A Partnership Forged in Absurdity

A tangled web of fluorescent green and orange ropes snake their ways in and out between his feet as he murmurs “what a fourth dimensional slumber fuck”. “What?!?!” I shout down. “These ropes are a fourth dimensional slumber fuck” he repeats, obviously perturbed.

A fourth dimensional slumber fuck. What an excellent phrase to describe the ice route we’re on. We’re pretty sure the route already has been named, but we’re equally as sure that the name couldn’t possibly match the utterly absurd genius behind a name such as “Fourth Dimensional Slumber Fuck”. So the climb is renamed; a title describing the maze of twin ropes that wrap and coil their way amongst one another, seemingly disappearing in a fourth dimension at times and reappearing at another, all the while engaged in their perverse orgy of writhing disorganization. Like all rope handling disasters, Jesse is ultimately able to disengage the two ropes from one another after a prolonged period of puzzled fumbling and profuse cursing. Fourth Dimensional Slumber Fuck…what a seemingly apt title to describe this situation, and maybe our climbing careers as a whole.

Jesse and I have been climbing together for many years now. We grew up together as children and always had a deep appreciation and reverence for the outdoors. Both having shared a brief stint in Boy Scouts, we both felt suppressed by its structure and formality and quit in favor of experiencing the outdoors on our own terms. Later I’d learn that our departure from the rigor of Boy Scouts would closely mirror the approach we’d take to our climbing career.

Fast forward a decade or so to the end of my Senior year in college. I’d been supplementing bong hits and keg stands with the writings of great climbers pontificating on life and death in the vertical realm. At this point it was still as much fantasy to me as J.R.R. Tolkien; a world I could only reach through the musings of some of my newly found favorite authors.

Its on a sunny afternoon that I meet Jesse for a hike which terminates on a beautiful granite cliff were a large boulder of the same composition is perched, known as “Wolf Rock”. We stretch out upon this herculean pebble and bask in the early afternoon sun. Conversation, as it has a way of doing between us, moves quickly between one thing to the next and finally we dance around to the subject of my most recent reading. Jesse picks his head up and glances over to me and instantly I know I’ve piqued his interest. “Dude, seriously? Its something I’ve been thinking allot about too!” The conversation picks up tempo and we begin discussing our thoughts and aspirations with a fanaticism matched only by the fervor you’d find amongst religious zealots.

Ultimately we decide that, like all things we’ve perused past to present, we were going to eschew professional instruction in favor of self education. Having observed time and again that self learned lessons are the best learned lessons, we decide there is no other way to go. It’s like Boy Scouts all over again…the hell with handbooks and merit badges to get in the way, this is the real world. To this end we rush off to buy gear the next day; a collection of aluminum and nylon we plan to put together into some sort of operational configuration. While basic physics is something that is not beyond us, our first top rope setup has us multiplying forces beyond the bounds of reasonable math. For many months we did it all…took dozens of falls in close succession dangling from American Death Triangles, ran whole ropes through belay devices instead of just clipping in at the point of actuation, rappelled off of a single chain of girth hitched runners, and set off into the unknown from belays protected worse that a high school kid with a 10 year old condom.

However, the learning curve in climbing is a steep one and every outing was a learning experience to be sure. We shocked, scandalized and terrified more veteran climbers than I can count but learned allot this way…receiving at least more than one lesson delivered in the clearly panicked tones of someone who clearly knew better. Since that time we’ve amassed a wealth of knowledge that far exceeds anything we could have gained from any REI sponsored course or a weekend out with “that guy at work that climbs sometimes”. We’ve become aces on rock and ice, mountains and crags, approaches and descents. We’ve starved, we’ve suffered, we’ve frozen, we’ve baked, we’ve yelled, we’ve panicked, we’ve succeeded, we’ve failed, we’ve nursed, we’ve puked, we’ve laughed, we’ve accused, we’ve ridiculed, but mainly we’ve had a shit load of fun independent of the overly analytical element of safety that threatens to anesthetize climbing and exploration as a whole.

Now-a-days schedules conflict and climbing together is not always a possibility. We’ve both got jobs, I have a kid, and we’ve got other hobbies as well. We still each put up routes on a routine basis and try to get a couple of weeks on big mountains each year. While I enjoy the diverse group of partners I’ve had, nothing quite matches the harmony and rhythm of a climbing partnership as long established as ours. While the wreck less abandon may have since been replaced with greater experience and a climber’s hard earned wisdom, the absurd foundations of our passion surely have not diminished and our time on the mountain is still a circus…maybe just a slightly safer one.