Dixie Cragger's Fall 2013 Mixtape

Clear Creek from Lilly Bluff at the Obed

It's officially fall. The colors are changing. The days are shortening. Girls are wearing boots and flannel. I'm even considering cleaning the crusty, four month old, used, coffee gel packets out of the pockets of my puffy jacket. And though I'm not a fan of six dollar, sugar laden, pumpkin spice lattes; the yellow leaves, dense early morning fog, and the sound of Clear Creek in the gorge below get me all giddy. These tracks are dedicated to the most wonderful time of the year.

I make no claims to be on the cutting edge of musical tastes, but there's a lot of new-to-newish jams on here. And for what it's worth, the Buffalo Gospel track alone is worth the download. Enjoy!





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1. Shovels & Rope - Birmingham (O' Be Joyful, )
2. Two Cow Garage - Farmtown (Please Turn the Gas Back On)
3. Diarrhea Planet - Warm Ridin' (Loose Jewels)
4. The Band - Atlantic City (Jericho)
5. Mother Falcon - Marfa (You Knew, 2013)
6. Pernice Brothers - End of Faith (Goodbye, Killer)
7. Hollis Brown - Gypsy Black Cat (Ride the Train, 2013)
8. Ian Fisher and the Present - Why Do I Go? (Ian Fisher and the Present, 2013)
9. Brandi Carlile - Hard Way Home (Bear Creek)
10. Doc Dailey and Magnolia Devil - Catch the Presidents (Catch the Presidents)
11. Buffalo Gospel - When God's Away on Business (Acoustic Demo, 2013)
12. Jason Isbell - New South Whales (Southeastern, 2013)
13. John Denver - I Guess He'd Rather Be in Colorado (Poems, Prayers, & Promises)
14. David Dondero - Boxcar (Jawbreaker cover) (A Pre-Existing Condition)
15. Lucero - Union Pacific Line (Texas & Tennessee, 2013)

A Day in the Life of an Actual Normal Climber

7:00 am: Wake up an hour late because you slept through your alarm because you stayed up late working on a paper.

7:02 am: Stumble into the kitchen and get a cup of coffee brewing. While it percolates, pee, throw on some dirty clothes (smell check), text your climbing buddy you're running late, sync iphone with new episodes of your favorite podcasts for the drive.

7:08 am: Pour your delicious go-go juice in a mug, grab your rack, rope, guidebook, crashpads, etc. and go.

9:30 am: Get to the crag after a two hour drive, divvy up the gear and start the approach trail down into the gorge. Take advantage of this intimate time with your belay partner for deep cerebral discussion about existence and the plausibility that the events in Ice Cube's "Good Day" actually happened in a 24 hour time frame.

10:02 am: Arrive at your warm-up route. Flake the rope, lace up, chalk up, tie in. Complain about how stiff your body feels, how sore your fingers are, how bad your toes hurt, how this feels like it's going to be a "high gravity" day.

10:08 am: Ask "is it lunch yet?"right before getting on the rock.

10:11 am: How do I already have Elvis leg? Oh God, I hope he doesn't notice my Elvis leg. This route is a total sandbag. 10a my foot! This is the hardest 5.10a I've ever done. "Are you sure this wasn't an '11' in the guidebook?"Maybe 10a  for somebody over six feet tall. Did Dikembe Mutombo bolt this route? "Clipping!" Is that backclipped? No, good.  Man, imagine Dikembe Mutombo climbing. Focus. Breathe. But this is definitely a tall person's route. I wish a little bit taller...

10:20 am: Partner hops on "warm up route." Flashes it.

11:00 am: Climb your second route. Make it count. Warmed up but fresh, this is the best you'll climb all day.

11:43 am: Run and jump from a 45 ft tall ledge (while on top rope) to get the flannel shirt you took off mid-climb out of a tree. Boy scouts on the top rope wall down the corridor watch your bad example. It doesn't matter because they're boy scouts and will all most likely end up playing Grand Theft Auto in their mother's basements when they're old enough to really climb.

12:27 pm: Most likely your "project" or your muse. Flail around and hang dog for an hour. "Clipping. Clipping. Clipping! CLIPPING!" Followed by a contrite, "Sorry I yelled at you." You make it to the anchors but not without pulling on a draw. Maybe another day.

1:30 - 5:17 pm: Walking. Talking. Climbing. Whipping. Climbing. Somewhere in between climbs, while walking along the cliff you notice exquisite lines with beautiful holds and aesthetic moves. You anxiously look it up in the guidebook and realize it is not remotely in your league of climbing.

6:00ish pm: Climb way less than you planned on on account of the time it takes to hang dog, red point, clean, coil, walk, flake, tie, climb, hang dog some more, get spit off of routes. Forearms burning, fingertips bleeding, stomach growling, and heart happy you make the way back to the cars. Continue discussion about Ice Cube and existential crises.

7:30ish pm: Crawl into the booth of a questionable Mexican restaurant in Podunk, Tennessee. Order the burrito, enchilada, and taco plus a pitcher of margarita. Celebrate the day's victories and whippers while old, white, probably racist rednecks examine your ratty clothes, dirty feet, and girly beverage choice.

In the words of the great 20th Century urban philosopher Ice Cube, "I gotta say that today was a good day."

Shirts-On and Shirts-Off Climbers

Alex Puccio crushing  it (via tumblr)

Ever gone to the gym to get a few laps in after a long day at school or work? You feel slightly lethargic, maybe a bit pudgy because you splurged for the $5 footlong instead of just getting the six-inch sub. Nevertheless, you're psyched to work on that 11d that worked you on your last visit only to find some shirtless, perfectly chiseled specimen with exquisite hair-to-body ratio effortlessly cruising up its microcrimps as if it were a 5.8 jug haul. Suddenly you're not so psyched to climb anymore.

Why does he have his shirt off anyway? It's a cool night outside. Air-conditioned inside. Massive utility fans blowing chalk in every direction. There are two types of climbers in this world: shirts-on climbers and shirts-off climbers.

"shirts off" climbers Anderson and Kyle spotting Jamie in Little River Canyon, AL.

Shirts-off climbers are those gym gods who crush 5.13; they've earned their stripes.Those stripes outline every trapezius and latissimus, every abdominal muscle bulging forth like a constant reminder that you ate Taco Bell yesterday. It's clear these climbers live at the gym, do juice cleanses regularly, and crush on the weekends. Horse Pens' sandbagged slopers? No problem. The Obed's horizontal roofs? They can do it and they do it sexier than you.

And this is the movement of modern climbing, right? Ondra, Woods, Puccio, et. al. Nobody's interested in Joe Climber running up West Ridge on Pigeon Spire. But the truth is shirts-off climbers don't always have their shirts off. And shirts-off climbers also include those who want to be shirtless. The gym bros who think they can crush 5.13 but then struggle on a 5.10. Or think that if they take their shirt off, they go from climbing 5.10 to climbing 5.13. 

Barrett and I on top Torreys Peak, CO; definitely "shirts-on" climbers

I'll be honest, I want to push myself to my climbing limits and look halfway decent with my shirt off too. But I also want to eat a pint of Ben and Jerry's ice cream. 

I know that I am just a lat guy living in an ab guy's world and I definitely don't have a perfect body hair ratio. Any given day at a southeastern crag, it is very likely that I'm the only dude with a shirt on. And that's as true in June as it is in December. In fact, it might even be my desire to keep my shirt on that pushes me towards the mountains where layering up is not only the norm but the necessity.

It's probable that the lure of mountains is more significant than that. But the point is, that's where you'll find shirts-on climbers. On an airy pitch in the high country, sweating it out on what would otherwise be a warmup route if it were closer to the ground. Don't get me wrong, I love a hard sport route just as much as the next guy; I just really love jackets and the places a jacket, a rope, and basic rock craft will take you.

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Wetterhorn? I Hardly Know Her Horn!

wet night cooking the kingdom

we drove some other climbers up the 4x4 road to the trailhead.
it got a little hairy back in the bed.

Unc at sunrise

Wetterhorn in the morning light

astonishing photo by Robin as heavy fog rolls in while I give it to Barrett. and by "give it" I mean route beta.

Bear Snack on the cat walk to the summit push.

Robin and I celebrate our fourth summit together. this is the hardest face she could give.

Vance, myself, Robin, and Barrett

we climbed Matterhorn (13,590) for good measure. last one up summited at 10:57.
rain and hail drove us down by 11:04. 

wiped.

Making Miseries

wet, tired, smelly, and spent in Lake City, Colorado

"We're epic-ing so hard right now," I gleefully yelled while crouched over a stove tucked under a truck's tailgate in a desperate attempt to cook in the midst of a massive freezing downpour at the base of Wetterhorn's long approach trail. At the same time, Robin and Logan were pitching a tent and Vance was taking a poop in the cold, late night, driving rain. All equally miserable. All equally stoked.

Epic-ing is a climberism for when everything that can go wrong, does go wrong. And without going into too much detail, it had. To "epic" is to suffer and endure and while we may not end up in Alpinist, we were definitely epic-ing for the everyman. Or, as Logan said while huddled under a boulder in the middle of another rain storm on another mountain, we were "making miseries."

Difficult moments shape us.

As a climber, I live for those moments. Snot in my mustache. Wind in my backpack straps. Kick stepping through snow patches. Scree sliding off exposed ridges. Running it out over your last piece of pro.

As guides, getting to tree line or rapping to flat ground when a storm is or is about to pummel your valley is a lot harder with twenty inexperienced people than it is with just your party.

We often ask clients after super hard days, "how do you find joy in pain?" Week after week, the most common response is in the people around us.

Shared experiences bring people together. Shared struggles bring people together forever in deep and meaningful ways.

Very few people can climb a mountain by themselves. And those people usually eventually die in the mountains. Similarly very few people can make it through life alone.

Real community exists in the journey.

What does it look like to have joy in pain? To be content in every situation? It's not a perfect analogy by any means but I think it looks a lot like an exposed final pitch and turning to your partner behind you and admitting, "man, this sucks."

Real community creates the space for lament.

And maybe you summit. Maybe you don't.

Real community turns lament into laughter.

Because when you get back to your car or to the bar or the local pizza joint, you laugh about the loose block that fell right past your face and embellish how miserable you felt on the descent and rejoice about how ungodly tired you still are.

It isn't the summit or the view from the anchors I talk about most when I get back down. It's the struggle and pain and the absolute joy of the journey that makes for great stories and laughs and memories.

Making miseries.

That day, after climbing three peaks on two mountains and hiking for hours back in the rain and the hail, I sat in a gravel parking lot in Lake City, Colorado, watching Barrett struggle to learn how to change his first tire, my shins aching, my eyes struggling to stay awake, and foul stenches erupting from every pore of my body and I thought, man, I'm having the time of my life. 

**addendum updated 8.18.13:
"the essence of the sport lies, not in ascending a peak, but in struggling with and overcoming difficulties. The happy climber, like the aged Ulysses, is one who has 'Drunk delight of battle with his peers,' and this delight is only attainable by assaulting cliffs which tax to their utmost limits the powers of the mountaineers engaged." -- Alfred Mummery, 1895 quoted in Pilgrims of the Vertical by Joseph E. Taylor III