Patagonia Climbing Adventures :: Día VI & VII

Scott sending the roof on Imaginate, El Campanile.

 January 29

9:00 I awake with a carefully crafted plan to spend today relaxing around el Refugio shooting Sean and Nico slack-lining - and thereby avoodomg the 2+ hour bushwhack/scramble to the adjacent valley to climb el Campanile with Blake and Scott. It's not that I don't like climbing, but having surpassed my expectations yesterday by climbing a 5.10 pitch on M2 (broken hand in tow) as well getting a number of solid shots of the guys climbing, I feel validated in a rest day. 

10:00 Over a breakfast of fried sausage and polenta cakes topped with leftover pasta sauce, Blake and Scott proceed to convince me that, contrary to my suppositions, today is not a valid rest day. Breakfast finished, I begrudgingly shoulder camera gear and straggle out of camp in their all too chipper wake.

16:00 "Validated rest days" be damned! The climbing on el Campanile is incredible. I have invented what may become a new technique in crack climbing. It is called the "cast jam". As the name implies, it consists in me jamming my broken hand into appropriately sized cracks and then using it to lock myself in while I go for the next hold. The only downside is that it requires a fairly specific crack size, and sometimes the "cast" (actually a heavily taped 6'' metal reinforced brace) gets kinda stuck. Also you actually have break your hand so you can get a cast, otherwise it is cheating. In any case, through utilizing this, and other unorthodox techniques I manage to "flash" (climb without falling - top roped) my hardest route to date (4 pitches of 5.10-5.10c), and end up on top of the highest spire in Frey with a view of Argentina surrounding, Chile to the west, and a pair of condors circling in the valley below.

17:00 Fixing a rope and lowering off the anchor at the top, I agree to a final stint "jugging" on what I have by now determined to be a very suspect 3 year old 8mm rope. Hanging in space some 30 stories above the ground, I attempt to perform some Cirque du Soleil moves to keep myself from spinning in the wrong direction as Scott sends the roof on Imaginate. The resulting photos (above/below) leave me whooping and laughing triumphantly!

Imaginate

View from the cave

Strategizing

Imaginate

Obligatory Condor shot

Scott on M2

Blake on M2

Evening boulder session

January 30

13:00  We make a mad dash decent from Frey, fueled by fresh oatmeal cookies from el Refugio, and the prospect of showers, chapstick, and a fresh pair of pants that does not have the crotch ripped out of them. To clarify, I have been wearing the same pair of pants for 8 days - the last 4 of which they have been crotchless due too abusive climbing and hiking on my part. Also, having forgotten chapstick I have been using peanut butter as a delicious but less than stylish substitute to sooth my cracking lips. We make the decent in less than 2 hours, running groups of trekkers off the trail as we scramble across ravines and huck streams in a dirtbag climber rendition of the final scenes of the Last of the Mohicans.

18:00 I part ways (as planned) with Blake and Scott, as they head south in search of more mountains, and I prepare to hole up editing photos for the next week in El Bolson.

Scott - night solos the spire next to camp in this 30 sec exposure.

Colorado Climbing:: Thunder Ridge and El Dorado

I'm currently sitting in the airport in Miami waiting to meet up with climbing cohorts Blake Herrington and Scott Bennet. From here we will continue on to Buenos Aires, and from there down into the northern part of Patagonia where we will spend a week shooting and climbing for an article for "Climbing Magazine". 

I'll be checked out of the internet world for a bit, but in the interim here are a few shots from the past couple months of climbing in the CO area!

 

Sissified Artist vs - Wild Man

"Hey Forest, not to freak you out...but don't fall here." Scott calls as to me, as I gingerly balance on a spine of rock that moments before he had pranced across.

Earlier that morning, Scott, Blake and I loaded up our packs with climbing gear and left over pizza and headed out from Denver into the Lost Creek Wilderness. Two days mucking around out in the wilds with a couple of serious climbers was enough to expose rather blatantly what a sissified artist I've become. I never thought I'd use those words to describe myself. Yet as I panted up the trail to the approach, doding imaginary rattle snakes under every rock, inwardly weeping as shimmering mirages of cold beers dissipated, and eventually clawed my way up craggy faces that Blake and Scott very nearly walked up, I realized I was a lot less tough than I had thought. Oh and I also realized I have a slight fear of heights. That said, by the end of our time together I found myself "jumaring" up ropes to shoot from what I fondly refer to as "killing heights"; as well as laybacking, finger jamming, and blood smearing my way up a couple of pitches I would have scoffed at the idea of climbing a couple days earlier. 

In all this I found myself frequently chewing on my own advice that I so love to sling around..."photograph what you know". 

I do not "know" climbing, and it showed in my struggles to position myself, anticipate the "crux" moves, and execute the shots I had in mind. 

Of course, the best way to overcome this is to learn to climb. And so that is what I set out to do. 

Yet in doing so I found myself in the catch-22 that exists at the confluence of "doing" and "photographing".I cannot climb to the limit of my abilities with a camera slung over my shoulder, and I cannot photograph the way I need to without the ability to climb and position myself.

Enter the struggle between the "sissified artist" in me (who drinks orange-mocha-frappes and wears Sperry's and linen) and the ever-present "wild man" (who kicks cameras into the Aegean sea and kayaks off waterfalls). Did I mention I'm a Gemini?

While the symbiotic growth of artist and adventurer is is not always easily achieved, it is certainly something to aspire to, and I relish the trips such as this one that push the two to a head...