Sonnie Trotter

MAYBE!   As I sit here at my desk, drinking coffee, looking at flight prices to Phoenix, Arizona.  I get an e-mail from my mother who asks me to reconsider my trip to Mexico.  For good reason.  What are mothers for?   I love her dearly.  She then tells me to read the latest news blast from the Yahoo home page about the recent shootings from the drug wars.   I am supposed to leave on March 23rd, meeting up with Andrew Burr and Alex Honnold, then we drive south to Hermosillo and then east bound into the mountains of Copper Canyon, then upwards on Logical Progression.  What do you think?  Should we go regardless?  Is it worth it?  What would you do?

If you’re bored today like most people, and you’re dreaming about when you can finally move to Squamish and live the life you were meant to live, then here’s a few superbly cheesy, and highly commercial (yet granted well executed) videos to keep the dream alive. The music gets quite annoying after you’ve watched about 2 of them, but there’s no denying that they behold beautiful cinematography and a great marketing campaign.

I was asked to participate in these commercials last summer. I said NO because I felt like a complete tool saying the words, “I am the spirit of Squamish”.  I hope that doesn’t offend anyone.  I just could not sit in front of a camera and crew and say that line with a straight face.  Impossible.  I think the mountains are the spirit, but not me. I’m a nobody fool, just here for a short time trying to enjoy it as much as I can.  I think the tag line should have been “THIS is the spirit of Squamish” not “I”.  I, is lame. Just my opinion. But I’m glad these were made, I think, they do an excellent job at showcasing our outdoor activities, friends, and peaceful lifestyles here.

But these youtube files have a down side, they will probably draw more crowds here, and more population which cuts into what makes the Sea to Sky so amazing and wild.   Understandably, this pisses a lot of people off.  But please don’t forget, at some point or another we are all “imports” to this area.  Immigrants if you will.  Aliens.  What really makes you a local I wonder?  I first came here in the year 2000, roughly 10 years ago, some of our friends came about 30 years ago and we met one family who arrived 50 years ago, and so on. We are all coming from somewhere and we should try to embrace that other people will want to come here and live here as well.  Why wouldn’t you?

Last month Lydia and I took a vacation to see the Islands of Hawaii and surf the waters.  It came across to us at least that the (typically white) American citizens who lived there felt (for some strange reason) that they were special people.  That they were better than you and me because we were just a tourist and they were “temporary residents”.   Basically, many of the surfing worlds working class caucasian locals were (for lack of a better word), grumpy assholes.  Which would never deter me from going back and enjoying the beauty of the area and meeting non asshole like people – BUT STILL – it’s as if they act like that just to fit in, so that outsiders won’t feel too comfortable and try to move there.  Even if they could afford it.  I watched them on many occasions going out of their way to be dicks to tourists, it’s like it’s part of the white man from the main land’s social responsibility. Each annoying roll of the eyes from some blond douche with a tan serving coffee at Starbucks said in bold type “I can fly over here from New York City during the winter months and live the beach bum life, but screw you if you try and do it too, I’m significant damnit“. What a crock of shit. That mentality really got to me bones.   It’s weak and narrow minded and so very self important.  When we got back to Squamish, it reminded me how calm and genuine it is here.  I hope it can stay like this during the next 10 years, 50 years, 100 years.  But who can say?  I’ll do my personal best to remember what’s it’s like to be a tourist here, and I’ll try to be as friendly as I can, if I’m not, I’m sorry, it’s because I fell off my project earlier that day, or I recognized you from Haleiwa.

On to the videos and the editors note at the bottom…enjoy…

MOUNTAIN BIKING

ROCK CLIMBING

HIKING

KITE BOARDING

FAMILY

PLEASE NOTE:   Not everyone in Hawaii were assholes.  In fact, with all honesty, some of the coolest most laid back down to earth folk I had ever met were on that trip, BUT it only takes a few rotten apples to spoil it for everyone else.  Please show respect and kindness and appreciation for the life you and we lead.  It’s a wonderful world.

The 23 year old from North Vancouver is back at it again, this time with a slide show in Bellingham, WA.  Perhaps the coolest place South of Squamish and North of Portland.  Will is one of my many hero’s, he’s a natural entertainer, humble, real and with a passion for climbing that exceeds most.  It’s his passion that allows him to achieve so much in the vertical world.  When most climbers cough up excuses, will coughs up a can of Kokanee, then sends his project.  In this photo below Will (green t-shirt) and Jason Kruk play safe at the Five Ten booth in Salt Lake City.  Check out his blog for details, but more importantly, go to the show, I believe it’s free. (CLICK ON THE IMAGE)

…hold on just a cotton pickin minute.  Not that Smith Rock or Australia don’t sound incredible, although I’ve been to both of them before….

Sonnie may have found a partner for his dream trip to Mexico.

Sonnie is getting very stoked again to climb some limestone.

Sonnie will share more soon, when, where and with who.

Thanks for your patience, keep up the pulling down.

Namaste!

P.S.  Here’s a tip when doing pull-ups.  Instead of pulling your body UP, try to think of pulling your elbows DOWN, it’s weird, but it will feel easier.

So my climbing partner for Mexico, Tim Emmett, broke his ankle last week (no not base jumping, cat skiing).  We were supposed to leave on March 13th, but his cast won’t be removed for 3-4 weeks.  So, it looks like the El Gigante trip will have to be postponed.  Shit.   In the meantime, I need to find somewhere to go and climb, the weather here has been SICKy beautiful, but I need more consistency, and vitamin D.  Hmmm, maybe back down south, Nevada? Cali? Arizona?  Maybe Smith? We’ll see, where my heart and available partners and cheap plane tickets take me.  We’ll see…I got some deep thinking to do.  Very deep.

In the meantime, here’s a cool little clip of Tim for his lecture tour last year, he’s incredibly animated and makes for a perfect public speaker, not to mention climbing partner, and there’s something about that goddamn British accent, it doesn’t matter what they say, it always sounds sort of interesting, those bastards got it all lined up, even when they’re drunk (which is much of the time) they still sound engaging, even more so perhaps.  That’s probably the reason more North American athletes aren’t proper television stars, they sound like idiots when they get drunk where as the Brits, sound they’re even smarter than sober.

Tim Emmett 09 lecture tour from Speakers from the Edge on Vimeo.

ROI -  Many a Western man and woman will live and die by this one agonizing question,

What Is the return on my Investment?

If it’s high, move forward, if it’s just medium, then perhaps sit and chill for a while, and if it’s low, you’ll probably want to pull out, sometimes literally.  This can be applied to many things in our often shallow society, work, training, relationships, finances, diet, whatever you can think of.  Nearly everything has an ROI, with the exception of spirituality perhaps, which (physically speaking) there is very little “return” (except for the one you give to yourself).  It seems to me at least, spirituality means having faith, ROI means having facts.

So with that being said, here’s a training video that my new friend Bailey Manson sent me regarding a new-ish grip strength routine. Or at least it’s new to me, I’m sure the Chinese have been doing this for thousands of years already.  Anyway, check it out, and please give us some feedback, we’d like to hear if anyone out there has any thoughts on this or are doing this already.   If nothing else, it looks like a great way to get the blood pumping, but then again, what’s the ROI?…

Here’s my Two Cents.

1. That dude with the bleached blond hair is sort of intense.   2.  You could probably do this with whey protein cookie dough as well, and when you’re done, just pop that shit in the oven and presto, you got yourself a tasty energy bar at the end of it all:) ha ha.

But seriously, I think it’s a super interesting idea, and I may even give it a shot one day, just to see what it feels like.  I think stronger muscles almost always create better climbers, (i.e. Nels Rossasen) and this seems to me as though it will definitely get you stronger, pump more lactic acid through the veins and get you to recover quicker too.  Also, it will help strengthen rotation, mobility and the smaller more stabilizing tissues.  I like it.  But, how well it translates to REAL climbing?  I don’t know.   From what I’ve learned, hard rock is generally about how much force you can put on your finger tips, and then maintain core strength and wrist control throughout body movement without letting that force slip.  I still think hangboarding and fingerboarding workouts would deliver better direct results.  Basically, I think rice buckets will help with overall grip strength, like for ice climbing and mixed climbing, and probably pitching and hitting baseballs, but slightly less for face climbing and crack climbing purposes, (unless you’re on big roof holds and tufa’s) but small edge crimping probably not as drastically.  But still, it’s kinda cool and worth a try I suppose!

The last thing I want is for this page to seem like some bland running commentary like tweeter -  Not that tweets don’t have their purpose, I believe they do, ’specially for legitimate companies who promote cool events or special offers, but it’s just not for me on a personal level,  there’s already too much useless crap “so peep this yo, I just bought a sick pair of sweat pants at Target and now I’m going to eat a banana in the park”  sort of ‘who gives’ bullsheet.  Not exactly my style.  But, I do want to keep certain people updated on some stuff once in a while and here’s my report for Wed Feb 25th.

After a long day of travel on Tues, I’m back home in Squamish,  It’s beautiful (as always) but it is raining.  I didn’t send Stingray over the weekend.  Monday was my last chance to do anything at all and it was soooooo f’n coooooold out there, I went to the park with a climber from Riverside named Alan Moore, a motivated individual and strong as nails, but our efforts were so pathetic t’was hilarious.  The wind caught the rope at nearly 200 miles an hour and nearly pulled us off the wall every three seconds.   It was my third attempt on the route and I was hoping for a clean Top Rope.  No bueno.  The 50 degrees, combined with patagonia like gusts was too much to handle…

Total breakdown…

3 hours driving.  Big Bummer

1 hour of hiking with down jackets.  Kinda cool, but not really.

11 minutes of suffering on 5.11a climbing.  ha ha,  Not so cool, but not too shabby either, I’m glad we tried.

I hope to return, maybe this spring who knows, the climb is certainly worth the effort.  It’s unique, historical, beautiful and painful enough to be intriguing.  We’ll see, I still have nightmares about the numbness we experienced, but on the other hand, I do have a soft spot for ‘In and Out Burger’, AND I did experience my first Earth Quake, dope.  Hope everyone is doing amazing,  thanks for your support as always and wishing you a wonderful weekend wherever you is.

Sonnie.  P.S.  Peep these few pics of my man Kevin topropping like a champ on Stingray on Sat, you can see how beautiful it is, but it’s J-Tree so expect lots of choss and expect that you’re going to break shit (as we did) and things will keep getting harder and harder and harder.  I don’t even know why this climb was nailed in the first place to be honest, maybe so it could be freed but it’s so bomber, it’s like CLEAN ZERo.

The 5.6 approach slab pitch.

Five Ten’s own Kevin Newell after the initial 5.11 moves, but just before the steep crux.  Which you’ll never appreciate unless you get on it.

Pulling on pinky finger locks on the crux moves, NO FEET.

A better understanding of it’s position, but this was shot from far away with a 70-200 mm lens.  A 16-35 would demonstrate its surrounding beauty.

PIMP star Kev, showing us what it might look like to drive this  abandoned Gold Rush car down Santa Monica Boulevard.  Sweet rims brah.

The stingrays are a family of rays, cartilaginous fishes that are related to sharks.   They are named after the barbed stinger (actually a modified dermal denticle) on their tail, which is used exclusively in self-defense. The stinger may reach a length of approximately 35 cm, and its underside has two grooves with venom glands.  The stinger is covered with a thin layer of skin, the integumentary sheath, in which the venom is concentrated.

Yep, that sounds about right.

So I wanted to thank everyone for their comments below, especially you Ethan (if you read this), I hear your shoulder is feeling better and you’ll be raising standards again for the rest of us?  I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t looking forward to it, I’d like to see you finish off the Dreamcatcher and Jumbo Love.  You’re a smart lad, and you got the skillz mate, but don’t rush it, you’re still young, enjoy the recovery phase.  That’s my advice, for whatever it’s worth.

In regards to what I’m doing here in California, it’s been three days since our adventure in the Joshua hills (read post below) and we got good news and bad news.  The good news is that the climb (Stingray) is brilliant.  About 4.2 stars I reckon (my personal opinion).  Not 5 because it’s been nailed with pins at some point, which is the only thing that makes it possible and another reason it isn’t 5 is because it’s still in pretty rough shape.  On my first attempt, I broke THREE major footholds.

SUCH A BUMMER.

To elaborate on that, on Friday, I basically flashed each series of moves on the cruxy lower half.  Doing one or two moves at a time on TR and they felt really good, hard and painful, but good.  When I tried to repeat the crux down low I broke the only foothold that was left on the wall and could not repeat the move at all.  In fact, none of us have done it yet.  It requires a metric tonne of more lock off strength and a shit pile of pain tolerance, because there are literally no footholds left to use and because the crack leans to the right so much, it’s not like Cobra at all, your feet are effectively USELESS.

It’s only getting harder.

We went back yesterday, and we all tried it for a second time (one burn per day, it hurts toooo much -ha ha -which makes it hard to send in a weekend) and we still didn’t stick the crux.   We all got pretty close and I could visualize doing it for sure, but I wasn’t in the mood, not enough BURL and I wasn’t ready to tear my skin open just yet, seems like tape makes it worse.  But on the bright side, I managed to link the upper half of the route in prettt secure style.  So I feel pretty secure that if I stick the crux, I’ll go all the way.  But I leave at 6am on Tues, so I only have tomorrow left.  We shall see.  The bad news is that Weather Underground is calling for RAIN.

Ahhhhhhhhhh!   Pain and Rain.  Bring it on.  No matter what,  always sending!

P.S.  We heard Suzuki sent it in 1988,  WHOA!  22 years ago.  What a MAD MAN.  This is a picture of our friend who’s apparently also training for this climb.  Our hero Wolfgang Gullich once said, (and this is by far my favorite Wogu-isms, and sticks with me always) “MAKE YOUR GRIP A VICE, OR FORGET IT”.

I think our friend here is lost in translation?  he he.

Raise your hand if you know where Redlands is?  Keep it up if you’ve ever been here?  And keep it up again, if you’ve ever stopped by the Five Ten store here for some hot ticket items?  This is the unofficial beginning of free climbing as we know it today.  Think about it…Sticky rubber.  Joshua Tree.  Charles Cole.  Boo-ya.

I’m here for one week on a work/play trip.  The work part involves meeting with some of Five Ten’s sales reps, shoe designers, web designers, and marketing guru’s.  It’s a rad place to be right now.  Hot and sunny, blue skies and green pastures, girls in bikini’s, dude’s in convertibles, it’s Cali with a capital C.  In regards to play, I’m trying to climb as much as possible up at Joshua Tree and I even have my eye on a line called Stingray, with a suggested rating of 5.13d.

Yesterday my friends Dave and Kevin hiked out and around looking for it.  We heard rumors that it was an epic one hour hike, somewhere in the Wonderland area.   So, we brought just enough for a SCOPING mission.  After more than two hours of canyoneering and boulder hoping we reaching the very end of the domes (which looked more like the end of the world) and we saw some pretty excellent rock formations, but not the line we were looking for.  Not even close.  Tail jammed between legs, disappointed, out of water, sun burnt, hungry and scratched all to shit by the thorn bushes, not to mention my little run in with a fresh batch of quick sand,  we decided to retreat.   The only problem was that we didn’t know which way the car was.

On our way back we stayed high, (no not like that) we often rounded the summit of high features to look for anything familiar off in the distance.  We scratched our heads more than a few times.  Until after about 40 minutes, Kevin stumbled upon a thin crack that he recognized from a photograph.  How, I don’t know, but he did.  We scrambled up to it and it was the legendary ladder crack, or something like that.  5.11b A0 if you use the metal later, 5.15b if you don’t, (F/A John Bachar I believe), perhaps the worlds first?

From there, we were able to get our barrings, and we explored the area some more, until we literally stumbled upon Stingray.  The funny thing is, it’s no more than a 30 minute flat walk from the car.  Like EEEEZY PEEEEZY walking.  You’re grandmother could make it, no troublems.  We laughed so hard at our epic mission, only to realize we over shot it by about an hour and a half.  Here’s what it looks like and if anyone is pumped up to come try it, I’ll be going back this weekend to throw a rope on it.  As the story goes, Hidetaka Suzuki made the first free ascent of this vicious looking fissure in the late 80’s or early 90’s.  At some point, it was on the cover of Climbing Magazine (I’m pretty sure) and then it soon drifted off into the far off unfashionable land of obscurity.  Or so that’s what I’m assuming.  I don’t know anyone who has any beta on the climb, or even how to get there.

But we found it.  And now we’re going back to get crushed by it.    I want to bleed.  I want to bruise.  I want to try so hard I might even lose a doigt.  It’s such mysterious climb and done my such a mysterious climber.  It may be easier than expected, but most likely, given the nature of the era and the area, it’s going to be sandbagged (meaning it’s going to be WICKED ASS hard)  it certainly looks harder than 5.13d.  Suzuki is a tiny and talented climber originally from Japan.  Rumor has it he’s got digits that make Beth Rodden’s look like bbq’d German sausages.  All we could see was 00 C3’s.  We may be in over our heads.  There is probably a reason why this slender splitter has never had a second ascent.  Eh?

I just threw this together on the weekend to show my mom what I did in Scotland way back when.  Otherwise I don’t think this footage would ever see the light of day.

DIREQIUEM 5.14 R from Sonnie Trotter on Vimeo.

This is a clip of a climb I did in Scotland called Direquiem. May of 2008. This was shot during a warm, sunny spell that lasted the better part of our month long visit. It’s pretty funny to me, because I did this on (what I thought was) my last day at Dumbarton Rock, only because it was too hot to climb Rhapsody 5.14b/c.

This was a ‘one take’ shot, of the first free ascent, and although in my opinion it’s the finest bit of climbing on the headwall, it goes pretty much un-noticed due to it’s big brother to the left.

Direquiem was a stepping stone for me, and Cory and I extended our tickets for another week so I could finish what I started – the second free ascent of Rhapsody, and the first to place all gear on lead.

I’ll never forget the level of DRUNK we got while cruising the stone streets of Edinburgh after the redpoint. I have to thank Dave Brown and Paul Diffley for helping me achieve my dream climbs. Without their dedication, friendship and selflessness, we’d have nothing to show for our efforts. So thanks for everything, and thanks for the use of this footage. And thanks to Cory Richards for flying over to Scotland with me and sticking it out climbing some fun rocks, and thanks for the belay by my hero Steve McClure, he’s the ultimate climber, funny, relaxed, non competitive and stronger than wrought iron.

The highlight of this video (besides the music by the Recontours) and (the mullet hair cut) is the police sirens in the background while I’m cursing my way through the crux. ha. Dumbarton Police are hard working folk, never a dull moment to be had. Classic. Hope you enjoy it.