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Attempted Weekend Speed Solo of El Cap, June 2-4 2006:
Everyone has a fear that lurks deep within their hearts. My "lurking fear" is that I'm going to get
"fat, complacent, & passionless" like the lazy soulless bas*&%#$@ who made a parade by my desk at
work after Canyon was born and promised me that my adventuring days were over! I probably owe them
a great debt of thanks as the possibility of becoming like them has been more motivating than anything
else....I absolutely love being a dad and husband and am convinced that while there's some adventures it
just isn't reasonable to bring Shannon and Canyon along on, that giving up and not even attempting to
find "family adventures" would be a cop-out. With Shannon and Canyon off visiting Grandma/Grandpa I
was batchen it and was obliged to "go-big". Recently I'd been thinking a great deal about how to best
balance my need for adventure and pursuing my passion with the realities of being a "responsible adult"...
basically how do I face my lurking fear? I have a very real need to feel like I'm pushing my envelope and
pursuing things I'm passionate about but I also believe that it's a cop-out to completely be an
"adventuring bum" and not contribute to society....continually trying to balance and re-balance my life
between contributing positively in the world and still being true to who I am has to a large part defined
who I am today. I don't pretend to do a good job at it, but I do push myself to try!!! I'd also been eyeing
the route "lurking fear" on the captain as a possible candidate for a speed ascent and so given my state
of mind and a little bit of free time I decided to go try to solo the route in a weekend from Salt Lake both
as a grand adventure and a very real way for me to go face my "lurking fear." Thursday night I found
myself barreling across Nevada and arriving in the valley late Friday morning. I shuttled 2 loads of gear
up to the base of the route and helped my new buddies from South Carolina fix some pitches. My plan
was to try to blast past the party about 7 pitches up in the dark and finish the route in 2 days or less.
After taking a sleeping pill to go to sleep early I drifted off only to have my alarm go off at 2 am and found
myself so groggy and sleep deprived I could barely stand yet alone aid fast in the dark. I ended up
getting a good nights sleep and then humping all my gear over to the other side of the valley and hopped
on the first few pitches of the south face of washingtons column. Once again I found the route clogged
with first time wallers and by this time was so dis-enchanted with speed soloing in the valley that I headed
back to Sacramento to visit with my dad before enduring the arse numbing ride back to SLC. While I
definitely wasn't successful in my objective and in hindsight should have known better, I absolutely had to
try and don't regret it a bit!
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