On the Rock and the Road with Mr. Motivation: Mark Grundon

Part One: Wide Eyes

Say a prayer for those you love and everyone else. That’s what I’ve written on my sleeping pad and the last words I read before going to bed. The first person I pray for lately is my friend Mark Grundon. Mark is twenty-two and has cancer; or hopefully by now had cancer.

I can vividly remember the first time I saw Mark on the campus of Western State College in Gunnison, Colorado. He was leaving class and I was going. I was admiring the fresh new faces on campus (checking out women). Somehow Mark stood out from the crowd with his wild appearance: six foot two, matted dreadlocks and wild blue eyes.

Through the college’s Search and Rescue Team, an important sounding organization to your parents that offered camaraderie similar to that of a fraternity, we met and became acquaintances.

I can remember the first time I saw him, but in the next couple of years, maybe due to all the college parties I don’t remember how much we hung out. But we were both climbers and passionate about it. Mark is the most motivated climber I’ve ever met. Like many college students my passion surpassed my motivation to actually do something, so Mark was an ideal friend and climbing partner.

When Mark and I first started climbing together he was working for the National Park Service; waking early around six and getting off around dinnertime. Mark would motivate me to show him some obscure routes in a nearby canyon. We’d climb till dark and immediately when the day was over he’d be trying to hook me into more climbing plans likely the next day after his long shift. This is Mark Grundon, an honest hardworking American, wide-eyed, packing as much life into each and every day.

The climbing adventures would continue as would the parties and growing and learning as climbing partners and more importantly as friends. In the winters around Gunnison they are cold and seem to last forever (forever-ever), if you don’t keep yourself mentally and physically occupied.

I was never prepared for winter, and the six winters I went through while going to college, I suffered through each one. I’d hibernate and loose track of Mark. Mark of course didn’t sink into the denial of winter I had, he got himself a job at the Monarch Ski area, this while maintaining a near perfect GPA at Western State with a double major in Environmental Studies and Recreation.

His first winter, Mark was skiing up Monarch and fell; lacerating his liver. He was flown out by helicopter to Denver. They stitched up his liver and part of it was removed. I found this out the following season at a party at his house, when he was the guy who lived at the party house. Mark was never the guy who partied his college away. Plus he couldn’t abuse his liver with alcohol like the rest of us. So while we’d take over his house, the only one we knew of in town with a hot tub (girls would always get naked in a hot tub), Mark would mostly be studying in his room maintaining that near perfect GPA, keeping his healthy perspective on life while the rest of us went on partying; acting like we’d be young forever.

Occasionally Mark would party and I’d be drunk, trying to get him to drink. I’m sure I was obnoxious and one night I was giving Mark an unusually hard time about not boozing. My (then) girlfriend got upset with me. I think this started a brother like relationship between us and then Mark would start to tease me about something, usually the girl, and we’d break out into a wrestling match.

So our friendship was born and molded by rock climbing, partying and some good-natured teasing. Another winter would come around and by then I knew I had to do something I remain sane to avoid sinking into the dark depression of winter. The only thing I could come up with was to continue climbing. Sure there was the college climbing gym, but pulling on plastic can only build up physical strength. My mental health was what worried me. School kept me active as well and girls would come and go. But I needed to climb outside.

My solution to combat the eventual seasonal depression, cabin fever, whatever you want to call it, had one major problem. We were living in a place often referred to as ‘The Icebox of the Lower 48.’ It is not uncommon to wake up in the dead of winter in Gunnison and it is negative twenty out, or even colder. I believe it’s the combination of the high altitude and the close proximity to the Blue Mesa Reservoir. Either way it will chill you to the bone, and it comes as no surprise that less than ten thousand people live here year round. Some say there are more elk and deer than people in the region. Two and a half hours to the west, though, is red rock sandstone desert at lower altitude; with some great climbing.

You could wake up at seven, down a quick breakfast and coffee and be climbing in forty-degree temps by ten o’clock. By noon you’d forget you lived in a place also known as ‘The Coldest in the Lower 48’ and your spirit would be a little warmer, which was exactly what my cold hardened soul needed. But who could I convince that driving five hours a day in the winter for a few hours of climbing was a good idea?

Part Two: Wide Eyes and High Times in the Desert

The first trip Mark and I made, or maybe it was the second was the worst. It was November, the start of the dreaded winter. It was one of those rare days when Escalante Canyon wasn’t a desert paradise, in fact it was snowing off and on and a wicked wind was brewing and by the time we starting climbing it was whipping and making us suffer.
Escalante is a quiet place where man’s influence is minimal. There are some cows, a small river, and lots of dirt and rock. Up to the wall where we would climb there is no distinguished trail. We just wandered up the red dirt, juniper trees, past little shrubs, and Mormon tea a green broom-like small shrub with jointed stems. Ahead red-rock walls, a couple hundred feet tall, actually maroon, with cracks to climb.

Despite the fact that it was snowing and wind was whipping Mark was still psyched to climb. Perhaps without his motivation I would have just given up and got stoned. He even wanted the lead. I agreed knowing the climb we were preparing to do would work him good, but how long could it take?

The climb we were about to get on isn’t described in any guidebook; therefore I can tell you no name. Mark began up a perfect hand crack, which had no other features other than the split in the rock. He was vaguely familiar with this technique of climbing those cracks, quite different than our backyard climbs in Gunnison, but he slowly struggled up the wall. I’ve been trying for years to pen the joys and philosophies of climbing as it can relate to normal everyday life. My experiences with Mark this day slowly logged themselves in my brain. Looking up to Mark it became clear this climb was much more than just a challenge. He lacked the training in the style, the prior experience to know what to do it. Yet somehow, inch by inch, in the cold and intermittent snow he was reaching the top, jamming his hands and feet into the crack accepting the pain of it.

He used some techniques modern purist climbers might call cheating, resting on his protection pieces wedged in the crack, but with no one but myself and God watching how could it be called cheating?

Two men suffering in the wilderness. Mark in the physical realm, managing his way up the steep red rock wall. While I was suffering in the mental realm, on the ground belaying, tending the rope, challenged by patience for being there for your friend. I did my best to send nothing but encouraging words up, Mark struggled on. The time came for me when I’d usually lose my patience; cursing myself for bringing a less experienced climber along and letting him lead. But there was something about his determination that kept me from anger.
It was cold, it was November and I wasn’t depressed. Something about fresh air, wind, rock, and dirt that keeps one from depression. A recipe that should be prescribed in moderate doses to all who are sad.

I was paying the dues for a climbing friendship that would grow and blossom and we were suffering together in the Colorado red rock wilderness. Though we’d been hanging out for years, it was a beginning. The start of our adventures in desert climbing, which for the purpose of this story is the red rocks near Grand Junction to Moab, Utah. The start of being brothers of the rock and the road, away from home, away from the college parties, taking down some of the walls we all put up in civilization to where we were just two young men, exited about life and willing to suffer to climb them walls.

We would make about thirty more trips to Escalante Canyon, our new winter climbing home, over the next couple years. Mark was as fun to drive in the car with, as he was to climb with. He was what many mountain folk would call always psyched. He had a childlike lust for life. I was an old, tired soul in need of a friend like Mark. He could get excited for the silliest of things and his excitement was infectious.

The drive to Escalante would be long so he would designate landmarks along the way as we drove from Gunnison through the towns of Montrose and Delta to Escalante. The more he tried to find landmarks, the weirder they were. It started with the ‘Giant Boob’, a Department of Transportation Structure half way to Montrose, that from one side that modestly resembled a fake boob.

With pure excitement and a manic energy he would yell, “Giant Boooob,” each time we passed the structure. Just outside of Delta headed west we discovered a yard with odd alien lawn ornaments, a monster truck on top of a crashed car and even a boat on a pole.

Mark was fun and he got better at wrestling the sandstone crack climbs too. One semester Mark and I had dream schedules at Western, modeled after many Crested Butte skiers; class on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday with Tuesdays and Thursdays off. So of course we’d go to Escalante. My obligations were minimal; a part time dishwashing job and two courses at the university. Mark however, no slacker, was ski patrolling at Monarch, taking more than a full school schedule as well as working on his Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) certification.

‘Escalante Tuesdays’ were the days. Mark provided the motivation to leave early and I would provide the cheese and avocado sandwiches. We’d usually take his little Hyundai, hell ten bucks in gas there and back. And of course, there would be holidays and he would be ready to climb on those days too. We’d climbed so many of the cracks there by then we began to search for the holy grail of routes to climbers, untouched, unclimbed ones. The climbing in Escalante had been going on since the seventies so most of the obvious safe cracks had been done. The leftovers from the ‘golden age’ of climbing in the West were typically littered with some loose rock but some were desirable and if your mindset was like ours, a strong desire for a first ascent, a little loose rock, or even a lot wouldn’t deter you.

On the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday of 2003 we found ourselves facing up at an unclimbed route, obvious that to human had ever climbed it because of the presence of many loose blocks in the first fifteen feet of the pitch. One feature, similar looking to a snow bollard, a ball of rock a few square feet around, hovered above us, destined to meet with the ground as soon as we got up to it and knocked it off. Though it was clearly a dangerous climb, both of us wanted our hands on it.

We eyed the line, with a hint of competition, like we were both after the same
co-ed. But since I had more experience, and karma-wise I’d spent lots of time belaying Mark; it was agreed that I would lead. I didn’t have the warrior like mental focus needed for steep difficult climbing and each move was a battle; made more difficult because of the unstable nature of the rock. I would reach up a hold and it would crumble away. When I’d step down with my feet the same thing would happen. Any time I found a hold to move up on I’d be afraid it would crumble and send me back tumbling to the ground.

After ten feet of humbling groveling through loose rock I arrived at a ledge five feet left of the bollard feature.

The scene was hilarious, but frightful at the time. Funny how climbing is sometimes the most joyous thing in the world, other times it is a nightmare. Once I arrived at the ledge I was too chicken to traverse on my feet, so I simply crawled across it, as it was perfectly featured to do so. I must’ve looked like a fool to Mark, but he stood there belaying patiently. I got to the bollard feature and karate kicked it off the wall, sending the three-foot tall ball of rock just beside of Mark. Finally I’d reached the perfect crack. I used the same techniques Mark made the year before, weighting the protection I’d placed in the rock, while knocking down loose rocks off trying to miss Mark while doing this. At a snails pace, (some say rock climbing can be one of the slowest forms of human movement) I eventually finished the climb.

Mark faced what I had with seeming ease, moves that I had struggled with he performed with delicate execution. It was if I was witnessing the student was growing closer to the teacher in ability. In climbing all are equal, regardless what the ego says. But I was not envious of Mark, his passion was shared. Quickly Mark was figuring out the techniques to climb these desert cracks, and he reached my perch with grace. We called the climb “Living the Dream,” to reflect the dream lives we’d been living that winter.

The following week we were back hungry for another first ascent experience. While I was bolting the anchors on Living the Dream, Mark had discovered a perfect crack, right around the corner that looked like it had never been climbed. Since I got to lead the previous week Mark would get the sharp end this time. Mark started up the stunning crack, split in a corner, like an open book, jamming his fingers and toe tips in the crack, placing the mechanical cams as he went. Forty feet up I heard some mumbling fearful chatter followed by an, “Oh shit.”

Before I even had a chance to think Mark had fallen thirty some feet, upside down, the rope had gotten caught around his foot, and he was now looking me directly in the eyes hovering a few feet from the ground. A piece had popped from the crack, the rope stretch a little but luckily his second piece held if not he would have landed on the ground headfirst. For a second I saw Mark more wide eyed than ever, and we went through some climber dialogue.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Holy shit dude.”

“I know.”

My friend could have just died, had things gone slightly differently. What to do now? Our gear was placed in the half-inch crack up there. All of it added up to a few hundred dollars. We couldn’t just walk away. One of us would have to focus back on the seventy foot climb. The crack hadn’t exactly been friendly to Mark. So I geared up, and used the most conservative techniques I knew to climb a rock. I quickly saw why Mark had been spit out of the crack, green lichen grew on the edges and the climb was perfectly vertical. We still thought it has never been climbed before. As I reached the place of his fall I was resting on the gear. I inched to the top of the climb and disappointingly there was an anchor, evidence we were not the first to climb the thing. But we were both alive and uninjured and deemed the day a success. And we had a story to tell when we got back to Gunnison

As always winter turns to spring, the cold is forgotten and the fruit of dreams planted turns to reality. Over the winter we’d became skilled desert climbers and Mark and I were climbing at the same level. Being a desert climber means little in the grand scheme of things (no one is going to take your picture and put it in a magazine just for that) and in a technical sense it basically means you’ve figured out how to jam your limbs into a variety of sizes of cracks. In your heart it means a lot more, climbing changes lives, over a season in the desert I learned to trust Mark with my life on the end of the rope and together we spent many days in the car and in the desert growing…

The spring following our winter breakthrough as school was done Mark was off on another adventure to Alaska; spending his summer guiding helicopter/glacier travel adventures. In the fall, when school started back up, I was living, camping out of my truck (standard for any climber at some point in their lives). Mark invited me to park the truck outside of his newly rented home. It was a classic college rental: run down, with a slumlord landlord that they later had to take to court. It’s a situation many a climber has dreamed of: living for free, surrounded by friends, and having all the luxuries of a modern home. I stayed living out of the truck for a few months till it really got coolllld.

Just before the cold set in we planned a climbing weekend. Starting with the nearby Black Canyon; followed by a day in Escalante. The Black in November is always a gamble. There was always that chance that you could be caught in a storm a thousand feet up on those intimidating granite walls. And how to describe the Black if you’ve never seen it? It has the tallest wall in Colorado, the two thousand plus foot Painted Wall; a crumbly thing with pink pegmatite strokes that run diagonal across it. The white man didn’t discover the canyon until the late 1800s, maybe early 1900s (my history knowledge is Native American style, word of mouth). But if you went you could see why they didn’t ‘find it’, you drive up and it all looks flat. Park your car at the primitive campsite at the North Rim (where most of the climbing is done), hike maybe a few hundred yards, and you are at the void. See the guardrail, stop and look right down about two thousand! feet. The ever moving Gunnison River roaring below; you feel it, and there’s a vibe that is unique to this place and time. There’s an average of a couple of people a year who jump off and commit suicide right there, climbers have been on the wall and discovered body parts. And I’ve heard that the Natives, Ute people (check the history books or ask their ancestors) believed the place was haunted. Without a guardrail probably more spooky. Anyways the first time I walked up on that guardrail I started to believe in evil spirits, and my stomach sunk deep down. But there is an equally empowering positive energy that one can access on the sheer grey walls; inching upward to the rim.

That morning in the Black, only climbers there, (woohoo) didn’t indicate any storm was coming in, and even though winter was in the air I was with Mark. I had done the climb once before, The Journey Home, I believed named after an Ed Abbey book, with a most exciting initial section of the climb (long run out without gear for falls), which Mark would lead. We approached the climb and were staring up at the beginning of our vertical world for the day. I felt calm knowing Mark would be leading the first dangerous section. He climbed off, set a piece of protection and then set off for a long section without any pro for falls, not that difficult of moves but sure to send all the adrenaline in your brain tingling down your body. I let out rope and watched Mark weave his body on small edges on the dark gray rock, with swirls of pink and lighter tones of gray. The rope hung from his harness, mostly useless for now, as he danced his way up the wall.

At one point he knocked down a small chunk of rock down but managed to stay on. It was a good thing too had he fallen it would have been to where I was standing twenty feet below. He was simply in a position where he couldn’t fall, and he didn’t.

He climbed higher, secured good gear, a relief for both of us. The rest of the climb went smooth each time we’d set out and climb a full rope-length, 200 feet. When I was the leader I remember I’d be staring off into the never-ending vastness of the canyon (it goes on for something like 50 miles), feeling tiny and empty then eventually Mark would draw nearer. I’d notice those wide eyes and soon after that we were on the perch together, a ledge just enough to put our feet on, dangling almost a thousand feet above the canyon floor, just two people but a closeness and enthusiasm that I’ve rarely found except when I was in the wilderness with a friend. And Mark was (is) the best of friends and full of the purest energy and enthusiasm (just used the word but appropriate again).

The energy of climbing in the wilderness led us onward to the top of the wall, a thousand feet above where we began. Three other friends from Western State who had been the only other climbers in the canyon were there to meet us with cold beers, a rare treat, usually when you top out there’s no one or some curious sightseers (ya’ll been climbin down ther?). We were the only people there in the vast park (maybe a ranger at the station), no surprise; we were on the heels of old man winter. The sun left us and we cooked a humble meal in the cold night and then left the canyon for the season, for another favorite, where we always go when things get too cold, Escalante Canyon.

Escalante, no secret, no surprise we’d learned many lessons, survived the falls and now it was an old friend. There was little, if any mystery of what to do when we woke up, ate some food and hiked up the hillside to a red rock sandstone crag. Once again it felt right to be in the desert. We spent all day climbing different cracks, we had also picked up the Benson, a particularly funny young man from Gunnison, who was one of the three from the Black the day before, who added an essential element to the day, humor (you can never have too much). Mark once described him as a big teddy bear. But as we were laughing, climbing, laughing, climbing, just as fast as the autumn fades to winter, if you’re not paying attention, the sun was steadily leaving us. Usually as the day ending I lose my energy too, but with Mark he sees the setting sun, as an opportunity, for more life, for one more climb. You better bring a headlamp if you’re climbing with Mark, and we walked down the hillside, well after the sun had set.

The winter soon came upon us after this trip, but by now we were too good of friends to just lose track of one another. Though Mark would be spending his free time skiing and ice climbing we still stayed in touch. We were working on a fundraiser together at the college for people in Nepal and Nicaragua; selling crepes and coffee. And, occasionally we’d party, but basically we were family now. One morning after a snowy weekend I stopped by Mark’s house to say hello.

Some Hard Times

“How was the ice climbing this weekend?” I asked. They’d been climbing near Silverton, Colorado that weekend, a few hours south of Gunnison.

“Not so good, we had an accident.” He told me somberly with a look of despair in his eyes and on his face.

Mark and his roommate Scott, and Steve (another climbing friend) had gotten hit by an avalanche, while they were well into the climb. Steve, who was leading fell well over 200 feet to the base of the climb, while Mark and Scott were nearly ripped from their anchor from the force of the avalanche. They all could have died. They immediately went into rescue mode and got help for Steve. He was rushed to the hospital in Montrose and spent the night there. Immediately we made plans to visit Steve that afternoon.

For the first time ever in the winter we were heading west to Montrose, not for the pleasure of climbing, but to visit an injured friend. We arrived in the evening to see Steve in a hospital bed, tired and injured but alert and in good spirits. He was the reality of what could happen to you while climbing. I didn’t know what to say. There wasn’t really much we could do. We gave him some food and told him we admired him. Time was the only thing that would heal the wounds, which included injuries to the discs in his back and a broken sternum. We left, he needed rest, but I knew from surviving that kind of fall that his body was as strong as steel, his spirit as strong as any other human’s I’d known.

Winter went on. Slow as winter does as did the sadness that comes with it. Steve was healing slowly. Mark and Scott were mentally were recovering too. But life, like the avalanche, sometimes the hard times just keep coming down on you. I was at work, washing dishes in Crested Butte, when I received a phone call from Mark with the news, he had been diagnosed with testicular cancer. He immediately needed a surgery to remove his testicle and would have to leave in two days, to Vermont, where he grew up. I didn’t know what to say, and I didn’t know what to do.

Mark’s surgery in Vermont was successful and soon after he returned to Colorado for radiation treatment and his final semester at Western. Mark faced this challenge with the same determination and courage I had witnessed in his climbing. Never did he submit to negativity. Mark had always been busy with school, with clubs like the college’s environmental group the Western Sustainability Coalition, or the Western State College Climbing Club, which he was the President of. If he wasn’t busy with school stuff he was practicing and studying Buddhism, yoga, or skiing or climbing.

His routine now didn’t leave him a minute of free time. He had six weeks of radiation treatment to do in Grand Junction, which meant getting up at 6:00 am, driving to Junction doing his treatment and then driving back to Gunnison for school. This was what he had to do. Certain days he would challenge himself a little more. Many days he’s get zapped (his slang for radiation) and then head over to Escalante Canyon for a quick climb. Typically he would out climb who ever was along for the adventure. More than one person reported to me that Mark ‘out climbed’ them; this from a guy getting treated for cancer. Over and over again. Week after week of this routine.

At first he was nauseous and couldn’t eat. He lost ten pounds. The medicine for he received, along with numerous other pills of God knows what, didn’t help. The doctor gave him weed, or as they call it marinol; little pills of THC (marijuana as the kids call it). It worked immediately, his appetite returned. Once his friends found out the marinol was helping they began to offer all forms of THC. One group of friends concocted some ganja peanut butter (peanut butter with weed in it). Mark unlike many college students didn’t care to smoke pot so the effect was just like someone getting stoned for the first time

One night after he had sampled some of the peanut butter I stopped by the house to find him in the middle of his kitchen floor laughing hysterically. Indeed the unimaginable stress of being a full-time college senior while undergoing radiation treatment for cancer hadn’t gotten to his sense of humor.

Mark, already a respected member of the Gunnison Valley community was now a hero. At the college a professor organized a ride system so that Mark would never have to ride alone. I got to go a few times. Waking up at six in the morning was rough, how did he do this day after day? Arriving at 8:30 in Junction at the cancer center. That day they invited us to go back in the radiation room, with that big machine above Mark’s body to administer the radiation. It was freaky, even more disturbing they had to put his privates in a weird metal cup. The doctor assistants explained the whole process and we watched via a TV outside the radiation room. This day after day and Mark never lost his cool. The only thing that upset him was the one cookie limit in the lobby,

“These people are going through cancer, can’t they have more than one damn cookie,” he’d say.

On the drive back that day we were talking about usual college topics: girls, parties, politics, the environment, and girls. One friend had been spending some time with a lady and Mark started asking him about it. Since neither Mark or I had a ladyfriend, we were interested. “So how did it go last night?” Our friend wasn’t interested in talking about it, “not so good,” he said after a little prodding.

“Well, what happened?” Mark asked.

“Ummmm, I don’t really want to talk about it,” the friend said.


“Dude you just saw my balls in a metal cup,” Mark.

And our friend told the story….

After the radiation treatment Mark had not only earned my admiration and respect but the same for many others. There was a big party in his tiny little house, his parents had flown in, and Mark did the MC Hammer dance like a wild man. It was an essential celebration, cancer, radiation, five hours of driving every weekday, none of it defeated his spirit.

Continue on He Did…

And continue on he did. He went back to ski patrolling at Monarch, back to climbing (he never stopped) and started planning for another adventurous summer. Sure enough, he scored himself an opportunity to be a summer guide on Mt. Shasta in California; which would be a final internship for his Recreation degree.

Mark had to try out for his position to be a mountain guide, so in his usual cramming as much life into every moment style, he did this just before his graduation ceremony at Western. I just happened to be in Bend, Oregon on a road trip climbing so it was perfect; we could drive back together.

I rolled into Mt. Shasta City in the afternoon, I was foggy and the mountain wasn’t to be seen. I found Mark’s new house for the summer. He had gotten the job and had spent the weekend on the mountain and partying like climbers do. “I’m so tired of talking about climbing,” he told me.

“It’s been a non-stop spray fest,” he said.

Indeed climbing is something that’s better to do and just keep quiet about it, which is easier to write than to do. So we packed up my truck with Mark’s climbing gear and headed east back home. Mark told me about his future fellow employees and the crystal people that come to Mt. Shasta to charge their crystals, as it is one of the ‘sacred seven summits.’ He told me about the breast cancer fundraiser that they did on Mt. Shasta. I had been doing some solo traveling on the trip and it didn’t bother me at all that Mark was talking non stop. The constant presence of a true friend is no doubt better than any benefits of solitude. We drove through the forests of Northern California which took us to Nevada. Poor lonely Nevada. Full of lifeless desert and casinos. Mark went on talking and we made stops for fuel, coffee for us, gas for the car.

The nighttime in Nevada. Forever of nothing but the white and yellow lines (just stay in between the mayonnaise and the mustard), and the truck powering down the highway. Then bright, bright, blinking lights on the horizon; an insanity supported by the gamblers. Reno, no urge to stop, gambling could be fun, but the prospect that we might have time to climb in the Utah desert called us. Nighttime driving, one would sleep, the other would put as much coffee in our system as possible. He actually stopped talking for a little bit. What he was talking about is gone to the wind and the road, but for sure set at a rhythm by the road, and the caffeine and the hip-hop, rock and reggae that played on the radio.

We were both up for the sunrise as Nevada ended one last big casino of course, on the edge. Then Utah began and Salt Lake City came into the horizon. Past the lake, big buildings. America, Nevada home of prostitution and gambling, fades into Utah home of the Mormons, of young adventurers like us, and I’m sure a lot of other kind of folk too. Ah, to be young, low on sleep, high on caffeine, rolling into a city with no attachments, no real plan, the sun in coming up and the city people are getting going, the semi-truck on their endless journey heading out of town and into town. No energy to be exited to arrive at the destination, but we had a friend in Salt Lake, an old college friend, so we find his house so we can pass out.

As we show up on Adam’s door, he was just getting ready to rise for grad school, “You guys can sleep as long as you want, I’ve got to go to class, I’ll be back in the afternoon.”

We slept for a couple of hours and woke to the most horrible smell of paint drying with none of the windows open for ventilation. Someone was painting the damn bathroom, why did it have to be the morning we arrived? Though there was nothing we wanted more than sleep, there was no hope for it with the toxic state of Adam’s studio. We stumbled out on the streets of Salt Lake City, a place we’d never been, a city like no other.

A great garden of flowers at a Mormon leaders old house, temples and temples in the city mixed with your usual American city commerce and business people. We stumbled more, looking for a place to get some breakfast food.

Wandering across the vast city over to a market and what do we hear but “Let’s get wild,” an old college phrase that we used to say when we got exited. I look back and walking down the street was one of our kind, Adam. Goofy and intelligent, one of our people, with his wild blond hair flowing in many directions he proclaims, “We should go to this Tibetan buffet over by my house.”

Fed, and then caffienated, Mark and I make a quick trip to the library to get some information about a climb and then head south to Moab, our destination for the evening. Driving on so little sleep I’m irritable but more caffeine takes care of that, Mark and I barely talk our brains are foggy and we’re leaving a city, and aren’t all cities a bit confusing after living in small towns for so long?

Though we don’t talk, I wonder what he thinks and he seems to communicate with those wild blue eyes. Is he scared of death after so many close encounters with it? But those eyes say to me, ‘I’ve lived and died a hundred times before.’

Driving across the United States. We’d seen the forests of Northern California, to the desert of Nevada now we cross from Salt Lake City headed south, desolate and lonely to the red rock desert of Moab, the real thing man. The real thing if you’re a dreamer, an outdoorsman, a climber, like us. If you’ve read Ed Abbey and he planted dreams in your head of adventure in the forms of rock towers, red dirt (ahhh red dirt), lone ravens, cactus, juniper trees and blue (so
blue) skies.

Our destination is Castle Valley, home of the prettiest rock towers I’ve seen, some four hundred feet tall, and very climbable. We set up camp, which only means throwing our sleeping pads and bags in the dirt and get some food in our guts. Mark wants to wake up before sunrise to get an early start, who am I to argue?

Motivation for that desert high gets us up way early. The landscape we can’t see it yet, still dark. But we know its there. We don’t hear much noise from the ten some climbers that are nearby. Success, there is competition for these climbs, the gems of Castle Valley, but all you have to do is get up before they do. It may have been what Abbey feared, the inevitable popularity and population of the red rock desert, but it’s really no big deal. Clinkering and clanking of climbing gear…but don’t wake them up.

We hike up to the Rectory, the first tower we plan to climb for the day. The sunlight replaces the headlamp and the towers, the nearby mountains (oh, what is their name?), are unveiled. Our legs are well conditioned. I’ve been on a three week climbing trip, and Mark he’s always in good shape. Hiking is a pleasure when you’re prepared and the suffering is little to none. The work out feels divine and puts our minds exactly in the moment. We find the base of the Rectory. Castleton is just behind us: a perfectly squared four hundred foot tower.

Our objective in front of us is a four hundred foot series of cracks up red rock sandstone. The tower itself is slender. It is long, like three hundred feet wide or so, and juts into the sky, the blue sky. In the red dirt we organize our climbing gear.

We start up, me leading first I jam (slam) hands in the crack, breathe, jam feet (bam), breathe, jam, breathe a few times over for a hundred and fifty feet. What a way to wake up, did we eat breakfast? I’m sure we did but I don’t remember what, but I’ll forever remember hanging on for my life above, the void, above my belayer Mark, striving to get higher and higher. Mark comes up to my perch, a nice little ledge if I remember correctly (I don’t) and sets off for harder climbing above; perfect style the reward for our lonely days in Escalante. No so lonely here, look back and there’s people approaching up the hills we climbed a couple hours before. It feels so divine to climb in good style, hell good style or reckless struggle, look around and you’ll have a view to remember. Red rock is everywhere. Of course the a few lone ravens are up and about. In the distance is a winery, which adds welcome greenery to the surroundings.

I clean Mark’s pitch, yanking the gear out while still hanging on. And then there we are a hundred feet below the summit, still early as hell. I try to soak in the time with my friend, but no much time to just be there, keep moving, just how I like it. Mark is still rather exited and talkative. He’s here in his element, late spring in the wild desert always a sense of reward for those who endured a cold winter. How does it feel for a guy that spent a good part of his winter treating cancer in a hospital? Well I can tell you he was psyched and the excitement building in his chatter. The guy likes to talk, loves to get excited. So like I told you we don’t hang out long and soon I’m leading off for the summit pitch. But just cuz you’re near the top don’t mean you there yet. Some sandy, exciting climbing begins the pitch. The sand makes you question your foundation; each foothold seems a little insecure. In the moment, at least I’m trying to be, Mark is still talking a mile and minute. I try to focus on the climbing. Mark still jabbering about God knows what. The morning has packed in so much adrenaline, workout and joy. But quickly I am entering a fearful state and I need to concentrate as much as I can, “Will you shut up,” I yell to Mark.

He takes no offense because he knows the process my brain is going through. We are brothers of climbing. I’m inching up the sandiness disappears, the quality of rock perfect again, the climbing harder and harder still, but protected by bolts, which all ya have to do is clip em with a carabineer. And there I am, later there we are on the summit and it’s still way before noon.

“Let’s get in another tower,” he says.

I was waiting for him to say it and it’s decided. We rappel back to the ground. Our next objective, just around the bend, The Priest, the Honeymoon Chimney, we hike over, have a granola bar lunch. We’re a little tired. Mark decides to do something about it and finds a good place to stand on his head, yogic way of revitalizing your energy.

It’s Marks lead. He starts to wiggle himself in the chimney. Chimney climbing, you just put your whole body in the crack. Physically demanding and mentally too when the protection for falls is limited, he’s got a rock in the back of the crack slung with some webbing, clips a mediocre bolt but doesn’t have ‘it’. Grunting Grundon, struggling, wiggling, clanking of the gear. Not much progress, after a half an hour, “I don’t have it, do you want to try it.”

“Well hell no, if you can’t get it,” I felt good enough, the desert was alive within me, or at least I have that high. I know that feeling and it’s much better than exhaustion. Hell our days been good enough. There’s no one keeping score in the sport of rock climbing.

So it’s a little past noon, we hike back down the hills wind through red rocks, red dirt, clouds are rolling in a little. We feel good, I feel perfectly content with the Rectory, Fine Jade being the final climb of the road trip. Back to Moab for lunch? It’s out of the way, but how good is a prepared meal when you’ve been eating camping meals? So good but no good enough to use that much gas that much time to go out of the way. Our way is east, back to Colorado, back to Gunnison. River Road, East, soon its I-70, soon enough Grand Junction. Food, food what else would we think of?

Once he’s energized with a modest meal Mark starts talking of more climbing for the day. I go along with the plan for a bit but the comforts of home have already entered my mind. You can try but you usually can’t keep up with Mark. He’s disappointed I don’t want to get a couple of afternoon climbs in Escalante. I feel guilty and start to come up with excuses. There we are in Grand Junction, the center of our desert experiences; Mark always ready for more living, more climbing.

We drive in Highway 50, which takes us home. Mark is about to graduate in a week. Immediately he’s got a lot on his plate. But he’s done it before. He graduates, with honors, cum lade I think they call it. His parents, Cheryl and Steve come back to town, and he takes them up a desert tower in Colorado National Monument, near Junction. He’s back in Gunnison for a day or two, then destined for California, to Yosemite for some big-wall climbing, up to Mt. Shasta for some guide training, back to Yosemite then to Colorado for a stop in Gunnison then up to Estes Park for an eight day American Mountain Guides Association (AMGA) training course.
After California and another drive across the West he stops at our house for some rest. He tells some stories, of a flood in Yosemite and climbing El Capitan with a random English guy he’s met in Camp 4, the historic campsite in the Yosemite. “Yeah we were four pitches from the top and my partner had to catch a flight back to Europe the next day.”

“So we rappelled two-thousand feet back to the ground.”

No sense of failure in his eyes or words though. A few hours at the house, a nap, and he’s gone to Estes Park. Eight days for his AMGA course, the stories don’t end. Most of his climbing gear has been stolen, and that is just the start.

When he arrives back in Gunnison he calls me, “My cancer has come back.”

He’s found out in Estes Park, from tests he has done a few weeks prior. My heart sinks, I must be with my friend. I’m homeless (doing the living out of the truck thing or put more poetically living as if the earth is my home) now so we meet at a three-bedroom apartment where five maybe six hipsters are living. He tells me of his experiences with the AMGA course, getting the gear stolen. His spirit not yet broken, if it isn’t by now, I know it never will be. Where did we go that night to sleep? The woods somewhere I suppose.

The next day before leaving he’s decided to cut his hair off, “It would fall off in chemotherapy anyways,” he told us.

But he leaves it half cut is some wild fashion, which makes all of us laugh at dinner that
night at the new hip restaurant in Gunnison called Bowlz. “Man just when Gunnison gets cool I
have to leave,” he joked.

And we all can forget, Mark too hopefully if even for just a moment, that he has cancer and just enjoy each others company. The restaurant had just opened, it took hours just to get our food, but that was just fine. So we all laughed, had a couple a beers and didn’t talk of climbing once, which Mark and I agreed we had been doing too much of over the years. That night he even found a friend, Aaron, to drive back to Vermont with him, where he’d be doing the chemo. Opposite of where he’d planned to be, California.

A summer of chemo, I talked to him several times, not often enough, but each time we talked I’d get nothing but positive energy, positive thoughts. He missed it so bad up here in the high country; God’s country. He seemed to never want to end the phone conversations. Sometimes we’d talk for a couple hours. He was doing the treatment in Burlington, which he called Girlington. Girls indeed essential for a young man to have around but I knew he just wanted to be in the mountains.

In the summer at work watching TV during my shift meal we’d watch the Tour de France, with the great cyclist Lance Armstrong, who also had testicular cancer, now a cancer survivor. Lance seemed to have the same hope and energy flowing through his veins that Mark did and everyday my belief that Mark too would be a cancer survivor grew. Summers go so fast when they are preceded and followed by months and months of snow and cold. I doubt the summer went too fast for Mark though.

Times are so great now in my life, but they can’t last forever. But when they get harder, and things might seem overwhelming I’ll think of Mark Grundon, a climber, Mark Grundon, a young man wise beyond his years. When times get hard I’ll think of Mark Grundon, who knows hard times.

This is Buildering

In the deep of the twilight, the night, buzzed on something, spirits, smoke, the usual, a change occurs: an athletic alchemy, different urges, some of the chances and opportunities of the night have passed…with no possibility of getting laid, you’ve stayed up too late to get really good sleep, some sense to experience more, and not just sit around and talk about things, besides the bartender is telling you to leave…stumbling out onto the streets, some think, ‘one more cigarette or a bong session, perhaps a silly movie, maybe the twelve pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon in the fridge at home?’

Others think about climbing buildings.

Enter the mind and body of a climber, in an urban concrete jungle we call a city, enter their heart thumping and pumping blood. Look through their eyes at the buildings with a desire that no one but a climber could feel, an inclination to interact with them, to enter a different dimension, the vertical realm, one with substantial risk. The usual risks of climbing: the consequences from falling, abuse to joints, bones, and muscles. Also legal risks: trespassing, the chance a cop may drive by and see you, though the pig would hardly think to look for someone twenty feet up the side of a building at three in the morning.

When most everyone has entered the dreamworld of sleep, or other lazy activities in the horizontal, the lucky ones are -well- getting lucky, in a city of a million people just two or three may decide to enter the vertical…they will choose to builder.

For a few years now I’ve managed to stay primarily on the outside of buildering sessions, while still remaining on the inside. While I’ve gotten off the ground a time or two, usually I just watch, especially when the building at hand enters the zone a fall could mean death. Just being around the excitement is enough for me, and in the last few years, for many nights after the bars close I’ve found myself within a cipher of builderers trying to climb anything they please mixing their beer buzz with adrenaline; putting their youthful health on the line for a unique rush.

I don’t know if Sparks builders much these days, but he did, and during a winter night in cold, bitter cold town called Normal, Colorado he had one of those mystical magical moments which involved several elements as you’ll see…

Sparks is one of those climbers people must think of when they visualize a guy in his twenties who muscles his way through a rock climb. Ripped, like the guys posing on the packages of underwear. For some reason his climbing performance rarely matched up with his strength. Climbing requires a mental discipline, a vertical meditation that often Sparks lacked. When his mind was on an “off” day he could not perform on the rock, he could not complete the difficult move because his mind would not focus. Though his body was strong enough, often his mind would not break through to the meditative state needed for difficult climbing. But he was strong, way strong and once in a full moon he would be “on” and great things could happen.

Well it may have been a full moon, the coyotes must’ve been howlin’, cause that night amidst the psychedelics and the beer we were climbing everything that looked like it could be climbed. The outside of a ten-foot stucco ATM station next to the bank, with an overhanging bulge near the finish and a foot of snow on the top, a plastic horse that was a sign for a local cowboy shop which was twelve feet off the ground, also covered in snow, even a route that was so difficult it hasn’t seen a known repeat ascent in years on Main Street, a route climbing up the front side of the sketchiest bar in town.

It was one of those night when people were in town for the holidays, the snow was falling like its supposed to in the mountains, maybe an inch an hour accumulating on rooftops, streets and sidewalks, spirits were flowing, Christmas lights were lit, like we all were, buzzed so much that at a point in the party no one could come up with a reason why we shouldn’t go out.

This was one of those nights. We were a group of climbers and a couple girls that liked climber dudes who were along for the kicks.

Climbers, especially the ones that are in their young twenties, are scruffy and rough around the edges: many have un-kept beards, pants and clothes with holes in them (a result of spending money first on gear and road tripping and second on clothing.) They also tend to be open-minded. Climbing rocks, mountains, and in this case, buildings requires a free mind that can come up with creative solutions to challenges.

In addition to this climbers must create a sense of believing, a sort of willing the body through dangerous and improbable situations. This is a positive characteristic that successful climbers share, and it is no surprise many people say climbing works at creating metaphors for life.

Give climbers a little booze and this open mindedness can get them into trouble. Like this night, where minds were altered by some additional things and we were climbing all over town as if the structures in town were just rocks eyeing a building that looked climbable and giving it a go, ignoring whether it was affiliated with a bank, the church or the government. Add some success on a couple of routes, which provided some sweet adrenaline and there was quite a cocktail of chemicals running through the veins.

So after Sparks had climbed the ATM machine, had a few drinks at the bar, and walked a mile across town in six inches of snow he was ready for anything. A free mind, egged on by six intoxicated spirits high and completely stoned into the winter moment. That –anything- Sparks was ready for led us to the entrance of the sketchiest bar in town; the Ajax. A place known for coke usage in the bathroom, and a constant haze of cigarette smoke hanging over the pool tables and the patrons.

Outside was a large thirty foot vertical sign that read P I Z Z A, which probably confused some tourists each year to walk into the place and find no pizza place just second hand smoke, beer and a handful of souls there to escape whatever it was that led them to the Ajax. Leading up to the infamous, out of place pizza sign is a difficult buildering route, which as we walked by caught the attention of our group.

The start of the building is what appears to be some average masonry, big stones a foot tall and two feet wide cemented into the wall, protruding out a couple inches so that they make great climbing holds, not at all symmetrical, but hey we’re talking about a shady bar here. These perfect holds lead up to a wooden shingled roof, slightly angled and this night covered in ten inches of snow. Just a foot right of the route was the entrance to the bar.
Now two or three of us had got to this point before Sparks and found the move too precarious and difficult to attempt. The move wasn’t very dangerous, only eight feet off the ground, so a fall was relatively safe, especially with five spotters below, with their hands up, ready to protect the climber from hurting themselves.

Sparks was on fire and you could see it in his eyes, and feel it in the energy that surrounded him. After an unsuccessful attempt Sparks was about to climb back onto the bar when a bouncer poked his head out, eyes glazed over from a night of complimentary shift drinks. He looked at Sparks with one of those, what the hell are you doing? looks. Sparks quickly acted like he was just checking out the well-done masonry work and glanced back at us, rubbing the wall, “yeah this is real nice isn’t it?”

The drunk bouncer went back inside confused. Sparks immediately got back on the wall and in thirty seconds reached the nearly horizontal roof. This move was the crux, the most difficult buildering sequence that had been attempted all night. In a sober state it would be very hard, and Sparks’ mind might have not been able to break through and conceive the move, but fueled with the adrenaline cocktail, he didn’t think, he just acted. Like a karate master he swung his foot above his head off to his right and planted it into the snow on the roof. As he dug his foot into the snow a couple, arm in arm, stumbled out of the bar. Their expression quickly turned from intoxicated lust to amazement and terror as they looked up to see Sparks rocking his foot onto the snow-covered roof, pushing his hands down and moving onto the roof. He had conquered the Ajax.

As the snow continued to fall and the couple walked away uttering drunken babble Sparks climbed down a ladder on the backside of the bar to receive his prize: hugs and high-fives from his crowd of admirers of his buildering feat.

Conditions in the winter were far from ideal for buildering in Normal; ice and snow made climbs more difficult and cold temperatures made it harder to grip holds with numb fingertips. But it made more sense during the winter climbers don’t get that rush as often that they are dependant upon and enjoy. The rush that comes from getting scared, and using the muscles of one’s body to the utmost extent.

I knew I was dependant on that fix as much as the guys in the Ajax were dependant on their numerous shots of Jack Daniels and the nicotine from Marlboro Reds. Hell, I’d been addicted to numerous things before I started climbing and I knew I was hooked on the climbing buzz.
That may have been some self-therapy there because it doesn’t exactly provide the segue I was looking for but it brings us to the next part of the story, the summertime, where a climber in Normal, Colorado could get that fix any time he or she wanted to provided they didn’t have to work and it wasn’t raining. Normal is surrounded by rocks (they don’t call ‘em the Rocky Mountains for nuthin’) in every direction and someone was always psyched to go climbing.
But there were still some of the usual reasons to builder, not getting any lovin’, and well you were fired up from partying all night, and you weren’t ready to go home.

This summertime buildering session occurred during the typical hours, just after the bar closed, two thirty in the morning. The group consisted of yours truly, P-Real, B-Boy Roy and T-Drizz and Lucy. The stars shined bright, the moon lit the town up as much as the streetlights were. The air was cool as it always is in a mountain town at night. This light lit up one side of an old church, which was the first climbing objective for the evening. I was pleased that the first building was something that had to do with religion and not the law, thinking that trespassing with the church would provide less harsh consequences than the government. From what I’d heard nothing was off limits that particular summer: banks, government buildings, rumor had it one night these guys even climbed on the police station. So we arrived at the church, a forty foot tall white bricked building, which appeared that it was from the early nineteen hundreds that narrowed as it went higher, slender at the top, with a four foot tall cross on the tiny roof.

The first attempted climb was too hard, and it was dark, as neither the moon nor the streetlights illuminated it. The holds were big reaches for small holds on the white bricks that a fingertip pad would barely fit on. No one got too far and I was glad because the climb would have finished forty feet off the ground and a fall from up there would involve some other people in uniforms we would have rather not have contact with; Emergency Medical Technicians.
So we moved around the church following P-Real, who was the reason behind the partying that evening; it was his birthday. P-Real found a route that was to his liking, with bigger bricks to hold onto, a path of least resistance to the top of the church.

Examining the psyche of P-Real would reveal that he has his mind mastered to a higher level than our friend Sparks. Unlike Sparks, P-Real has a mind that is just as tuned for climbing as his body. Watching P-Real climb was like watching a master of the rock, not necessarily all the time, for this was just the 23rd birthday, not enough experience to become perfect in the vertical terrain; but he’d shown that he had what it took to be a successful climber. He’s also a southern boy, which in Normal made him stand apart from nearly every other climber. A remarkable and unique character that everyone in the climbing community knew, or knew of. So all four of us listened, when in his distinct southern drawl he looked up at the arête on the side of the church and uttered slowly in a rather monotone way, “I’m go-nna climb this fu-cker.”

So off he went up the church, which conveniently was facing both the moon and the streetlights. P-Real climbed in his trademark warrior way, no hesitation, no hint of nervousness, fluid movement from brick to brick; which protruded from the side of the church generously and at equal increments. In this manner he quickly entered a zone, thirty feet off the ground where a fall would be disastrous. Though he had four of us spotting him, we could do little to protect him from six step concrete stairway that lay directly in his fall path. A metal railing eight feet long to the left of the stairs ensured that if P-Real fell things would be bad-real bad. The stairway and railing was an emergency exit for church patrons, but for P-Real if he were to fall down on this, it would spell disaster, and possibly a chance to meet his maker.

All of us spotters: myself, T-Drizz, Lucy and B-Boy Roy gave each other a look. A look that we needed not put into words that P-Real could hear. The look that had the intensity that a normal serious climbing situation would have but this was different, it was three in the morning and this southern boy thirty feet above us on the side of a church had been drinking whiskey all night.

“You got this P-Real,” Roy says, defying what he may have been thinking, but sending up necessary encouragement. “Yeah, man, looking good,” T-Drizz adds.

P-Real climbs five feet higher and is near the lip of the roof of the church, just below the cross, into the unknown. He had no idea what it would be like, and since none of us had climbed it either we could offer no beta. As he reached up to the top of the church a small chunk of brick falls down to the ground, hitting the rail, and making a “clink” sound. Unfazed and buzzed on adrenaline P-Real keeps searching for a handhold, the sound of his breathing just slightly increased. His tennis shoes standing firmly on a brick, his left hand on a brick higher, and his right hand feeling around even higher searching for a hold to grab onto to climb up onto the top of the church.

A minute later he is still in the same spot now his left hand is feeling to top of the church for a hold. Another small chunk of brick, quarter sized falls down, this time landing on the grass. This prompts Lucy to speak her first words since P-Real left the ground, with a tone of a mother that has warned her disobeying children one time too many, “P-Real Sleeps you get down from there right now!”

A cold silence followed her words, and immediately P-Real started his retreat, gently climbing down the bricks, forty feet back to the ground, back to the horizontal. Lucy gave him a motherly look, we all offer handshake; and with that P-Real had survived another birthday, and another buildering session had ended.

T-Drizz, B-Boy Roy and P-Real made it through the summer without suffering any injuries. But, the more I talked about buildering with friends the more I heard stories where people got hurt. Ironically these people were usually top-notch climbers, who had spent countless days taking big risks on big walls and boulders; and these were their most severe injuries.

But, just as STDs don’t stop random drunken hookups, people will still continue to builder. There is a fire lit in the intoxicated youth, one that is ignited by alcohol and drugs. An energy some express by doing graffiti on billboards and trains, which some call art and others vandalism. Others may skateboard, putting their energy into that sport, onto the concrete, grinding a rail in a park. Some see skateboarding as trouble, others use it to keep out of trouble.
Buildering is very risky, but it is also an expression: a manifestation of energies, in the night, the twilight, buzzed, not ready for the night to end, determined to live more, to transform, to builder.