You’ll Never Be a Wrestler

Around 10pm I slipped away from the campfire to go watch a few office re-runs for the billionth time before bed. When there’s no service, you have to make do with whatever you downloaded on your last rest day… a year ago. Laying in bed, I opened an app on my phone to jot down a few things I wanted to remember from the day. It had been an eventful one.

I had finally gotten on a new project I’d been saving for colder weather, and there had been more learning than success. On my first attempt as I neared the chains, no longer in the most difficult terrain, I pulled up an armload of slack to clip into a cam. Just before I could slide the rope through the carabiner however, my foot skated out of its seemingly secure placement in a sandy pod in the crack. It caught behind the rope, flipping me upside-down as I fell; the extra armload of rope from trying to clip sending me halfway down the climb and gouging a deep burn into the skin on my calf.

A few hours later I racked up to try again, hoping to have learned from my first attempt. The temperature had skyrocketed, making the already difficult climbing significantly more strenuous. I slipped out of the first crux again, leaving an unfortunate amount of skin behind in the process. Determined to try and make the most of the attempt, I continued questing upward, only to fall again just a few moves higher. Somehow my foot got behind the rope again, and for the second time in a day I found myself in a position many climbers manage to avoid for their entire lives.

Once I righted myself once more I slithered my way past the second crux, only to slip once more in easy terrain. The ringlock I had been weighting with my left hand had been a little too good, and I carved the deepest gobi I’d had all season into the outside of my index finger. Five layers of tape and it was still leaking blood, so free climbing was no longer really an option. Every type of jam was so painful it brought me to tears. Even aiding up the climb was excruciating because the rope would run over my raw finger anytime I pulled it up to try and clip. I was being dramatic for sure, but I guess that’s what happens when you care too much about climbing.

After all that, I had gotten a pretty good idea of what not to do on that climb. In between all the faff, I had also figured out all the gear and sorted out beta for the crux; things I should remember for next time. As I lay in bed making notes that night, instead of rack beta or information about the crux however, I wrote down the phrase “You’re never gonna be a wrestler!” It was in reference to a comical moment around the fire that evening in which my friend Chris had been trying to cure another friend Nick’s hiccups.

Nick and other friend Matt had apparently already drunken themselves silly with vodka shots chased with olive oil and had brought a manic energy to the campfire. Matt sat across from us animatedly telling a story to someone else, his greasy hair sticking straight from his head up in an overgrown mohawk. Nick was sitting next to me, doing everything in his power to be annoying (and in turn annoy the people around me). Subsequently through what I like to think was some kind of karmic retribution he had gotten the hiccups. Chris, sitting on my other side, had been offering for almost half an hour the service of his magic cure: to punch Nick in the stomach, until finally he conceded. Nick stood up and lifted his WWE sweatshirt as instructed as all eyes turned to the unfolding scene.

If you’ve ever tried to cure the hiccups, you might know that brute force is rarely enough; there has to also be some sort of element of surprise. As Nick steeled himself for the blow, Chris yelled “You’re never gonna be a wrestler!” in reference to the favorite WWE hoody Nick was wearing before delivering the punch full force. The small crowd around the fire erupted into laughter as the phrase was repeated by all our friends.

As much as I love climbing and have shaped my life around it, these are the real things I want to remember at the end of the day. The things that make laughter burst from deep inside me. The things that connect me to other people and build community in the unlikeliest of times and places.

I may or may not send that climb this season. After two months here already, my drive isn’t quite as strong as it was when I got here. I’ve already had a great season, and my focus has shifted into milking the “hang” for all it’s worth before I have to leave. Nowhere else have I ever found it to be this good, even when the half of the campground normally occupied by our much missed Canadian friends lies empty. Even when it rains for days on end and another half of our already small numbers bails to St. George or Red Rocks. There’s still something about Indian Creek that makes it so much more than just the climbing, and I think it has something to do with never being a wrestler.