Anne Hughes is a long-time veteran of Chicks Climbing (first clinic was in 2002), and many women who have been to a clinic have met her. She has been a participant in a total of 13 clinics in the past nine years and has served as the Base Camp Manager for the Chicks Rock! programs in both Devil’s Lake and Red Rocks. Her backyard crag is Devil’s Lake, where she climbs on a regular basis and just recently sent a 5.11d project she’d been working on for months.
Sarah Goldman ever so graciously conducted this interview with Anne – a very long distance interview from Northern Iraq in fact, proving that the Chicks community is literally only a click away no matter where you are! Sarah is another Chicks veteran (three times over), who is starting an adventure of a lifetime as she begins a trek throughout North America to climb. Keep up with Sarah’s new life here.
Anne, we know you are a longtime friend of Chicks Climbing, please tell us about your connection to the program.
I started at Chicks with Picks in 2002 and have gone for one or two sessions per season ever since. Last year I was base camp manager for Chicks Rock’s inaugural workshops at Devil’s Lake and at Red Rocks.
So, how long have you been climbing rock and ice?
Rock: 13 years. Ice: 8 years.
Damn, that’s a long time, good on ya. You recently celebrated your 56th birthday, and as with other birthdays you completed a self-imposed birthday challenge. First off, what is a “birthday challenge?”
A birthday challenge is an event that is, as the name says, “challenging”, usually involving your sport, but may also include eating and drinking challenges. On my 55th birthday I climbed Gils Cheek, climb number 55 in the Devils Lake Climbing Guide. After that joyous ascent, I did all sorts of things including 55 burpees, 55 pull ups, a 5.5 min plank hold, climbed 5 boulder problems and 5 roped routes in the gym, traversed for 5.5 min, ate 55 M&Ms, drank 55 cc of gin among a gaggle of friends, etc. If you’ve never done a birthday challenge, I highly recommend it!
Wow, that sounds great and TOUGH, I’m thankful it’s only my 31st birthday coming up! What did you do for 56?
I wanted to send Flatus Triple Direct (5.11d) on top rope. I’ve worked this Devil’s Lake classic off and on for years and seriously last fall and this spring. I’ll bet I’ve made 35-40 stabs at FlatusTD through the years. I worked it obsessively this season. I could climb it in my mind several times a day and I was physically on it once or twice a week May through June. Then, joy of joys, I sent it clean a week before my birthday!
Any advice for Chicks on projecting a climb?
Pick an aesthetic climb that intrigues you, that is just out of reach as far as the ratings go, and that is in your neighborhood, because it is going to take a lot of practice. Find some partners who can work it with you or would like to work a nearby project perhaps of a different rating not far from your own project.
What about breaking it down even further – any specific advice for the head game so many climbers face while projecting tough routes?
Get to work! Climb your project regularly and with different people so you can glean different ideas that may help you. Don’t be discouraged. Skip the crux when you can’t do it and work other sections — batman up, lower down from the top, or climb an easier route beside yours to bypass the area that has you stymied. Work the climb in overlapping sections once the pieces begin to fall into place. Memorize the sequence exactly. Visualize it at the speed you normally climb in as much detail as you can conjure up, including sights, sounds, smells. Remain positive and present in the moment as you climb. Avoid the distraction of worrying about getting to the top or the crux a ways ahead.
Part two of Sarah’s interview with Anne will be published later this week. In part two, Anne discusses her physical and mental training, as well as how she pays it forward, mentoring other women in the climbing world.
The following is a guest post from Chicks alumna Carolyn Riccardi, who has generously shared the trip report from her experience a couple weeks ago alpine climbing in the Northern Cascades.
But it’s much more than just a trip report, it’s an open and honest piece about climbing and its challenges, especially training the mind and the body. Her beautiful slide show immediately follows, but please don’t skip a word of this compelling piece.
“I know the pieces fit. I know the pieces fit. I know the pieces fit. I know the pieces fit.”
I can remember being the happiest kid in all of Flatlands, Brooklyn after a heavy snow would fall in the winter. I would walk for hours and hours to find the biggest snow piles in the freshly plowed parking lots of the Kings Plaza shopping mall a few miles from my home. With the wind picking up off the water and light fading fast, I would throw myself, again and again, down the grey and black snow hills. And proclaim to all those within earshot that I was king of this snow pile. My gloves would been soaked with ice water, my cloth jacket weighted heavy from the wet snow and the leather on my pumas cracked from nights of thawing them out too close to the radiator. The Kings Plaza parking lot or the empty land fills in Georgetown were about as far as I could get from home when I was 11 years old. They were as close to nature and the mountains as you might get in the southern tip of Brooklyn. I was trying to touch something out there. Something in the cold was comforting. Something in the cold made me alive.
I am not Rested. Relaxed. Or satisfied. I look in the mirror and I see compromise. I look back on my trip and I am gripped by every little mistake I made. Everytime I was too tired to contribute fully. The leads I passed up. The many times my head felt heavy with exhaustion. Too drained. Too tired. Too sore to think straight. Is this alpine climbing? Am I totally over my head? I note half measures in my training. Crossfit. Long hikes. Runs. Bikes. Where did I go wrong? How can I be so fit and not fit enough to keep it together? What I did and what I could have done but didn’t. What sounds good on paper, in books and in training journals. I look at my photographs and I see all the mistakes I made. A week later my body is still wreck. My hair and skin feel dry. My shins are brushed, scratched with one nice size puncture wound that continues to pain me. Always a slow healer, the past week I am healing at a glacier’s pace. I want look at my photos and feel pleasure. I want to look at myself and just be pleased with myself. I want to be 100% proud at being an alpine badass. But I don’t.
Last week my friend Ryan Stefiuk (bigfootmountainguides.com) and I headed to the Northern Cascades to climb some classic alpine routes in Washington State. For me the Cascades seem to be a natural stepping stone into larger climbing objectives in the lower 48. While some friends practice aid for Yosemite and others head to sport climbing areas that are close to beaches and bikinis, I look for a great white and chilly reprieve from the sweltering humidity of New York State.
Mt. Shuksan
Ryan and I planned on two routes for our trip. The North face of Mt. Shuksan and the Mt. Torment to Forbidden Peak Traverse from the Boston Basin. On Shuksan we concluded the No. Face was getting too much sun and the snow far too soft so we opted instead to ascend the White Salmon Glacier to the top of Willey’s Slide. From here we would be in a good position to get an early start and make a summit push if we desired on our third day. The crux of the route ended up being the gnarly approach where a bulldozer and a machete was needed to battle the dreaded Cascades Slide Alder. the approach to the white salmon glacier is called a Bushwhack grade 4 or BW 4 by our friends in the Alpine Club of Canada.. A BW 4 is defined as “Pace less than one mile per hour. Leather gloves and heavy clothing required to avoid loss of blood. Much profanity and mental anguish. Thick stands of brush requiring circumnavigation are encountered.” Friends I lost some blood on this one. It was 4 grueling hours of punishment though we might have made it in 3 if we hadn’t gotten slightly lost).
While the first two days the temps were perfect on the evening of the second night at our small exposed bivy on Willey’s there was a shift. I woke up freezing around two am shaking from the wind and the cold. The formerly clear night was gone and it seemed like we were in a dense cloud with winds whipping down Hells Highway onto our camp. I was freezing. I technically had great gear. I had an excellent clothing system (MHW chockstone jacket, Patagonia capilene top and Nano puff pullover. Patagonia wool and Marmot Scree Pants) and sleeping gear (EMS 25 degree down bag, MHW bivy shell) for the 30 degree temps but i think after two full days on the move I was unable to generate enough heat to be warm during the rest of the night. I had to shake out repeatly to stave off the chills a few times before day light but was able to feel okay-ish in the morning. By the time we broke camp without breakfast or coffee we were in a full hail storm. The descent down Fisher Chimneys proved an ample white out navigation challenge as we tried to move as fast as possible in wet cold. Having never been in a white out before and wondering if my body wasn’t getting a little hypothermic I was starting to get a little nervous. Experience and a solid skill set is everything Cascades as Ryan taught me a thing or two about navigating us down the rest of the Fisher Chimneys as we made it back onto the Lake Anne trail. We soon made it to the town of Sedro-Woolley and filled our belly’s with pizza and beer.
Schism: The Mt. Torment to Forbidden Peak Traverse “The poetry, That comes from the squaring off between, And the circling is worth it, Finding beauty in the dissonance”
As I describe the very exposed 50 degree snow/ice traverse, the crux of the route, to my friends Jason and Courtney over a lazy brunch in New Paltz, Court meets my eyes and she asks me if I cried during the climb. It’s the first time anyone has asked and I feel a sense of comfort in her question. “Oh yeah,” I say “a bunch of times.” She says she would have done the same. Kathy Cosley and Mark Houston describe steep snow climbing as “a common Achilles heel” among alpinists and I would agree. Though I have a passion for ice and snow most I spend most of my time playing in both in the winters of the north east. Climbing on the exposed crux of the TFT was a humbling education.
The TFT almost didn’t happen as we arrived at the Marblemount Ranger Station only to find out there were no permits for the Boston Basin. Both Ryan and I had been to the BB on previous trips and there was something comforting in heading back into familiar terrain in the second leg of our trip. Now with no permit available we opted for the Torment Basin a considerable steeper and more challenging approach with little water available for the first 3,000 feet. My stomach did a little backflip as I filled out the paperwork and half read the approach description in the guide book.
The approach was all uphill, steep, soft dirt in a densely wooded forrest with no water until you make it to the Basin. We made good time but it was hard work. Every step was earned. We made our camp in the late afternoon and I felt good as we made dinner and absorbed the stunning views of Mt. Johannesburg and Eldorado Peak. We got to bed as early as you can when its bright day light until 10pm, knowing we would be getting a 3am alpine start the next day. Day two proved to be the crux as we made fast time to the summit of Mt. Torment only to have a hard time finding the notch to the small glacier on the north side of the ridge. The route finding challenges are definitely on the first half of the Traverse with easier exposed 4th class climbing over loose rock done after the snow/ice section of the route. After completing the aforementioned snow and ice crux on the traverse we made a welcome bivy and celebrated my 42nd birthday with a snickers bar. 14 hours of being on the go I was crushed. The next morning we finished up the ridge and opted to descend one of the snow gullies and out the Boston Basin.
Our days had been long 9-14 hours and while we did make stops to rest, refuel and eat for my body it was never enough. I think our caloric intact was pretty good though breakfast was the hardest meal as you’re struggling to consume calories while getting ready to break camp. Hydration was a different story. I imagine I was only averaging 3 to 3.5 liters of water per day. This during a 9 plus hour climbing day. Woefully short of what Mark Twight recommends in Extreme Alpinism. Hydration and nutrition were a real challenge for me in the mountains. At the end of the day you need to refuel but your body is so exhausted and your past hunger. The climbs also spoke to my inexperience of travel fast in 4th class terrain climbing with a pack and mountain boots. The instability of the terrain caused me to be extra cautious while climbing. My toes felt destroyed and my knees pained me. It was like doing 10,000 squats in a day. Snow climbing is a whole world unto itself with marginal at best protection and self arrest being far more difficult on steep slushy ice with serious consequences. The newness of all these experiences were wicked heady during most of my trip. It turns out I was more of an alpine noob than I had imagined and I felt a heavy weight of this self awareness as we headed out to our rental car.
Digging Through Old Muscle
I am in the best shape of my life. I crush crossfit WOD’s and my June deadlift PR was 313. Despite a minor tendon injury with my right ring finger that happened in early spring I am climbing well. I am confident and strong. My lead head is improving and I’ve got the heart and passion on an army of spartan women warriors. I thought I had this. I thought it was going to be a comfortable win. I was over confident. I got destroyed. Now mind you it’s important to love yourself, take care of yourself and not wallow would of’s and could of’s. I am a young alpinista. It’s going to take time to learn and train my body and mind. that’s the point. But to become better I have to really look in the mirror, assess my performance and work hard to become a better climber. Become a better me. And that what this is about. My cardio endurance on this trip was off. Way off. I gassed and gassed again on this trip in exactly the ways Mark Twight and Gym Jones have pointed out can happen if you rely on the high intensity workouts of crossfit. I didn’t train sports specific nearly enough to met the tasks at hand. I hiked and climbed but didn’t put in the long days off training to mirror the long days I would do in the Cascades.
Reaching out for whatever may come “I wanna feel the change consume me, Feel the outside turning in. I wanna feel the metamorphosis and Cleansing I’ve endured within”
I am drawn to the ice and snow, a place that others move away. When I climb ice and snow I am trying to touch something. A perfect state of trust in myself and my abilities. I am trying to transform. To connect with the snow and ice and unforgiving terrain. And in the process re-embrace myself and what makes me strong. I guess it’s not alpine climbing until you shed a few tears behind your glacier glasses. It’s perfect cause no one can see. During the climb tears felt like submission. My struggles were crystal clear indications that I didn’t belong on these routes. I couldn’t keep up. I was lagging. I was afraid. Now I realize that all those moments were the heart of the climb not top outs and summits. I was wrong. The tears are self knowledge. They apart of who I am. It’s not simply that I pushed through the tears and become this alpine amazon its that I own my tears. I own my fears. I own my short coming and failings as I own my hard work and my climbing skills. My heart and my passion. It’s all me.
Hey Chicks, as we are entering our twelfth year, we are excited to be expanding our clinic offerings to meet even more climbers in epic new locations, but we want all of you to continue to feel like a real part of the Chicks family no matter if it’s been 2 months or 10 years since you last attended a clinic!
So, we’ve got a couple of fun new ways for you to actually be a part of the Chicks Climbing Web site both on the front page and in a regular blog post!
The first thing you may notice is that our main home page has no photo! Well, that’s where we want to put you! If you are an alumna of a Chicks With Picks or Chicks Rock clinic (and soon an alumna of our Girly Gatherings) we want to put your photos from the clinics you’ve attended on our home page! Please submit any and all photos you’ve taken at one of our clinics to our Flickr pool here (ChicksClimbingRockandIce) and we will put up a new photo on the main page of Chicks Climbing each week! All that we ask is you ID which clinic you attended and the year the photo was taken. Then watch the Web site to see which week YOU will be our “featured Chick!”
Another venture we want to promote is the many crazy cool things you ladies are all up to on the weekend! After a few weeks of watching your updates on Twitter and Facebook it’s clear that you are doing amazing and inspiring things all the time, and we want you to submit photos of exactly what adventures you are up to, so we can continue to inspire each other! Whatever it is you did last weekend – ran a marathon, did some multi-pitch at Yosemite, kayaked along the coast of Georgia, or gave local Girl Scouts a class on rappelling we want to see it! With the wealth of women athletes out there we think we could get some great beta exchanges between each other, so we will be posting the photos on a regular basis (once weekly is our aim if we get enough submissions!) on the Chicks Climbing blog. So please keep us up-to-date on what you’ve been up to by posting your photos on our Flickr pool here (ChicksClimbingRockandIce)!
Let us know if you have any questions or issues uploading your photos – you can reach out to us here by commenting on the blog, on our Facebook page, or through Twitter.
by: Sarah Goldman
My words hung, suspended in air above the table. I could see each member of my fire department duty shift processing what I had just said. “I am resigning, effective immediately. I’ve accepted a contract firefighting position in Iraq.“ The only thing louder than the silence in the room was my heart thumping in my chest and my throat. I watched the words sink in; I could see the judgments forming. It was the same each time I had told someone about my decision and upcoming adventure.
What makes me, a woman on the brink of my 30s with a solid secure job and the freedom to find as many climbing days as the calendar allows, chuck it all and travel 8000 miles away to a seemingly endless, unpopular war with zero opportunity to climb, enjoy a microbrew, or sport a nose piercing? Change? Risk? Adventure? Opportunity? Hope? The pursuit of a wild dream? All of the above?
As I think more about these words and the spirit behind them, I realize these are the reasons so many of us are drawn to climb. As climbers and adventurers, we look at a massive granite spire and think, “what if?” It is in the same spirit that we eye a job opening in Boulder from home in Cincinnati and think “why not now?” I left stability in Virginia and came to Iraq because I was due for an adventure and even more ready for change.
I’ve known it was time to shake things up since my first Chicks With Picks experience nearly 2 years ago. My life, while exceptionally comfortable and one no doubt worthy of envy, had left me feeling cornered, firmly entrenched in a rut and just plain bored. I liked my job as a firefighter, but I knew that it wasn’t going to be my life’s work. I’d spent the past 20 years in Virginia and finally accepted its highest point tops out at barely 5000 feet, so I knew a change of scenery was needed. I suppose I was happy enough, but passionate? Excited? Energized? Not so much.
There are many who don’t understand why I would walk away from what I had, but these often seem to be the same people who don’t understand why we clip bolts, plug gear and stick hard ice. For the most part these same people value, consistency over spontaneity, financial stability over chance, and resorts over road trips. Adventurers are people of courage, people of faith. Faith that things work out, that the universe will provide. They are doers and decision makers. Most often they are not shy and they are not timid. They act when others choose to idle. They choose the risk, when others choose security. Adventure is both a state of being and a state of doing. It is in some, and definitely not in others.
I applied for the position in Iraq and kept expecting for it to somehow not work out. When the doors kept opening and the reality set in that this decision was now going to be up to me, and not the universe to make, I knew, being me, I had to take the chance. Just as any of you cant deny an offer to scope a new crag, or try a new route. I got the call while sitting on a park bench in Calgary, after three amazing weeks in Alberta. My life in Virginia was literally and figuratively thousands of miles away.
I have been in Iraq now for nearly 3 months. The time both crawls and flies depending on my mood. I live in a firehouse on an Army Forward Operating Base with around 25 other firefighters. Each day is the same. Morning meeting, eat, train, eat, work out, eat, call home, dream, repeat. The work is not hard, and I feel fortunate that through my adventure I have the opportunity to support and protect thousands of men and women in the military. Whatever your views on this war, these men and women are sacrificing on our behalf and that cannot be overlooked or underappreciated.
Unlike the members of the military, who do not have an option, I don’t plan to be here long; as I mentioned, being a firefighter is not my life work. I‘ll be here until next summer, or maybe a bit longer. For me, this is a year of transition. It is my first move. Due to responsibilities back home, changing my life couldn’t happen overnight, and I’ll venture to say for anyone over the age of 21 this is probably the case. If it, the adventurist spirit, is in you, which, if you have found your way to this blog it most likely is, and you feel the stink of stagnation into your life, then act. Consider your wildest dreams; consider the life you wish you were having. I don’t know what is next for me, but I take comfort in knowing what is not. I plan to pursue my wildest dream, or dreams as it may turn out to be. As we say in climbing, make the first move, and the next will appear.
Perhaps one of the greatest compliments I have ever been given came from the Head Chick when I told her I had skipped the states and would be working in Iraq. She called me a true adventurer. Thank you Kim, and all of the Chicks touting picks. I didn’t get here alone and Ill enjoy the help finding my way home. Leave the anchors set, I’ll be back soon.
Piper Musmanno’s been exploring Colorado’s fourteeners for several years now, and she’s just about summited them all. Piper’s not one to go up the easy way, either. She chooses the exciting routes. Piper recently completed the traverse between the Maroon Bells. Well known for its extreme beauty as well as its challenging terrain, this route in the Elk range offers a scenic , steep snow climb followed by some tricky route finding up fourth class rock to the first summit. At this point the fun is only part way through. The traverse offers exposure and more route finding followed by continuing to stitch one’s way down through more challenging rocky geometry back down to the finale of a beautiful alpine meadow.
While Piper is a strong mountaineer and climber, she has faced a few of her own challenges to reaching her climbing goals. Last — Piper took a lead fall resulting in a badly broken leg. The injury might’ve delayed her progress, but it did not deter her spirit. As many of us know, the steepest terrain does not always present in the geographical topography, but often, surmounting our own emotional hurdles offers the greatest challenge.” Overcoming the mental aspect has been the hardest part of my recovery. I am slowly gaining confidence back in myself and my body.”
Mental fortitude goes a long way in climbing and mountaineering. One must have the ability to stare down her fears as well as retain an unerring belief that her body will see her through the rough spots. Consistent work on technique is also a given, but the ability to believe in one’s own strength can (and will) save the day. After Piper’s hip gave out, leading to having her hip resurfaced in June 2007, Piper faced a steady, long road to physical recovery. Following this up with a lead fall and subsequent broken leg has forced Piper to be more mindful than ever as she recovers her physical and mental strength. “I can no longer just run all night if I need to get out of bad situations… I’ve gotten much more skilled and better w/ maps, decision making and general mountain skills to keep myself from getting in bad spots.”
Knowing what it’s taken for Piper to continue to reach her climbing goals is inspirational. When you meet Piper climbing with Chicks, you’d think she’s just like you- and she is- (with an exceptional amount of mental fortitude) as well as a few extra metal pieces helping to hold her together.
If there is anyone out there who is getting after it, having fun and kicking axe….it’s our Chicks Alumni! We love to get news of the latest “Chick Sightings” and now we want to hear what you are up to and where you have been on our Blog. Email us your stories and rad photos to info@chickswithpicks.net
Part 1: Projecting a climb
Piper Musmanno’s been exploring Colorado’s fourteeners for several years now, and she’s just about summited them all. Piper’s not one to go up the easy way, either. She chooses the exciting routes. Piper recently completed the traverse between the Maroon Bells. Well known for its extreme beauty as well as its challenging terrain, this route in the Elk range offers a scenic , steep snow climb followed by some tricky route finding up fourth class rock to the first summit. At this point the fun is only part way through. The traverse offers exposure and more route finding followed by continuing to stitch one’s way down through more challenging rocky geometry back down to the finale of a beautiful alpine meadow.
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