Climbing with Shaun and Marissa

I guess it's about time I start writing something. I've been in Korea for a month and a half at this point, and I have been a combination of busy and lazy as far as writing a blog is concerned. It's a Sunday night and I've already cooked dinner and cleaned the dishes, bought some food for the week, showered, watched a movie, surfed the Internet for awhile, and put my laundry away, so I guess I don't have many other distractions. Today and yesterday I spent climbing at crag called Yeongyeong, somewhere shortly north of Daegu. Both today and yesterday I met Shaun and Marissa at the rock, and both today and yesterday I made a mess of getting there via public transportation. Today wasn't as bad of course, since I had about three hours practice of fucking up yesterday. After I got out of my language class yesterday at one, I had lunch and wandered aimlessly around downtown looking for a bus up to Palgongsan, thinking it would be easy to spot one since Palgonsan is supposed to be such a popular park for hiking and checking out Buddha statues and temples and so on. I didn't have to wander around too long before I realized it would be futile. I asked a woman at the YMCA where I take my courses if she could help me, and she looked up a bunch of info but couldn't find the stop Marissa told me to get off at. Turns out Marissa was telling me the bus number, not the stop, and that was my first mistake. After walking to the bus stop, and waiting ten minutes for what would eventually turn out to be the wrong bus, I started to get on only to ask if it was going the right way and be told that no, I had to go to the other side of the road, which is where I waited fifteen minutes for one going the correct direction. As I got toward the end of the line, in Palgonsan Natural Park, my suspicion of being very much in the wrong place grew stronger and stronger. I finally asked the bus driver, which I should have done in the first place, and he spit out a bunch of Korean at me which I understood none of, save the fact that the general idea was that I was in fact way off. He put me on another bus and explained what this retarded foreigner was looking for. I went back down the mountain and was dropped off at a small stop with the vague hint I was supposed to change buses here. I didn't get which way I was supposed to be going, or which of the four buses that stopped here I was supposed to be on, so after asking the drivers of the first three routes that came by, and crossing and recrossing the road at least three times, I finally got, by process of elimination, correctly on the fourth bus that came, which I was on about ten minutes before I had to get off and wait for another bus, which finally brought me to the crag, visible from the road, nearly three hours after I had set off.
Marissa and Shaun had already been climbing since about 11 and it was about 430. I met them both about two weeks ago in Busan at the Tre-X games. We were all competitors in the sport climbing category, mainly as token foreigners in this international sports competition since we all did quite miserable in the competition itself - but everyone got a free weekend out of it, and officially became international extreme athletes, so we were winners in our own way. Shaun is tall lanky Australian with persistent dark stubble to match his shaved head, and is quite humorously vulgar. Marissa is a North American - Canadian, American? I don't remember, like there is even a difference, sorry to offend any Canadians - and has lived in a tent in Alaska, a shack in Washington, east Africa, and has been in Korea now for a few years. The Tre-X games was a great opportunity to meet a bunch of other English-speaking climbers, some of whom I already knew, some I did not, like Marissa and Shaun. There is a great website called koreaontherocks.com that is a pretty extensive English language resource for climbing in Korea, and it's forums and message boards provide plenty of opportunities to meet other climbers.
I only got a few climbs in each day since I got there later than them both days, thanks to my reliance on public transportation. Which is fine, since I most of my climbing experience is in bouldering, and although its starting to change now that I am sport climbing more, my strength and endurance are pretty low for long routes. Saturday I made a bee line for the top of a 5.10c for my first climb, unleashing a nest of centipedes on the way up as I grabbed an undercling. I was only aware of this as Marissa yelled up, "Way to unleash the centipedes," which I at first took for some sort of metaphorical compliment, but it turns out that she was being quite literal. We had a laugh about that once I got down, and unleashing the centipedes instantly became the euphemism of the weekend, much like doing anything in an Xtreme fashion became en vogue for Shaun and myself during our weekend stint as international extreme, sorry, Xtreme, athletes.
On Sunday, my first climb was leading a 5.10b which gave me a considerably harder time than the 10c, or even an 11a that I climbed the day before. I was struggling when I was at the top, but managed to get withing clipping distance of the anchor at top and was putting the rope in...nope, I fell.
Some falls, you can feel your grip slipping and you are aware that you are about to go right before you do and appropriately prepare yourself, but this fall gave me no indication I was about to fall and I was probably down about three feet before I could even curse myself. It wound up being about a twenty five-foot fall, at least half of the entire climb, since I was so far above the last bolt, and I had a lot of slack out. That was my first lead fall, and I must say I couldnt've asked for a better one. Marissa and Shaun down below seemed more excited about it than I was, and apparently I nearly hit my head on a rock outcrop, but I didn't notice it. Good thing I didn't since life is nice, and especially since last weekend when Shaun and Marissa were climbing with Greg, another climber I met at the Tre-x games and Marissa's roommate, he got dropped almost ten feet and broke a vertebrae. Ouch. If I split my skull open they have foolishly thought they were cursed or something. Greg seems to be doing alright though. He can walk around and has a brace to wear should he have to do more than walk around the apartment. Greg is a super strong climber, and I didn't realized this until we were watching a climbing video at his and Marissa's place and he was in it, and filmed many of the parts he wasn't in. No Permanent Address, maybe you climbers out there have seen it - check out Greg Foot's bouldering part in the Hueco Tank's. Apparently I am associating with some real skill. Anyway, Saturday night was good, I drove back with Shaun and Marissa and the four of us went out for dinner to eat some dweji galbi (not sure on that spelling), which is a delicious variety of pig that you throw on the grill at your table and eat up with the galaxy of side-dishes that Korean food is all about. Next on the agenda was a DVD room - these are places you can go to watch a DVD in a private screening room. Private screening/dark sex den, I suppose I should say. If the idea of getting a dark private room for cheap to "watch a movie" isn't suggestive enough, our room with its massive futon covered in off-colored stains and supplied with Kleenex and even a full bathroom with shower may give you a hint...although I think the bathroom was more for the employees since there were toothbrushes and toothpaste, and a full selection of toiletries living in there. Pretty sketchy, but what the hell. We watched Hot Fuzz. Greg and I had seen it before, but Shaun and Marissa hadn't, and they loved it as they should have, since it is hilarious and great.




Here we see Shaun belaying Marissa on the right side of the photo. On the left we see a Korean climbing the 10b I fell off. For an idea of how far I fell, my feet were above the top of this photo, and I fell to about the third bolt up, about five feet above and slightly right of the Korean guy. Sweet! Maybe twenty-five feet was an exaggeration. Maybe it wasn't. Whatever.