Climbing with Giovanni
On our third day, I introduced G to the nuances of hard face climbing and delicate foot work on a route cal led Mennonite Cracks. He waltzed up the lower section but was puzzled by the delicate face climb r ight until I suggested he sor t out the footholds visual ly before he l aunched i nto the forearm wasting traverse. Smearing his big toe into the shal low pocket and tenderly moving his feet with his hands, core and head absolutely stil l, he cruised through the hard sequence, repeating the route a few times without fal ling on the rope.
As I untied from the rope at the bottom of the clif f after my last ef for t, I explained to G that some accidents happen after the rope is of f or near the bottom of a big route, when climbers get sloppy. Like any good teacher or guide, I il lustrated my point about sloppiness by slipping down six inches of slipper y rock and deftly breaking my left foot. Crawling around through the talus in agony, G asked what he could do to help. “Take off my boot and sock,” I groaned. He asked if that helped and I shook my head “no.” G asked what else he could do for me and I suggested he make me laugh as quick ly as possible, but unfortunately he knows no jokes. In climbing circles, raw strength and good foot work are highly pr ized, but a sense of humour is fundamentally indispensable. Looking back now, it was the f irst time I had broken anything.
When my foot stopped aching almost six months later, I introduced G to climbing steep ice. His feet are small so he borrowed my Kof lach boots, a rusty pair of hinged crampons with neoprene straps and two old-school axes with wrist loops and plent y of oxidation. His titanic forearm and core strength made him swing the axes with the ease of butterf ly nets and he walked up the vertical pillars of blue ice all afternoon long. I was greatly relieved when he lifted his heels a few times and the front points sheared out leaving him dangling from the brittle ice like a f ish on a hook gasping for air. For the most part the G-man was making it look annoyingly easy again.
While I was belaying him I noticed shards of grey plastic mixed among the ice he was knocking of fat the base of the pil lar, and when he stopped long enough for me to inspect his boots, I noticed the t wo apple-sized holes where his toe caps used to be. I gently chided him that the boots were only 35 years old and had been up great pil lars of ice in Alberta such as Polar Circus and alpine climbs such as the American Direct on the Dru in the French Alps and that he had self ish ly destroyed them on his f irst day out. G listened politely to my gentle ribbing and then quietly asked if the ruined boots meant he had to stop climbing that day. It did not.
G’s last time out with me involved hooking up grade f ive pil lars of chandeliered ice, chopping away f lutes and daggers of overhanging ice that wouldn’t hold body weight and learning to rest and recover on the leashes as if hanging of f a hand jam. He was climbing superbly again and this may be in part because G had upgraded to a pair of antique ful l-shank San Marco boots from the 1970s and I had generously shar pened his dul l crampons and axes.
Then, while shar ing a cup of ginger tea and warming our hands, we met the Ice Princesses, t wo teenage girls who were chosen as the “winter ambassadors” of the Ontario counties of Huron, Perth, Grey and Bruce. They were delightful and shyly asked if they could have their photograph taken with us as we were climbers and “cool.” Their overbear ing mother, who was clearly enjoying her new role as stylist, stage manager and photographer, was a lot less delightful. She yel led up to us that she was dr iving her girls over to the local f ish fr y at the Propel ler Club and “would we mind posing for photographs as they had nothing else to do until then? ” Robed in scarlet dresses, white sashes with blue letter ing and glitter ing tiaras perched precar iously on the tops of their coif fed heads, the t wo girls had some dif f icult y climbing of f the road and over the massive snowbanks to get closer for the photo-op.
Wonderstruck, I turned to G and speculated that the world’s best climbers such as Reinhold Messner had yet to experience the unique pleasure of being photographed with the brightly plumaged but elusive Ice Princesses and that he was well and truly on his way up in the climbing world. And, after climbing the long pillar six times that day, G took off his crampons and the soles of both of his boots literally fell off onto the road. I pretended to be annoyed again while G wondered aloud if a little epoxy might f ix them.
Recently, while studying viola at his house, I discovered G had hung a homemade fingerboard and that he is losing what little weight he has to climb even harder. This is bad timing for both of us, especial ly me as I am in a stage of life where I am gaining weight, becoming more indolent by the week and losing what strength I have left. In the privacy of my basement last week I tr ied to do a pul lup but stopped half way when I heard the scar tissue in my ar ms popping and crack ling. Besides, I have my music career to consider.
I have lear ned a lot about climbing from G in the past year, how to be excessively polite while str uggling up a clif f. I have been known to swear so much that the cows in the f ield below soured their milk. I learned how to be grateful for open wounds and bloody sheets after epic of f-widths, about gear that doesn’t fal l apar t, and, most of al l, precious time spent playing together while cementing a new friendship, old boots and older bones.