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climbing and diving When I'm not working, I like to climb. Technical climbing is my main thing, as opposed to mountaineering. So far I have tackled several routes on Devils Tower, and have summited 3 times: Durrance F5.7, El Cracko Diablo F5.8 and Patent Pending F5.8+. I did Durrance with Jeremy and Steve Smith; the other routes on Devils Tower I've done over the years have been "Rangers Are People Too" (aka "Rangers Are Perverts Too", the name more commonly known to the climbing elite), f5.9, "Broken Tree", f5.10b, and several others. I climbed with the legendary guide Frank Sanders of Devils Tower Lodge, Scott Dikkers, Jessica Kilroy, Erik Schaefer and Tom Harding. My friends Tom Blain and Paul Lottridge and I made a valiant effort to get up Half Dome via the Snake Dike route in 2003 but bad weather caused us to turn around and rappel down 4,000 vertical feet to safety. This was heartbreaking because we had made it past the most difficult part (the "crux" as we say in climber's parlance), and the rest would have been easy. In any case, we made the right call and got back safely. Now of course I feel compelled to try Half Dome again! I have also climbed several routes in the Gunks in upstate New York with my friends Scott Dikkers of Onion fame and Erik Schaefer. Scott and I also successfully attempted a route in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. The route was called "White Horse Ridge", or so we thought. I think we got off-route though because we got really messed up. Here's the story: Scott and I were a bit inexperienced for lead climbing of this magnitude. Okay, we were inexperienced for lead climbing of any magnitude. So we headed up the route with too little gear, and of course, the gear we had was totally wrong. So Scotty led the first pitch, realized we didn't have what we needed, so when I got up to him I volunteered to rappel back down and get more cams and nuts and sling. I did this, and we continued on up. We got on the wrong route, ending up on a 9-pitch f5.8 instead of a 6-pitch f5.6 like we'd planned. I led pitch #5 and the wonderful crack I was using to place pro got narrower and narrower and finally disappeared altogether. I climbed a run-out 40 vertical feet with no pro. When I finally clipped into the bolt I was shaking like a leaf. We summited in the dark and realized we were lucky to be in one piece. But we did it! Scotty pulled it off, though. He is one great climber!
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