The Joy of Tenting Alone

I was four years old when I first slept in a tent. My dad dragged his old, bright-green two-man out of our basement, carefully unfolded it and spent about thirty minutes pushing enormous plastic stakes into the ground to hold it up. I doubt I helped beyond maybe holding a stake or two, but that night my father curled up next to me and read me a library book for a bedtime story. We were less than ten feet from my deck.

A few casual cows wandering next to a Colorado campsite
—note yellow tent (sadly not mine) in background.

I have since slept in various tents over the years. I struggled for hours to set up the yard-sale four-man, complete with mesh roof for stargazing, next to our house with my younger sister; I camped with my girl scout troop in Maine; and I discovered the joys of the ultra-light, two-man tent on my first overnight backpacking trip with my father. Last fall I tented or car camped nearly every weekend until November, dragging the ultra-light with me on all my climbing adventures. But I always shared my tent.

As a child, I would have been much too afraid of bears and other wild creatures to sleep outside alone, and by the time I was old enough to camp on my own without extreme fear I was always sharing my tent with friends or my dad on outdoor trips.

This week was different. I slept in the ultra-light, two-man tent at a campground somewhere roughly thirty minutes outside of Basalt, Colorado; and I slept in it alone.

Many things were the same; I put my crash pad down as a sleeping pad and left my smelly sneakers outside. However, I learned that it takes longer to set up one’s tent alone, though the process was still over in less than 15 minutes. I could now spread out my stuff as much as I wanted without worrying about someone else’s foot-room, and I could sleep diagonally on my crash pad without hitting anyone. I have never slept so well while camping; it was wonderful. 

If you are wondering, no I did not fear any creatures, though I did dispose of several spiders and red ants that tried to share my tent. At 4 a.m. on the second morning some type of animal decided to make a ruckus—I’m still not sure if it was a wild chicken, a coyote, a goose in distress or some other creature, as I didn’t see it and have heard all of those hypotheses from those camping around me—I was too sleepy to be afraid and tucked my pillow into my sleeping bag to shut out the noise. No, I was not alone in the wilderness; about thirty people from Rock and Ice’s photo camp were sleeping in tents and vans within a quarter-mile radius, but I did enjoy having my little tent all to myself.

High Infatuation by Steph Davis: A Book Review

I just finished reading Steph Davis’s first book High Infatuation while recovering from two days of climbing and an accidental hour-long run.

First, I should mention that, for me, Steph Davis is incredibly inspiring. I first learned of her climbing, skydiving, BASE jumping, etc. adventures last fall, while writing a test article for an internship at Climbing Magazine. I was assigned to write about Clif Bar dropping five of their sponsored athletes for participating in high-risk activities. Steph was one of those athletes, the only female. I was a bit biased into liking her when she used the questions I sent her for my article in a blog post that served as her first public response to the issue—granted her blog is based off of questions people write to her, but it still caught my attention. Since then, I have been increasingly inspired the more I learn about her first female ascents, mentality when jumping and overall lifestyle choices. She also has a fantastic recipe for granola on her website; I recommend it highly.

I found High Infatuation on one of the shelves above my desk at Rock and Ice, and decided to borrow it to learn more about Steph’s early years and have a little climbing psych before bed each night. The cover told me that I would be reading a “climber’s guide to love and gravity.”

High Infatuation, first published in 2005, is a collection of short stories and essays beginning with how Steph first found climbing and ending with her free-climbing the Salathe Wall in Yosemite. In between are tales of Patagonia, Kirgizstan, Baffin Island, Pakistan and more free climbing in Yosemite. She tells of impressive first accents, first female ascents, the challenges of free climbing in Yosemite without reliable partners and the terrible weather of Patagonia.

I really appreciated Steph’s honestly throughout the book. She writes about times when she was terrified, exhausted, smelly, wanted to bail and failed along with all of the times she succeeded—which are a lot and on very difficult ascents. She tells of discovering that, after weeks of wearing the same base layer in Patagonia, the crotch had rotted through, not exactly glamorous. She isn’t afraid to admit when her passions might have gone too far, for example, when she selfishly pushed one climbing partner beyond what she believes was reasonable in her quest to summit Fits Roy—though everything worked out in the end, so I’m sure Philip wasn’t unhappy with the outcome. She also admits to forgetting people’s names and sometimes making them up.

However, I did have a little difficulty getting into her writing voice, though reading one or two essays at a time might have caused this. I also struggled to follow the timeline. I knew that time kept marching forward, but I lost a sense of how old she was after the first third of the book, or how much time had passed between her different adventures. The book also switches from being in past tense to present, which I found a little challenging; since, I kept mentally trying to put all the present verbs back into past tense—though that might just be me.

Now, if you’re looking for a book about how Steph Davis fell in love with Dean Potter—one might think that is the theme from the many pictures of him in the book and “love” being mentioned in the title—you will be disappointed. I wasn’t looking for a mushy romance of two lovesick climbers who were driven together by their passions for rock climbing, but I was a little surprised about how little of the book was about their relationship. When Dean is mentioned, he is only playing a small back-seat roll in a bigger Steph project, is away doing his own projects, or, more likely, he and Steph are at odds, stewing in a snow cave before they break up, again. However, if you wanted Dean to stay out of the picture or are disenchanted by romance, you’ll be quite satisfied with Steph’s account of their relationship.

Overall, I think High Infatuation was a way for Steph to collect the various essays she had written over the years and put them in one place, a way for her to sum up her climbing experiences thus far and their impact on her life. She is an incredibly smart woman, graduating with a Masters degree in English literature, but I don’t think this book shows her full writing potential. It reads like sampling of her journal entries that, while well written, feel like they are missing some connecting words between them. Though, in Steph’s defense, it sounds like she was quite busy with climbing adventures during the time she was writing it—and every other time in her life since she began the sport—so a perfect account of her travels shouldn’t be expected.  I think I now understand that her finding love wasn’t about marrying Dean Potter, though his picture is on the first page of the chapter “Love Dogs,” instead it was about her finding her love of climbing and how that love has evolved.

I would recommend High Infatuation to those who are already familiar with Steph’s climbing history and interested in learning more about her thought process during her early sends. However, I wouldn’t recommend that someone unfamiliar with her life read it as his or her first introduction to her life and writing.

An Ending Note: As a heads-up, due to some sort of publishing error, the first essay of chapter 6 is cut off after the first page, which is too bad since I really enjoyed the first part of it.

Hat Beta: A Flowchart Guide to Belayer Headwear

A Guide to Free Stuff at the GoPro Mountain Games

I spent last weekend “working” at the GoPro Mountain Games in Vail. It was inspiring, exhausting and quite lucrative for gathering free stuff.

Free hat swag courtesy of GoPro.

Vail is a strange town with random signs saying “like nowhere on earth.” It’s more like a European-themed amusement park with chair lifts and a ski mountain for rides and tons of Swiss-chalet-style Patagonia outlets. However, with river rapids in the center of town, an abundance of eateries and sports stores, and several hotels on every block, it was the perfect place to host the GoPro Mountain Games.

The games host a variety of events for athletes of all ages, skill levels and species. There are competitions for slacklining, kayaking, rafting, running through the mud, biking, doggie long jump (yes, it’s where you see how far off a platform your dog can jump after a toy before hitting the pool water), and the IFSC bouldering World Cup, among other events. It is also a paradise of vendors supplying crowds with free giveaways.

To do the Mountain Games right, you should make sure to maximize your accumulation of random free items. Entry to watch the competitions is free, so you have the potential to “make money” off the event if you do things right.

Here is a guide to help you plan for next year:

A few of the bars I collected.

First, make sure you get both a media pass and a VIP pass. The media pass gets you random funky neon USB connectors and smartphone car chargers stashed inside a canvas shoulder bag resembling 1970s safari pants. It also gets you a bracelet, which in turn gets you into a lounge serving free food, happy hour drinks, and “Strong” Kind bars. If you need to take a break from scrounging from free stuff, the pass also allows you to speak with whichever athletes venture into the lounge and gets you into the media section of events for a closer view of competitions for pictures and funzies. The VIP pass gets you into another lounge with even more free food for breakfast, lunch, and afternoon snacks and a great goodie bag with a free Columbia soft shell, a t-shirt, a knife, the latest issue of Rock and Ice, socks, a hat, and some other random items.

Now, attend the games with an organization that allows you to get a free hotel room. I can only speak for the Antlers at Vail, but our room did come with two pull-out couches (though no bed), a balcony complete with grill, a full kitchen, a knife set as a wall decoration, and a fake fireplace. It was also a 20-minute stroll from the games and had a pool and hot tubs.  Not too bad for five people.

And then there are the hundreds of vendors. You can tap an iPad mini screen for a free Buff with your spirit animal on it, hit up free power yoga at 8:30 a.m., drink shot-sized amounts of Starbucks coffee beverages and various sports supplements, eat Honey Stinger Waffles in bite-sized pieces, sample gummies two at a time, gather hundreds of stickers, find a hat or two, and collect enough Kind Bars and dog treats to have you and your furry friend fueled up for a month after the games. Some vendors even hand out little drawstring track bags with their logos on them, which are quite handy for carting around free samples that don’t have to be consumed right away. However, I’d recommend bringing your 70-liter overnight hiking backpack to fill with as much stuff as possible; you don’t want to risk dropping anything because you were walking around with your arms full.

Some general free stuff gathering tips:

• 

  And if you need a break from free stuff scrounging,
  there are some rad athletes to watch too.

  Take as much from each vender as you can without being noticed. If they turn away, then grab another sticker, if not, just take as much as everyone else and come back in an hour or two for a second or third or fifth go-round.
• Fill out every raffle card you find, because, who knows, you might win another Osprey backpack—to be filled with extra free stuff—or a Goal Zero solar panel to power your phone on camping trips.
• Bring multiple jackets. If you do accidentally do something memorable in front of a vendor, simply change jackets so you’ll be harder to recognize. Bring sunglasses and a hat for a more compete disguise.
• Grab extra stuff on Sunday. It’s the final day of the games, and the last thing overtired vendors want to do is pack up leftover products at the end of the day. They’re happy to get rid of everything, so try your luck and ask about the availability of display items. You might get a “no,” but it’s worth the shot at additional free gear. They might also direct you to additional free items you’d have otherwise missed.   

First Impressions of Colorado

After more car repairs than I thought could be possible after owning a car for less than two weeks, I finally arrived in Carbondale, Colorado, on Memorial Day.

The last four hours of driving, from Denver to Carbondale, were the most beautiful I have seen to date. Denver itself didn’t impress me. Granted, I didn’t exactly take in all the downtown sights, but it seemed like another large, flat, sprawling city that just happened to have the Rocky Mountains visible in the distance. I prefer to be in the mountains than straining to see them through the smog.

Loveland Pass

However, once you drive up and out of the city and your engine begins to complain about highway speeds up large mountains, it’s hard to look at the road. Instead of the tunnel on Interstate 70, I took Loveland Pass, which brought me up a winding road to over 11,000 feet. I don’t usually utilize scenic pullovers, but I definitely hopped out of the Subaru to take some pictures of the surrounding peaks and Memorial Day skiers. If I had alpine skis, I could have started down the slope in front of my car and walked back up the road from a pull-off lower on the mountain.

As awesome as it is being at 11,000 feet (my highest non-airplane elevation point to date), Glenwood Canyon, a 12.5-mile-long canyon carved out by the Colorado River, was my favorite part of the drive. It has the highest concentration of cliffs I’ve ever met. There are sections where the cliffs rise to over 1,000 feet. I tried to take some pictures while driving; the quality ended up being quite poor, as I couldn’t look through the viewfinder.

The view of Mt. Sopris from the bike trail through town.

Carbondale sits under Mount Sopris, the town’s nearly 13,000-foot claim to fame (besides being the home of the Chris Kalous of the Enormocast, Bonfire Coffee, and Rock and Ice and Trail Runner Magazines). The town itself is flat, allowing elementary school children to bike to school instead of taking the bus. However, on all four sides are mountains with trails for running and mountain biking. There are also more than a handful of local crags that have been recently developed or are in the works, allowing locals to skip out on the Rifle crowds on the weekends and project right after work on the weekdays.

As far as being at altitude goes, a little over 6,000 feet in Carbondale, I haven’t had a difficult time adjusting. I might have felt it a little on my first jog around town, but it’s more likely that I was feeling having been in the car for 34 hours and not having run in a little while. I didn’t get overly tired or have a terrible headache, which was quite nice since I had to start work at 9 a.m. the day after I arrived.

However, I have noticed the drier air here. I’m hardly ever cold. It was 30 degrees when I took pictures in the pass, and I wasn’t cold while only wearing a light fleece and sweatpants. In New Hampshire I would have been wearing my down jacket and a hat. I do, however, have to use lotion a bit more frequently and my nose is a bit dry when I wake up, but I’d rather have to hydrate a little more to have 30 degrees feel like 50.