The Moonlight Buttress! Round One

   "Do you ever close your eyes, and try to remember a moment perfectly?" Danny's question hung suspended in the quiet air. He went on. "You know, remember what it smelt like, how you felt, what you saw." I looked at the point where towering sandstone met glimmering stars. I peered over the ledge and savored the inky blackness below my feet. I could smell the whiskey on my lips, and looked over at my friend who was as lost in it all as I was.

We were on the Moonlight Buttress in Zion Canyon. The last shuttle bus had come and gone, and we were the only ones in a very grand space.

"Yes. Yes I do," I replied with the peacefulness of walls and stars on my breath.

"When I go back to work next week, I'm going to close my eyes and go back to right here." Danny said. We went back to a long and good silence, the kind of which I have only experienced a handful of other times.

This conversation happened on a bent portaledge about thirty meters off the ground. Earlier, while the sun was still high in the sky, we were sharing a small foot ledge below the crux pitch. Our dreams of onsighting Moonlight had survived the first trial of "The Rocker Block" pitch. Now, the hardest climbing on the entire route was about fifteen meters above us. I racked up and took off with the blankest mind I could muster. The gear was finnicky and I wasn't up to the task. I pitched off, ripped an arbitrary piece out of the crack and sat in my harness.

We were joined by two awesome strangers,  Josie and Becca. We had a portaledge party and the four of us traded attempts on the crux. Everyone was going for it, and encouraging the other three to do the same. The energy was infectious. Becca and Josie were planning to return the next day, and wished us well before descending. On our following attempts, Danny and I both fell a move away from the end of the hard stuff. Climbing is so all in; whether or not you move your foot twelve more inches determines whether you will continue up the route, or lower back down to try again. At least that was the rules that we were excited to play by. I had not freeclimbed up high in a while, and I forgot about those magical moments that come with trying to live a dream; when the wind and the occasional click of a carabiner are the only sounds that exist. Regardless of outcome, for a moment, the universe is a simple place consisting of pulling with your hands and pushing with your feet. It is the best!

Ledge party!!! Thanks for the photo @beccabeatbox!!!! 

On my fourth attempt, I pitched off again trying to get my foot in a pod. My body convulsed with cramps, and I knew that it wasn't in the cards. I returned to the ledge where Danny and I dined on a pizza that we had pre-cooked. We listened to good music. Music so good in fact, that Danny was motivated enough to slam some pre-workout mix and have one more go. Hell yes. 

For a few minutes, once again, our concerns with the universe were silenced. The pre-workout did little to sooth the cramping from our time in the sun earlier, and Danny fell in a similar fashion to me. We put our cards on the table, and they weren't the winning hand.

We made the decision to live and die by the redpoint sword. Climbers play their ascents out by their own arbitrary set of rules. Ours was to not continue until at least one of us had sent the pitch at hand. This sounds marvelous on the ground beforehand, and even more marvelous when you're onsighting and things are going your way. It feels a little less marvelous when you blow the onsight. When you fall on your third, and fourth attempt, the marvel is gone and you begin to question your arbitrary ethics. Arbitrary as they may be, it felt right to try something that mattered in the way that we saw fit. We also thought it was important not to abandon principle upon failure.

Also, my girlfriend and Danny's wife had planned to meet us on the top. Mason, my girlfriend, is a brilliant photographer and was keen to rappel in and shoot us on the last few photos. We knew that we weren't going to make it up there, and without any way to contact them, had to beat them to the shuttle stop so they didn't hike to meet with two absent punters. 

So, we rappelled most of the way down, stopping about thirty meters from the ground, because we were both still psyched to sleep on the ledge.

It is so easy to fall into a trap of taking yourself too seriously, especially when you begin to find a level of objective success at your passion. Seemingly all at once, self worth is placed in your ability to climb a certain grade, and in the wake of that destructive value are all the ugly things; expectation, frustration, envy. 

Failure lacks opportunity for any sort of negative value system. There is no external validation, no accolade to hold and wave. Instead, you are left with only your personal thoughts on your experience. Did you have fun? Are you content with your effort, and excited to try again? What did you learn? What mattered most? 

What am I trying to say? That process is everything, and letting self worth ebb and flow with objective failure and success is a dead end, and frankly scary road. 

And what a gift it is that climbing has no ceiling. That you can fail, and try again with the power of what you learned; that you can rediscover the attitude of the kid that was psyched to flail on a 5.9, and take it to more inspiring venues. "To take your climbing seriously, but not yourself seriously," as Peter Croft said in his Enormocast interview.

So, we tried as hard as we could until we shivered with cramping muscles. We shared the ledge and laughs with new friends. Then we sat, side by side, thirty meters off the ground and half into a bottle of Jameson. Scheming, philosophizing, and wishing to be nowhere else. And the beat goes on, hopefully more this way than that. 

Thank goodness for failure, and the compass that it is.