Beta MAX #1 Alpine Sport Starts: Avoiding Common Mistakes Text: Chad Harnish		Previous Article Next Article
"And they will taunt you. With French accents."          You know the situation. It's dawn. You are stuffed into the back of your friend's camper/bivy sack/pickup bed. The sun has not yet invaded the canyon, but your spider sense is tingling, and you know it is TIME.           Actually it isn't your spider sense; it is your partners watch alarm, swaddled in a sock to keep the noise down. You see, it has been muffled to keep anyone else in the crowded parking lot from getting up and beating you to the trail. You are in competition. You want to climb a "CAME-UP" climb, a "Classic Accessible Moderate that is Ultra Popular". And you want to do it on a weekend. And so does everyone else. You look over at your partner, and you see a nod, almost imperceptible from beneath the hat and mummy sack hood. It is time to get up and brave the 40 degree dawn.           No coffee for you, that luxury is for pad people and sport climbers. Some sanka stuffed between the lip and gum and some cold, TMJ inducing clif bars will have to suffice. Carefully you tiptoe into your boots and across the gravel, making barely a crunch. As you leave the lot, you turn and see a couple of heads poking up, horror boiling through the sleep-encrusted eyes. Ha! Too late, suckers. Victory is yours! Or so it seems.           But here is where things can go wrong, terribly wrong. Here are some approaches to keep you from being benighted and annoyed. Approach #1 - Charging Blindly Ahead.           The instinct of the early bird is to run to the base of the climb and get started. This is a bad instinct. Ignore it. Maps just don’t make sense at 7 in the morning, even to someone that has been on the route before. It is amazing, the power of the wrong line to morph into some semblance of the topographic map and description, "Uh, it's KIND of an arête, and that MIGHT be a placement, up about 40 feet..." Nine times out of ten, you will be two pitches up the WRONG dirt-encrusted gully when the later risers get to the base of the RIGHT climb. You see, they slept a little longer, and allowed their brains time to grasp the nuance of phrases such as 'well-marked' or 'easy fourth class'. And they will taunt you. With French accents. Approach #2 - Wait and ask someone for Beta.           This is also a bad idea, but it CAN be successful. If you stop in the trail where you are doubtful of a turn, you risk the 'flanking maneuver' where parties not in the 'pole position' will sneak around you to get ahead. If you are going to ask for beta, be sneaky. Do not do it explicitly. Phrase your statement like this: "Hmmm...This (insert name of climb) route looks WAY cleaner than when I soloed it in '92" and watch their reaction.           Another, better approach is to sit at the bottom of what you THINK is the right line, and SLOWLY rack your gear. This way, you can get one, and maybe TWO parties waiting behind you to affirm your choice. Your patience will be rewarded. Ignore their pitiful requests to pass you. They are just jealous. Approach #3 - Hide in the Bushes.           This approach depends on the fallibility of the human guidance system in the morning (see approach #1). Get up early and hike to where you get ALMOST lost (this is key), and hide in the bushes until the next party comes along. Then stealthily hike behind them and wait for them to go up the wrong route. Then, by process of elimination, find the RIGHT route! Note: if you are detected on the trail - try to look skyward and whistle. This looks completely innocent. They will assume you are bird watchers or hikers. If this fails, put on your helmet. They will assume you are mountaineers, somehow separated from your flock, and therefore are no threat.           Remember, the early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese! Approach #4 - Sleep In.           If you can convince yourself to wait past your alarm, and then past the torrent of people flooding out of the lot, you can play it one of two ways. One is to blithely assume that no one was actually headed toward 'your' route, and try and approach anyway. This is just dumb. The other approach is to go to town and have a great big breakfast, and agree on the lies you are going to tell about the climb. Make sure your account at least somewhat matches the topo. For after all, History is just lies agreed upon!
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