Climbing Out of Bed Cover Shot

I've chosen this shot by Braden Gunem for the cover of my upcoming book, "Climbing Out of Bed". (I am currently on the hunt for the right publisher.) One of the photos from this shoot will also appear in the Winter 2011-12 Crested Butte Magazine with an article on The Freedom Mobile.

Braden is one talented and creative dude, check out some more of his photography at www.bradengunem.com.

Onsight Weather

Climbing's leader in weather forecasting: T-Drizzle. Here is the first installment from Timmy Foulkes TV, courtesy of the Stokelab. Reporting from Indian Creek, Utah.

Click here to watch the video via the lab

Black Canyon Poem

As I'm working on my upcoming book, "Climbing Out of Bed" I've been digging through some old pieces of writing. Some I'm mighty proud of, and others are embarrassing. This particular piece is one I wrote after climbing Black Jack (Grade III, 5.9) in the Black Canyon with the great, Brent Armstrong, who had an impressive run of epic climbs in the canyon at the start of this century. Thought I'd share this one. Hope ya'll dig it.

(Photos are from a recent adventure in the Black on Movable Stoned Voyage (Grade IV, 5.10) with Dave Ahrens. Didn't do much picture taking in the Black, pre-digital camera days.)

I thought we couldn’t do it, but we did
I thought the end
Was upon us, but it wasn’t, doomsday ended up being a
Rebirth. I can’t understand exactly how we did it

But we did, the good guys won, a victory against evil, a real evil
And I meant it when I said reborn, I feel reborn, brother
I feel as young as the blue in the sky

You taught me that positivity would be the only way to survive
And you were right. That face first with a smile was the only way to face my
Fear. That the negative mind would only connect with negativity

But the mind that doesn’t think negatively would connect on a whole another level
The level of rocks, trees, birds and souls fighting for freedom, wildness and perseverance

The canyon let us test these philosophies
A God from this peaceful paradise gave us answers
A few, the most important ones came from within, and the philosophies held true
And we found that love isn’t so far away
The love for yourself and what you are capable of, it all lies within

And the love for your brothers and sisters and the mountains and rivers
Crazy, crazy experience

Originally published in the Gunnison Valley Journal.

My First Book, Climbing Out of Bed, tentative story list

Drew, Dave, Phil, and Luke at Hidden Valley Campground, Joshua Tree, California.

Well I'm finally getting around to publishing my first book, tentatively titled, "Climbing Out of Bed". It will be a collection of stories, and three themes are emerging as I embark on this journey of editing and revising the material: climbing, humor and the search for love.

Most of these pieces were originally published in magazines and self published zines such as: Rock and Ice, Mountain Gazette, Crested Butte Magazine, and The Climbing Zine.

Here is a list of the stories that I'm hoping to include, with a link to some of the original drafts. Any shout outs are appreciated, including stories that you particularly would like to see included.

Thanks,
Luke

Table of Contents

1. Climbing After Kerouac
2. Couch Surfing
3. Hitchhiking
4. This is Buildering
5. Adventures with Two Tent Timmy
6. Mark Grundon Story
7. A Climber in the Winter of His Discontent
8. Somewhere in Between Dreams and Smog is Love
9. The Underwear Story
10. Hammer’s Time
11. Real Mountain People
12. Naked Disco Dance Party
13. Climbing Out of Bed
14. A Year in the Heart of a Climber
15. The Painted Wall
16. Go West Young Man in the Freedom Mobile
17. My First Piece for Durango
18. The Freedom Mobile, the Police, and the Rasta Hairnets.

This is Buildering Part Two

Here's part two of This is Buildering, see below for part one! Enjoy.

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 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 there was no reason to go home.

This summertime buildering session occurred during the typical hours, just after the bar closed at 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 early 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: T-Drizz, Lucy, B-Boy Roy and yours truly, 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 up 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. However, the more I talked about buildering with friends the more I heard stories where people got hurt doing it. 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.

Regardless, just as STDs don’t stop random drunken hookups, people will still continue to builder. There is a fire lit in the spirit of 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.

Spiderman Buildering Video

Check out this buildering video of the human spiderman in Malaysia. His third attempt to beat the cops!

Click here to watch the footage via Stokelab.com

This is Buildering......Part One

This story is one from the archives, and is one that will appear in my first book tentatively titled, "Climbing Out of Bed", due out in 2012. Hope ya'll enjoy.

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 an intense 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). No surprise, 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 himself.

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 he 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 drunken 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.

Part Two of This is Buildering