It was late for winter campsite hours, past 9pm, on Sunday night. Luis, Peter and I were walking the Hidden Valley campground loop trying to find our friends who had taken off to visit a campfire to which we’d all been invited. The directions at the time had been, “We’re at the really big bonfire”. Â Problem was that there didn’t seem to be any “really big” bonfires left. Luis and Peter had taken awhile to get back from their errand so we had started off late, we figured the “really big” part might have burned down to “moderate sized”.
Still, we walked along, looking at the stars and checking out campfires. We got to one that two guys were near, their backs partly facing towards us. “Dave and Eric?,” we asked, pretty sure it wasn’t them but feeling like we had to say something since we had obviously been walking towards them.
“Yeah?” One of the guys said, “We’re Dave and Eric.”
“Wha?” Peter said.
I took a step closer to get a better look at their faces, I really didn’t think I was wrong. Â The other guy who hadn’t spoken yet said, “Hey we know you, from Thin Wall.”
The first one added, “And we watched you climb Sexy Grandma today!”
I finally got a good look at the guys, It WAS Dave and Eric — just not the Dave and Eric we were looking for.
We all had a good laugh about this, and I thought it was a great example of just how social this particular climbing trip had been.
I love climbers. In the span of 4 days, Â between the comings and goings, Â I ended up meeting 14 people for the first time, some of whom I shortly there after put my life into their hands and vice versa. And that’s not counting some folks we met at the ranger sponsored “Climber’s Coffee” on Saturday morning or the party of three who we saw on Sail Away.
When taking off for this trip all I knew was that Peter and myself were going with 100% certainty (my boyfriend couldn’t make it because he had to work). I also knew that some climbers who did not lead trad were coming up one of the days and that on Monday Peter wanted to climb with a woman he had met previously. My only expectations were then centered on me following routes, putting up some sport/ top rope climbs and maybe doing repeats of trad leads I had done but Peter hadn’t. I also expected it to be very cold, day and night, for the entire trip.
My weather expectations were a little off, it was cold at night and in the shade but on Saturday it was so warm that the guys took off their shirts and Nicole and I went down to tank top / short sleeves layers.
My climbing expectations were also exceeded. With the addition of Eric to the mix I got to follow a 10c friction climb that I would not normally have done (leading a run out J Tree 10c slab climb just doesn’t appeal to me at this point in my climbing life). I also got to try a 10a friction climb that Dave (from California, not from Arizona) put up and then I got to follow Luis (who I had just met that day) on a 5.7 trad climb which turned out to be much trickier than you’d think… and also turned into a 2 pitch climb in which I led some unknown crack climb to the summit as an onsight.
This was in addition to some of the more expected climbs, for example, Peter got to lead Sail Away for the first time (I’ve led it in the past so opted to second it so we could more quickly get out of shade that day). Â That same day I did however, Â get to lead a 5.8 crack climb on Thin Wall (which is when we’d met Dave and Eric from Tucson).
The people were as diverse as the climbs. Dave (the California one) is an architect and an avid mountaineer, he is in training for Mt. Ranier and has been up Mt. Shasta and I’m sure a number of other peaks. Eric was currently on his 8th month of being a climbing bum and had started his trip climbing in Croatia. He also had a neat camera gadget which he used to make some cool climbing videos. Eric from Tucson, did his first 10a trad lead on No Calculator’s Allowed but unfortunately hurt his finger pretty badly the next day, which went along with his partner Dave twisting his ankle. Peter P. (who we met at Echo Cove) is originally from Munich and had a dry sense of humor, his friend Brian from New Jersey is a newlywed and seemed happy to be out enjoying West Coast weather. Risa and her friend James are in the Military. James is an airplane “operator”, he flies unmanned aircraft and told us that therefore they don’t call themselves pilots. Luis came to the US from Spain three years ago and is a math teacher in the LA Unified school district. I liked him immediately when, after doing a section on the 5.7 trad climb which we had all eyeballed from the bottom as being the “easy part”, he said, “That part is a little bit scary”, in his Spanish accent.
To me anyone who is willing to admit they are scared in front of some girl they don’t know is alright by me. I’d rather know what I was getting into then have some guy hiding it because of bravado.
As far as the “usual suspects”, Peter can’t hear from one ear, lives on his boat and is the oldest of our bunch but is in crazy great shape, Matt is, well “Matt”, if you meet him you’ll know what I mean (he and Eric really hit it off well). Michael is a very “zen” climber who is into martial arts and also does movie effects related work. Nicole and Casey are great climbers and a lot of fun, they just aren’t keen on trad so much (yet), Â and me well, I’m just a generally laid back climber who is also a bit of a geek and photographer.
Next time you’re out at Josh perhaps faced with limited options due to weather or partners, look around. Try going around yelling, “rockgrrl!” or Dave, Eric, or Peter and maybe you’ll get a holler back.
