The first time I ever climbed outside was with my friend Kelsey. She had seen my flailing around in the gym and taken me under her wing, guided me, and helped me become a better climber. Eventually she deemed I was ready to try the real stuff. I borrowed my dad's Audi, I had heard the road to Castle Rock was a windy one, and thought his sporty car would handle the curves well. I picked up Kelsey, who was shocked, although she didn't tell me until months later, that I was belting out an off-key version of the Kelly Clarkson song that was pounding out of the fancy Bose speakers. I passed the drive this way, winding around turns, singing loudly, excited for my first outdoor climbing experience. The actual climbing experience turned out to be pretty uneventful. We had one tiny crashpad, Kelsey showed me a few easy climbs, and we quickly grew cold and decided to go eat. On the way home, Kelsey's head bobbed a bit more, she mouthed a few words of the familiar songs, and a bond began to form. This bond, now as familiar to me as the back of my hand, was foreign at the time, but it would shape my next decade tremendously. The bond that forms between the road, the rocks, and the people by our sides had planted a seed in my young, 17 year old mind.
The first time I drove a good, long distance to go climbing was right after I had graduated high school when my boyfriend and I decided to go up to Oregon and climb at Smith Rock for a week. We loaded up my CRV with all sorts of stuff. We drove, sang along to the radio, marveled at the beautiful scenery unfolding before us. We set up a six-person tent for the two of us, inflated a queen-size air mattress and camped in style. We grilled up steak and made mashed potatoes on the camp stove we had borrowed from our good friend. I remember looking at that stove, seeing all the dings, little pocks of rust on the green exterior, small signs of years of use, and thinking, "wow, this stove, like the friend I borrowed it from, has been a lot of places." And that was one of those moments, a little flicker of inspiration, the awareness of something inconsequential like dirt on a stove, that ignites something inside you, that nudges you, and makes you say, "I too shall go many places."
That trip was great, and it did inspire me, and make me want to get out and climb more. Soon I took a trip to Thailand, and spent time climbing in the paradise of Tonsai. The following summer, my first real climbing road trip would take place at age 19. My friend Jen decided to move to Colorado. No sooner had she told me, than I was volunteering to accompany her on the drive. "I'll go with you!" I had said excitedly. "We can stop and climb in all sorts of places on the way!" It didn't matter that it was the middle of July, and that we would be driving through the desert. We were psyched and we began planning.
Looking back on that trip, I wonder how we accomplished anything, how we ever found any of the climbing areas we were looking for, how we didn't starve. At the time though, it was the adventure of a lifetime. We were on a budget. We didn't use the A/C so we could get better gas mileage, even when we drove through the sweltering heat of Nevada and Utah. We bought food before we left- a few Clif Bars, some dried fruit, and a jar of peanut butter. Those snacks would sustain us through four states and six climbing areas. When we were hungry, we would get out a spoon, dip it into our jar of peanut butter, have a scoop, and go back to driving or climbing.
We didn't have any maps, just a faulty GPS, and a few old guidebooks. Somehow, we made it from one place to the next. From Big Chief in Truckee to Maple Canyon, to Joe's Valley and on to Rifle. From Rifle to Boulder. In Boulder to Clear Creek and the Flagstaff Boulders. We had the time of our lives. The joy of the open road had fully affected us and we were giddy with the freedom that came with it. We experienced the now familiar, then quite foreign, dilemma of finding somewhere to sleep. On a particularly long drive from Joe's to Rifle, we stopped at an information center to ask about camping. The women suggested we sleep at the dog park at the end of the road. We ran back to the car, holding our breaths, containing our laughter until we had shut the doors and driven out of the parking lot. Then we erupted, tears rolling down our cheeks, laughing as we got back on the highway and continued driving into the night.
It was cemented then. The Climbing Road Trip. It had become a full-blown thing, something I needed as much as food or water. I had experienced the intriguing tastes of it with Kelsey, with Tim, and then got a full entree of it with Jen, and by the end of that summer of 2008, I was hooked. In the upcoming years, I would face a few difficulties in fulfilling this insatiable desire to get out, to drive, to climb, to make connections with whatever wonderful human being was in the passenger seat. I went away to college and suddenly knew no one, had no climbing partners, I lost my greatest climbing partner, Tim, in 2010. Slowly though, I started making connections in my new home. I met Ben and we made a journey to Joshua Tree for spring break where I did my first trad lead. I met Ian, Casey, Lisa, Alex, Eric and Trevor. Most importantly I met Chelsea. The perfect road trip co-pilot, who had the same drop everything, let's hit the road attitude as me. And then a new era began.
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