Up Against The Wall

Regular readers will recall, I wrote about El Capitan.  That led me to check the Anchorage rock climbing gym.  And last night I went with a friend for the intro class.

The intro class meets 7pm - 9pm M,W, and F. For $20 you get a lesson and equipment.  And as I mentioned last time they suggested bringing a buddy.  Though that didn't really turn out to be necessary, there were people who needed partners in the group of folks.

There's a long iPad form to fill out and initial waiving all sorts of things, mostly about if you get hurt.  And climbing shoes, despite looking really comfortable, aren't.  I started with a size 8.  Way too tight.  A size 9.  Still too tight.  When I got the size 10 I realized others weren't wearing socks.  But even without the socks it squeezed my toes.

Then we checked out the boulder room upstairs.  And then we went back down to the big climbing walls.   There are different climbing routes up the wall, each with its own color, a sign that designates its level of difficulty, and which rope (hanging down from near the ceiling) goes with that route.

We had been given harnesses which we had on like shorts made of straps.  Since I didn't take pictures I'm linking to an REI page on how to pick a harness.  Then we got shown how to tie the double eight knot for the climber and how to attach the carabiner and the belaying device.  I should have taken pictures, but I was caught up in the class.  The links will fill you in.  I'd note the way we learned to make the double eight knot was different.

Then we watched the instructors climb - actually the attention was on the belaying, not on the climber - and then it was our turns.

It wasn't really hard.  The belaying device holds the climbers even when they are hanging free and you can let them down slowly or more quickly.  So after the class was over and we got our belayer certificates, we went back and tried some more difficult routes.  Not too much more difficult.


Finally, I remembered to take some pictures.  Here's my partner up on the wall part way.


He looks so much more agile than I do in the picture he took of me.  But, then, something I only thought of afterward, was that his name is Cliff, so he should be more at home on the wall.  And he's climbed before.









We were going up a green route.

It was fun and after being in Yosemite and learning a bit about climbers, I just really wanted to learn about how the ropes and belaying works.  Climbing up was not too difficult on the easy paths, though you have to work harder on the more difficult ones.  Letting go of the wall and holding on to the rope and letting your partner belay you down was probably the coolest part.  It takes some faith to just let go.

Will I go back?  Probably not.  I got what I wanted.  And it's kind of like swimming indoors.  I so much prefer the ocean.  This is much easier than climbing outside - everything is there and ready for you to just climb.

What I got was the most basic experience in climbing and a better appreciation for the safety measures climbers take and the feel of being way up on the wall.   If I were forty of fifty years younger, I might have decided to try some real climbing.  But I am thinking about next time my granddaughter visits Anchorage.  There were kids climbing the boulders.

[UPDATED Nov. 2, 2017 4:30pm  - When people worry about the danger of mountain climbing, I'd note that mountain climber Fred Beckey died the other day at age 94.  Here's the start of an LA Times obituary:

"Legendary mountain climber Fred Beckey, who wrote dozens of books and is credited with notching more first ascents than any other American mountaineer, has died. He was 94.
Beckey died of natural causes in Seattle, said Megan Bond, a close friend who managed his affairs.
“He was an extraordinary mountaineer. He also had a personality and humor that almost dwarfed the mountains around him,” Bond said. “He was a brilliant writer. He was a scholar. He lived based on what was important to him, and he was not going to sell out.”
Beckey was known as much for his eccentric personality as for his singular obsession with climbing."]

Anchorage Heats Up And I Get Myself To The Rock Climbing Gym

We had a bit of snow that seemed to have waited to fall until after we got back in town.  Our street stayed white and sidewalks did too.  It looked like it was going to stick.  I biked to the University library to see how my mountain bike would do.  No problems.

But today it was 47˚F when I checked this morning, with lots of wind.  Sidewalks looking better, our street looking better (from a cyclist's perspective.)  So off to my meeting by bike.

You can see how blustery it was.  The flags waved north, west, and south at different times.





At the meeting I realized that my route home could easily take me by the year old rock climbing gym that I'd never been in, but had decided, watching climbers on El Capitan last week, to check out when I got back.  So here's a look at the Anchorage Rock Climbing Gym.



 


It started with Aaron who told me about their intro class that meets M,W,F 7-9pm and S 1-3.  For $20 you get rental equipment and two hours of introduction to how to use things at the gym.  He suggested bringing a partner, and there was another guy at my meeting who just been at Yosemite too and was interested.





Here's the big room.  Not exactly El Cap, but still very impressive.  I asked Aaron how this gym ranked nationally.  He said it's not in the top 10, but probably in the top 20.  I also asked about nearby places to climb.  I know people climb ice along the Seward Highway in the winter, but he said that's a very different activity.  Rocks face near Anchorage tend to break a lot.

Still in the big room.














Then I went up stairs where they have smaller walls.

And there were lots of kids climbing here.











And there is lots of equipment to rent.

Here's a close up of part of the wall and some of the climbing holds.  Skyaboveus identifies a number of these ways to stay up on a wall.  They list:

• Jugs
• Mini-jugs and incuts
• Slopers
• Pockets
• Pinches
• Crimps and Chips
• Edges
• Side Pulls, underclings, and gascons

You can get specific descriptions of each at the Skyaboveus link.

A nearby eating and drinking establishment even has a sign directed at people walking out of the climbing gym.   If you can't read it, you can click on the picture to enlarge and focus.  

And later today I saw it was 50˚F on our backyard thermometer.  The record high for October 25 is 50˚F in 2002.  So I looked on line to see if our backyard was just a hotspot.  But there it was.  We'll see tomorrow if that's the official high.

Mario And Marlene After Their 3 Day El Capitan Climb

After watching the slackline walkers at Lost Arrow, we took the shuttle to El Capitan and looked up at the giant rock to look for climbers.  I could only find a couple.  (I did not take my telephoto lens on this trip, so this was the best I could do.)

Let's put this into the context of the whole rock.

I know a lot more now about El Cap (as the rock climbers all called it) than I did when I talked to Mario and Marlene.  I've watched several El Cap climbing videos and realize that where I saw a big rock, the climbers saw various routes and various features that are all named and ranked by difficulty.

At the meadow below El Cap,  I asked this photographer which climbers he was following, he said all of them.

Which leads me to believe, now that I have had  time to poke around online, that he might well be Tom Evans who has a website call Elcapreport.com which I got to because I saw several vehicles with that url on them in Yosemite.  He's got much better shots (yes that telephoto does much better than my camera) there, with a set of photos of climbers on El Cap from this week.



There can't be two photographers who know as much as he did about all the people on the mountain. (Well, sure there can, but I'm betting it's him.) Marlene and Mario (in the video below) are in the background. They had started up the Triple Direct route on Friday and reached the top on Sunday and had just hiked down when I met them.

This is probably a good time to just watch the video.  Remember these two had just spent three days climbing El Cap and a fourth hiking down with heavy packs.  I didn't quite catch what they were saying about their route, but I've looked up the routes on El Cap, and it was clear they were talking about Triple Direct.  So listen for it.




I took this screenshot from Triple Direct El Capitan.

It looks a little different with the shadow, but you can figure it out on my picture above.

We went back to El Cap when we drove home on Tuesday.  Here are some more pictures to help you put this all into some context.  In the one below, you can see some climbers, and you can see what I mean about all the crevasses and other features that, if you take time, you'll get to recognize.

Click on any of these images to enlarge and focus - I saved some in higher res than normal

On Tuesday, I walked through the woods closer to the base.  Here's a sign I passed on the way.

And another:

Here's a look at part of the base from a clearing.

Again, saved this in higher than normal resolution, so click to dramatically enlarge

And here's most of El Cap from below.  The wide angle lens does distort it, but this gives a better sense than the other pictures of how big this mountain (It really seems more like a rock than a mountain) is.  (I googled "Is El Capitan a mountain?"  Wikipedia calls it a "vertical rock formation.")

And here you can see El Cap on the left (and Half Dome on the other side of the Valley in the distance) just before we entered the tunnel out of the valley and headed south.  It was still a bit smoky, but not near as bad as when we got there.  

After talking to Marlene and Mario and watching some YouTube videos of people climbing El Cap, I'm more inclined to see these folks as much saner than lots of people think about climbers.  You have to be pretty well organized to undertake an adventure like this.  These people are not, as many of the tourist observers at Yosemite seemed to think, suicidal.  They have lots of equipment to ensure their safety.

Here are two YouTube videos that get you much closer to what it's like to climb El Capitan.
These are two very different stories of climbers on the same mountain.  Both fascinating stories that fill in a lot more than I got this week.




These videos show us how much more we are capable of than most of us think.  But it takes work.



I think I need to check out the rock climbing wall when I get back to Anchorage.

Climbing Prohibited or Aqua Pura MCMVI or Playing With Photoshop

How many buildings have climbing prohibited signs?


Here's the water tower in Seattle's Volunteer Park where climbing is verboten.

Actually, this appears to have been a favorite rock climbing site.    Mountain Project, a rock climbers website, has a "Rock Climbing Guide to 122,093 Routes", including a post dated in 2009 for the water tower.  They have pictures too.

"Description 
Three fun expanses of brick wall, separated by cement ledges. Brick is uneven with lots of little holds and pockets. Route will depend on which side of the tower you choose to climb. Watch out for the cement ledges, from underneath they look positive, but they are slopers!
You can also spend an enjoyable afternoon traversing around the base of the tower. 

Location 
The tower was built as a water reservoir in 1906, but is now empty. It is located in the middle of Volunteer Park in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood. Address: 1247 15th Ave. E
From the inside of the tower, choose your window & anchor spot & that will decide which side of the tower you'll climb.
We climbed the east facing side, just to the right of a tall, very leafy tree. 

Protection 
Climb the inside of the tower and rig an anchor to one of the fixed metal banisters. Feed the rope through the window grating onto the ledge & then use a stick to drop the rope over the edge. Belay from the top, inside the tower. Once the climber reaches the top they will need to be lowered down, as all the windows have grating."

Here's a post card of the water tower from 1909 that was part of the displays once you 'climb' the stairs to the top inside.   

And here's a June 4, 2010 report of an encounter with the police from a Cascade Climber forum:

"Ah, so the sun came out finally in Seattle. No time to make it to the mountains to climb, so thought I would go for a quick session on the water tower at Volunteer park. The tried and true training ground for the broke Seattle climber.  
I get a few laps in, when I hear "Sir! sir! Get down off of there!". I hop down (from a whopping 2ft) and am approached by a Seattle police officer (along with a parks employee hiding in his truck). The cop tells me that the tower is "private" (!!) property and that it is only to be used for its intended purpose. I tell him that I'm pretty sure its public property and that people have been traversing it for DECADES without incident. At which point he says, "Are you arguing with me? I am a POLICE officer, do you want to go to jail?". I say, "No.. I'm just trying to understand this. Why not put a sign up then? To notify people of the rules, because this is the first I've heard of this" To which he replies, "it wouldn't do any good, people will climb on it anyways" (um, OK!?). I head back to my car, while he sticks around waiting for me to leave.
I considered being arrested, just to see if any of this would hold up. Anyone have insight in to this? Are they justified at all? At any given day there is someone traversing the tower, are they for real?!
Anyone want to plan a water tower climb-off-protest in the near future...?"

Well, now they have a sign.  (Was the cop celebrating the anniversary of Tiananmen Square by harassing the climber?)

Now, More Pictures Of The Tower With Some Photoshop Help

Of all the updated programs I'm dealing with now that I have a new computer, Photoshop (CS6) is the one that's giving me the fewest challenges.  I'm not sure what exciting new things I can do with it, but what I do like is that all the basic functions I use all the time, work they way they did in the CS3 version I was using before.  In all the others - from Safari, to iMovie, to, well everything - the basic moves are all frustratingly different.  Photoshop is, so to speak, still in English.  

So here are some experiments I did with my water tower photo.  First the original.  

This is the original.   It's pretty boring, especially since the sunny parts are overexposed and the parts in the shade are underexposed.


In the picture of the tower way up above, I just did simple adjustments so the parts in the sun got a lower exposure and the parts in the shade got a higher exposure.  Oh, yeah, I added the spider.  I took a photo of a  spider I had, but because it was so small a photo, I touched it up to make it bigger.


But then I started to have some fun.







I did this one using curves under image adjustments.

This one used the 'glowing edges' filter.

I got this one with the gradient map  (in Image Adjustment) - using Yellow, Violet, Orange, Blue.


















My favorite is this one using the water color filter

Click here for help with Roman Numerals.