Climbing in Seattle

10 am... a little bit of me still on UK time, news spreading around the world about the deadly swine flue that is as we speak killing people in Mexico and causing the British government to request that people do not come to the US unless it's totally urgent. (too late! Suckers) I am unfortunately blissfully unaware of the fact that all this is going on as my brother in law, his wife's brother and some kid that lives in his house all show up with the desire to go climbing.

They have ropes and tools and everything that we'll need and I have the upper body strength having in the past few weeks been climbing every week or so as part of a protracted fitness campaign. I don't know what my current weight is but I'm no longer the soft chubby bastard I saw in my wedding photo's .

I call shot-gun. Word is that it has already been called but I want to stamp my claim for alpha male down early and claim that as I was not around the count cannot be called legal. No once complains and I get to ride shotgun. Things are going well. For some reason I am nervous. I have been reading a Bret Easton Ellis novel in which he talks about his manic cocaine fueled orgy of a life. It has left me feeling some what guilty. Like I am hiding something from the world. Which is odd considering I do not even drink. Tom, My brother in law drives. I sit in the shotgun seat.
Toms been drunk every night since we got here.

In the back seats are My bilbm, (brother in law by marriage) thought the acronym bilbm has been shortened to bilf, which everyone still finds funny. Some guy from Tom's house turns out to be Danny a dreadlocked natureboy of about 21 who is so clearly full of life that you want to stick a fork in him and watch the stuff come pouring out like fat from a sausage. He is my main competition for alphadom. Even from the start I know I am destined to lose and go for a counter stratagy of being OK with not being the best at everything and just be the person that is most OK with that.

We cruise listening to the presidents and some other Seattle bands that sound similar to the presidents. We cruise out over the floating bridges, looking for Bill Gates' pad, which I am then told is not visible from the interstate. Which makes sense. Why would the worlds richest man want to be able to see a motorway from his bedroom window. I wonder if I could use my BBC credentials to get into bills 23rd century show home. But then realize that since I cannot access my BBC email and do not have my pass with me this is probably a fools errand.

After the bridges there is a small tunnel and then we are into the mountains.

Bigger more impressive yet still more cartoon like than the mountains in the UK these do not look like mountains in which foolish tourists lose their bearings and die. These look like places where women go to dress up like Germans and sing. Perhaps it is the presence of the interstate. So at odds to the one lane road I expect to see when surrounded by NATURE.

We are off to exit 38, a climb spot. Once there we pull over and start the trek up to the ridge. Danny tells a story about how he once free climbed something he shouldn't have and nearly died. I don't believe that anyone could really be in danger in this Disney mountain range, pale green grass , dark green trees and a pale blue and diomand white sky. This insn't anywhere real. This is the cover of a chocolate box.

We get out o the car. Danny starts the hike in bare feet hoping that his life energy will protect him. Richard my Bilf, luckily has some extra flip flops. Richard is less charismatic, less deadlocked, but seemingly far more use than Danny the pup. Different rock faces have different names. I don't remember the first face we climbed, or the second, they were two easy, the main event of note being able to watch as kids from some camp or other struggle to climb the 5'6s and 5'7s only to have Danny literally run past them, like a mountain goat. No harness no helmet no nothing. He later takes to scampering up after people who are climbing, finding a good spot and taking pictures. Danny can name all the birds, Richard has brought food for everyone. The climbing equipment belongs to Tom.

We are a novelty on the rocks, the two English guys and the glowing with life Danny. Women start conversations with us, they expect to be asked for numbers, but since both Tom and I are married and Danny is quite frankly too busy scampering around like a loon to pick up women they slowly start to loose interest. After a while we realize that we can all pretty much race climb the things we are on and head off to the 'We Did' face. Routes here are harder, starting at a 5.9 in the American rating. Basically that makes them... a little bit tricky.

Like any sport at it's inception climbing came a long with a lot of male bravado and teenage gusto. The first person to climb a ridge gets to name it. On the We did face, you can climb, your mum your sister or some drugs. There are others too, all hilariously frat boy funny. They are all tough routes. Tom has to lead climb, which is much more dangerous and since it's been over a year since he went climbing he's a little bit reluctant to go up a genuinely hard face. He delays and delays, we are also delaying as none of us want to see him die. Danny begins to balance rocks, and then take quick sequence photographs of them as they tumble to the ground, sometimes smashing as they go into tiny higs-boson like fragments. I don't think the sight of falling rocks does Toms confidence any good. Danny and I start picking targets and trying to hit them with rocks. It's a light hearted pissing contest while tom get's his courage up. I have no idea what Richard was doing.

Tom is finally ready to ascend. We strain our necks to watch is long skinny limbs struggle up the vertical face. He reaches a tricky section. And much to everyone's releaf is able to clear it, it's a triumph for Tom. The weight drops of his shoulders as he repels to the ground. He can still climb and he is still not dead.

Danny is currently wearing the shared harness so he gets to go up next. For the first time today he looks intimidated by the wall. Quickly though he reaches the difficult section. Is briefly stumped by what to do, and then finds a way past it. Next up it's me. I climb up pretty fast, confident that anything they can do I can also do. I've been watching from the ground and have a strategy. Unfortunatly upon getting to the tricky section my stratagy proves to be impossible and I slip and fall, the rope holds good and nothing by my knee and my pride are hurt. I hang for a moment 40 feet off the ground. Get back on the wall. Find a tiny grip, it doesn't look big enough to hold me but miraculously it does and I pass the section and find my self touching the anchors and repelling down quickly after that. Richard is the last up. He struggles hard. Can't make the grip, eventually kind of cheats, but gets up anyway.

Were all done. It's probably time to go home but we decide not to. We decide that it might be a better idea to head off up a side trail that leads to the top of the mountains. The sign says that the trail is only one and a half miles long. That translates in my imagination to about 100 yards. The trail takes a 45 degree angle up the side of the mountain and doesn't stop. Highlights include us boldering up a small almost perfectly square rocky outcrop, the top covered with soft moss. We pose for pictures on what we have dubbed the Thrown of the Forrest King. Tom decided that he should come back with swords and maybe shoot a short film up here. I start to feel that we are all 12 years old again. We climb up. We start to approach the snow line and the trail becomes more and more like a computer game as Danny starts lobbing snowballs down at us through the trees, often smashing on the branches and dissolving into a cooling mist. We find ourselves having to navigate small patches of snow. Richard complains. he wasn't prepared for this. Danny laughs and runs ahead. Me and Tom just kind of keep on climbing up.

When we get to the top, it is worth it. A great view on all sides only partly spoiled by the surreal line of the freeway weaving it's path along the valley floor like some kind of accelerated glacier. All the colours are pure. Tom decides to take off all his cloths and have Danny take some pictures. He has apparently always wanted to have some naked top of a mountain shots. Then he decided that he want's to tweet naked. Luckily for the gods of mother nature he cannot find his phone and he will not be able to access Twitter, until we find it again. I'm pretty sure it will be with all our other kit that we stashed about a third of the way up this trail.

After many jokes, my favorite being that he could do with gaining a little weight... especially in the penis area, Tom gets dressed and we all go back down the trail. Pick up our gear, find Toms phone and hike back down to the car.

Everyone talks about how this has been just the perfect day for this, and that it's great when you get a day where you can accomplish something. But a niggling voice prods me in the back wondering exactly what is is that has been accomplished. What have we done that has not already been done. What have we done that will leave a mark. What have we done that will even colour the next week of our lives.

As we drive back towards Seattle the car enters the formerly small town of Issaqua. I ask if it's an Indian reservation but i's apparently named after the Indians that once lived there. “The people we kicked out”

I said that we should go head and call it Genocide. Lets not faff about here. Lets call it what it is.

Issaqua rent is slightly cheaper than Seattle's and people are starting to flock here in droves. We see two or three neighborhoods of identical houses, not just identical within the neighborhood, but identical. Three sprawling expanses of cookie cut homes. A total contrast to downtown Seattle where it seems no two buildings are alike in the whole damn city. I say something I've said before about how the word develop could be replaced with Shit On and the meaning would be the same. This area has been earmarked for shitting on. This expanse of wilderness is in fact under-shit-on. The down town area has been densely shit on... from a great height. It seems to win me some cred, a little counter-culture environmentalism from the sarcastic Englishman. Tom disagrees with the term. He says life comes from shit. There's no life in the homes we pass by.

Its been a good day and part of me wants to put a downer on things. Wants to point out the hipocracy. Even though we spent the day in the wilderness, Even though we climbed the cliff face, faced fear and death, stood naked at the top of mountains, laughed and danced barefoot in the last of the winter snow.

Was it “the wilderness” TM? Was it a McDance with death? Would it have been true to say that we all knew that the ropes would hold, that the mountains would not get us. That the cookie cutter day would lead to another one, that if the danger had been real we wouldn't have come?

Danny puts on 'Furr' the one good song by 'blitzen trapper.' It's about a boy of seventeen that leaves society to join in singing with a pack of wolves. He loves the song, wants to live the song. It gets played another three times. The chorus is terrible.

Within two hours we are eating Steak, with steak sauce and bushman mushrooms, within three I am back home in bed with my wife.