pushing the bush

The next day we woke up around 8 and were trying to decide what to climb. It was a balmy 50 degrees outside. We were thinking to do California Ice when we both discovered that we had made a few mistakes packing. I had brought the wrong crampons and Joe forgot his climbing pants. We decided to do Hellroaring Falls instead so I could see how things would go with my hiking crampons. Joe wore his carhartts that he had been cooking in the previous day. They were covered with french fry grease so he figured they would be pretty waterproof.

Hellroaring Falls has the easiest approach in East Rosebud. You just get out of your car and climb up a drainage ditch. Joe climbed up the falls to set an anchor up and we decided to just climb there all day as there was enough ice to do a number of lines. As Joe was climbing I noticed he had a huge hole in the crotch of his carhartts. At first I wasn't going to say anything, but, after he got off lead, I couldn't resist so I said "Joe, I can see your balls". That prompted a short diatribe about how all his pants are crotchless (I can verify that is a true statement - his jeans were worse than his carhartts). He said he wears out the crotch in his pants because of the size of his legs, but I think maybe it's because he has steel balls.

After I lowered Joe I took a lap up the ice. The day was getting warmer and the ice was in the sun so it was pretty sloppy up there. At one point I yelled down to Joe "The ice is so wet I feel like I'm climbing in a vagina!" I heard him make a noise that I usually only hear when I punch someone in the stomach. At that moment I thought back to some advice my co-author had given me about toning down my personality around Joe so as to not offend him. I sometimes forget that not everyone talks like Jeffy and me. But by the end of the day Joe was taking my bon mots in stride, and by Tuesday I realized that nothing I could think of to say would shock him and worse, that he was saying the same horrible stuff I say.

In fact, while I was climbing I asked him to yell up coaching advice about anything I was doing wrong and he said "you need to push the bush!" This means, in climbing parlance, pushing your hips against the ice so that your stance is more solid and so that you have a better reach for tool placements. I asked him what he said to guys since they don't have a "bush" per se (although some guys never trim their pubic hair, which is annoying - like I want to be pulling hair out of my teeth after I blow someone).

Anyway, Joe said there wasn't a good expression for guys. Then he said he thought it was really gay when instructors would tell people to push their hips against the ice like they were "making love with the ice". I've heard an instructor say that myself. I told Joe that might not be a great thing to tell guys because most climbers aren't good at fucking, so telling them that would make them a worse climber. A short discussion ensued about sex with climbers, my conclusion being "If the climbers I've fucked climbed like they fuck I wouldn't have fucked them".

Other things I learned from Joe include not climbing rotty ice, how to keep my tool steady when I only had a few teeth in, and how to tap my crap crampons into the ice so I could get a good foothold on the more vertical sections of ice (the crampons I was wearing only had really short triangular front points and so were kind of shit). Luckily the ice was super sticky so I was able to practice this technique, which served me later in the week when the weather was not so nice.

We climbed until we were both soaking wet and then we decided to go for a hike to check out California Ice. We went on this beautiful trail around the lake and back into a canyon. California Ice was blue and glittery in the setting sun. It looked like a big blob of icing on a mountain cake. I immediately wanted to smash my ice axes into it. It's kind of the same compulsion I have when I'm in the grocery store and see all these decorated birthday cakes and I imagine putting them on the floor and then jumping on them.

For dinner Joe made a beef stew dish and garlic bread even though I told him that some times garlic makes me fart. He said "oh, well, that's okay". It's kind of weird the way he talks like a Canadian but isn't. He lived in Calgary for a long time. Every time he said "eh?" it made me want to laugh.

We went to bed pretty early so we could get up at 6 for our climb. I did not see any ghosts. We saw Venus and Joe saw a shooting star.