by Luke Mehall
The mountains in Colorado are ideal for coming of age. I won’t bother quoting anything from “Rocky Mountain High” by John Denver here, but I will start with an example from my own life: A few years ago the police came to my place of employment to discuss my overstaying the 14-day limit at a nearby public lands area. Now, years later, this June, the governor of Colorado, Bill Ritter, was speaking at a kick-off praising the work we’d done organizing an event at the same area.
The event was 24 Hours of Gunnison Glory; an endurance climbing festival loosely modeled and very much inspired by an event called 24 Hours of Horseshoe Hell that takes place in Arkansas every September.
I’d organized several climbing events in the past – the Butte Bouldering Bonanza in Crested Butte (now in its fourth year) and a few indoor competitions at the climbing gym at Western State College – but nothing like this.
As a climber of ten years who has written about it for about the same time period, I love to study those who partake in the activity. A common sentiment I’ve heard from a few die-hard climbers is, “without climbing I would be dead or in jail.”
I can say the same for myself. I think it’s the adrenaline. And maybe it’s that climbing is addictive. Study the life of a die-hard climber (also referred to as a climbing bum) and you’ll see. The hardest of the hardcore set up everything they do around the sport:?they live out of their vehicles to save rent money which can be spent on other climbing related items, they dumpster-dive for food and clothing – further reducing the necessity to work, and generally alter their living patterns to?fit into their main goal in life: climbing as much as possible.
But back to Gunnison Glory – Alec Solimeo, the coach of the local youth climbing team, the Peaceful Warriors, and I had spent six months organizing this event. Many caffeine-fed late nights in the library, arguments, conversations, a thousand emails, phone calls, meetings, etc. And it all boiled down to this: we woke up at Hartman Rocks where the event was held (three miles south of Gunnison) and it was “go time”– today was the day. You could count the combined hours we’d slept the night before on one hand. Solimeo and I had marked around 200 routes for the competitors and we still had some marking to finish up before the participants showed up at 10:00 a.m. to begin climbing.
It was the first event in my life I’d ever seen start this early. Solimeo’s Peaceful Warriors had been waiting an hour and a half before the event even started and they were psyched. (The Warriors are the most successful publicly funded climbing team in the country, and its members range from eight to seventeen years old.) And, just so you know, the youth were only allowed to climb for 12 hours (we’re not that crazy).
We kicked things off a little early and sent forty-some climbers up to Hartmans for the event. Hartmans, for me, is very reminiscent of Joshua Tree, California; granite domes, spires, slabs, boulders and rolling sagebrush that seem to go on forever. That day we had all the weather – bluebird skies followed by billowing summer monsoon clouds, and finally the sky erupted into an intense lightning storm with a rainbow for a finale.
So, how does everything I’m writing about here come together? Climbers are, in many ways, adrenaline junkies – and I’m one of them. And, even with all the event coordinator responsibilities, I could not resist the urge to climb. I began my climbing with a crew of the Peaceful Warriors in my charge – barely keeping up with the youngsters. When an epic thunderstorm erupted at the eleven-hour mark I was happy for the break. Soon, night hit and we were back to the climbing.
Two in the morning found me quite fatigued but still going at it. The climbing was not the hard part, rather it was the sitting. I’d do a short climb then nearly fall asleep sitting there watching my ten-or-so friends try the same route. Finally I hit a wall and my body demanded sleep. So I slept.
Sunrise came and we kept climbing up ‘til we reached 10:00 a.m. the following morning. I was delusional but very happy. No one had gotten hurt at the inaugural Gunnison Glory.
Awards were handed out. Participants (Matt Samet, the editor of Climbing Magazine was among them) were grateful for our effort. After everything was wrapped up I still had the urge to climb (I had made 30 climbs a personal goal and was still short of the number), so, after the event ended, I still had that urge to continue – a bit crazy – but the urge that keeps me focused on climbing, one that I feel is healthy. And I imagine that it’s a similar feeling that drives the true junkie, the one that cannot get enough of the substance that she/he is addicted to.
So, yes, we had the governor kick things off for us, and we may be a bunch of crazies, but we are crazy for rock climbing, and I think, for crazy folks that’s a good thing to be into. Maybe we’ll see you next year in Gunnison.
Luke Mehall is an alumni of Western State College, where he now currently works in the public relations department. He is also the advisor to the climbing team at the college, in which he gets to see a part of his younger self in some of the team members.
