garage gym: July 2010

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Thunderbolt-Sill Traverse IV (5.9)

On July 17th Hunter Sibald and I hiked into the Palisades via North Big Pine Creek. We camped for the night in Sam Mack Meadows and in the morning hiked onto the Thunderbolt Glacier. Another team was in the col between Mt Winchell and Thunderbolt so we took a direct line onto the ridge. We climbed all five 14,000' peaks along the way. Thunderbolt Peak 14,003, Starlight 14,200', North Palisade 14,242' Polemonium Peak 14,200 and Mt Sill 14,162'. The traverse involved around 10 or so single rope rappels (we had a 50 meter x 8mm) and about 200' of belayed climbing on 5.7-5.9 sections (our rack consisted of 8 nuts and 6 cams). The climbing was exposed high quality Sierra granite with the bulk of it being 4th class-5.6 which we soloed in approach shoes. In Peter Crofts book "The Good, the Great and the Awesome" he gives this traverse his highest quality rating of three stars *** and a rating of IV (5.9) and we have to agree. The whole traverse took about 9 hours. As we sat on top of Mt Sill watching thunder clouds build along the ridge, we were joined by a dude who had just soloed the Temple/Gayley/Sill traverse via the Moon Goddess Arete. We hiked out that day and had dinner at Denny's in Bishop.

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Polish Route III (5.10+) Incredible Hulk

Yesterday John Train and I returned to Little Slide Canyon to climb the Polish Route III (5.10+) on the Incredible Hulk. On my fifteen previous trips here I've always stared in awe at the Polish Routes long sustained wide cracks. Could they really be that good? Our Day started in Truckee when John picked me up at 5:30 am. The beautiful High Sierra morning was made extra blissful because I was missing a staff meeting at work. The route went well with John (as usual) taking the lion's share of the leads. Some of the incredible pitches were more like Yosemite than the back country (see photo of John leading the first pitch). We had hoped to check out a finishing variation call "Escape from Poland" but the building thunder clouds dictated a sprint to the top. A few rain drops fell as we rappelled the back side of The Hulk and hiked in our TC Pros around to the base. Back at the truck we were both tired and satisfied. We had some mediocre mexican food in Bridgeport and were home at 10:30 pm.

Introduction

garage gym

I’ve always been a gym rat. I like to workout. In particular I’ve always been interested in strength and conditioning as a means to improve climbing performance. Bachar ladders, home made fingerboards, pull up bars, and crack machines have over the years littered my garages and lawns. In my thirty years of climbing I have almost always had access to a commercial gym. I have also accumulated a small library of books and articles on fitness and climbing performance. These include a dog-eared, twenty-year-old copy of Bill Pearl’s Strength Training, to my recently purchased copy of Eric Horst’s Maximum Climbing. After an extended lay off due to illness and pursuing other interests, in the fall of 2009 I began to train again.

After a few workouts at a local gym I began to question if it (a machine based circuit) was actually helping me. I was going through the motions. It was boring as hell. A few days later I stumbled upon an article in Outside magazine on GYM JONES the Salt Lake City based gym owned by famed alpinist Mark Twight. Since I’ve always admired Twight’s climbing, writing, and taste in music, I quickly drank the kool aid. The Gym Jones web site was a revelation. A short time later I discovered Mountain Athlete.com, Climbstrong.com and Cross fit. I soon realized that I had been wasting my time, and perhaps I had never really trained with any meaningful level of intensity. In Twight’s book Kiss or Kill Confessions of a Serial Climber he says, “…know the difference between working out and training”.

Since family, career, and other interests take up a lot of my time, I decided I needed the ability to train at home. Fortunately I have a large garage. I started with a pull up bar, fingerboard and a few dumbbells. Later I added kettlebells, a medicine ball, gymnast rings, a small climbing wall, and an Air dyne bike. The information age made it easy for me to find the books, websites, and videos by Paval Tsatouline, Dan John, Neil Gresham and others. Yet none of these training philosophies addressed the specific needs of my friends and myself, i.e. forty-something’s who climb Yosemite’s long hard free climbs and big walls in a day. High Sierra car-to-car, dawn-to-dark missions that combine ultra running/hiking with multi-pitch rock climbs and high ridge traverses (my personal favorite). We also skate ski, backcountry ski, as well as ride mountain and road bikes. Our training combines all these influences into a potent brew. The process is always evolving. We’ll try anything. Then we’ll evaluate it, modify it, keep it, or chuck it. Then try something else. The results speak for themselves.

Mike Davis RN

Truckee, California

Spring 2010