Chad's spot for various thoughts, musings, poetry, ideas and whatnot

Friday, June 27, 2003

A Climb Up Memory Rock, Part I

After reading Scaryduck's many accounts of his past, I have decided that I too would regale you, my readers, with a tale from the dim mists of time involving risk, danger and, as is always the case when risk and danger are involved, stupidity. Unfortunately, unlike Scary's stories, there will be no alcohol involved, so the story may not be nearly as funny.

The story begins at the beginning of winter quarter of my sophomore year in college. Christmas had been wretched for a number of reasons mostly involving a young woman who had spurned my affections in the most nefarious of ways. She now, after a year of claiming that she wanted more, only wanted to be friends. I reacted to the news with what I considered an amazing amount of self-restraint and maturity. Instead of throwing temper tantrums or sharp objects, I decided to live like a monk and swore off the opposite sex for the next two years of my life. A pretty sane response I thought. I also decided to return to a pasttime of my high school scouting days, hiking.

Ashland's a pretty cool place to hike around and I had a gaming friend who I knew was in town that liked to hoof it around a bit so we got in touch. Just after the new year we decided to do a bit of slogging about in the high country. The problem was just where, but Kelly said he'd figure something out. After the holiday and the general monking up of New Year's which involved no alcohol or general gaity of any kind (I think I read some stodgy old philosopher or something) I rang up Kelly and we agreed to set off the next morning. Kelly said that he wanted to climb Pilot Rock which I thought was a smashing good idea.

So at about 7:00 am he picks me up in his old blue Mazda minitruck. My New Year's resolution had been to become a Stoic. All of that lowering one's expectations stuff seemed pretty good to me and I would get to play the strong, brooding, silent type that the chicks seemed to dig but that never had to pay them any mind. The ride up to the Pacific Crest Trial was pretty quiet as I got the impression that Kelly had something on his mind and didn't want to talk about it. Fine by me I thought. I didn't feel much like talking, being a stoic now and all.

When we disembark from the truck and hit the trail, we have a 3 mile hike to the base of the rock. Through snow. Up to our waist in places. I'm all for it. Suffering silently through difficult conditions is a stoic kind of thing I figure. Before long Kelly and I look like arctic explorers, except that we don't have all the great equipment meant for actually keeping you warm. Still though it's such hard work getting on in the snow that by the time we reach the base a little over an hour later we are sweating up a storm. Before our assault on the rock, we decided to take a break and catch our breath. As we chat the small talk we both realize that something much deeper is going on with each other and finally we both fess up what's on our minds. It turns out that Kelly's basically going through the same thing I am with an old high school flame and has decided to do the same stoic thing I have.

Cool! So right there we swear some sort of unspoken stoic oath to suffer whatever comes along with a sort of "what the hell" attitude. This would have been just fine at "Goodtimes" in town over pizza but it wasn't such a good idea right now. We were about to climb up an old volcano core of windpolished basalt. Pilot Rock stuck up out of the Cascade spine about 300 or 400 feet like a hitchhiker's thumb. It got it's name from the fact that the airline pilots that flew from San Francisco to Portland and back used it as a visual navigation aid. So up we go. At first, is was mostly like climbing stairs since the basalt had eroded to form those cool hexagonal rodlike thingys that got places named things like "The Devil's Staircase" or whatever. As we climbed higher the going got tougher and we started to have to do some hand and foot climbing. No problem I think and up I stoically go. As we near the top we hit an unexpected obstacle...ice. Hmmm. Ah, what the hell, right? Up we went, caution be damned. I mean, we'd just had our love-lives pooed upon so who cared, really? Just climb and the devil take the hindmost. About 30 feet from the top I took a bad line and got stuck with no way to get the rest of the way up. Normally this is no problem, you just back down to where you started and pick a new line. Kelly had found a good one and was making nice progress. But now the reality of what I'm doing smacks me in the face. I look down about 100 feet of near vertical rock face with a lot of ice and try to find my next down foothold. Did I mention my fear of falling? Yeah, all of the sudden I'm more than a little uncomfortable and trying to hold on to rational thought.

"You have to get down," I tell myself. Myself says some rather foul and very unstoic things back. "Relax, " I say, taking deep calming breaths. Myself gibbers with fear and then throws a rather unsavory image of me falling to a very painful landing at me. Ouch, I think. The bastard's really playing rough now, bringing my mortality into this and all. Doesn't he know I'm 19 and that mortality has no place in these conversations. I decide to try a little philosophy and tell Myself that I just need to lower my expectations. Myself counters with, "Like what, not expecting to survive the fall?" Damn, he really plays dirty. Just then Kelly asks if I'm OK. Myself wants to speak gibberish and blabber on about how slippery the ice is. I manage to get Myself into a half-nelson and say, "Give me a minute, I need to find a better foothold and I'll be good." "You're a lying bastard you know," Myself says. "You're so full of it your eyes are brown, " he continues. We talk like this a lot, swearing seems to be an important part of the conversation. I take the stoic route and ignore him. I search around and finally find something and lower myself down. Wow, how can you sweat so much when you're so cold. Don't look down too much I tell Myself. He sneers and I look. Still though, things look better as I can find a couple of more footholds. The only problem is that one is a long reach for a squatty guy such as myself. I rapid succession I make three moves and hope everything holds. It does and I'm back where I started and I've even managed to retain control of all of my bodily functions.

To be continued...

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