talk about old times, and some like Fred Beckey lived to be ten thousand years old, living like a dirtbag in a car. Fred died last year. He did not fall off a cliff and his death was not televised.  He climbed rocks until he was 93 and died at 94, not ten thousand. Beckey had a lesson for us all. 

Base Camp Mendenhall Towers, August 2017. 
A climbing team including Ryan Johnson that came by our camp to share a beer. 

This was not Ryan's last climb.

I suspect that in the next decade or so many of my generation will die and not by falling off cliffs or being swept away by avalanches but by one of many iterations of Couch Potato’s Disease
(Radix lecti scriptor morbus). 

It’s crazy to fear sharks if you aren’t swimming and I mean seriously crazy, not amusingly crazy.  It’s not crazy at all to fear reality show hosts. They manipulate fun house mirrors and whip up fear. Fear kills and it’s often a slow and painful death. Some of my high school associates and friends are so dead they voted in the last presidential election for a fear mongering reality show host and a con man. They seriously fear  Mexican immigrants and Hillary Clinton's emails.  In high school I liked these folks and I lament their loss already. Most, though not all, of them will be gone for real by the time they reach 70 years old because they eat horrible, rarely exercise, and drink a steady diet of anxiety and rage.  I hope that my death is forty years from now and not on TV. Until then, I plan to continue climbing, try to stay safe, and stay the hell away from reality TV. I may play some guitar. 
Once you're gone, 
you can never come back,
when you're out of the blue and into the black.