Monday 1 August 2016, week 12: Buldir Island, 14:15

My 2 winters based south of Sacramento have gone unwritten because there wasn’t anything exciting enough to chronicle. In a nutshell, I drove a white pick-up truck and counted many thousands of birds in California’s Central Valley. While the mega flocks of geese flying overhead were impressive, and I enjoyed living on the Cosumnes River Preserve, the flatlands were not for me.

When I had my brother’s old Specialized road bike operational my second year, I thoroughly loved flying down roads, but I only had time for that in rare spare hours of daylight. The occasional weekend forays to the coast, mountains, or friends just teased me with how much more interesting those places were. The outings were so nice that they made returning to the valley a disappointment.

Fortunately my ginger friends/co-workers/housemates helped me find Sacramento’s redeeming quality: Sacramento Pipeworks Climbing & Fitness. Kelsey and Emily had gone twice my first winter, and I tagged along the second time. Housed in an old warehouse with a dramatically high interior, Pipeworks features a handful of pillars that connect at the rock textured ceiling. Color coded rock holds of purple, green, blue, red, orange, white, pink, black, and gray mark routes of varying difficulties. Certain routes are for lead climbing only, enabling climbers with their own gear to train for outdoor climbing where everything is not all set up.

In addition to the main climbing pillars, there’s a whole room dedicated to bouldering, which is climbing at lower heights without being roped in through a harness or anything. If someone falls while bouldering, he or she will land on the crash pad, a cushion the thickness of a mattress.

With the $100 initiation fee waived for those joining in January, Kelsey and Laney joined the gym and began going there after work. Torn between wanting to join them to rekindle my interest in climbing and being the penny pincher who stays at home to keep my feelings of inadequacy, competitive nature, and slight discomfort of climbing hidden, I let my desire to climb win. After all, my college guy friends wouldn’t be there to see my weakness, and neither Kelsey nor Laney were ultra experienced. No sweat, right? Just have fun!

It took me a little while, but that’s what I did. When I did get worked up at failing to pass a tough point on a route, I finally got to a place where I would tell Kelsey to let me down instead of letting me flail around. I even told her to feel free to just drop me slightly if she saw me beating myself up for too long. Once I was able to acknowledge my own weakness, climbing became more enjoyable, and I was able to notice my own improvements over time. I had a blast!

Next to the farmers’ markets, Sacramento Pipeworks is my favorite scene in town, for the climbing and fitness area, as well as the puppies and wealth of good-looking guys. Yes, Pipeworks allows canines inside, so it was my duty to smile at all of them and pet any that needed attention. What more does one need in a gym?

So that’s my shout out to Pipeworks, the place that enlivened my winter. Puppies, calluses, blisters, more use for my climbing gear than it had seen in years, and a reawakened interest in climbing. The guys behind the counter became friendly familiar faces, as did some of the climbers and their puppies. As much as I’m looking forward to winter elsewhere, I will thoroughly miss that gym.

Climbing has come to mind this summer because of the style of our work on Buldir. For checking crevices on Main Talus, we wear DeWalt knee pads and work gloves for scrambling over boulders and crawling inside little caves. On Northwest Ridge our trail to the crevices and burrows initially climbs dirt steps that have been cut into the hillside over the years; I grab onto the vegetation on my way up and throughout my route since in most places it’s so tall that I can’t see my feet and am likely to slip at any time. Bottle Hill offers limited putchki to grab and more of the flimsy ferns; fortunately the tall, lush ferns are soft for cushioning my falls.

Buldir-style climbing is very different from actual rock climbing. Here you can never trust your footing, so grabbing handfuls of strong vegetation is essential. Slippery vegetation, loose rocks, unstable boulders, and slick dirt make me slip all the time, and sometimes that purchase on putchki is all that keeps me from sliding far. Tall grass helps me pull myself up the Super Upper section of Main Talus. In the areas of large boulders, I enjoy heaving myself up and around by using my arms just as much as my legs. It’s like being on a playground!

Watching the auklets has shown me that wings would be helpful on this terrain. Often they land with less than grace and end up flapping their wings to regain balance and scamper up those last few inches to the tops of boulders.

Climbing in a gym or on real rock is a world I’ll return to at some point, but for now I’ll enjoy my bizarre climbing methods and thoroughly appreciate my knee pads.