Putting in new routes always carries certain challenges and obstacles, which is part of the allure for route developers like myself. New routing offers and adventuresome break from the day-to-day clipping of bolts or reading of topos for established routes. On new routes you have to find your own way, and sometimes that way is littered with distractions and difficulties.
This spring I got permission to put in a new route in Rifle via an existing permit that had been granted but not used. I was excited to add this route because it’s in an area that has the potential to become a new area for beginner to intermediate climbers. Before I could even get started the winter’s heavy snowfall and hot temperatures caused widespread flooding in Western Colorado and closed Rifle Mountain Park for about a week. As a husband, dad, and new business owner, in addition to other commitments such as coaching, my days to get out and explore new routes are already limited and hence it was mid June before I could get to Rifle to try this new route.
On that first day the canyon was beginning to fill up with climbers who were elated that the closure had lifted. Across from the Meat Wall and the popular routes Cold Cuts and Eighty Feet of Meat, I clipped an assortment of cams, stoppers and runners to my harness. This was my first trad lead in Rifle but it seemed the easiest, and most exciting, way to get to the top of my proposed route. The lead turned out to be fun and enjoyable and it made me think this route was going to go in easy. Instead, the route was littered with a dense layer of lichen but by the end of a few hours time I had completed some preliminary cleaning, picked out the line of least resistance and drilled the bolt placements. Needing to get home I left my rope hanging to return another day.
The next day was my wife’s birthday so I waited a day to return. That night I tried to give my 36 weeks pregnant wife some relief by sleeping with our 2 year old daughter who was struggling to sleep with a fever. I crawled into her tiny twin bed and found myself challenged to make the fit. Tired by a busy schedule I quickly fell asleep and woke up 6 hours, having stayed in the same position the entire time. Immediately I could tell that I had slept on my arm wrong but I didn’t think anything of it. As the day progressed, instead of my arm feeling better it regressed and pain started to shoot into neighboring parts of my arm and shoulder. By that night I was in distressing, incapacitating pain and struggled to sleep that night. In the morning I hoped it would have improved but to no avail. Desperate for answers and relief I went to my doctor, a rarity for me, and he attempted a diagnosis and prescribed some anti-inflammatory/pain medication. He offered a cortisone shot but I refused. The next day was even worse and I called my doctor again and anxious to be able to work in the guiding world I took him up on his offer of the cortisone shot.
In 15 years of climbing I have never had a climbing injury that prevented me from climbing, other than a broken leg but that’s a different story. The usual litany of elbow tendinitis, tweaked finger tendons, and strained shoulders had escaped me so I was thoroughly perplexed by my current predicament of being unable to climb because I slept with my daughter.
After a few days I slowly returned to guiding and some easy climbing. A week later I returned to work on finishing my new route but my glue gun broke as I placed the first of the glue-in bolts on the route and was left unable to finish. I returned half a week later with a new, burlier gun and finished the job. A day later I climbed When the Levee Breaks, 5.10.
The name was inspired by an excellent NPR story about the song, When the Levee Breaks, a popular cover by Led Zeppelin but with roots going back to the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. My suffering was not comparable to that event but I was amused by this idea that a litany of events seemed to conspire to prevent me from completing the route. The massive, and historically unprecedented flooding we have experienced this summer has challenged area businesses, including mine, and thwarted many of my climbing goals. But, such is the story of life with its ups and downs.
When the Levee Breaks, 5.10, climbs the gray streak in the center of the photo in Rifle Mountain Park, CO.