#dirtbagswag whips 007: My 2003 Toyota Room With a View

Josh makes some tailgate coffee in Diablo Canyon, New Mexico

Toyota Tacomas go with rock climbing like Black Diamond cams, dirty Carhart pants, and empty cans of PBR. On any given weekend, you'd be hard pressed to not see one of these fine products of Japanese engineering at any given crag in the United States. And for good reason too. They're dadgum near bullet proof, they hold their shelf life longer than canned yams, and they get pretty good gas mileage to boot.

For the climbing bum, it doesn't take much to make one of these vehicles inhabitable: a camper top and crashpad will do. But dirtbag savants have created all kinds of sophisticated truck bed sleeping apparatuses to enhance the slumber experience. I kept my methodology simple, imitating a popular tripartite system with a removable top platform and plenty of storage space along the two sides.

With the top platform in place, the bed can sleep two comfortably above the wheel wells. Slide the platform out and down and one can sleep down low with ample headroom for sitting up or for stealth camping in Wal Mart parking lots.

I dropped $360 on the Craigslist camper shell and about $100 for the bed platform materials. That's less than $500 for a mountain front room-with-a-view whenever and wherever I want. No reservations required. I can't put a price tag on the simple joy of falling asleep to the dim light of the moon, the cool breeze blowing through the screened windows, and the sound of wind in the trees. Or waking up with the sun, crawling out of my truck, brewing up a cup of coffee on the tailgate, and thumbing through the guidebook to find a place to climb that day. Those are memories that last a lifetime.

If climbing is my conduit for travel, then my truck is the means by which I experience these beautiful places. Many of which a non-climber would never see or feel. When is the last time a non-climber hiked up to the beautiful, geologically perplexing, cobble stone conglomerate walls of El Rito? Or wandered past the roadside overlooks to take in the monstrously steep sandstone cliffs of the wild and scenic Obed River gorge? I spent the past summer driving up the Mountain Standard Time Zone from Diablo Canyon, New Mexico to Ten Sleep, Wyoming. The big mountains and deep canyons are nice but I'm glad to be back in the South; waking up to fleeting fall foliage, foggy mountain mornings, and Cumberland Plateau sandstone.

A room with a view, whenever and wherever I want.

Wild Iris, Wyoming

whip specs

make and model: 2003 Toyota Tacoma Pre-Runner
moniker: pootermobile 2.0
under the hood: 2.7 L DOHC EFI 4-cylinder
gas mileage: 19-23 mpg
dirtbag mods: casette tape adapter, camper shell, bed platform, BF Goodrich All Terrains, and a "Namaste Y'all" bumper sticker

home is where you park it. 

5 Things Working as a Backpacking Guide Taught Me About Climbing and Life

The boys from Antioch, TN on top Mt. Antero

I've spent the last few summers working for a backpacking outfitter that guides groups of teenagers on weeklong treks through Colorado's backcountry and up some of the state's tallest mountains. Some of my most fun, challenging, and rewarding experiences have been in those mountains and these are some of the lessons I've learned.

1. How to be miserable: Growing up backpacking with my friends, if a raccoon ate all our food or the weather wasn't to our liking, we could hike out in the middle of the night and drive to Waffle House. When you're guiding a group of teens through the backcountry and a bear eats half of your week's meals or the stoves don't work or it has rained and hailed for the last seventy-two hours, you just have to deal. Sometimes you fester in a tent all day. Sometimes you hike with a missing toenail. Sometimes you don't eat so your clients can. Sometimes you remain in a perpetual state of damp, soggy, misery because you gave a forgetful client all your Gore-Tex rain gear. Embrace the sufferfest.

You learn how to suffer and how to be okay with it because, well, you're in it and sometimes the only way to get down is to keep going up.

Our group from Texas riding Antero's ridge

2. How to think about ethics: Nobody likes to think of their human behavior as destructive behavior. Whether it is pooping in the desert, picking Columbines in the high country, or accidentally leaving a Clif Bar at your last rest stop. But human action has environmental consequences and we have to be mindful of that. A fed bear is a dead bear because they become dependent on human food. A water reservoir is ruined because a fragile ecosystem was contaminated by human waste. Or maybe it's just robbing another hiker of the joy of seeing a beautiful rare wildflower.

Backpacking ought to make us aware of how our presence has lasting effects on natural spaces. Are all those bolts necessary at the new crag? Should I keep climbing at the boulderfield whose landing areas have been eroded and trampled away? How and where were these ingredients grown for this delicious burger? Leave No Trace goes far beyond a week in the woods.

Jamie helps Daniel across a flooded creek on a pre-season scouting trip of Mt. Ouray

3. How to move light and fast: I got sucked into the super-ultralight backpacking scene pretty quickly in high school. One weekend trip with an external frame and an Army Surplus tent and I was convinced: lighter is better. We made our own stoves, ditched most of our gear, and covered a lot of miles. And though my Gossamer Gear G6 "trashbag with shoulder straps" backpack wasn't practical for guiding,  I was pretty adamant about not carrying anything I didn't absolutely need. I wasn't about to carry a watermelon to summit just to say I did.

Backpacking inspires a certain level of minimalism that can help one achieve one's goals but also leave less impact along the way (see #2). "What can I ditch to shed base weight pounds?" "How much gear do I really need to take up this route?" "How many articles of clothing does my closet actually need? And do I have to buy them brand new?" Do we really need that much stuff?

Robin and I talk about the weather and our fastest route through the snow on Ptarmigan Peak

4. The view from the summit is better together: I've cried in the high country twice. The second time was last summer taking a group of students from West Memphis, Arkansas up Mt. Rinker. Rinker is one of our longest mountains by mileage and this group chose to do it in a five day push instead of our standard six. "Rinker the Stinker" is hard by any means but it was exceptionally hard for one particular student: a sizable offensive lineman we'll call Michael.

I hiked in the back all summit day with Michael and two other guys, taking turns -- quite literally -- carrying him up the mountain. His feet struggled to move, his legs struggled to lift, his lungs wrestled to breathe. Michael legitimately believed he couldn't do it. He told me at least 100 times, "I can't do it." And when he finally did it, he wept. And I did too. Looking back, I recall the wise words spoken on another mountain, "It's easy to shout encouragement from a distance, it's another to walk alongside someone and speak words of hope." 

West Memphis boys sharing the load, still in the valley below Rinker

5. How to appreciate not making it to the top: Sometimes you summit. Sometimes you don't. Backpacking has taught me that failure can be a powerful positive force. As a guide, few things are harder than telling a group of wide eyed students from Texas or Arkansas or Louisiana -- who worked hard and did everything right -- that their climb ends prematurely. That they're not going to summit. The mountains have a way of normalizing failure and they do not discriminate.

The first time I cried in the mountains was telling a group of young students from Houston, Texas that by no fault of their own they were not going to summit. Yes, weather was rolling in but we could have pushed it. No, we didn't summit that day because of a verbally abusive father who came as a parent chaperone. We ended our day early, below the summit ridge, to hopefully avoid long-term emotional wounds. It was hard. It was even harder when a teary eyed eighth grader with a mild form of autism came up and hugged me and the other guide, ecstatic for how far he had come. I looked at the other guide, our lips quivered, and we both cried. I learned that day that the mountain doesn't show us who we are but who we want to be, and I want to be like him.

Nothing feels better than standing on top of a mountain but few things are more powerful than the lessons learned from a failed attempt. Embrace risk. Try hard. Take chances. Fail often. Succeed next time.

Dixie Craggers Summer 2015 Mixtape

North Clear Creek swimming hole at the Obed

 

At my mother's behest, I played "Country Roads" at my very first guitar recital. When you grow up in a house where Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton, and The Statler Brothers fight for stereo time, you don't have much choice in the matter. Shortly after that recital, I began to take my guitar to the basement of our church where on Tuesday nights, old men with aged stringed instruments sat in an enormous circle pickin' and grinnin' music from the mountains. They were called the Skillet Lickers.  I struggled to keep up.

But I came of age rebelling against the music of my mother. The discovery of Sham 69, Minor Threat, and The Buzzcocks set my ears on a path that lasted well over a decade of my young life. The effects were deep and lasting. These days though, if I listen to music in my truck at all, I'm more prone to listen to Doc Watson or Uncle Tupelo than Reagan Youth. Like circles, we end up where we began, "but only in leaving can they ever come back round."

This summer's mixtape pays homage to the music of my roots. It opens with a blazing fury of Appalachian fiddle that will set the feet to tapping on even the most jaded urban ears. Acts like Benjamin Booker and Lee Bains III successfully cross the streams of Chuck Berry and Creedence Clearwater Revival with the likes of Bad Brains and Black Flag, respectively. But it all remains heavily anchored by country purist revivalists like Melissa Payne, Nick Ferrio, and Sturgill Simpson. In a time when country radio has not only neglected but totally turned its back on traditional country music, what could be more punk? Listen to it HERE.

Enjoy!

1. Possessed By Paul James - There Will Be Nights When I'm Lonely Intro (TWBNWIL)
2. Possessed By Paul James - There Will Be Nights When I'm Lonely (TWBNWIL)
3. Diarrhea Planet - Heat Wave (Aliens in the Outfield)
4. Nick Ferrio and His Feelings - Night Garden (Nick Ferrio and His Feelings)
5. Melissa Payne - High and Dry (High and Dry)
6. Sera Cahoone - Shakin' Hands (Deer Creek Canyon)
7. Jason Isbell - Different Days (Southeastern)
8. John Moreland - Heart's Too Heavy (High On Tulsa Heat)
9. Brandi Carlisle - Wherever is Your Heart (The Firewatcher)
10. Lee Bains III and the Glory Fires - The Kudzu and the Concrete (Dereconstructed)
11. Sturgill Simpson - Just Let Go (Metamodern Sounds in Country Music)
12. The Drive-By Truckers - Mama Bake a Pie, Daddy Kill a Chicken (The Fine Print)
13. Benjamin Booker - Violent Shiver (Benjamin Booker)
14. Dresses - Blew My Mind (Sun Shy)
15. Manchester Orchestra - I Can Feel a Hot One (Mean Everything to Nothing)

Listen to it HERE.

#dirtbagswag whips 006: Caleb's B2500 & The Making of a Dirtless Dirtbag

#dirtbagswag

Caleb James is the anti-dirtbag.

He is always clean.

He hates being dirty.

He openly hates dirt.

He hates sleeping in it.

He hates being covered in it.

He perpetually makes fun of me for my dirty fingernails, greasy hair, tattered and unwashed clothes. I don't know how he does it, but after a week in the mountains, Caleb looks like he just got out of the shower.

In fact, if you saw Caleb in the wild, your first thought would most likely be, Man who let this insanely good looking John Stamos-Rob Lowe hybrid with cheek bones like granite and back muscles like a sack of potatoes out of the super-top-secret underground-Calvin-Klein-underwear-model-laboratory? 

But don't let his dashing good looks and disdain for dirt fool you. Caleb loves mountains. And he loves the freedom and feeling he gets when moving vertically in their midst; whether in the Southeast or the Mountain West, either steep jug hunting or thin ice climbing, whether on foot or the sharp end of the rope. So he's always just dealt with the dirt.

Caleb does it all and he looks good doing it.

That is, he dealt with it until he found his 1996 Dodge B2500 conversion van at a dirtbag deal in Salida, Colorado where he works in the summers. He drove it back to Chattanooga, Tennessee where he studies outdoor education and business; sets boulder problems in the campus climbing gym; fixes bicycles; and takes Greek-lifers top-roping at Rocktown, SUPing on the Tennessee River, and leading ski trips to North Carolina.

Caleb has swagged out his van into a full-on dirtbag adventure mobile complete with bed, gear storage, and an enormous roof rack. But he hasn't sacrificed his penchant for the aesthetically pleasing either. "Tito" is decked out with interior mood lighting, shag carpet, and a Nintendo 64.

At the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, students often mistake his van for an ambulance. And while that mistake would have made sense in the early 90s, Caleb's Dodge conversion van is, in fact, a lifesaver of sorts because now he doesn't have to sleep in all that dang dirt anymore.

whip specs

make and model: 1996 Dodge B2500
moniker: "Tito"
under the hood: 5.2L V8
gas mileage: see above
dirtbag mods: safari sized roof rack; DIY paint job; shag carpet yanked from his parents' old house; 12" Kicker subwoofer; Nintendo 64; eagle hood mount (sits on the spare tire cover). The bed comes with the van.

Caleb graduates in May and plans on dirtless dirtbagging across the United States before returning as a guide for the summer in Colorado. I'm hoping to meet up with him in the mountains at some point. You can catch him and Tito at a crag near you, but remember to kick the dirt off your shoes before you do.