Pan Flutes & High Flukes

I recently received a grassroots sponsorship from Evolv. Evolv makes some of the greatest climbing shoes in the market. Legendary Chris Sharma uses their shoes so that means they can't be that bad ;-). Over the next year I'll be testing out their shoes and giving out reviews on the internet and also directly to the company. I am honored to be apart of their team and look forward to the coming months of using their shoes, crash pads, and other gear.

I'v been training hard back home in Syracuse, New York at The Wall. We've been getting some great bouldering routes set their by Andy Freeman and Brian Caha. The snow and cold weather is still hindering the chance of the climbing season to start early, so I'v came out to arizona to get on some rock.

 I met my friend and climber Kyle Knoll in Sedona, we decided we would give a go at Mars Attacks 5.8 II.
Neither of us had ever climbed on sandstone and we were a little curious to see how we would hold up compared to other places. We bushwhacked and scrambled our way to the base of the climb due to having no idea where the trail was we figured we'd just head in the direction of the rock formation that resembled Mars Attacks. Luckily we were right and we soon racked up and began climbing.

I lead the first slab pitch, originally this pitch went at 5.6 but because its sandstone and the route has seen a lot of traffic recent debate is that it goes at 5.9+. I thought it was 5.8 slab, either way it was a scary introduction to sand stone haha. After the first pitch Kyle took the lead to traverse 120 feet right on the 5.8 2nd pitch. Meeting him at the belay I racked up and took on Pitch 3 (5.6) this crack-chimney pitch brought me back to my days in the Red River Gorge, there were pockets, pinches and underclings everywhere, then it would go to 30 feet of pure crack climbing. It was an amazing pitch to say the least.

While belaying Kyle up the third pitch and gazing out across to Devils Bridge, Capitol Butte, and the Sonoran desert I began to hear a faint sound of a pan flute. The sound of the flute brought me into the moment and strangely relaxed me completely. I was able to just BE. I stood on the 4 foot ledge and took in everything the world could give me at that moment. Kyle arrived at the belay and the flute stopped. We charged up the last "5.9" pitch (more like 5.8) and set up the rappel. While Kyle began rappelling down, the pan flute started up again. I really enjoyed who ever it was playing the pan flute. It was amazing to hear it but not know where it was coming from, I once again came fully into the present moment. It was a great addition to the climb. "Off Rappell" yelled Kyle, I breathed deeply, gazed out to take in the big red rock walls of Sedona and began my decent back down to society.

Mars Attack was an amazing climb. I recommend it to anyone who travels to Sedona to go climbing. The route was just purely amazing, adding all the pitches together you really can't get such a great classic.

I'm headed to go climb in Queen Creek in a couple days. Im psyched to get down there as well and see how i match up on their sport climbs as well as some of the trad routes.

OVER DUE UPDATE!

Wow its been along time since I updated this page! okay so to keep it simple I arrived in the Red River Gorge in November and climbed for 5 days. What an amazing place! i will definitely be returning soon (april 2012) I assembled quit a good tick list while i was down there onsighted and red pointing some hard routes in the 5.10-5.11 range. The climbing truly was some of the best I'v ever done!

After the red, i came back home to Syracuse and competed in a local comp in Oswego at The Wall climbing gym. I placed 4th, wish i would have climbed a little better but theres always next time for that!

I was in Arizona for a week in December and climbed a little with my brother, I bagged couple easy crack routes, rope soloed on the days i couldn't get anyone to climb and red-pointed a 5.10d trad route. As of the first of the year i have a new short term goal! that is to climb my age in 5.10s-5.11s, so by September 23rd, 2012 I have to climb 19 5.10s and or 11s.

Heres some pictures from a photographer I met in Kentucky, the route is called Rising 5.11a

I have a pretty full scheduled year ahead of me including graduating high school and starting my cross country climbing trip to get to college in Arizona. I'm excited for the next couple years of my life where I can finally start climbing more than sitting in a damn boxed up room!

Cultural Weekend in the Shawangunks

This past weekend I took a trip down to the Shawangunks just outside of New Paltz NY. Lesson learned this weekend, don't go to an internationally famous historical climbing area on weekends and expect to climb the classics. We had the typical gunks list of climbs that we all wanted to accomplish, including High Exposure (5.6), The Dangler (5.10a), and Madame G (5.6) and surprise surprise, we got shut down on all of them due to the biggest lines I've ever seen. It was like going to disney world, we literally had to wait 3 hours just to touch the rock I have never experienced something like this in my climbing career.

We did end up getting on some rock though, some decent random 5.6's and one off width 5.6 that was one of the best off widths iv climbed yet. Put <ThermalBar> to the test yet again atop a 200' pitch, i was cold in the 45 degree weather in a t-shirt belaying my partner, decided to eat it then and was warm literally for the rest of the day, these things seise to amaze me. Hopefully i can get down to the gunks one more time this season but for sure will be getting down there next year.

This weekend was more of a cultural weekend, we had the only campsite with a fire pit so our bon fire brought a wide variety of campers and climbers to come and toss a few back with us. Met and talked to a lot of great people this weekend, I makes me feel great to be apart of such an amazing community.

Wallface Mountain Trip Report

Columbus day weekend, Chris Picinich and myself headed up to the High Peaks Region of the Adirondack Mountains to climb Wallface Mountain. Wallface is an 800+ foot vertical wall, suggested to be the tallest wall in NewYork. We drove up friday evening and made our approach by moonlight to wall face lean-to 2.7 miles in from the abandoned town of Upperworks. Upperworks use to be a small lumber town until they filled their quota and were forced to leave; it was an erie last sight of civilization to be seeing abandoned houses right before we met the trailhead, made me question what lay ahead of us in the next few days.

The trail to the lean-to was the typical backcountry style of the ADK mountains, wet, sloshy muddy, with ups and downs, river crossings flat sections and a beautiful half full moon. After 2.5 hours of solid hiking we arrived at the lean-to and built ourselves a nice warm fire. Spreading out our sleeping bags we pulled out our topo maps and planned the climb. It wasn't long until we fell deep into the realms of the dream world, that night i was hoping to have a philosophical mind state dream where i would be shown the events of the next day and how things would turn out, it was only later that i really did wish this had happened.

5am the alarm clock on Chris's watch beeped, i got up and whispered "is it time?" a simple nod from chris acknowledged my statement and i quickly began setting up my stove for our dehydrated breakfast skillet. After fueling up and ditching the gear we wouldn't need we set off to the base of the wall. A mere 1.7 miles of difficult hiking would lead us to the bottom of our objective. As the morning sun rose we could see the wall peaking out standing tall and proud above the trees. This excited us and also led us to a bad mistake, after leaving the red marked trail onto the cairn path we saw a wall above us and chris leading the way took us up towards that wall, through thickets of thorns and massive boulder fields we trudged to the base of this misleading wall. Getting to this wall i instantly knew it was the wrong wall, and chris had no idea where he was leading us (this started to piss me off) we found our selves standing on a ledge above atop a cliff with two options rappel down the cliff and hope to find the trail or back track through the rugged hell we had just came up. We chose to rappel, setting it up with webbing and rap ring around a tree we made it to the base of this false wall and I then took over the lead, finding the correct trail we arrived at the base of Wallface at 10am. Due to a stupid mistake we turned what would have been an hour approach into a three hour approach, there were two things i was most concerned with about this mistake 1. it was completely energy wasting, (this would be proven to later on the climb with chris) and 2. we planned on hiking back to the car this day so we only brought in our lunches that was the only food we had and limited water.

10:45am after waiting for another party to get off the ground and get moving, it was our turn to finally begin the climb. The route we took was The Diagonal 5.8 G III it followed a huge diagonal ramp to the final two 5.8 pitches. Standing at the base the head wall of the cliff had such an allure to it, looking up 865 feet to the top was an amazing sight, to know in just a few short hours we would be standing at the top and looking down instead of being on the bottom looking up made me happy. Chris led the first pitch, i took the second both pitches were 5.5 easy ground and good protection. Arriving at he infamous diagonal ramp we simul-climbed the next pitch shaving off some wasted time, simul-climbing was so cool! Being up that high and simul-climbing gave me a feeling that ill never forget, it was simply pure fun, happiness and mind exploring. I quickly led the 4th 5.5 pitch and chris led the 4th class traverse, that brought us to the first 5.8 pitch this is what i came here for, an alpine wall with a hard finish just the way i like them.

5pm we sat at the massive bivy ledge below the 5.8 recuperating and enjoying the views of the mountains out behind us, with the source of the hudson river below us we felt emerged in the true wilderness of NY. Quicker than i should have i started to lead the pitch, it looked easy and fun in pictures but today it was full of fresh mud, dirt and debris. The pitch follows an Off Width crack on the right side of a right facing dihedral, now this really was not a hard climb but when every time i stuck my hand in the crack and looked for the next sweet spot i got an ounce of dirt and shit into my eyes blinding me it turned hard. Eventually this would cause me to slip and fall, it was a clean fall (other than my eyes.) after huffing puffing and grunting i grunged my body up to the top, set up a belay and thats when things started going down hill. Chris was unable to climb the pitch and aided his way up, exhausted he told me he would go no further because the hip he had surgery on was giving him problems. After silently being pissed off at him i understood the problem and we made an emergency rappel and started heading down, at this point we had eaten all of our food and ran out of water i was so dehydrated i felt like a desert sand dune.

Things just kept getting worse after our first rappel the ropes got stuck in a roof crack, resulting in me having to climb up and pull the ropes from a different location then untangling those ropes and setting them up again, we started heading down. The sun set by the time we reached the third rappel and we had a beautiful moon to light up the face along with our headlamps, each rappel the ropes got tangled adding more and more pointless un-needed time wasted. eventually landing at the base we packed up and headed back to the lean-to starving and dehydrated as we walked back i remembered i still had a ThermalBar a new energy bar that gives you energy and heats up your bodes core temperature, i was extremely happy to have this as my only food left as it had so many organic natural ingredients that tasted so good! and it heated me up the whole way back to the lean-to. Chris had brought water purification tablets so we could drink the water from the stream, waters never tasted better than that night. I couldn't stop thinking about how i may want to go on a sport climbing binge for awhile.

Eventually we stumbled back into camp and slept the day off, waking up and moving out to the car fast to get to our food, our energy source! Wallface was a great learning experience, and I'm glad everything happened the way it did. If only Chris's hip hadn't given him trouble we could have stood atop the great Wallface Mountain, but hey what are you gonna do except come back!

http://www.thermalbar.com/-This is the link to Bob Rose's ThermalBar. His bar is amazing and any one who can get them should! I'm very excited to test these things on my winter trip to climb Mt. Washington in New Hampshire.

ThermalBar is also on Facebook check it-  https://www.facebook.com/ThermalBar

Dont Stop

If theres one thing iv learned that really sticks in my head from climbing, that is don't give up. In fact Never  Give Up! Everytime i set my mind to a new project the only way i complete it is if i believe and keep the positive attitude that i can make it to the top and that i won't stop until i drop. Its all a mental thing, if you can wrap your mind around the idea that it is possible to top out on the climb of your desire then you will.
Sure you may whip a few times but hey, thats what climbing is; going until you drop. This can be applied to everyone in life. The moment we let our mind give up on something is the moment that we consciously shut off on a path that could lead us to grand places. We can break this down to the simplest of thoughts, so simple as for example: deciding not to go to the grocery store at a certain time. this is a silly example but ill have you know that if i didn't go to a store at a certain time on a certain day i would have never met one of the greatest connections of my life. If i were to give up on the idea of going and simply say no i would have probably never met this person. Okay enough babbling

Don't Give Up

Keep Climbing!

"Don't Stop Till You Drop" is how i train, i keep climbing and climbing until i physically cannot get up even a 5.7 Im sure if you use it to shape your training as well you will increase in strength and climbing technique.