Meeting up with Dave in Tonsai

So after a night of staying up way too late, I grabbed my stuff from my Bangkok hostel in a rush and headed to the airport to catch my flight to Krabi. The flight was short and more importantly it was cheap, only 2500 baht or $83 USD. I arranged for a taxi to take me to the beach in Ao Nang, and from there you buy a $3 longtail boat ride to Tonsai which is only accessible by boat. I was quite literally stunned at how amazing the Thai cliffs looked framed against the beautiful turquoise waters of the Andaman Sea.

Is this place even real?

I stepped off the boat and found myself in the little-known hippie / rasta beach village of Tonsai. Most tourists visit the more developed Railay Beach nearby, but Tonsai is where most climbers stay and you can get bungalows on the cheap. I knew Dave was staying at the Jungle Hut so I oriented myself to the layout of Tonsai and headed back there.

This is roughly how Tonsai is laid out.

Very shortly after I met up with Dave (or as I like to call him, Coyote Dave). Dave and I met over three years ago in Potrero Chico, Mexico, and as both of us were "long-term" climbers there, we quickly became good friends. Dave is a fellow nerd, formerly focusing on web development and now studying robotics at CU-Boulder. In fact, he developed this very awesome Potrero Chico website which I personally consider to be the best. But I'm biased. In any case, Dave had already been in Thailand for nearly six weeks and only had a few short days left in Tonsai, so he let me sleep in his hammock on the porch of his bungalow for the low low price of 100 baht per night, and then he let me take over his bungalow when he left for only 325 baht per night. Shya!

Jungle Hut bungalow! Climbers reuinte!

In the afternoon of my arrival, Dave and I headed out to the Fire Wall to do a quick easy 6b as my first Tonsai climb. The rock is yellow/orange limestone mostly, and is absolutely riddled with tufas and pockets, and although I'd like to say that I've climbed plenty of limestone in my life (thanks Mexico!) this limestone was really completely different from anything I'd ever climbed before. Footholds are often polished but the routes tend to be overhanging and have huge jugs for hands. The kind of place where your biceps get stronger than your fingers, and if you keep at it you get really strong.

After the 6b warmup, Dave wanted to try out a really classic route called Burnt Offerings, which goes at 7a+. For you Americans, that is roughly equivalent to a 5.12a sport route. It starts out in this pretty cool cave and you then find yourself traversing across the lip of the cave and then up and over the cruxy overhanging finish. Dave worked it pretty well, making it to the cruxy part, and then he convinced me to try. I wasn't particularly keen to try hard at the time, so I only climbed the first couple of moves and then I was good. I'd like to blame the fact that I was hot and dehydrated and not acclimated to the heat and humidity, which is true. That's one thing I didn't quite realize about climbing in southern Thailand: it's fucking hot. I was sweating like crazy before I even started climbing, and sweaty palms do not a good send make. So we bailed right after watching another party trying the route with much more success =)

A Korean girl absolutely rocking this route.

Anyway, we quit climbing for the day and he introduced me to some friends and we had dinner and I believe we went out for drinks at one of the village bars. The cool thing about the bars in Tonsai is that they are all outside in the open air, and instead of standing packed inside of a building you typically sit down on wooden decks and drink and relax. It's definitely a very laidback, jungle rasta vibe. Many of the bars put on fire shows, or slackline and fire shows, or sometimes there is a band playing, but ultimately it's a very friendly place, and the visitors are very international, so when you meet people (and it's easy to meet people), you never quite know which country they will be from. I should mention, nearly everyone in Thailand, including the Thais themselves, speaks English or at the very least enough broken English to get by, so if you're lucky enough to be from an English-speaking country you will be able to converse with nearly everyone you meet. However, there were enough French/Canadians/Germans around that I definitely wished that I was competent not only in Spanish but in French and German as well. Maybe next time.

My favorite bar in Tonsai, Small World Bar.

Dave and I unfortunately didn't quite manage to climb much together in the next couple of days; his next day was a rest day so I merely convinced him to belay me on Groove Tube, a fun/easy/classic 6a on the Fire Wall. It was pretty groovy. The next day Dave and I planned to go deep-water soloing together via BaseCamp Tonsai (on a paid/guided excursion), but I woke up super nauseous and decided to cancel; ended up throwing up three times that day, probably due to food poisoning of some sort. Dave ended up partying long into the night with his Tonsai friends for his last night while I slept most of the evening and night in the hammock, so we couldn't get on the same schedule to climb on his last day either. I did end up climbing with two of his friends from Sweden though, Simon and Seven, the first of whom I *probably* met in Mexico three years ago as well. We tried a couple of 6b+ routes at the Tyrolean Wall and a 6a at Dum's Kitchen, all of which were fun, but by midday it was too hot to climb and I wanted to say goodbye to Dave.

Tonsai Roof Wall, near Dum's Kitchen.

Later that night I ended hanging out with some of Dave's friends, and got invited to a house party, and ended up using my glowing juggling balls to entertain quite a few people. They weren't completely sober, if you know what I mean, so the juggling light show was quite a hit so despite my new "alone in Thailand" status I made some friendships of my own. Success!

Glowing juggling balls for the win.

A Day in Bangkok

So my flight from Seattle to Bangkok arrived at 1am Thai time, which is sort of inconvenient, but I had a reservation at the Lub D hostel in Siam and I knew they had 24-hour checkin, so after grabbing my checked bag I took a taxi straight there. Found my mixed dorm and tried to quietly arrange myself for bed without disturbing the others and mostly succeeded.

Hostel lobby

I woke up the next day with only one main mission in mind, to book a flight to Krabi the next day. I probably could have done this online in advance but I'd heard that this was unnecessary and no cheaper so I didn't. I hailed a tuk-tuk for a travel agency and booked a flight for the next day. Success.

After that I decided to check out Chinatown, so I rode the tuk-tuk there and started walking around. I've been to a few other Chinatowns in the world, and this one wasn't much different, except I stumbled upon a Buddhist temple named Wat Mangkon Kamalawat. Lots of people were buying flowers and papers and incense, apparently to offer as gifts, but I didn't really understand it. So instead I walked around and took pictures and tried not to offend anyone.

Wat Mangkon Kamalawat

After wandering around Chinatown for a while, I realized I was hungry so I took a ride back to Siam Square and started hunting for Thai food. I actually had little success until I went into the Siam mall and ordered some curry in the food court. Really good and remarkably cheap.

I then wandered around the mall and found a wax museum which I thought might be fun. It was, and I convinced some strangers to help take some photos for me.

Bend It

Wolf It

Next I headed back to the hostel, which is really nice by the way, and saw a flyer for a nearby massage place, with a price of only 360 baht ($12) for an hour-long oil massage. Sold! It was really good and professional and well worth the $12.

After the massage, I took a nap and got my phone charged so I could go out a bit later. I wasn't sure where to go, but I eventually decided to go to the Hard Rock for dinner and a beer and then go to Club Insanity. I ended up meeting some people at the Hard Rock from Maldives / Russia / Ukraine and somehow convinced them to come as well so we did. The club was pretty wild with electronic dance music and plenty to drink, so I found it pretty amusing and stayed there pretty late until it was time to take a taxi back to the hostel. After all, I had a flight to Krabi to catch.

Club Insanity

Tilting at Windmills

So after a painfully long week in Potrero full of more rain than I can ever remember seeing in Mexico (especially in the dry season), punctuated by only a day and a half of dry weather, the end of the year was nigh. Spirits were probably not quite as festive as they would have been after better climbing weather, but still, the climbers of Potrero gathered for a night of celebration by drinking and dancing around a bonfire while Edgardo spun beats. My recollection of the night is a bit hazy but you can be sure that fun was had by all.

The next day my friends and I awoke, eventually, and gathered up. We headed for the Spires and I led the first pitch of Aguja Celo Rey (5.10a) in order to get to the saddle while the other half of our friends climbed up the west side of the spires. I then belayed Eric to the top of the second pitch and bailed because I had to take a friend to the airport, but I had played my part. We had previously purchased several Santa hats and sent them to the top of the larger (downhill) spire and made the party of Bostonians who were there join us in wearing them for a festive Christmas photo. The results speak for themselves.

Merry Xmas Potrero Style!

After that day of fun shenanigans, it came to pass that it was my last day in Mexico, and I still had one piece of unfinished business. There's this climb in the Virgin Canyon which I first attempted on toprope three years previously, and eventually managed to climb (once) without falling, on toprope. This was quite the achievement for me as the climb is a very difficult, pumpy, technical dihedral called Don Quixote, and it's rated 5.11d. Definitely the first, and perhaps still so far only, climb of that grade that I've climbed clean on toprope, and I had battle plans with it.

Toproping the Don over three years ago

A few weeks previously I'd managed to climb it again on toprope, possibly for the 4th or 5th time, and even though I hadn't climbed it since last year I actually climbed it clean. Which unfortunately meant that I was out of excuses for avoiding the scary task of leading it. So on my last day in Potrero, my friends and I set out for the Virgin Canyon so I could try to redpoint my project.

Unfortunately, when we got there, we realized that the rock was still a little wet from the rains that had come before. Shoot. But we looked at the route and it seemed like the wet spots might not actually affect the difficulty of the climb that much. So I led Mugre Mugre (5.10d) as a warmup and it felt pretty good and not too difficult while Felipe led another 5.10d. A little while later, I convinced Felipe to lead Don Quixote for me both to hang the draws and to test how wet the route was. He sent the route and placed some much-needed draws for me, and assured me that the route wasn't really that wet.

Warming up in the Virgin

I was pretty stoked, but pretty nervous, when it was time to climb. I tried to calm my nerves by singing a few notes from The Final Countdown, and it seemed to lighten my mood a bit, but I was still really nervous. I made the first couple of clips without a problem, going slow and remembering to breathe, but soon after the third clip or so, right before it starts getting hard, my left foot popped off of the corner and I found myself falling before I realized what was happening and fell about 15 feet. Super clean except for a slight hit on my right thumb which made it feel slightly numb. Despite the fall, I was actually pretty stoked and felt pretty good and pretty psyched that I'd had the nerve to try the lead in the first place. And somehow the fall made me less nervous as I got some fear out of the way.

Devon decided he wanted to try a few moves on it, so he did, but he wasn't feeling too stoked so he stopped before it starts getting serious, and this gave me some time to regroup and shake out and get ready for my second go.

Making some moves

Now it was go time, again. I made the first few clips, no problem. I made it past the point where my foot had slipped before, and suddenly it was business time. The cruxy part of the route is tricky because all of the bomber holds are on the left face, and it's overhanging, and you have to stem and smear the right foot on essentially a blank face. So your feet feel insecure and your left arm is pumping out, but what's worse is that the bomber jugs kind of disappear and you find yourself sketchily moving your feet up with not very much for hands. I made some sketchy moves and stemmed hard and was convinced my feet were going to pop, especially when I lunged for a key hold on the right face, but somehow everything held and I stayed on. Then the only thing left is to stand up awkwardly and grab the money jug above the roof, which I managed to do to my surprise. Todo bien. From the jug it was a relatively easy clip to guard against the fall, and I knew the hard part was over. Or so I thought.

I was tired and out of breath and although I had a money jug for my hands, I didn't want to stall too long. I knew the next clipping stance would be balancy and awkward, but I moved up anyway thinking I could handle it. But the pump was overwhelming, and I couldn't figure out how to move my feet into a secure spot, and before I knew it I was trying to clip the next bolt but lost my ability to hang on. I fell... and when I did so, my left foot got caught on the rope between my harness and the last draw I'd clipped, and before I knew it I had flipped upside down!

Right before getting flipped

Fortunately, somehow, the fall was super clean, even cleaner than before, and even with my back to the wall I hadn't hit a single thing on the way down. My friends were silent for a moment, trying to assess the damage, but when I screamed "Holy shit!" they knew I was basically alright. Unfortunately I knew that I was out of time and I had to leave the crag in order to pack up my tent and fly back to Seattle, but my friends convinced me to finish the route so I did after a short rest. Then I bid my awesome Potrero crew adieu =)

Love these guys!

In the end, I didn't send my project this day, but I was super proud of myself for having the cajones to finally try the route on lead, and I even managed to pull the crux without falling. And I even took a couple of really good (and safe) whippers in the process. I am confident that next time, Don Quixote, you are mine.