I have been feeling recently that words and stills couldn’t quite adequately describe the experience of doing a triathlon, so for the Luna Bar Triathlon this past weekend, I decided to make a video! This was my longest triathlon yet: 0.5mi swim, 20mi cycle, 4mi run. I finished in 2:03:51, for 4th place in my age group (out of 16) and 55th overall (out of 298). This was only my 3rd tri, so I’m still kind of a newbie when it comes to training, and I always learn something. This time I learned that I needed to actually go on 20mi bike rides to train (rather than 13mi bike rides)…
Being a climber in NorCal in the summer is much better than being in SoCal, and this is because we have easier access to alpine climbing in the Sierra. The long days mean lots of daylight in which to climb and it’s great to get out in the cooler, high-elevation air of the Sierra during the hot Californian summer. Climbing in Tuolumne is awesome because you can get out and climb “alpine” routes without the commitment of having to backpack in.
Happy turtles!
Among the many awesome multipitch routes in the Meadows, I think three stand out as the most classic moderate, yet easily accessible alpine climbs in Tuolumne: the Northwest Buttress of Tenaya Peak, the Southeast Buttress of Cathedral Peak, and the Matthes Crest. We’ve both already done the first two (I climbed Tenaya with my friend Lauren, Luke soloed it; we simuled Cathedral together), but hadn’t gotten around to doing the Matthes Crest yet. After not climbing for 4 weeks straight, I thought that a long, fun, moderate day would be perfect for my first weekend of climbing after my South Africa trip.
Although we had originally planned on doing the Crest on Saturday, we got into Crane Flat late on Friday night, so we decided to push the Crest til Sunday (hoping it might be less crowded then, too). This allowed us to sleep in a little on Saturday morning before driving out to the Meadows, where we climbed Zee Tree on Pywiak Dome, South Crack on Stately Pleasure Dome, and a few single pitch routes to finish out the day at Low Profile Dome. I was pretty tired by the end of all of this, since I had made the questionable (but necessary) decision to run on Thursday and Friday to whip my butt back into triathlon shape (this also after not running for ~4 weeks straight).
On top of Pywiak Dome after climbing Zee Tree.
We headed to the always excellent Whoa Nellie Deli at the Mobil Station for delicious dinner, where we met up with a bunch of other climbers. We bivied for the night and got up at 6am the next morning to head back into the Meadows to start our Matthes Crest day.
We started hiking from the Cathedral Lakes trailhead at about 7:30am and made good time along the climbers’ trail to the Matthes/Cathedral split. This had us in good spirits, since we had forgotten to print the topo for the approach (we only had the written directions), we mistakenly thought this meant we were halfway (we were not). We reached Budd Lake and, after some brief discussions about interpretation of the written directions, set off again. Luke started to head uphill towards a saddle between some peaks, but I convinced him that we should stay lower and hike around the peaks (turns out, both ways work, but my way was the one intended by the SuperTopo directions).
Luke thinks about diving into Budd Lake on the approach in to Matthes Crest.
We had begun to be worried that we weren’t in the right place when we rounded a corner and saw the Crest! Then we saw that we still had a ways to walk before the start of the route (at the south end of the Crest). We kept chugging, and eventually made it to the base of the route at 10:15am or so, having taken a little less than 3 hours to do the approach. Not bad for thinking we might be lost for a good half of the hike.
We had tentatively planned on soloing much of the route, but looking up at the crazy features of the first “5.3″ pitch, I decided that I would be much more comfortable simuling. Just being tied in to the rope and having the option to place protection makes all the difference in the world for me. I lead us up the first vertical section, then stopped to retrieve the gear from Luke and shorten the rope. If you only have 20-30m of rope out (vs. 60-70m), you have way less rope drag and much easier communication with your partner, although you do have to be more careful about placing protection often enough that you don’t end up simul-soloing with a rope.
Lizzy about to do a cruxy 5.2 stem section.
Still having fun!
With our 7 cam rack, we had to stop fairly often to exchange gear, but we were also able to move quite fast, passing both roped parties in front of us well before the South Summit. In the interest of time, we decided not to tag the South Summit. I also made Luke lead the 5.7 pitch up to the North Summit (it looked a little intimidating for simuling). At this point, the 2 parties behind us had apparently decided they’d had enough and had both rapped off before the South Summit, so we basically had the whole ridge to ourselves.
After the North Summit, the climbing became more technical, with a number of 5.8 or 5.9 downclimbing sections and some tricky route-finding to get around vertical drops along the ridgecrest. There was also a crazy section of traversing along a wild knobby slab that was overhanging on the other side. This has just barely enough protection to simul – some pro at the beginning, a new-looking piton somewhere in the middle, and a green Camalot (I think) at the end.
North Summit of the Matthes Crest!
Crazy knobby slab section.
All the downclimbing meant we were moving slower than on the first half of the ridge, and as we neared the final 2 gendarmes on the ridge, we both had the same thought: traverse below the two small towers rather than going to the trouble to climb up and down each one. As the difficulty eased, the silliness increased, such as this incident of me forgetting to grab the red Camalot from Luke at our previous gear transfer:
When we finally made our way down to the ledge system we’d sighted, we found several sets of footprints, indicating that we weren’t the only ones to do this. We unroped and thankfully switched our climbing shoes for our approach shoes (this day involved a lot of time on our feet) and traversed our ledge system, which led us back up to the final bit of ridge crest, after the last 2 gendarmes. We decided to head for the saddle next to the Echo Peaks, which we were pretty sure would be a nice shortcut to get back over to Budd Lake. This was actually the saddle Luke had started heading for earlier in the morning, but as we went down the other side, we were glad we’d approached the other way – probably more distance, but a lot less elevation to gain on the way in, which was nice.
This is approximately how our feet felt at this point.
Back down at Budd Lake, we were psyched to be back on relatively flat, well-traveled trail again and set about marching our aching feet and sore legs back down to the car, which we reached at around 6:40pm, giving us an overall car-to-car time of just over 11 hours. While not super fast, I was still pretty proud of this, considering my legs were already tired from running at the end of the week, we were at elevation, and we probably covered ~10 miles (including the technical ridge traversing part) over the day.
Done with the technical part of the day!
After refueling with some nuun and snacks, we got in the car and started the drive back home, making it to our well-deserved burritos and chips and guac at the Chipotle in Manteca just 15 minutes before closing.
It was a long (especially with the 5-hour drive back home) but really good day. I’m really glad we finally did the Matthes Crest, and there’s something pretty cool about being in constant motion for so long (which is what happens when you simul the whole thing…). Although we had planned on soloing more of the easier first half of the ridge, I was happy about my decision to simul it. I think I would probably have been slower if I had been soloing, and the fact that we were simuling made the experience a lot more enjoyable and less stressful for me. There were definitely a couple of downclimbing sections on the 2nd half that I would have been extremely uncomfortable soloing, and I’m not sure I’ll ever want to solo the Crest. I’m also not sure I’d do the 2nd half of the ridge again, especially with a less-experienced partner, although I’m glad we got to experience it anyways.
Compare this with the next photo...
We didn't even notice we were matching this day: blue shirts, orange backpacks, tan pants...
Alright, people. If you have been waiting for the details of my trip, for answers to the really important questions like How long was the plane flight? or Were there elephants? or How many ticks did you remove from your pants? then THIS IS YOUR POST! There will also be more photos and minimal geologizing if you were bored to tears by my previous South Africa post.
My trip to South Africa was just over 3 weeks long. We left on a Wednesday morning and returned around noon on a Friday 3 weeks later. The travel to get there is looooooong. We first had a ~5 hour flight to Atlanta, followed by a 3 hour layover in Atlanta, then a ~15 hour nonstop flight to Johannesburg. In case you hadn’t been keeping track, this is 23 hours of travel from initial takeoff to final landing, which in reality ended up being >24 hours since we were delayed leaving Atlanta. Then we get our baggage, exchange some money (South African currency is the Rand, and $1~=R7.50), pick up the rental car, and set off on a 4 hour drive to our guest house in Barberton, South Africa. I left my apartment at 6am on Wednesday morning and arrived at the guest house around 11pm on Thursday night, for a grand total of 32 hours of travel door-to-door (Johannesburg is 9 hours ahead of Pacific Time).
Barberton Mountains scenery: rolling grassy hills
It didn’t take long for us to settle into a daily routine, which went something like this:
6:30am: wake up, get dressed, head to common room to call Luke on pay phone (I got about 10-15 minutes of talking per day with my phone card); 6:45am in SA = 9:45pm the night before in SF
7:00am: breakfast – granola and papaya; scrambled or fried egg; tea
7:45am: finish getting ready for the day – double check backpack, make lunch (PB&J and juice box), get in car
8:00am: set off to do geology
5:00pm: usually back at car by this time or earlier to drive back to guest house
6:00pm: back at guest house – shower, read books (I read 5 books on this trip), chillax
7:00pm: dinner (they cook for us, what a luxury!)
8:30pm: brush teeth, write Luke a letter, read more
9:30pm: bedtime. 9 hours of sleep!
Repeat for several weeks and you have my whole trip!
My room at the guest house. Home away from home.
But I suppose you may be interested in some more exciting details about my trip. In particular, I’ll share a few more things about what it was like to be in South Africa. Because I like to be organized, this will be organized into a couple categories: landscape, wildlife, and people.
Landscape
Before this trip, my main mental image of southern parts of Africa was savanna – fairly flat, grassy land with lots of wild life. This is probably influenced by the fact that this is what I saw on my only other visit to Africa, on Safari with my family. If you’re a climber, your vision of South Africa might be Rocklands. Well, as far as the Barberton Mountains are concerned, we’re both wrong. The “mountains” are a large area of big, fairly rounded hills, largely covered with long grass. There aren’t really any climbing opportunities here (really old rocks don’t really make for good climbing usually, but I promised not to talk about too much geology in this post).
Cool corkscrew-ended grass thingy.
The weird thing is that a lot of the mountain land (except for Songimvelo Nature Reserve) is owned by commercial forestry companies, which use it to grow trees. This is pretty weird for me, as someone who’s also grown up in a place where forestry is a pretty big industry (Washington), because the trees are only there because they were planted there by the foresters. The land is almost all grassland, naturally, so even though a tree-covered slope looks pretty to a Pacific Northwesterner like myself, it really doesn’t belong there. It’s also pretty strange to drive alongside the forest because if you look closely, you can actually tell that the trees are planted at regular intervals in rows. All this aside, however, the forestry companies are actually very friendly with us geologists and often their roads are what make access to a lot of our outcrops possible.
The last thing that is unusual about this area, landscape-wise, is the attitude towards fires. In the US, any fire is a big deal, and people are always rushing to put it out. Here, if some grassy hill is on fire, they just let it burn (unless it gets big and is threatening some commercial forest – it takes 20-25 years for the trees to grow to “harvestable” size). This is both a good and bad thing. Good: the grass is often quite tall and dense, so a burned slope is much easier to walk on and better to work on because often short outcrops are hard to find in tall grass. Bad: the smoke tends to get caught in valleys, so the air often had a “smoggy” appearance (like living in LA.)
Wildlife
Although we didn’t see a lot of big wildlife on the trip, we did see some. Mostly I saw baboons and vervet monkeys. The monkeys especially liked to hang out by the train tracks because trains carrying sugar cane tend to drop a fair amount of sugar cane on the ground as the go by.
Baboons. image from Wikipedia
Vervet monkeys. Image from Wikipedia.
We also saw a number of deer-like animals called Mountain Red Bucks. When we were working inside Songimvelo Nature Reserve, we saw a little family of 4 zebras. There were also a number of domesticated animals (we probably saw more of these than wild animals, if you don’t count monkeys) like cows, goats, chickens, and dogs.
Thankfully, we only encountered one snake (and it was only a garter snake). I also saw a number of lizards, including a couple gorgeous blue-tailed skinks. There were A LOT of grasshoppers in the grass, including one really gigantic kind (probably 2-3 inches long) that had red “wings” and only flew away when you were about to step on them (meaning they launch very loudly, right in your face, which is totally startling and terrifying when you’re already on edge about all the poisonous snakes that could be out there).
And finally, there were ticks. LOTS OF TICKS. We put on bug spray every day, but somehow the ticks still decided to hop onto my pants. Luckily, ticks move slow and my pants were light-colored, so I was able to remove them all. I also encountered several sizes of tick, including lots of Really Small Ticks, a good number of Just Plain Small Ticks, and at least one Fairly Large Tick-Like Bug That I Removed From My Pants Quickly Instead Of Waiting To See If It Was A Tick.
People
South Africa has a pretty complicated history. You could check out this Wikipedia article to learn a little more, but suffice it to say that it’s a country with a history of racial tension. While a lot of this tension still exists, I was lucky enough to spend my whole trip in the small town of Barberton and the surrounding mountains, where things seemed to be a lot less tense than in cities (like Johannesburg).
More scenery!
Everyone I met was friendly and helpful, and I never felt like I was in any sort of danger, although I also didn’t go out running along the road by myself (well, I didn’t run at all, but I think I would have if there had been a group).
At the same time, there was often a pretty stark divide between the “haves” and the “have-nots”. We visited the home of an Afrikaner family and, apart from the accent and the right-hand-drive cars, it was pretty similar to an American home. On the other hand, there were several local villages we would drive by where the people lived in falling-apart shacks (think tin roofs with rocks along the edges to keep them on the house), with no access to power, even though big powerlines are right next to the village.
But this is just my very brief and extremely limited outsider’s perspective. On a whole, the people were actually a very positive part of my experience on my trip. It was a little startling when I got on the plane to Atlanta with several large mission groups whose accents indicated they were from somewhere in the southern US. Although many of them were nice enough, one particular woman was extremely rude and pushy towards a flight attendant and an older South African gentleman while they were trying to put some luggage in the overhead bins (always a point of stress). I know travel gets on people’s nerves, but I think a lot of Americans could learn a lot about interacting with other human beings… Even as the southern “lady” was hurling insult after insult at him, the South African man just shrugged it off and was calm and polite with the flight attendant.
This was my grandmother's ring. I think she'd be happy that it came back to Africa with me, even though we didn't see any giraffes (her favorite).
So there you have it. Three weeks of new experiences, geology, some wildlife, lots of ticks, and even more grassy hillsides. Apart from the fact that geology is basically the best branch of science out there, it has this additional perk of needing to spend plenty of time outside on the outcrop, often in cool, exotic locations, just to do your job. It’s pretty fantastic. If you have any other burning questions about my trip, ask away in the comments!
Stay tuned for the part 3 of my South Africa posts, where I’ll talk about what gear really made my trip (when you use something for 3 weeks straight, you really find out what the good stuff really is).
I’ve decided to break my South Africa trip into three parts, to avoid having a really long, wandering blog. This first part will be a relatively non-technical (hopefully) explanation of the geology I went to South Africa to study and why it’s interesting. The next part I’ll write about the details of my trip with a bunch of photos. The last part I’ll write about what gear I relied on for my 3 solid weeks of bushwhacking, hammering, and carrying heavy loads of rocks.
Trusty geology notebook in South Africa
We traveled to the mountains above the town of Barberton, South Africa to study some of the oldest, relatively well-preserved rocks exposed on the Earth’s surface. To give you an idea of the scale of how old these rocks are, here is a brief history of Earth, with all times in units of millions of years ago (Ma):
4540Ma The Earth is formed.
3800Ma Thought to be the end of “Late Heavy Bombardment”, a period when the planet was constantly being bombarded by fairly large meteors
3400Ma Approximate age of the oldest sedimentary rocks in the Barberton Mountains, South Africa
2500Ma Approximate time when most of the Earth’s continental crust (thick crust, as opposed to thin “oceanic crust”) had formed, and when many think the world became oxygenated (previously there was practically no oxygen in the atmosphere or ocean)
635Ma Age of the oldest Ediacaran fossils, the first preserved examples of macroscopic life forms
542Ma Beginning of the Cambrian explosion, when macroscopic life forms go crazy
65.5Ma Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction, when the dinosaurs went extinct
0.000001Ma Last year (2009)
Ok, now that you’ve comprehended how incredibly long timescales we’re dealing with, I’ll move on.
I think sedimentology (the study of sedimentary rocks) is fascinating because sedimentary rocks provide a record of what the Earth’s surface was like. Clastic sediments (like sandstone) tell you about the energy of the particular environment – stronger currents can move larger grains and result in coarser sediment; “current structures” like ripples and dunes are often preserved in rock form and can tell you a lot about the environment they came from. Chemical sediments, like limestone, often preserve a signal of atmospheric and seawater chemistry from when they were formed, which in turn can be used to determine the “paleotemperature” and other interesting variables of the ancient Earth’s surface. Furthermore, if one is interesting in the geologic history of biology (e.g. fossils), their record is only preserved in sedimentary rocks.
The rocks I looked at are part of the Mendon Formation, a set of komatiites and black cherts that are about 3.3 billion years old. Komatiites are a type of volcanic rock with an unusual chemical composition, generally only found in rocks of Archean age (3.8 – 2.5 billion years ago). Chert is a type of sedimentary rock composed mostly of microcrystalline silica (it has the same chemical formula as the more familiar quartz, but is much finer grained). In younger (i.e. not Archean) rocks, chert occurs as small “nodules”. Archean cherts are unusual in that they occur in very thick sections (often >50m of just chert), which may partially reflect that the Archean ocean had much more silica than the modern ocean.
Part of what makes these cherts appear black is dark, carbon-rich material that many have suggested is associated with microbial life. One of the principle goals of my research will be to address whether all this carbon is indeed biological in origin. There are a number of chemical techniques that I can use: making sure the dark material is actually carbon and not just some iron-rich stuff; seeing if it has a “biological” isotopic signature, along with physical analysis (what environment is the material deposited in).
Still life with lichen.
It is becoming more accepted that life probably did exist by 3.3 billion years ago (although there still isn’t a whole lot of incontrovertible “proof”), but a subject of major debate concerns what kinds of microbes existed. The early ocean was probably a fairly extreme environment by modern standards – hot (~40 degrees C); enriched in silica and a variety of other elements; and notably lacking in oxygen. Hence the biological community might have looked pretty different from what we know today.
I think a lot of these questions are extremely interesting because in many ways they are very key to understanding the early evolution of life as well as the evolution of the environment of Earth’s surface (some people think that oxygen produced by cyanobacteria is associated with the oxygenation of the Earth at ~2.5 billion years ago).
Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately, because there’s still so much opportunity to do meaningful and important science), these questions are particularly challenging to study, simply because the rocks that preserve evidence of what was going on 3.3 billion years ago are just SO old. Even though these rocks are remarkably unmetamorphosed for their age (heated to less than 300 degrees C), much of the original evidence has still been destroyed. Chemical signals in the rock have been altered, the original carbon-rich material has been degraded, and original textures (like “microfossils”, the fossils of original microbes) are not always particularly well-preserved either. Therefore, one has to be very patient and innovative to glean all the relevant preserved information from the rocks and interpolate everything that has been destroyed.
A lot of this kind of work takes place of a very small scale – looking at “thin sections” (thin slices of a rock glued to a glass slide) in a microscope to examine microscopic textures and choose candidates for chemical analysis. Mostly what I do in the field is “measure section” and collect samples, which means I make a record of the macroscopic variation of layers in the chert (there is some variation), along with how thick the whole unit is in that particular location, which will help me make large-scale interpretations, like depositional environment (e.g. deep vs. shallow water, high vs. low energy, proximity to nearest volcano, etc.). So this is what I did for my 3 weeks in Africa.
The hardest part is not, in fact, carrying a backpack full of rocks back to the car. No, it is getting your samples off the outcrop. If you took an intro geology class, you might remember the concept of hardness of minerals (you scratched things against one another to see which one is harder). As it turns out, pure silica (like quartz or chert) is quite hard, so it takes a lot of effort to break it. If you were a boy or girl scout (or you watch Survivor), you might also know that one primitive way of making fire is with flint and steel. Flint is actually another layman’s term for chert. And a geologist’s mini-sledge hammer is often made out of steel. Therefore, hitting the rocks actually makes some sparks. And smells like burning. And can literally burn you if you touch the rock too soon after hitting it (oops). So it’s pretty hard work. Next summer I’m hoping I can bring a field slave (i.e. undergrad) to do the hammering for me…
Ok, now that I’ve bored you enough with geology, stay tuned for the next post, which will have more photos as well as some description of the actually trip (minus the geology).
Cairns are useful for geologists, too. This one was so I could find my starting point again - all the outcrops in the long grass start looking the same after a while.
You may remember that it was not that long ago when I blogged about my first triathlon, the Silicon Valley Sprint Triathlon on June 12th. Well, it was so awesome that I decided to do some more! I knew right away that I wanted to return to the Luna Bar Women’s Triathlon Festival, where I got my first taste of multisport in the duathlon last August. But it was a long time until the end of August, so I decided to do another event in between. The TBF Tri-for-Fun2 was perfect because it is held at the same park by the same race organizers as the Luna Bar Tri, and the courses are very similar (the Luna Bar cycle and run courses are a little bit longer).
Lizzy tries to get rid of some nerves
This triathlon was held at Rancho Seco Park, which is out east near Sacramento. It’s not that far away, but it is far enough that we had to leave at 4:30am to get there in time to stake out a good spot in transition, check in, warm up, and deal with pre-race nerves.
Where's Lizzy?
I was a little nervous for the swim course because it was significantly longer than my previous tri (800m vs. 500m) and the air was a little chillier. However, the water was surprisingly warm and much less murky than at Lake Almaden. As a result, I was able to follow a couple swimmers in front of me (letting them break their stroke to check our direction instead of having to do it so many times myself). I think I ended up averaging a little over 2:00 per 100m, which is generally what I’ve been doing in the pool.
Women's heat one is off!
I think my T1 was a little faster than before – the short run from the swim exit to transition was grassy and allowed me to get most of the sand off my feet before I got to my towel. I’m still not super fast at jumping on my bike, but I don’t think I’m really competitive enough yet for those couple of seconds to make a significant difference for me. The bike course, an out-and-back course on a relatively flat road with gentle rolling hills, was also significantly longer than that on my first tri (16mi vs. 8.8mi), but I had raced on the course before (the Luna Bar Tri/Du does the same out-and-back, except with the turnaround another 2 miles out), so I knew what to expect. Not surprisingly, I was much faster on my tri bike than on my normal road bike that I used on the duathlon. The course is flat enough that I was able to stay in aero position almost the entire time, in addition to staying on my big front gear for maximum efficiency. My top speed was about 25mph, and my average speed was around 19mph. I think I averaged about 14mph on my road bike on the same course (well, the same course +4 more miles and maybe in a little worse shape).
Lizzy works to minimize her T1 by running out of the water!
My T2 also went better than my first triathlon. My feet were drier (I’d been on the bike for about 50 minutes this time) and I did a much better job of putting my socks on. My legs definitely felt much more tired starting out the run, but I tried to stay in a positive mental state, focusing on how light I felt and how warm my muscles were, rather than how tired my legs were feeling. I got a little psyched out on the run, since I expected the aid station to be at the turnaround (1.5mi) and it was actually at ~1mi, so I got all excited to be halfway done, only to realize that I still had a ways to go before halfway. With some effort, though, I was able to stay positive and keep pushing. It didn’t hurt that I was passing tons of people and could tell that there weren’t that many women ahead of me (i.e. I was doing well in my age group).
On the bike leaving the transition.
Since my legs were quite warm (read: tired) by the final stretch, I was able to do an even better sprint to the finish than my first triathlon. (I know this is counter-intuitive, but I have a major tendency to pull my quads when I really sprint hard, so I only really go full-throttle when I know my quads are happy.)
Lizzy staying in aero position as she finishes the bike.
Although I was definitely more physically tired than my first tri, I still felt good after finishing and relaxed in the shade with Luke to wait for the awards ceremony. They were giving awards 5 deep in 5-year age groups (mine is women 20-24) and I was almost certain I’d done well enough to get an award. It actually turned out that I won my age group, which I think is my best race result ever (I won my age group at the Luna Bar Duathlon, but I was the only one in my age group, so there wasn’t much competition).
Lizzy in first for women 20-24 with the other top finishers.
So my second triathlon was just as awesome as my first! I’m pretty excited for the Luna Bar Tri at the end of August (I’ll have some work to regain some fitness after my 3 weeks doing geology in South Africa, but that’s ok). It continues to impress me that, although I used to consider myself a pretty unathletic person, I’m now a successful triathlete! I’m even entertaining wild and crazy thoughts of doing a Half Ironman at some point…
Over the past few years Lizzy has been lucky enough to travel and examine old interesting rocks in different places around the world. She’s spent time in Death Valley, Bishop, Hawaii, Western Australia and now South Africa. Despite all the time spent looking at rocks these trips usually don’t include any climbing. So no side trip to Rocklands for Lizzy this year.
A fresh lava flow in Hawaii
These field sessions are a necessary part of Lizzy’s, and most geologists, academic work since you need to have a solid understanding of how the rocks were formed and their surrounding environment. Her interest in old, were talking Billions of years, rocks requires finding a suitable area and taking samples in a location where those rocks are exposed. This years trip is a short one and her first to this field area so Lizzy will be back in early August.
You can check out some of her older trips under the geology tag or read over this report on being a geologist:
In the mean time Lizzy has written up some content to tide everyone over while she is away. The most recent is a guest blog over at The Clymb. Lizzy and I are all about getting sweet gear at good prices and this site offers just that. The Clymb rotates through different brands and offers sale prices during a certain number of days. Lizzy was able to nab a sweet 2XU triathlon suit on the Clymb and has been using it in her recent multi-sport races (post coming next week!).
First of all, if you don’t recognize the “Squamish is…” reference, then watch this classic Timmy O’Neill video. Or if it’s been too long since you last watched it, watch it again:
Although I spent my whole life before college in the Pacific Northwest, including my formative climbing years when I found my love of trad climbing, I didn’t visit Squamish for the first time until I’d moved to California. I don’t know why. We were willing to drive several hours more to climb chossier rock at Smith Rock, rather than the beautiful, sticky granite of Squamish. Sigh. However, I’ve been doing relatively well making up for lost time. I’ve visited Squamish ever summer since moving to California (I think) and this summer was no exception.
The trip was initially born as an idea for Luke’s Bucknell friends to have a climbing trip together, but life and distance meant that only Jackie and Arthur were able to come. We missed the rest of you! Keep it on your “Places I need to go to climb” list. Seriously. I think it is one of the most beautiful and awesome places I’ve ever climbed, and I’ve climbed in a lot of beautiful and awesome places.
Squamish is very green.
[Day 1]
Maddy and I got up early to catch a ferry and pick up Luke from the airport, before heading north to Canada. After a couple of brief stops, we made it to the border and breezed through the Pacific Highway crossing (I always prefer this one to Peace Arch). Before we knew it we were in Squamish – the widened Sea-to-Sky highway makes the drive go much faster.
We set up camp before heading out to do some cragging at the base of the Grand Wall. We hiked up to the base of Arrowroot and Rutabaga, which we’d heard a lot about. Since we were planning on getting on the Grand Wall the next day, we thought it would be good to get on some 5.10 and 5.11 to re-familiarize ourselves with Squamish granite.
Luke had just finished leading Arrowroot when we heard a scream from the woman who had been leading the 2nd (final) pitch of Rutabaga, the next route over. This was followed by a horrible thud as she fell onto a sloping ledge below the crux at the top of the route. Time seemed to slow down as her belay partner called her name and there was no response. Finally, she started responding (I couldn’t tell you if she was out for 20 seconds or a minute, but it seemed on the longer end of that range) and apologized to her partner for falling and offered to finish the pitch. We all (including her partner) thought that was a bad idea and told her so – we were able to convince her to stay put.
A guide had run over from the base of Exasperator and we let him use our rope to climb up to and past the anchor of Arrowroot to try to rap down to her from above and help her down to the ground. By now we learned that she was bleeding from the ear (if you don’t have wilderness first aid training, this is a potential sign of a head injury). She had also not been wearing a helmet (she told us all a couple times that she was so embarrassed because she had sold her helmet) and had clearly been passed out for at least some time. She flipped upside down when she fell and may have taken much of the impact of the fall on her head.
While the guide was on his way up, she started getting dizzy and nauseous and decided she really just wanted to get down sooner rather than later. Without telling her partner, she built an anchor where she was hanging, untied, pulled the rope, and tied back in. Then she asked her partner to take so she could lower her back to the belay. We were all very worried when she did this because you can’t really trust a potential head injury patient to have actually tied themselves in correctly. We had little control over the situation, however, and luckily her partner safely lowered her to the belay and then to the ground.
Squamish SAR showed up within minutes of the climber reaching the ground and, with the help of her partner, a nurse, stabilized the climber and set up for a helicopter lift (we were never sure why they didn’t just opt to carry her out – the trail is not that rugged, but that’s a whole other post). I haven’t been able to find updates on what happened on the internet (this was on Wednesday, June 23, 2010), but if anyone has read about this, we’d love if you’d share the information. We sincerely hope that the climber is ok. Falls happen and I hope that the major lesson that everyone can take away from this accident is to PLEASE WEAR YOUR HELMET!
This whole incident took a couple hours to play out and we were considerably less excited to get on Rutabaga after this had happened. After retrieving our gear from Arrowroot, we headed over to Seasoned in the Sun, which I had also heard was fun, to get in one more 5.10 pitch for the day. The route was really good, although maybe not quite so epic-ly classic as Exasperator. It was started to rain lightly when I got down from leading the route, so I packed up and headed back to the parking lot while Luke and Maddy climbed the route so I could get a head start on dinner.
When we welcomed Jackie and Arthur to the parking lot a little later that evening, the trip had already deviated from our expectations, but we still wanted to make the best of it. Given the light rain, Luke and I decided to tentatively plan for a late start on the Grand Wall (we were pretty tired and weren’t sure we were psyched for another super early morning) the next day if the weather held.
My rain jacket got some use on this trip...
[Day 2]
On Thursday, we woke up to rain, so it was good we hadn’t planned on an early start for the Grand Wall (we would’ve gotten rained on). We showed Jackie and Arthur some of the boulders in the forest below the Grand Wall, then decided to go check out the Upper Malamute while Maddy, Jackie, and Arthur went to find some dry boulders. This didn’t turn out to be as easy as we thought, and many of the routes we actually managed to find were featureless slab climbs, which weren’t too exciting given the still-moist air. We headed back to the car to meet up with the bouldering crew for lunch.
The weather was starting to look better, so we decided to head to the Smoke Bluffs, which also tend to dry out pretty quickly. I headed to Flying Circus, but Jasmin Caton was being filmed at the base, so we continued up to Penny Lane instead. Luke lead Popeye and the Raven to warm up, then hopped on Yorkshire Gripper, which I’d managed to onsight last summer (Wooo!). He found the low “crux” hard and misread the sequence(I guess I just managed to do it right first try), but sent on his second try, finding the top a little less scary than I did. We then headed over to Partners in Crime, which was the remaining classic Penny Lane 5.11 crack that we both needed to do.
I was pretty nervous because the route had felt pretty hard when I’d tried to onsight it in 2008, although it had also been very hot and humid. This resulted in me thinking the route would be much harder than it was, and I sent it pretty easily on my first try (2nd time on the route). This maybe shouldn’t have been so surprising, since I’d already done Crime of the Century and Yorkshire Gripper, which are both graded harder. Luke also sent the route first try and we’d officially completed the 5.11s of Penny Lane! I’m not really sure which is my favorite… Crime of the Century is definitely awesome, but I will not be sad if I never do the starting boulder problem ever again; Yorkshire Gripper was good, but the top was scary; Partners wasn’t as hard as I expected, but the crack is definitely a bit awkward. Clearly you just gotta do them all to enjoy the good parts of each one!
We had time and energy for one more pitch, so I recommended the also fun Climb and Punishment, which we both did (Luke lead, I followed, since I’d already sent it last summer). We’d done a good number of decently hard pitches, which was good preparation for the Grand Wall, which we were hoping to do the next day.
[Day 3]
The alarm went off on Friday morning and I was nervous, but ready to go. We ate, racked up, and hiked to the base of the Grand Wall, psyched to find it still deserted. I tried to calm my nerves, mostly unsuccessfully since the perspective from the base of the slabs below the Grand Wall makes it look overhanging (I think it’s only nearly vertical).
Looking up at the Grand Wall from the base of Apron Strings. It looks STEEP!
I started up the first pitch layback of Apron Strings, focusing on moving quickly and not placing too much gear (I knew the crux was near the top, when the pump has accumulated). The top was definitely challenging with my first-route-of-the-day pump, but I made it through, belaying Luke up and then sending the second pitch of Apron Strings to the base of Merci Me. It was then Luke’s turn to take over the sharp end, so he headed up the long runout to the first bolt on Merci Me, linking through to the belay before a traversing section that would get us onto the Grand Wall proper. There was one wet streak on the pitch that had to be stepped across and while following this move, I accidentally wiped my leg through the wet streak, getting mud, moss, and 3 worms on my pants. Gross!
We were psyched to see that the party that had followed us up Apron Strings was rapping back to the ground (we thought they would be following us up the Grand Wall, but I guess they were just getting an early start to their day). Another party was just starting Cruel Shoes (which looks hard!) and a third one was traversing the flake escape ledges to the base of Merci Me. But we were already well ahead of the other parties and had all the belays and pitches to ourselves, which was great.
Luke lead the traversing pitch and short bolt ladder to the base of the Split Pillar, the first of the classic Grand Wall crack pitches. After the first couple of tricky moves before he could get in hand jams, he cruised up the beautiful corner, handling the widening crack and short squeeze chimney with ease. We had brought a haul line for the pack, which was awesome because at this point it still had our approach shoes, 2.5 Liters of water, food, and some extra QDs for the second bolt ladder. I was definitely happy to follow the pitch without the pack. I pretty much got hand jams from the start, but once the crack widened to big #3 Camalots, I switched to laybacking. Laybacking would be a trend throughout this day.
Luke at the belay ledge at the top of the Split Pillar.
The Sword, the next pitch, was supposed to be mine, but I was not feeling very brave, especially after the accident the previous day, so I asked Luke to lead it instead and he did. I ended up doing the crux a little easier than he did (I found a foothold so I could stem), but I found the transition out to the short section on the face to the left of the corner system to be quite reachy and tricky. The upper section of the crack is pumpy, but pretty straightforward – just laybacking (yes, more laybacking) a grey Alien sized crack to chains, which you grab. Luke linked the Sword with the bolt ladder above, bringing us to the base of Perry’s Layback, the second 5.11 pitch. Both bolt ladders were very easy to do with quickdraws and a few slings, so definitely no need to haul aiders and jugs all the way up there.
Lizzy in the squeeze chimney on the upper part of the Split Pillar.
Perry’s Layback is a relatively short pitch involving very strenuous laybacking out a curving crack (too wide for gear, so the entire pitch is bolted). Luke used some grrr-power for the send, while I took once – my forearms were pretty tired from all the laybacking (and all in right-facing corner systems, too). There is a crazy “rest” at the top where, with your feet on a ledge, you can lean back onto a fin of rock that sticks out behind you. It probably wouldn’t work for anyone much shorter than me, though. While it looked like an actual rest for Luke, it was not very restful for me since I had to engage my legs and core (my shoulders only just reached up to the fin behind me).
The next pitch was also supposed to be mine, but I gave it to Luke again and I’m glad I did. It involved some traversing and face climbing, culminating in an extremely reachy move from a ledge. I really just could not reach the handhold you were supposed to use to pull the move, but luckily, there was a bolt right here, so I used the nylon jug and foothold… it’s not like there hadn’t already been lots of aiding on bolts that day, so…
We both looked up at the last pitch, the Sail Flake, and groaned… more laybacking??? This pitch involves climbing a tree off the belay ledge (typical Squamish tactics), then laybacking and underclinging out and around the Sail Flake. Luckily, this pitch actually felt like 5.10 – there were footholds and the flake is very positive. This found us at Bellygood Ledge, from which point one can either continue up via the Roman Chimneys, or traverse off. We were both too tired for the Roman Chimneys, so we stayed roped up and started simuling across Bellygood Ledge. There were actually bolts relatively often, including a fixed hand line, except for the very last part (which was the most exposed part), although this protects decently well with some slung trees and roots. We made it to the woods, changed into our approach shoes, and hiked down the well-marked trail (markers on trees, along with sections of fixed line) to the main Chief hikers’ trail.
We made it to Bellygood Ledge! Nine pitches, no crowds, no epics!
Maddy, Jackie, and Arthur were still at the cars having lunch when we got down (the route took us about 7 hours from the base to the end of Bellygood Ledge). Luke joined them for a bit of bouldering, while I retreated to the tent to read and nap. We treated ourselves to dinner at the Howe Sound Inn & Brewery that night, which was pretty excellent.
[Day 4]
I was still tired by Saturday morning, so we had a luxurious morning of sleeping in. Luke was still psyched to climb, so we decided to do Snake. A moderate multipitch would not challenge us too much, while still allowing us to stretch our sore muscles and get it some classic pitches.
The route definitely “snakes” its way up and around the Apron, linking features in surprising ways. I could definitely tell, however, that the Snake corner system is a major drainage down the Apron. Much of the rock had a black, shiny coating that was luckily much stickier than it looked. The cruxes were often face climbing next to the corner, rather than actually climbing any cracks. Overall, I didn’t feel it was as classic as Diedre, but I do love real crack climbing, so that may just be personal preference. It’s still a very worthy objective on the Apron and a logical next step in difficulty after Banana Peel (5.7) and Diedre (5.8).
Luke on a crimpy slab problem.
As usual, the boulderers were still at the car finishing lunch when we returned, and we joined them for some chilling. We all headed into the forest for the afternoon, although I decided just to take pictures. Even though they hadn’t all been full days of climbing, 4 days on is still a lot for me and I didn’t want to push my tired body and stressed mind too far.
Maddy on a crimpy slab problem.
Jackie on Easy in an Easy Chair
[Day 5]
Sunday was our last day and we woke up to more light rain. We decided to pack up our tents before they got too wet and head into town to find breakfast and showers. After a lot of driving around and a trip to the ATM to get more Canadian money, we were able to all shower. (The pool at Brennan Park Recreation Centre has showers but limited hours, the Gym suggested in the guide book, called Club Flex, no longer offers showers, we ended up at the Squamish Inn on the Water which has showers for $5 Canadian, cash only) We then headed to Chef Big D’s Deli for some excellent breakfast (I highly recommend the breakfast wrap – I’ve had it twice now and it is AWESOME). We also did a little browsing at Valhalla Pure, the local climbing shop.
We still had a little time to spare before we needed to get on the road to take Luke back to the airport, so we headed back into the forest to do some bouldering. And by “we”, I mean, Luke, Maddy, Jackie, and Arthur were bouldering and I was taking pictures. They played around on some fun problems, then we returned to the car, said our goodbyes, and headed south for a pretty uneventful drive back to Seattle. We did take a little detour east at the border to the Lynden crossing when we saw that the Pacific Hwy and Peace Arch wait times were both 90+ minutes. This is a good thing to know how to do, especially if you don’t really have the time to spare to wait around in line.
Hehe, just had to throw this one in!
[Epilogue]
As usual, this trip was not quite what I expected it to be. I don’t think I’ve ever been that close to a serious climbing accident before and it affected my psyche and my mental space pretty strongly. However, the trip was still great (I always love Squamish) and we accomplished some excellent goals. The Grand Wall was awesome, although it’s hard for the experience to live up to the expectations of waiting for years (literally) to be “ready” to climb it. I still need to work on this – not letting my expectations have so much control of my experience.
I had an amazing year for climbing last year – I sent my first two 5.12s (both trad!) and a bunch of 5.11s, so this year has been feeling a little lackluster so far in comparison. But I’m trying to be more realistic with myself… I still onsight 5.10 trad (even if I’m intimidated to do so, it’s not like I’ve fallen much this year… or at all(?)), which is not something I used to do. I’ve still sent two 5.11 trad projects that I would probably have been super proud of if I hadn’t had such an incredible sending year in 2009 (Crack-a-no-go at Smith Rock and Partners in Crime in Squamish). We climbed the Grand Wall, which is something we’ve wanted to do for a long time and reaching the point where it was actually pretty straightforward is still a major accomplishment.
Oh, and keep that accident in your mind. There are many variables contributing to climbing accidents, but wearing a helmet is one variable that is 100% in your control. There are so many options out there and I really think there’s never a good reason not to wear a helmet (unless you’re climbing a squeeze chimney that’s so narrow you can’t climb it without a helmet, but I doubt anyone is in that situation particularly often).
Back in August 2009 I did something new. It was the Luna Bar Duathlon, part of the Luna Bar Women’s Triathlon Festival. A duathlon is like a triathlon (swim, bike, run), except you run the first leg (run, bike, run). I hadn’t wanted to do the triathlon because I didn’t have consistent access to a pool to train for the swim, but when I was running the first 2-mile run leg on a hot, dusty trail… I thought that it might make a whole lot more sense to swim, too.
After the duathlon, I decided I wanted to try a triathlon. I could use more aerobic fitness and having a goal (a race) to train for helps motivate me. It was a long road. My first year at Stanford was a busy one, plus finding my awesome climbing partner, Sarah Kate, made me really psyched to climb. I had an awesome fall (of climbing), culminating in a fantastic trip to Indian Creek. But once 2010 started, I knew I needed to make it happen.
I signed up for the Silicon Valley Sprint Triathlon. I could’ve trained more, but I didn’t. There’s still school and climbing and personal time and I haven’t figured out how to schedule everything appropriately yet. I’m working on it. But I did train, especially running, which is my weakest leg.
On June 12th, it was go time. My stomach was full of nervous butterflies. I had a banana for breakfast (plus 2 shot bloks right before the start and lots of water) while we drove down to Lake Almaden in San Jose. I checked in and Luke helped me set up in the transition area. I’ve gotten a lot of new triathlon toys since my duathlon, including a tri suit, my sweet tri bike (thanks Luke, Mom, and Dad for helping out with that!), tri bike shoes (easy to put on + designed to wear sock-less), an aero helmet, and a racebelt (you have to wear your number on the run, so it’s nice to just clip it on without having to wear it the whole race or put on an extra shirt with the number pinned to it). I’m happy to say all my gear was awesome, but then I’m getting ahead of myself.
My transition all set up, including my aero helmet, tri bike shoes, and neon green race belt.
The men started in the first 4 waves, separated by age and road vs. mountain bike race. I waited around on the beach and tested out the water waiting for my wave (road bike women 29 and under), the first of the 4 women’s waves. A lot of people were wearing wetsuits, which worried me, but the water was actually a perfect temperature for swimming (if it isn’t somewhat cold when you first get in, you’ll overheat once you start moving). The shore of the lake dropped off surprisingly quickly, so when I paddled out to the start line with my wave, we were all treading water.
Waiting in the shade before my wave starts.
We started and there was a lot of splashing and jostling. Although the lake water felt nice, it was quite murky (I could barely see my hand when it was all the way extended at the end of my stroke). I hadn’t expected this (I mostly swim in a pool), so it took a while to adjust to how often to pop my head up and check my orientation with the next cone. I did it too much at first, but after a while I was able to do it less often as I started to trust myself to swim in a straight line. I felt like I wasn’t doing too great, although it turns out I was only about 10th in my wave (you don’t notice how many people are behind you, only in front). I made the two turns of the swim and jogged into the transition zone (passing my first dude, who was walking to the transition zone).
My wave (the neon pink swim caps) starts!
At my transition, I wiped some of the sand off my feet before sticking them in my bike shoes and grabbing my helmet. I jogged out of transition with my bike. I guess I passed a couple people who’d worn wetsuits (it takes a non-trivial amount of time to take them off). I wasn’t super fast getting on my bike, which is clearly something I need to practice. I got out onto the bike course and relaxed into a rhythm. We’d ridden the bike course before, so I knew what to expect – mostly flat with one hill at mile 3. I survived the hill, even passing a bunch of people (many were walking their bikes), which was impressive because my tri bike is not geared for hills, whereas a bunch of people had mountain bikes, which definitely are geared for hills. I was a little less comfortable on the downhill and some of the turns on the course than I’d like to have been, so I did get passed by a couple women, although I continued to pass dudes, which continued to be awesome.
Starting out the bike leg. I heart my awesome Quintana Roo Lucero!
At my bike transition, I was slowed down a little by the fact that my feet were still a little wet (I’d expected them to dry out more, but the bike ride was pretty short), so it took me a couple extra seconds to get my socks on. But I saved some time by putting on my race belt (with race number), headband, and sunglasses as I was running out of transition. I managed my initial adrenaline surge on the run well, remembering to save energy rather than going out too fast – I did still have a 5k to run. I continued to pass people on the run (I think I only got passed once or twice myself), which was great motivation to focus on the person in front of me, run them down, then move on to the next person. It was not too hot yet, so I didn’t stop at most of the aid stations.
Heading out of transition for the run!
I was still feeling good by the end of the run and starting building my pace in the last 1/2 mile or so and sprinted the last 200m. I love being able to really have a strong kick at the finish and I passed another woman in the last 100m (although I don’t think she was in my age group). I felt awesome when I finished, although I insisted on retreating to the shade before I’d talk to Luke (it was hot). We proceeded to wait around and eat free burrito and pizza to pass time until the awards ceremony. I ended up getting 3rd in my age group (20-24-year-old women) with a time of 1:13:17 for the 500m swim, 8.8mi cycle, and 3.3mi run, which I was very happy with. I also placed 3rd in my age group for each individual leg, so I was satisfied with that too. I did train, but not that much, so I could definitely do better if I train more (I’m in the process of trying that now).
Finishing strong! I just passed that girl behind me
Although the rest of the event was great, the post-race organization was pretty poor. I think we waited 2 hours from when I finished until the awards ceremony started (it was over an hour after they’d promised it would be). Then when I got up there it took them about 10 minutes to find my prize bag. But, on the bright side, my prize bag was awesome and included goggles, an insulated swim cap, and compression socks. Thanks!!!
So I learned that triathlons are awesome and fun, especially when they are short (so I don’t get that tired) and I am excited to do more in the coming months. I also love the feeling of passing dudes who started ahead of me And finally, I’ve been learning recently that it’s good to just do what I’m psyched on at the time, and right now that’s triathlon! I’m planning on doing a couple more in the next few months (including the triathlon at the Luna Bar Women’s Triathlon Festival in August).
Are you psyched on triathlons? If you’re a woman and interested in triathlons, I totally recommend trying the Luna Bar Festival! The atmosphere is great and there are Super-Sprint tri’s and du’s, along with a longer sprint distance race! Let me know if you’ll be there and we can share our pre-race nerves and post-race exhaustion!
Luke and I read a lot of climbing blogs. Well, Luke reads a lot of blogs, and I skim blogs until I find one that I actually want to read. Quite often, this will involve awesome photos of climbing that make me want to read the words that go with them. I probably miss a lot of well-written, awesome blogs because I skip over them (what can I say, I only have so much time). As a result, we make an effort to have cool, exciting photos in our blogs. And this is pretty much impossible unless we think about taking good photos while we’re at the crag. So this blog is about some techniques we use to take good climbing photos.
First, a disclaimer: we are by no means expert climbing photographers, and not all our climbing photos are awesome. But the idea of this post was suggested by a friend and I figured it couldn’t hurt to share the tips and tricks we use to improve on butt shot climbing photography.
Work with your angles
In order to take good photos, you have to put in some effort. Don’t just stand next to the belayer and point your camera up at the climber. Take advantage of the topography – if you can gain a little elevation by walking along the cliffline, do so to try to get a side-on view of the climber. Scramble onto ledges (be safe) or boulders. If you’re bouldering, photos looking down on the climber from the top of the boulder can turn out really great. Whatever you do, don’t be static: move around and try out a lot of different angles. After a while, you will start to develop more intuition about which angles work, but sometimes the best way to start is just experiment.
Another great trick is to take pictures from another routes. This often requires extra effort, but it can really pay off in the long end. If you have a toprope on a route and a friend is climbing a route next to it (especially if he/she is leading), being up on the rock can really give you the angles you need.
This is an awesome route, but the angle isn't doing much for the photo.
Getting some height by TRing an adjacent route allowed Luke to get a great angle of Maddy.
Think about the light
I think a major problem with a lot of amateur climbing photos (including ours) is overexposed or blown-out pictures. Let’s face it, we like climbing in beautiful, warm, sunny weather and this often means very bright, harsh light that’s not too nice on our photos. Take advantage of cloudy or shady conditions when the light is less harsh. If you’re climbing in the shade on a bright, sunny day, try frame your photo so all the frame is shade so you don’t have the harsh contrast.
Here the cloudy sky in the upper left corner is way too bright.
This different angle eliminates the brightness of the sky.
The face can tell a story
Part of the reason butt shots are so unfulfilling is that you often miss the most expressive part of your climber – the face. Sometimes the expression on a person’s face can really tell a story – terrified, elated, in the zone – all these things make a climbing photo way more interesting in my opinion. So snap lots of photos and pay attention to where the climber’s face is. If you can get a different angle on the climber so you see his/her face more often, then try. For example, it can be hard to catch someone’s face when he/she is climbing in a dihedral, but, depending on the orientation of the dihedral, he/she may be way more likely to look in one direction.
Check out that face! (This photo could be even more awesome if Konstantin was wearing a nice green shirt, though)
Use the rule of thirds
This is a pretty basic rule of photography, but it’s amazing how much it can improve your photos. I think a lot of people (including myself) often automatically center the subject (usually the climber) in the frame and click. This is a no-no. If you imagine dividing your frame into thirds vertically and horizontally, try placing your subject on one of these lines. It might feel weird, but it often makes your photo a lot more visually interesting. This also works for landscapes – instead of putting the horizon or the cliffline in the middle of the frame, line it up 1/3 of the way through. If you don’t actually manage to do this in your original photos, you can always crop your photo afterwards.
This photo does not follow the rule of thirds...
This photo follows the rule of thirds.
Eliminate clutter
There’s often a lot going on in a climbing scene that can be really distracting in a photo. When bouldering, get your friends to move their stuff (bags, shoes, water bottles) out of the background so you can just have climber, boulder, pads, and spotters. When shooting routes, try to use an angle that will eliminate clutter at the base of the cliff. Try to keep other climbers’ ropes out of the frame.
Wear colors
A little color on the climber can go a long way to improving a photo. Stay away from black, white, grey, or tan and choose brilliant colors like blue, green, or red. As nice as it is to climb shirtless, make the climber wear a shirt. Skin colors often blend in to the rock, or the ground, while color cause the climber to pop. Red can be great when you’re climbing somewhere with a lot of green, like the Pacific Northwest (think trees), and blue often works well when you’re climbing on orange-y rock (like the sandstone of Indian Creek).
This photo would be better if Luke was wearing a nice bright shirt instead of this grey one.
The blue sleeves of Lizzy's shirt contrast nicely with the rock.
Get a bigger memory card
Part of getting good shots means taking A LOT of photos. The more you take, the more likely you’ll find some real winners, or at least something you can work with. Use different orientations, different compositions, different angles. It’s often hard to tell what’s working on the little screen on your camera (I’m often surprised at how things turn out when I get them on the computer). You don’t want to be limited by your memory card. This also allows you to shoot in better quality (or shoot in RAW), which often means you’ll have a lot more to work with when you get back home (i.e. the next category). Memory is getting pretty cheap these days and if you ever want to try to shoot video with your camera, then you’ll almost definitely be glad to have the extra space.
Don’t be afraid to edit your photos
Before you post just any photo on your blog, look at it with a critical eye. You can improve its composition by cropping it, or deal with too dark or too blown out issues by adjusting brightness and contrast. You can get your colors to pop a little more – make the lichen more yellow, the climber’s shirt more brilliant, the trees more green, or the sunset more saturated. Don’t go over the top, but a few minor tweaks can go a long way to make your photos more eye-catching. One thing that doesn’t work particularly well (in my experience) is trying to use “sharpen” tools to make up for poor focus, so choose images that are already well-focused.
This is a decent photo, but it doesn't really draw your eye to the climber.
Cropping this photo (rule of thirds!)and playing with the colors helps focus on the climber (again, Lizzy should have worn a colored shirt).
Don’t be afraid to break the rules, sometimes
Climbing photography is a learning process. We’re constantly pouring over our photos from the weekend, trying to learn what worked and what didn’t. As you learn more, you’ll find lots of situations when the rules should be broken. So, keep the guidelines in mind, but don’t be afraid to experiment!
That’s about it for now. If you have any other good tips to share with other amateur climbing photographers like us, feel free to leave them in a comment below.
We had an interesting situation our last day at Smith Rock that I thought it might be interesting and informative to share and get people’s opinions on. Before I jump into my little narrative, the basic question is this:
If you are cragging and you see people doing something that is pretty clearly unsafe, what do you do? How do you tell them that you think they are being unsafe, especially you suspect they’ll be unreceptive to any sort of admonition? If you have any sort of professional (e.g. AMGA) training in climbing, should it be your responsibility to tell them, even if it probably won’t make them change anything they’re doing?
Alrighty, so, keeping those questions in mind, here was the situation:
We arrived at the Cinnamon Slab area to meet John and Emily, with the idea of SK teaching Emily some climbing basics (TR and lead belaying, etc.). It was a weekend, and it was pretty crowded, although we were easily able to climb when we wanted to. There was a group of people at the crag – a couple adults, some older teens (I think), and some younger teens. I think some of them may have been associated with some sort of community organization (e.g. along the lines of Campfire, Boy Scouts, etc.).
They had decided to climb Ginger Snap, a bolted 5.8 next to Cinnamon Slab that can be tricky if you don’t realize that you can step to the left or right of the bolt line. While we were setting up, I think the adults (two men in around their 40s, I think) were trying to lead the climb, but couldn’t get past the third bolt. Then one of the younger guys (older teens, or maybe early 20s) went up to try to get further. I later learned that this was his first time trying to lead (ever). He couldn’t get further, either, and was hanging a lot, and the two older men were having trouble holding him, since he was a pretty big dude. A non-ideal situation, but nothing non-safe has happened yet. Just your typical newbie climber epic.
I guess at some point they gave up on trying to get to the top of the route and decided that the rest of their group could just toprope the first section. It’s at this point when sketchiness begins, because they proceed to REMOVE the first two (of three) quickdraws so that their TR set up involves ONE quickdraw on ONE bolt as their anchor. Now, I know quickdraws and bolts usually don’t fail, especially while toproping, but I would still consider this to be an unnecessarily unsafe situation.
They proceeded to toprope in this manner, sending their (even more) beginner climbers up, and telling them, that they could keep going if they could get past the 3rd bolt (although these climbers obviously had no leading experience, and they didn’t send them with QDs to clip the additional bolts). This goes on until another party rapping off Cinnamon Slab offers to clean their (single quickdraw) “anchor” since they are pretty obviously incapable of doing it themselves.
Now comes the tricky part – what do we do about it? I did nothing, for several (maybe not so good) reasons:
I am female, and only 22 (and I’m sure I look younger to most people) and despite the fact that I’ve been climbing for 8+ years and have worked (a little) as a guide, I don’t think the leader dudes (the men in their 40s) would have paid attention to anything I had to say about safety.
All the dudes in the group were acting very confident and self-assured, instructing the girls on the correct belay communication (so obviously they have been TR-belay certified in a gym, although not necessarily any further training than that), such that they seemed like they would be particularly unreceptive.
I’m pretty non-confrontational and telling them that they were being unsafe, in this situation, seemed like it would escalate into a confrontation.
No one else at the crag said anything to the group, either, which I assume is a combination of:
Not noticing.
Noticing but not realizing there was an issue (it’s a beginner crag, after all).
Noticing, but doing anything about it, because other climbers’ safety is not anyone else’s responsibility.
And now I ask: Is it anyone else’s responsibility? What would you have done? What do you think is the best way to deal with situations like these?
RT @SanukFootwear: Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in their sandals. That way, when you criticize them, you're a mile away... http://fb.me/GF15zMUm
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