Ah, finally, a moment to think. Quiet. It’s been so long since we’ve been somewhere without ATV’s and pick-up trucks driving by in the middle of the night. Or without a non-stop flow of people to talk to and things to do.

We arrived in Maple Canyon on April 30th of 2024. On May 1st, at approximately 2:45pm, we met a man wearing a black Polo By Ralph Lauren bathrobe in the lower Day Use parking lot. He was in the process of retreating from society (totally missing the irony of doing so in the USFS Maple Canyon Campground, Site 12). Technology is evil and everyone’s gone insane. No one knows who they are anymore, they’ve lost their ability to discern reality and function in it. He’d gotten rid of his cell phone and destroyed his driver’s license and birth certificate, along with all other official documentation relating to his identity “in the system”. “Something big’s gonna happen soon and I don’t want them to be able to find me.” His girlfriend was sitting in their car, glued to her cell phone, apparently not on the same program. Mr. Lauren went on to tell us he wants to find a commune somewhere with like-minded people working together to build shelters and grow their own food. But right then, there he was, standing next to a pit toilet in Maple Canyon wearing a bathrobe at 2:45 in the afternoon.

And so our summer season began.

I was, objectively, the least fit I’ve been in years. Spending the previous winter in Mexico was a fantastic experience, but the most of the climbing in El Salto wasn’t a style that translated to the steep roof climbing we normally gravitate towards, and as a result we were in subpar form when we showed up at the Hurricave in southern Utah in February to get some steep fitness. Charlie had been having pain and mobility issues with his right shoulder all winter, and the cave finally convinced him that it warranted serious attention. When we moved on to Maple at the end of April, he decided to take time off. He saw a doctor, went to physical therapy, and consulted with a surgeon. It ended up being a full three months before he started to ease back into climbing again with the aid of a cortisone shot and the depressing knowledge that a replacement is inevitable.

When the end of October rolled around, we’d done okay. I managed to redpoint Toxic Turkey (13c), a route that I’d started trying when we were last in Maple, in 2022. I saved it until I’d climbed almost everything else in the Pipedream because I knew it would be hard for me, with big moves and fewer rests than almost any other route in the cave. I was crazy intimidated to come back to it because a huge conglomerate flake literally fell off the wall in 2023, eliminating a bomber double kneebar rest that connected the techie vertical start of the route to the roof. When I heard about it, I wondered if it meant I wouldn’t be able to reach the undercling that gets the business rolling. It took a few days of trying, but eventually I found a way. A month or so later, I finally built the fitness and power-endurance to send the thing.

In that time frame, Charlie worked his way through repeats of a slew of 11’s and 12’s, and couple 13a’s. While that sounds fantastic to the rest of us, they’re routes that were warm-ups for him in years past so it was hard for him to get excited about them. As soon as his shoulder started feeling stronger, his left hip started causing him trouble. In a short space of time his range of motion for drop-knees, high-steps, and twisting kneebars became limited to the point of forcing beta adaptations. He has the drive and determination to do anything, but his body just doesn’t seem willing to cooperate without a fight.

Today I turned 55, and in a month Charlie will be 69. After a quick stop at Sitting Bull Falls, NM, we’re in Hueco Tanks now, bouldering for our winter training season. I can’t help thinking that we’re having to adapt more and more to what these bodies are willing to do for us, but then…isn’t adaptation what climbing is teaching us all along? We don’t change a route to fit us; we change us to fit a route.

Back to Bathrobe Guy: In a way, I kind of get it. A similar urge to withdraw from society has entered my psyche more than a few times in the past 7 years, as the idea of what it means to be “An American” has been challenged and questioned by ideologies that have been considered dangerous and fringe for most of my 55 years, but are now mainstream and even thought to be normal. The risk of being consumed by animosity does feel overwhelming. In my quest to understand the choices we’ve made as a nation, I continually come back to the words of Steinbeck, “No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself.” (From The Winter of Our Discontent)

When it comes down to it, I suppose we’ll adapt as we’ve trained ourselves to do, and continue to find a way to exist and preserve our own happiness. Somehow, we always do.

-Maggie

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