After all the driving, climbing, hiking, taco eating, sun cowering and coffee drinking, we rolled into Squamish after a three-week hiatus in the wilds of the Sierra Nevada.
California is a state where water restrictions shout at you from the front pages of major papers and people still play endless rounds of golf on pristine carpets of green. They grow much of the produce we see in supermarkets yet are in the fourth year of an ongoing drought, with no end in sight.
Low snowpacks, depleted rivers and lakes and such an arid climate meant my morning alarm clock wasn鈥檛 my daughter but the nosebleed that started each day. A local resident, with whom we stayed for our trip, called the growing water shortage 鈥渨ater madness鈥� because everyone wants a solution but no one is willing to change basic parts of their lives to accommodate the change needed. 鈥淭hey鈥檒l start looking north of the border鈥︹�� was the last line he said. A sobering thought.
Life slowed down and simplified once we arrived at the tiny rented cabin that became our home for two weeks. We woke early and were out the door to the boulders by 8 a.m. each day. The weather became so hot during the day that we sought shade and aimed to finish the day by 1 p.m. at the latest.
Temperatures hit 30 Celsius in town and the bouldering took place at around 2,500 metres, so sun exposure became a real worry. It pierced you, it hit you, it shot right through you and dried you out leaving you a dried out husk of a Canadian. I can now vouch for how great a moisturizer coconut oil is. After climbing we slunk back into the shade of the yard at home to play in buckets of water, drink much excellent coffee and take stock of our skin鈥檚 condition after the day鈥檚 beating.
Skin maintenance is a constant job on a bouldering trip to such a dry and sunny place. With the care of a trained and passionate aesthetician we moisturized, filed, sanded, bandaged splits and crazy-glued open wounds so they would heal faster.
Dish gloves for the hands, balms at night, arguments over who would bathe the babe and minimal showering on climbing days all became part of the daily ritual to create tough strong elastic skin that stood up the abuse of the sharp holds on which we climbed. It sounds fanatical, but this attention to dermatological detail was one of the kernels I was most happy to learn.
We met up with two families from Squamish down there; new friendships were created and old ones strengthened. Our daughter learned how to use a run bike and put herself to bed during the trip 鈥� a pretty good tick list, if you ask me.
The key was staying with a local family. Getting to know them made our stay much richer; we are going to return because of the people and the climbing now. There was some endearing and personal learning going on for me and my partner in that we failed quite a lot but still came away feeling we鈥檇 climbed better than past trips and enjoyed each and every day, despite destroyed skin, injured fingers and hot hot weather.
There鈥檚 a lot of fuss made over enjoying the process in life. Now I get that a little bit more clearly, thanks to climbing in Bishop, California.
