The drive to the Monastery in Colorado is farther from my home in Boulder than I want it to be. When my Dad was in the Hospital last fall, it was agonizingly far. In the end of my dad’s life, he became delirious and confused. He would call me repeatedly through the night and early morning. We’d talk, then he’d call ten minutes later, not remembering what happened. I started sleeping in our spare room with my phone on, just laying next to him (so to speak).
Despite halting everything in my life, I continued to climb for my own sanity or to simply pass the time. I would drive out to the Monastery, and call him before leaving cell coverage. In between burns I would solo the back of the climb and sit above the valley, admiring the distant Diamond winking at me from 14,000 feet. It was here that I knew I could get a phone call out, and so I’d sit in the healing beauty of that place with him next to me on the phone. Ultimately those were some of the last times I every spoke to my dad. Such trauma in that place, but also a lot of beauty and an intense connection to nature, the land and the climb.
After he died I remember hiking back out the Monastery to climb on my project, Third Millennium. On one particular day while hiking in, the wind whipped around me suddenly and held on like a blanket had wrapped around my arms. It felt like the closest I had been to my dad since he passed away.
Overall I wasn’t doing well, and I wasn’t eating. I felt weak, broken emotionally but I was one-hanging the route so I kept trying. The bottom boulder was probably my favorite part of the route, and the part I was always best at - even when I was sick and emaciated from grief. The rest of the route stays hard and consistent with another boulder problem at the 5th bolt, and then a redpoint crux at the 7th. Totally relentless. As the season ended, I was falling apart. Forever changed from the loss of my person.
The Spring of 2022 came quickly and by then I felt more emotionally stable than I’d felt in months. I knew I wanted to go back to Third Millennium and try putting the pieces back together. On a decidedly too-cold spring day, I hiked out there with a mini-trax and some headphones and started trying. The first few days were frigid and I was always alone. I would jog to the wall, rap in and take a few moments on top in our (me and my dad’s) spot. In the beginning I would talk to the pigeons and they hooted back. I imagined they were him.
Soon enough I felt like I was making big links and wanted to get off the mini-trax. The day I sent, I fucking lost it. It felt like such an intense release of emotion. I had shared so much with this piece of stone, the floodgates completely opened. I started crying before I clipped the chains, and suddenly felt immobilized by grief. I knew I had to send the route because I knew I had to close this chapter of pain. In the end, I managed to drag my body to the top of the cliff and sat in ‘our’ spot. I cried a bit more, pulled myself together and lowered to the ground. The chapter abruptly closed. Not only was Third Millennium the hardest route I’d climbed, it was also the first route I climbed with my dad fully in my heart.
Third Millennium is an incredibly beautiful climb that helped me achieve a small personal milestone, being my 80th route graded 5.13a or harder. The route itself is graded 5.14a or 5.13d depending on who you ask. I tend to take the low grade, just because I’m crusty and from Smith Rock, but truth be told I felt like it was a significant step up from the other 5 routes in the grade range that I’ve done.
Either way, you’re in for a treat if you haven’t tried this route.
Photos of me by Andrew Tower
Unrelated to Third Millennium: I got a macro lens. Exciting.
Immersing myself into this tiny new universe has been a breath of fresh air. A saving grace from the intense reality of the actual universe at this moment in time.
