Music

Its been said that music can move mountains, you want to know who said that? I just did, that right, I mean I don’t actually know if anyone’s said that, but it sounded good. But I don’t need to move mountains , I just want to climb them. Honestly music is amazing, it can be so motivating, and in a sport that can be so discouraging, music is just the thing you need. When I listen to music I listen to all parts of it, the melody and the lyrics. I really enjoy listing to the lyrics of a song, because most songs tell a story. Now I will clarify I generally listen to country music, and pop music. I also listen to other various kinds to like alternative and rock. Each genera of music has its ups and downs, some of it is really hard core, and some of it is mellow. One of the groups I would climb with would listen to piano music before a climb. I personally didn’t enjoy it, but it was calming and kind of got you in the zone. On the other hand there’s the kind of music that gets you pumped up for a climb. This would be the pop/ rock kind of music. With a fast beat and lyrics that get you to work hard. It’s the equivalent to what go workout music would be. A fast beat and melody that is upbeat and makes you feel good. I mean you don’t want to listen to depressing music before a climb, be you will be all down and won’t be motivated. I preferred a mix of country music and pop music. The country music has a very calming tone, plus most of the songs have a story. Every time you listen to it sounds familiar and is almost like a memory. Its hard to explain since I grew up listing to country, that is just what I love. From the old country to the new country, which brings me to another aspect, which is rock country. The most up beat, feel good kind of country there is.  I would never recommend climbing and listening to music, especially not with headphone in. It is critical to communicate with all of your team members and be able to hear them, in case of danger. So like I said I would only recommend music as a pre climb activity. Just to get you pumped up for climbing.

Exploring the UP

For anyone who isn’t from Michigan when you look at the title “Exploring the UP” you are probably wondering to yourself what does that mean? Isn’t up a direction? Yes in fact it is a direction, but to Michiganders it is more than a direction, it’s a place. A place also known as the Upper Peninsula, “yooper land”, or “The 906” (which is the area code for the whole up). People who live in the up are called “yoopers”, where as people from the lower peninsula are “trolls”, this is because they live below the bridge.  From lower Michigan, the gateway to this beautiful place is known as the Mackinac bridge, or “Big Mack” for short. From there another 5 hours of driving northwest will bring you to the Keweenaw. Which is the small peninsula on the top of the Upper Peninsula. This is the beautiful place where my friends and I do all of our climbing.

Climbers are an interesting breed, they like to boast about their experience and climbing story’s, but when asked where these story’s take place, they will try to dodge the question. They will tell you all about the well-known spots, and how you should check them out. However since everyone knows about those spots, they are frequently visited, and you will run into other climbers. However our solution was to this problem, was to consult topographical maps. We looked for ridges, and places on the map where the lines where extremely close, normally denoting a steep cliff or hill. Then we would go to these places, and explore. We looked for rock quality, and took a great deal of time studying the rock to determine if it was safe to climb. The major problem we would run into, were loose rocks and or crumbly rocks. This is very unsafe, and doesn’t allow you to get good anchor points or handholds when climbing. After we determined if the rock face was climbable, we would mark it on our map in green for good or red to denote that this face was a no go.

We also spent a good amount of time searching for good Ice climbing. We also looked at maps, but this time we would look for rivers, and google earth to find water falls. Then like before we would explore these places in person. Sometimes we found that these places we two small or not worth climbing, however sometimes we found gold. Our favorite spot happened to be a small waterfall that came out underneath a snowmobile bridge. As far as we know this is not a spot that anyone else knows about, and we visited this spot many times. Never did we run into any other climbers, and that made that spot perfect. Since we were under a snow mobile bridge we could anchor directly to the bridge, which is called top roping. Giving us maximum safety, if for some reason the wall were to break then we would still be hanging from the bridge. This spot is just a great example of what you can come across when you are exploring the Upper Peninsula.