Kevin

Pinnacles, you crazy wonderland/wasteland…

I remind myself about the ground up ethic of the Pinnacles as I stand on top of the balconies. I’m looking for bolts that can make it possible to rap down to a previous high point I’d previously made it to on one of the Pinnacles infamous aid routes. From the top, I can see why it has a ground up ethic, multitudes of broken chunks of rock, fractured and connected to the conglomerate mud by fault lines and dust. Better to start from the ground without knowing about the shooting gallery waiting above. I return to the Pinnacles year after year, shared with the Condors scratching their way back from oblivion through generations of lead bullets and half-eaten plastic trash fed to them by their parents. We have joint custody. The autumn and winter are mine and the spring and summer belong to them. It is much like every…

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October 5, 2011

Creative Nonfiction

Up

With "10% chance of rain" the fixed lines drip neon colors back to the ground. Single cylindrical rungs of ladders to turn alpine ascents into medieval siege tactics. Tom yells from the bridge, his words amplified by the focusing of a camera's lens. Hardmen hunker down on the wall. They stay up there through the rain and sideways rivers funneling down the face of ElCap. I have never met a hardman on the ground. I wander between parties preparing to start up a route and parties drying out their things for the retreat back to the meadow. In my darkened car, my face is lit by my laptop screen. I steal Wifi from my gym when they close. Rain against the windshield of my car does not remind me of being outdoors. In an empty parking lot, I hear the freeway as the muted buzz of the Merced River. I press my nose…

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October 3, 2011

Creative Nonfiction

Snow will be the Death of Me

"They've gotta stop reporting wind chill. That's nonsense. It really is. I don't know where they came up with it, why they came up with it, but it's a lie. They come on, "Well, it's 27 degrees today, but with the wind chill, it's minus 3." ... Well, then it's minus 3, asshole! I don't need to know what the weather was like if the conditions were perfect!" - Lewis Black Yup. "Real Feel = 8F?" I don't even know what that means All I want is a big wall window. - - - - - and a day later?

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March 14, 2011

Creative Nonfiction / Trip Reports

Pinnacles Aiding

Took two attempt to send Mustache (took a nice 8 foot fall onto my back in the first thin section when a knifeblade came out - none of the placements below were worth anything but bodyweight.) When I sent it the weekend before last it took me about 5 hours to sort through the entire thing. We have some pictures but haven't got around to making a TR yet. Here's some snippets. Have worked on Premeditated twice. First time I wasn't feeling the traverse from 2nd to third bolt and came down. Second time made it around the corner right below the thin section when I had to create an anchor and come back down when some rangers came by and informed me that the closures were in effect. My honest to god response was "I thought the closures don't generally start until February" This is what I was thinking when I was deciding the night…

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February 12, 2011

Trip Reports

Roulette/ West Face TR and Ledge Bail

Intention We spent the summer practicing aid placements on rotten boulders an hour north of Truckee. Fun two and three move wonders that were more about trying to figure out what worked and what didn't. The translation from the page to the rock coming in spurts of realizations followed by dry spells in between. We would have liked to go a bit bigger, but our jobs only gave us 24 hours off every week. Not nearly enough time to march up to a big wall and do anything but turn back around again. We had played on Washington Column before the summer but had no other longer route to hang our hat on besides multiple single pitch TR hooking sessions done more for the fun of trying things out than for the most efficient line to the top - read as, all over the place, including the occasional quick downward…

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August 19, 2010