Ground Up 27: 24HHH Veterans Leather & Lace

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Dick and Nataliein anyway, but I put the word in for her. So she said, let me design a sea shirt for you. So the full color version of this was our shirt one year.
Dick and NatalieAnd then the next year, they took that same graphic and made it for everybody. And people were saying, what is that? What is that? And if you look real close, one has long eyelashes. That's Natalie. and
RobertOh, nice.
Ari Grodeah
RobertOK, nice.
Dick and NatalieAnd if you look really close, there's lions because our theme was unicorns in a field of lions.

(00:25):
Robertokay
Ari Grodeah
Dick and NatalieSo there's all these little lions and we're dominating them.
Robertnice
Dick and Nataliethere Well, the funny thing about that was also that we had this t-shirt that was like, we're unicorns in a field of lions. And everyone else was like, that's cool.
Dick and NatalieCan we get that too? And we're like, no. Unicorns are unique. I mean, how you know, then we'd be a unicorn in a field of unicorns.

(00:52):
Dick and NatalieMakes sense. but then next year everybody got one yeah
Dick and Natalieyeah what year was this does say 2021 2021 we've been so many years that um yeah they kind of run together i actually have a cheat sheet of every year uh when tommy came when uh
Ari GrodeUh, so what, what year was that then?
Ari GrodeOkay. Okay.
Ari GrodePerfect.
RobertThat's awesome.

(01:18):
Dick and NatalieYou know, Sonny Trotter came, what our scores were, how many people competed. I did that because wrote the software for the scoring, the original scoring software.
RobertOkay.
Dick and NatalieBecause whether you know it or not, the the initial two years were on Excel spreadsheets.
Ari GrodeI don't doubt it.
RobertWow.
Dick and NatalieAnd you had to fill out your own scorecard at the end of the competition.
Ari GrodeYeah.

(01:39):
Dick and NatalieAnd do math. but But it was. After 24 hours of climbing. Scorecard was 20.
Ari GrodeThe real challenge.
Dick and NatalieIt was clustered by grade, not by area. So you had all the five sevens clustered together, all the five eights clustered together.
Robertwow.
Dick and NatalieSo you had to have a guidebook to find out where you were and what it was. And then at the end, you'd have like five five sevens at 70 points. And you had to do the math. Well, I did four of those, four sevens at 280 Well, when I wrote the software for the third year, I had all those old old spreadsheets and all that the old scorecards.

(02:13):
Dick and NatalieAnd I figured out, people can add, but they can't multiply.
Robertah
Dick and Natalieyeah The results were wrong for those first two years.
RobertI, I don't doubt it
Dick and Natalienot Not desperately wrong, but a couple of places were definitely wrong because all all the people with the spreadsheets were doing, they'd take it, see the person's total, put it in a master spreadsheet, and at the end, they'd say, Jeremy Collins scored 10,200 points. And they'll say, well, what did he climb? I said, I don't know.

(02:40):
Dick and NatalieNobody knows. He just got 10,000 points. Oh. So the funniest thing about that, when my score...
Dick and Nataliewow We got to put the dogs up. ah When my software came out, it was hilarious. Jeremy said, you mean everybody's going to know what I did?
Ari GrodeHmm.
Dick and NatalieYeah. Everybody's going to know exactly what routes you did to score your points. says, man, that's horrible. and nancy everybody yeah Because it showed what everybody did. You could get online and and see what everybody did, how they did it.

(03:14):
Dick and NatalieSo that changed everybody's strategy. They say, oh, wait a minute. Nobody went east. Nobody climbed this route.
RobertYeah, yeah.
Dick and Natalienow with the phone and now with the phone app And even if you're knowledgeable how it works, you can go to their score and you know what routes they did first.
Dick and NatalieBecause when you enter your as you enter your score, it gives a timestamp. And so you could say, oh, wait a minute. Yes, they clustered their first 10 routes. They didn't put them in.

(03:44):
Dick and NatalieThey put them in all at once. So you look at it and say, oh, those are the first 10 routes they did. I know where they started, which is valuable information if you do the 24 very often.
RobertYeah, I think i think it's it's more it's always like it's always funny seeing all the new groups and everything.
Ari GrodeYeah.
Robertand And I feel like everyone has to learn the hard way of like where maybe where to start, but more so like where not to start. So that's always like ah it's always a fun one.

(04:08):
Dick and NatalieOh, yeah.
RobertYou know you got to pay your dues, to say the least.
Dick and NatalieWhen Natalie was really fighting it out sometimes for for most routes and stuff, she had a couple of friends. They'd show up and say, well, where you starting? I don't know. Where are you starting? Oh, I don't haven't decided yet. And they're playing all this coy stuff that was that's just hilarious. Keeping the cards close to the chest.

(04:31):
Robertof course, of course.
Dick and NatalieYeah.
Ari GrodeYeah.
Ari GrodeYeah. Over, ah over're we're starting over in the East, you know, we'll we'll be there for the first eight hours.
Dick and Natalieyeah
Roberthit
Ari GrodeWe'll see you there.
Dick and NatalieYeah. Well, the very first year, nobody knew what to do. And the very first year, anybody that went east was totally screwed because you take 20 minutes to get over there.

(04:53):
Dick and NatalieAnd there are not that many. Don't forget, this is way back when there weren't near as many routes and there weren't very many easy routes and people didn't make their first hour. And if you don't get around every hour, both both people, you miss the bonus points at the end.
RobertOh, wow.
Ari GrodeOh, wow.
Dick and NatalieAnd you don't get a t-shirt, you don't get the horseshoes came later on. Yeah, so after that, people pretty much figured out. Very, very few people started going east. And so it became everybody running up to the North 40 after a couple of years.

(05:24):
Dick and NatalieHow many years have we done it? 20 or whatever? We never once ever have gone east. Not once. Nope.
Ari GrodeDuring the whole, during the whole event.
Robertat all or or to start it off?
Dick and Natalieand And any, river no, ever. I mean, we when we're when we're not at when we're not at the 24, yeah, we climb over there. But not ah not during 24 hours.
Dick and NatalieIt's just not worth 20 minutes of walk over there. There was only one year where we considered it. um The year I got the most five nines. This was after my injury and after everything, after Natalie had had her her big push and got her 206 routes.

(06:01):
Dick and Natalieyou know I looked at, you know as a scorekeeper for years and years and years, I knew the low hanging fruit. And the most five nines for an advanced climber was low hanging fruit.
Dick and NatalieSo we started out and only five nines. That's all I climbed until 1.30 and ah I showed up later on in the in the morning around 3 a.m., 4 a.m., and we were talking to climbers, they were saying, hey, what are you doing? I said, oh, just most five nines. They said, yeah, how many of have you got? And I said, 84. And they said, oh, never mind.

(06:34):
Dick and NatalieThey were going for the same thing.
RobertYeah, And there's some fun ones in the East.
Dick and Natalieright But as far as I went, we considered going east because we were running out. Instead, we just kept going further west, like over to Street Fighter and and the arcade.
Ari GrodeOkay.
Dick and NatalieAnd that's as far as we've ever gone. We've never gone past those two walls.
Ari GrodeOkay. Yeah.
Dick and Natalieno Those are pretty new ones.
RobertThere are there are some fun. Ari and i did 5'9 push one year while we were doing the Golden Horseshoe. So we kind of had to do more than the 5'9s.

(07:00):
Dick and NatalieOkay.
Ari GrodeTwo.
RobertBut... Yeah, there's some ones over there. There's also some ones that hurt quite a bit. So probably for the best.
Dick and NatalieOh, well, I failed on one, on 159 on the wall behind the Titanic boulder, really sharp and really, it did.
Ari GrodeOh, I know that one.
RobertYeah.
Dick and Natalieyeah i tried it three times and put him down

(07:24):
Dick and Nataliethink was just growing up at that time. I probably had you know upper 70s, so i i just I just gave up on it.
Ari GrodeWe always joke that there's like three routes right there.
Ari GrodeThere's like 10A, and 5.9. And a 5.9 is the hardest. The is the middle one and the is the easiest. Yeah.
Ari Grodeten a's the you know the e the middle one and the ten b's the easiest

(07:44):
Dick and NatalieExactly. yeah You know the trick by going a little bit right. yeah You can go right and then go back left.
RobertYeah,
Dick and NatalieYeah. Yeah.
Ari Grodeyeah
Robertyeah.
Dick and Nataliebut once you Once you know the tricks, it's hilarious.
RobertDog's barking because we're giving away too much beta. That's the that's the micro beta there.
Dick and NatalieWell, they usually bark and she gave them some treats and that usually shuts them up.
RobertYeah.

(08:06):
Dick and NatalieBut they get nervous when we aren't usually talking like like this over here. You know, it's just like, oh, and so she could put put them in the gym. No, I didn't do that.
RobertYeah, yeah, yeah.
Dick and NatalieOh, you didn't. Okay. Well... But yeah, we we learned a long time. Some of the tricks that that we've developed over over the years have become pretty standard.

(08:28):
Dick and NatalieLike at first, nobody stashed. You'd be at the start. Everybody had your backpacks on and stuff. Then when you start stashing, ah and you're stashing ropes then you're stashing And then you're stashing your trad gear.
Dick and NatalieEverything started to develop. But we've never done the the super duper, go super fast by everybody having a

(08:50):
Dick and NatalieEverybody has a carabiner you pass back and forth between you. We always tie it in with a traceback bowline, and we just untied and retied because it never locked up. And it takes a few seconds, but I don't think there's any manufacturer on earth that would would certify their harness to have a beener click to the belay loop as you're meaning of taking a lead fall.

(09:13):
Ari GrodeYeah.
RobertYeah, there's certainly some shenanigans that go on, hell, to say the least.
Dick and NatalieBut that's how that's how That's how almost every everybody trying to go fast does it that way now, or they have their own separate ropes. Everybody wants, oh yeah.
Ari Grodeyeah oh like two ropes yeah yeah interesting
Dick and Nataliebut But some people like ah Jeremy and when he was climbing with Tommy, they had rope stashes at different crags so they can just that leave their stuff behind and yeah.

(09:39):
Ari Grodeyeah yeah yeah i mean
Dick and NatalieYou find out some of the secret stuff sometimes when you're hanging around the right people.
RobertYeah, for sure. There's that whole wiki page too, on just like all the different nuance beta and all of that stuff too. It's
Ari GrodeYeah, i think I think with the 20th anniversary coming up this year, it's going to be really fun to kind of... Since you guys are probably one of the only teams that has climbed at pretty much every...

(10:05):
Ari GrodeOr has climbed at every iteration of Horseshoe Hell over the past 20 years, including the one that nobody climbed at.
Dick and NatalieWell,
Dick and Natalieah we did. We did. We're the only ones that did.
RobertYeah, yeah.
Ari GrodeYeah, so it'll be it's really...
Dick and NatalieWe went down there, we did by the rules, and we did a full 24 by the rules, brought all our stuff in, did it all by ourselves, like on a Tuesday, and there was nobody else there, and and and took it all out just to go by the rules.
RobertNice.

(10:33):
Dick and NatalieI was going to get, I have 15 tick marks on my arm for my 15 years of doing D24, but it's really 16, but we stopped after that. Now we've been doing the 12th.
Robertah
Ari GrodeYeah. Yeah.
Dick and NatalieBut up yeah up until when we stopped, we were the only team. No other team stayed together with it with the same name and the same two people for those years. But there are two other guys that have done done it every year.

(10:58):
Dick and NatalieYeah. look Luke Stuffelbe, the guy that writes the software now, he's done it every year.
Ari GrodeWho or who are they?
Ari GrodeOkay.
Robertyeah
Ari GrodeYep.
Dick and Natalieand John Richard. John Richard's done it every year.
Robertso god Gotcha.
Ari Grodeah cool. Okay.
Dick and NatalieYeah, from St. Louis.
Ari GrodeI didn't that.
Dick and NatalieYeah. yeah They just haven't had the same partner every year.
Dick and NatalieYeah, they switch around and other people people are pretty close. i don't know if anybody's done it. Take those two away. jeremy Jeremy's missed one year. No, he missed last year too.
Ari GrodeGotcha, gotcha.

(11:27):
Dick and NatalieOh, did he? Yeah, he ran it. Oh yeah, because he wasn't climbing. Yeah. I mean, he was there. So mayor Jeremy's probably done it like 13 times, maybe something like that. So I don't know you're, I don't think you can run it and and still compete in it.
Dick and NatalieI've been trying to get Andy to do it.
Ari Grodewould be tough.
Dick and NatalieI said, come on Andy. That's the one time I said, I
RobertYeah, now that he's not running it, he's got to jump in, right?
Dick and NatalieOh, yeah. I tried to talk. Natalie, I said, Natalie, why don't you climb with so-and-so? And I'll try to get Andy to do it with me. and But she says, ah, we've been together all this time.

(11:57):
Dick and NatalieThis is the 20th year. So, you know, doing singles, is I've pushed for singles since almost from the start.
Robertyeah
Dick and NatalieAnd Patagonia shut it down a while back. that they didn't want They didn't want to change. and You can see they were really excited about it. And they just didn't want changes when, you know, why why change it? If it's not broke, don't fix it.

(12:20):
Dick and NatalieThen finally i said, we we got to do something different. You know, talking with Jeremy finally for the pulled the trigger and say, yeah, let's have fun. let's Let's get everybody excited again to try new stuff.
Ari GrodeYeah, ah not going to lie, when that first came out, I think at least my reaction was, oh, no, like, you know, that's I was a little bummed. But after thinking about it for a little bit, i I actually got pretty excited about the idea of like, wow, it's kind of a totally new like blank slate.

(12:50):
Ari GrodeYou know, it's going to be really interesting.
Dick and NatalieYeah. Well, one of the reasons
Ari GrodeEveryone's on the same like playing field.
Dick and NatalieWell, one of the reasons was, have you ever talked to anybody about what you did in the 24?
Ari GrodeIt's going to be it's going to be cool.
Dick and NatalieEvery time you do it, you have to put the caveat, oh, by the way, I didn't do 150 routes. I did 75 routes times two. you know
Ari GrodeMm-hmm.

(13:11):
Dick and NatalieAnd after a while, it got kind of tiresome to say, come on. And they say, well, why did you climb it twice? Well, those are the rules.
Ari GrodeYeah.
Dick and Nataliei you know I climbed it twice.
Ari GrodeSome
Dick and Natalieand And so now it's just like, no, I climbed 100 routes.
RobertYeah.
Dick and Natalieon your back i think it's going to be tough this year to make the standards they have to re-qualify, though.
RobertYeah. We were curious what, uh, what you were thinking in terms of like what the overall experience will be like now that there has been that shift from two laps to one.
Ari Grodeah some of them are pretty tough.

(13:37):
Dick and Natalieoh for For me, since the last few years, um not for me, but I've got some nerve pain in my leg that's I had a new hip last year and my hip pain was tolerable.
Dick and NatalieWe did 75 routes last year for my 75th birthday. you know That was my kind of birthday challenge after my birthday. But I had a new hip in October after that.

(14:03):
Dick and NatalieAnd I've always had nerve pain since my accident, but now it's gotten worse because of that. i think all the muscles they had to pull and it's on the same leg, you know, that where I've pain before and all the nerves they had to push around. Well, so we're just gonna go cragging.
RobertNice.
Ari GrodeI see.
Dick and NatalieWe've done that the last couple of times we've gone, we've done that, cause I've had various issues ever since. Some years I feel really good and I can do things, some years I can't. Some years I have to take off my, I can't tolerate nerve pain in my feet. I have to put on trail shoes.

(14:39):
Dick and Natalieso So this year, to me, it's more important to see if I can climb 10 Ds or maybe even 11 A than it is that I could do 50 routes.
Dick and NatalieSo we'll see. ah It's harder to stay say fit when you get in your 70s, believe me

(15:00):
Ari GrodeHow about you, Natalie? You got anything on the agenda for this year?
Dick and Natalieme. Well, I don't, you know, he has he has thoughts on climbing hard things. And that's not what I do. best.
Dick and NatalieI do best a lot of things, but you know, every year he says, we don't have to climb that crappy five, seven again. So, you know, don't want put that on him.

(15:22):
Ari GrodeYeah.
Dick and NatalieUm, we'll see what happens. I mean, I can climb the five C's and D's. I just, you know, my game has never been how hard can I climb?
Dick and NatalieIt's always been how much can I climb? So, um, but you know, we're only doing the 12.
Ari Grodeyeah
Dick and NatalieIt doesn't mean anything, uh, You know, I will say it's going to be a different game for everybody climbing one route an hour because there's only so many easy routes.

(15:52):
Dick and NatalieSo if someone does have some thoughts of climbing, you know, 150 routes, they're not going to be able to climb 150 five-eighths.
Ari Grodeyeah
RobertRight.
Dick and Natalieyou know what I mean? They're going to have to climb more hard routes in their set to get that many routes. So it'll be interesting how people change their ah strategies and their goals for that.

(16:16):
Dick and NatalieNatalie is always the groundbreaker on route.
Ari GrodeSo maybe we can.
Dick and NatalieShe's had the woman's records for route count a lot. First person to break 100. And then somebody broke it at 132. Next year, she did 133.
Dick and Nataliethen she did 160, then she did 180, then she did 206. So she's always been, now it's gone up, you know, 300. Genevieve did 300, just blew it out of the water.

(16:41):
Robertyeah
Ari GrodeYeah.
Dick and NatalieBut I've always thought it was kind of cool for us as the older generation, the fact that she has been, spurring the youngsters to action when they see what she can do.
Dick and NatalieI think it really motivated some of these youngsters to say, you know this this lady is kicking her ass, but we're 25 years old and weigh 120 pounds.

(17:08):
Dick and NatalieWhat's going on here?
RobertRight.
Dick and Natalieah So I think that that's been a motivation.
Ari GrodeHehehehe.
Dick and NatalieAnd I think Jeremy used to tell me, you know there's i said, I don't think anybody cares if I beat him. He says, oh There's a lot of people that care if if if you beat them, but they never say they're worried about Natalie beating them. Because when we first started out, we went one-two in the intermediate division before we both had climbed an 11 when I was still ah an intermediate.

(17:37):
Dick and NatalieAnd she was second overall, not not you know female. So that was kind of funny. People say, yeah, i want to beat you. say, well, don't you want to beat Natalie? It was kind of funny.
Dick and NatalieBut sometimes don't think you do.
Ari Grodebut so was gonna say some i mean maybe this is like a good transition you know it'd be kind of fun since we're coming up on 20 years here to kind of throw it back to you know i'm really curious to hear how the the event kind of started and how you guys heard about it i mean and then talk a little bit about you know what that first year was like i i can imagine the ranch had a lot less roots and
Dick and NatalieGo ahead.

(18:14):
Dick and NatalieI did a post back, I didn't put it down here um about the difference of how many routes it has been added. But the very first year we heard about it and I hadn't really climbed in Arkansas that much. i hadn't even done very much sport climbing.
Dick and NatalieI was a El Dorado type of guy and it's a little, Kansas City is not noted for having a lot of climbing. but

(18:42):
Ari GrodeMm-hmm.
Dick and NatalieEverybody was pairing up. And I just asked Natalie if she wanted to. I was getting back into climbing after um kind of a a little bit of a hiatus while my daughter was a swimmer, a collegiate swimmer.
Dick and NatalieSo all the way from when she was 10 years old and and my son too, and they're swimming. I kind of devoted a lot of my time and writing software. That's what I did. So I was writing software, worked at the post office and wasn't climbing a whole lot.

(19:10):
Dick and NatalieI got back in into climbing, so we paired up. and Everybody's talking about strategy and how long should we sleep? Where should we come down? We go down to the campground to eat eat dinner and things like that. it's We only did like 33 routes, and but but she got third in female.
Dick and NatalieAnd I think 10,000, around 10,000 points, in fact, that year, 10,000 points in 70 routes. That's what won the very first year. And it it was amazing.

(19:39):
Dick and Natalieweird. Then after that, the next year, let's see what I've, Travis, Don and Jesse Gross did 99 routes each.
Dick and NatalieAnd we, everybody was blown away like, whoa, that's, that's like impossible. We did
Ari Grodeso And, and, and what did the, like, what did the tactics look like, I guess, for those first couple, or even that first year, I mean, was everybody just, you said everyone has their packs on, it's like a day out climbing, you're just kind of extending it for 24 hours.

(20:06):
Dick and NatalieOh yeah, everyone just walking up to the prairie.
Robert1155. Yeah.
Dick and NatalieYou were afraid of bonking. You were absolutely terrified. You'd be too sleepy. It'd be dangerous. So you'd take naps. You know, you'd you'd say, okay, you had this strategy.
Dick and NatalieWell, if I do ah ah route at five minutes after 10, that's my 10 o'clock route. And I don't have to do another route till, you know almost two hours later.

(20:32):
Dick and NatalieYes. So we were going to try to sleep in between.
Robertthat Yeah, of course.
Dick and NatalieOvernight, we were trying to get some naps.
RobertBecause the original the original format was just you had to climb one route per hour, right? To re-qualify. That was the original.
RobertOkay.
Dick and NatalieYeah. Well, there was no re-qualifying.
Dick and NatalieIt was how fast are you on the button to hit
RobertOh, okay.
RobertOh, okay.

(20:53):
Dick and NatalieOh yeah, that's why that's why the lottery came up. It was just like, here's the day you can, quiet you you can but yeah, you I don't. I don't think that was even an issue the first couple of years.
Dick and NatalieThey just let people, you know they didn't have a ah limit.
Robertof course.
Dick and NatalieThey didn't have to, hardly anybody had heard about it.
RobertHow many people like roughly were there that that first year?
Dick and NatalieSo.

(21:13):
Dick and Nataliei can I can tell you, 120 competitors first year.
RobertOh, wow.
Ari GrodeOkay, it's decent sized actually.
Dick and NatalieSecond year, yeah, second year, 180.
RobertIt's not nothing.
Dick and NatalieThird year, 184. Fourth year when Tommy Caldwell showed up, 216. That's probably when they started having to hurry up and push the button. Yeah, in 2010 when Alex Donald, 240.
RobertYeah.

(21:36):
Dick and NatalieSo it it really started. yeah People were finding out about it. Wow.
RobertYeah.
Dick and NatalieA lot of those, they were limited to 150 teams. But when I say 240, that's not how many were actually signed up. That's how many ended up showing up.
Dick and Natalieyou know Because his thought if you looked at it, you could say, oh, my there was 300 people, but people didn't show up.
RobertYeah.

(21:57):
Dick and Natalieor But yeah, by 2010, I think that's probably about when they put the lottery in.
RobertDo you know how many are are active now?
Dick and NatalieThe first couple of years, the first couple of years, the ill go ahead.
RobertI was just going say, do you know how many are active now?
Dick and Nataliethey don't have I can tell you what the last year I had here. Let's see.

(22:19):
Dick and NatalieI didn't put how many people were in it those years. yeah he took that Luke took down some of the, well, 2019, 294. twenty nineteen two hundred and ninety four so but
Robertpretty big difference.
Dick and NatalieI looked at it. one One thing they've been opening up a little more, and I think Jeremy's been opening up, is the 12. They were used to limit it to 100, and now now it's gone.

(22:45):
Dick and NatalieHe's pretty much just opened it up because he opened it up to the whole canyon. So it's kind of like, okay, and the canyon's open, so I don't care if if it's crowded, go somewhere else.
RobertYeah, yeah.
RobertYeah, yeah.
Dick and NatalieAnd the standards are going to be be tougher. But we were discussing that in the 12-hour. I don't know if you have time to run across the canyon. Yeah.
RobertI mean, we, so we did pretty big push last year in the 12th. We like went for as many trad routes as we could and we were pretty jam packed and there was like the idea, like you said, of running across the Canyon, just like, it seems like such a waste of time.

(23:18):
Dick and NatalieYep.
RobertLike it's either like either go on Easter, you go on West, but like, I don't know why you would even consider crossing the Canyon if you're the 12.
Dick and NatalieWell, the routes are taller and harder over there too, in my opinion, ah by grade.
RobertYeah.
Dick and NatalieYou know and you know you do a over there. 510s on the North 40 and the West side are pretty much, except for a couple like, uh, um, Scampi one move wonders, there's the short sequence, but you you go to the East side and they're long and sustained and, uh, great routes.

(23:53):
Dick and NatalieThere's a difference between competition routes and, uh, and, and great routes, you know, know, things that, you know, uh,
RobertYeah, for sure.
Dick and NatalieYou know, I would never do Hacker Crack unless I was a really, really good crack climber in the comp just because it takes too much work to do for five, nine points. yeah You know, when some of these little sport routes, that you can do it like one hard move and then jug haul to the top, you know.

(24:19):
Ari GrodeThat's funny you say that. Do you remember, Rob, I think it was ah two or three years ago, I took a nice nice fall on Hackberry Crack.
RobertYeah, yeah.
Ari GrodeSo not only did i not only was it slow, but I had to do it three times total.
RobertIn the middle of comp.
Dick and NatalieWhoa.
Robertto To be fair, that was a that was the year we were going for most five nines and the golden.
Dick and NatalieOh,
RobertSo we needed tried laps, but we also wanted every five nine we were getting by. So we had rehearsed it a bit ahead of time. But yeah, that was a slowed things down a little bit.

(24:43):
Dick and Nataliewow. Yeah, the the cracks on the west side are tough. And I don't know what these people, these people that are going to try to trad qualify, they're going have to leave the North 40.
Ari GrodeYeah.
Robertyeah
RobertYeah.
Dick and NatalieAnd I don't know where i don't know where they're going to go.
Ari GrodeYeah.
RobertYeah. We've got couple of recommendations on where to go, but mainly where to not go for a trad routes. Yeah.
Dick and NatalieWell, that used to be the easiest way to requalify was TRAD.

(25:05):
Robertyeah Oh yeah.
Dick and NatalieIt was 60 TRAD, which is only 30 routes in 24 hours, which is, you know, 30 routes times two. You can do it on the North 40. Yeah, you used to be do it on the North 40.
RobertOh yeah.
Ari GrodeMm-hmm.
Dick and NatalieYeah. That's
RobertAri and I used to joke all the time about how like all of the minimum requirements for requalification have like steadily outpaced like the jump of the trad laps.

(25:27):
RobertLike the trad laps have gone up like five laps total. And it's like, you went from like a hundred to 115 to 130 laps on like other anything else.
Dick and Natalieright.
RobertBut like trad, it was like, yeah, like if you're climbing trad, we don't care.
Dick and Natalieyeah Yeah. Well, we know some people that that's the only way they know they can qualify because they aren't strong enough to to do the huge volume.
RobertYeah, yeah.

(25:48):
Dick and NatalieAnd so they unfortunately for them talk about climbing the same crappy routes year after year. If you do a trad on the north 40 year after year, that's the ultimate crap, crap route collection.
Ari GrodeMm-hmm.
Robertbut Best five, best five, two in the world. I don't know what you're talking about, Nick.
Dick and NatalieI can't think of one good trad route on the North 40, not even one that I'd say, oh, I can't wait to climb that. But there's so many sport routes that I'd say, wow, I really love that one.

(26:17):
RobertOh yeah.
Dick and NatalieLike Crim Scampi. Crim Scampi is always my, let let's see if the old man can still do it. Crim Scampi and Brad Holes is, I think, a little easier, but my nemesis is Portside.
Dick and NatalieI did it in 2019 and I haven't been able to repeat it.
Ari GrodeYou talking about the 10 plus on a Titanic?

(26:39):
Dick and NatalieThe 10D that's really an 11A or 11B that I couldn't convince Cole to make an 11A in his guidebook. The old guidebook had 11A by, what's his name?
RobertYeah.
Dick and NatalieClay Frisbee's guidebook had it as 11A.
Ari GrodeOkay. I don't think we've never even tried that one.
Dick and NatalieHave you done it?

(26:59):
Ari GrodeWe've done most of the other ones um the types, not that, not the really hard ones, but, uh,
Dick and NatalieWell,
Dick and Natalieit's it's real it's real rock climbing. I mean, it's-
Ari GrodeYeah, everybody warned us about that one.
Dick and NatalieIt has multiple cruxes and it's really super crimpy.
Robertyeah
Dick and Natalieand And the other one on the other end there that is, I did it in 2020, I think, is cracked rib on the end. that That one's really hard too.

(27:25):
Dick and NatalieSimilar type of low um low percentage moves at the beginning to to try to get up to the slots and stuff. so
RobertYeah, just what you want 16 hours into hell, right?
RobertNice low percentage beta.
Dick and NatalieIt's kind of interesting. Things like that, i always tell people, say, and i my argument with Cole was, port side, I had in my software that I wrote for for scoring the comp, I could go to any route and see who climbed it.

(27:56):
Dick and NatalieI said, why did no intermediate climbers that top out at 10D ever climb port side in the comp? It's only 30 feet long. Well, it's because it's not 10D.
Dick and NatalieBut I don't know whether you know it or not. When I did the most five nines that was 84, I went back and looked at that score, and it says I only did 64 because they downgraded 10 five nines since I did it.

(28:27):
Ari GrodeOh, really?
Dick and NatalieYep, they downgraded them to five eighths.
Ari Grodeum interesting.
RobertWow.
Ari GrodeIt's funny because there was one on ah the west side that got upgraded. It must have been upgraded a couple years ago.
Dick and NatalieWow.
Ari Grodeit was the I think it's called Duck Hunt. And it's like so it's such a gift because it's such an easy one.
Dick and NatalieOK. Is
RobertYeah, yeah. It's insane. Like it's borderline 5, borderline 5, 7 and they give it 5, 9 now.
Dick and Nataliethat it?
Ari GrodeAnd you get the 5.9 points for it.

(28:50):
RobertYeah, it's pretty wild.
Dick and NatalieIs this sport route or a trad route?
RobertSport.
Ari GrodeIt's a sport route.
RobertIt's over by Legend of Zelda.
Dick and NatalieOh, where is it?
RobertDon't tell anyone.
Dick and NatalieOh, OK.
Ari GrodeIt's in the arcade.
Dick and NatalieWe don't.
RobertYeah, it's like to the right of Legend of Zelda.
Dick and NatalieOh, in the arcade.
RobertYeah, yeah.
Dick and NatalieOK.
Ari GrodeYeah. on the west side.
Dick and NatalieOK, yeah. We're we're probably going to end up visiting that some of those this time because we used to, our first route used to be learning fly.

(29:17):
RobertOh, nice.
Dick and NatalieThat used to be, we did that at least two years in a row, maybe three years in a row.
Ari GrodeOkay.
Dick and Natalieah And you run up that hill dying to try to get it. And we would go there and then go over to Ren and Stimpy and then go over to Titanic. That that was our normal start.
RobertOkay.
Dick and NatalieWhen you're doing hard routes, that's a good way to start. When you're doing easy routes, that's a horrible way to start.

(29:42):
Ari GrodeSo, so Natalie, I'd love to hear kind of, I know you kind of pushed the pace there, especially, you know, in some of the women's categories. I mean, can you talk about like, you know, what the kind of what the tactics were like and, you know, how, how you started kind of stacking, uh, you know, pushing the root, the root count further and further each year.
Ari GrodeThat'd be kind of interesting, I think to dive into.

(30:04):
Dick and NatalieWell, It helped that my partner is an analyst. I always said, he just told me what to climb and I just climbed it. Cause he would go through, i mean, and then he had the software.
Dick and NatalieSo it was real easy for us to do. Well, if we do this, this and this, and then this, then, you know, we could do mock setups of our set really easily.

(30:27):
Dick and NatalieSo that was one advantage. I've always said my main advantage was my partner. um not only for that, but just for the training that we do. I don't know anybody else that would want to suffer like we do.
Dick and Natalieum i Honestly, I can't think of anything anybody else that I would have been a good partner with or for, or that would be a good partner for me because, you know, who really does want to climb all those five sevens over and over and over and over again?
Ari GrodeYeah.

(30:56):
Dick and Natalieum Or who wants to suffer that much or who wants to, you know, tear up their hands and their body? um So I guess our strategy was we would We would do a set.
Dick and Natalieyou know We'd figure out what our water set could be. um He would look at the numbers and be like, well, if we did this, then you could win this. There again, we're low-hanging fruit. um I mean, honestly, don't climb hard.

(31:22):
Dick and Natalieah you know eleven a maybe is my my best red point outside is 11A. But I've been in the elite division since, I don't know, 2010.
Dick and Natalietwenty 12 or something like that because i climbed enough a lot. um You know, my strategy is just to suffer. They made the rule that if you won your category, you automatically moved up.

(31:47):
RobertRight.
Dick and NatalieBecause Natalie was going to win intermediate for the rest of my life. The rest of her life. soon yeah Because she could do crimp scampi with no problem. But um There aren't very many, ah except for horseshoes and hair knees, there aren't very many friendly 11s that we were really interested in. and She didn't do an 11, I think, until we moved to Vegas.

(32:10):
Dick and NatalieYeah. so she didn't she was an elite climber before she ever did an 11A. Yeah, I was up against the pros in my division.
Ari GrodeMm-hmm.
Dick and NatalieSo I just had to train really hard. like in the We spent our summers... auto blades in the gym, going outside and doing like hours of climbing, you know, fitting it in whenever we could.

(32:34):
Dick and NatalieVegas was nice because you can climb before or after work there. You know, it's just, we were what, five miles from the gate. So we could, we could go, you know, we could go anytime and just,
Robertwow
Dick and NatalieYou know, crank off. It's not, it's not horseshoe though. Like when you go to Vegas to climb, I did a 50th birthday thing there and I did 50 routes, which you would think, well, I've done 200 at but to do sport routes,

(33:01):
Dick and Natalieum And the first and second pull out there, you're like, you have to clean everything. And you have to hike five miles because there's only six here. And then you have to hike for a mile and there, you know, whatever, you know, that is one advantage of horseshoe.
Dick and Natalieum And I will say you were asking about the first year. you had to clean your routes. There wasn't like beaners at the top of every route. So that slowed everybody down down and repel.

(33:27):
Dick and NatalieAnd you had, yeah. So you had to clean your route and repel. You didn't have all these great, um, ideas for transitions and things like that. Um, so yeah, I mean, I always wondered when I was, you know, over the years, I was like, how, like, i don't climb hard and I'm old.
Dick and NatalieAnd honestly, I'm, you know, I'm not exactly skinny. So why aren't all of these young ladies that are coming out here that climb way harder than me? I would see, we would be at the comp watching other, and I'd be like, oh my God, she's crushing. She's going to beat me.

(34:03):
Dick and NatalieYou can't climb that many routes when you're climbing hard routes. You have to have rest at some point. um Also, I think, I'm, For a while, i don't think very many women were willing to suffer like I was. And that was, think, honestly, that's what it boils down to.
Dick and Nataliei was willing to suffer for years. I was willing to do the work. That's what I did. I did the work. The funniest time that she broke the the She had lost the route count record.

(34:32):
Dick and NatalieBut we were really keeping too track of that. But the first and one year we did the double, she won the women's stuff in the 12. And we're going into the 24, we just say, let's just have fun. Let's just just go and have fun.
Dick and NatalieSo she we said, just five nines and under. We didn't do anything hard. And it was easy. It was easier than the 12 because we, we did almost all tens in the 12. And so when we were doing that, so that she ended up getting near the end, I said, I got to stop climbing for a little while.

(35:01):
Dick and NatalieYou were really close to the, to the route count record, which we couldn't believe. and Which he knew because, yeah you know, so, uh,
RobertYeah.
Ari GrodeKeeping track.
Dick and Natalieah So I kept track. So I stepped back but for a little while and I still got my 100 routes, but she got 134. I think that's how things have progressed. But I don't know. I'd have to look up the post I did several a while back about how many routes there were available in the North 40 that there was no land beyond there was no early morning light kindergarten boulder had like three routes on it uh titanic had like three routes on it there was no wall behind titanic um unbelievable number of routes all these stolen of course there was no arcade there was no doomsday wall there there was none of that so uh it it was uh all these fill-in routes every time the routes were

(35:35):
Ari GrodeOh, interesting.
RobertWow. wow
Dick and Natalieyou You couldn't do what you do now where you run, pull a rope and go to the next route. No, the next route was, was a ways down. Yeah. I would say a hundred routes used to be pretty hard. It's I think it'll be, it used to be as hard as maybe it will be now with only being able to climb one, yeah one instead two. That'd be good to bring back the t-shirts.

(36:13):
Dick and NatalieThe hundred route t-shirts. We used to live for those things. Yeah. Yeah.
RobertYeah, now it's the Mile High Club.
Dick and NatalieUh-huh. The Mile High Club. Yeah. we We found out that year she did 134 routes and just made just made the mile. And I think that's the first year that they did the mile.
Dick and NatalieBecause after that, you and I both did 152. And yeah, we we don't, some of the

(36:40):
Dick and NatalieSpeed ways people do things, we we don't believe. We pretty much clip every bolt. you know We stick to the second bolt and we put we put gear in when we do trad.
Dick and Natalieyeah we don't
Ari GrodeYeah.
Dick and NatalieWe don't risk our life and to get a couple more seconds.
RobertYeah. No, i'm I'm just cracking up internally now hearing you talk about how like Dick analyzes everything. Okay. We know that there's this many routes left. You're this close to this.

(37:07):
Dick and Nataliehu
RobertCause this is like, this is me and Ari. Like I just get, I'm like, where do we need to go? I show up. Let's have a good time. Ari's like, here's our plan. Here's our strategy go.
Dick and NatalieBye.
Robertah But no, you also mentioned like a couple of things were obviously different early on. Like, yeah, you used to have to clean the routes. Right. And like, okay, there's only so many routes available and all. When did, horseshoe hell really start to get enough traction that like some of these logistical things started getting figured out.

(37:32):
RobertPeople started putting up more routes so that there's more access for like the climbers on the actual event day. Any other like big changes that you guys started to notice? i don't know if it was like five years in or seven years in.
Dick and NatalieYou probably hear three or four when the pros started showing up. Yeah, they started they started putting carabiners on the first pole.
RobertYeah.
RobertOkay.
Dick and NatalieSo you would take the carabiners up to the top and clip them to the anchors so people could lower off. Right, if you were the first one on the route.

(37:56):
RobertRight, right.
Dick and NatalieNow the entire North 40 is mussy hooks. And a lot everywhere else are mussy hooks. So... That was the first one of the first steps like, oh, that makes it fast.
Dick and Natalieum When you didn't have to clean the routes, that that made it fast. And yeah, I think when Tommy Caldwell showed up and well, Sonny Trotter showed up the third year and Brittany Griffith showed up, I think once the pros started showing up, everybody started paying attention.

(38:26):
Dick and NatalieAnd then there was at least one guy that was noted for his getting route count. And he was also a route developer. you know, bless his heart, love him, but he started putting up some crap routes just to get more routes in for the 24.
RobertOkay.
Dick and NatalieSeriously, he did that.
Ari GrodeHmm.
RobertYeah.
Dick and NatalieYou know, it was like, wow, these are, you know, we still do them, the three-bolt routes on the back of the Titanic, or maybe they're two-bolt. If you clip the second bolt, you only have to go to the anchors.

(38:56):
Dick and NatalieYeah, you know, those are routes. And, uh, Dean Potter actually soloed one of those routes on the first ascent on the backside of the Titanic. But some of the routes that, some the routes they put up in between routes and stuff are pretty pretty nice routes as far as for the grade.
Dick and NatalieBut One time I asked Jason, you know, Jason down there, the main climbing guy, I said, early early morning light wall.

(39:21):
Robertyeah
Dick and NatalieI said, how come there's no routes in that? he says He says, because you you can put you can drive a drill into it's like butter. He says that the rock isn't near as good as some other places.
Ari GrodeYeah.
RobertYeah.
Dick and NatalieAnd you'll notice if you climb there, the rock is not that good. And now there's like a dozen routes on that wall or something.
RobertOh yeah, there's there's a lot.

(39:42):
RobertThat wall saved us our first year.
RobertWe were not going re-qualify and we went on a tear on that wall. So appreciate those butter bolts.
Dick and Natalieyeah in
RobertYeah,
Dick and NatalieThose starts, broken holds have made those starts like at least a letter grade harder than what they're listed as. And it's just to get off the ground because all the all the stuff that's broken off.
Robertyeah.

(40:05):
Dick and NatalieBut those those are the types of stuff that, um, um People got excited. Oh, now they finally had to stop doing the 100 route t-shirts because all of a sudden there were so many easy routes that people could do it really fast.
Dick and NatalieThe Titanic boulder, if you do the Titanic boulder and the Emma's got a mullet area, you're almost there when you can do two routes, you know, when the old style. You didn't have to go very well, very far. The kindergarten boulder. Yeah, kindergarten, Boulder area, and Emma's got them all.

(40:34):
Dick and NatalieMan, you clean up those. In fact, the year and Natalie did a 206, we had 120 routes by 12 hours. You know, she did.
Dick and NatalieI didn't.
Robertthat's That's a good feeling, isn't it?
Ari GrodeYeah.
Dick and NatalieYeah. Oh, yeah. Well, you know you're going to slow down overnight. i mean, that that's a fact.
RobertYeah, yeah.
Ari GrodeYeah.
Dick and NatalieYou're not going to get 120 more routes if it's 9 o'clock. At least I'm not going to.

(40:57):
RobertYeah,
Ari Grodeyeah Yeah.
Dick and NatalieSo I needed to have a head start. She's.
Ari GrodePut them in the bank and and yeah, get them done for sure.
Dick and Natalieyep Yeah.
Robertyeah, yeah. Yeah, I feel like most of the time things don't always go according to plan. So if something is like you're ahead of schedule at hell, you're like, this is incredible.
Dick and Nataliewe We have a couple of little hints we give people that are that are new to it that we know, that we've done over the years that that help. that We don't want to give too many away yeah but because too many people would do the same thing.

(41:27):
Dick and NatalieBut it definitely helps if you know way way the traffic flows uh when you're on the wall and you're in your observer you'll you'll see certain patterns of of way um climbing groups work almost like a living organism they're all up here and then they're all over here then they're all right same group and you'll you'll find out throughout the day you're with the same group of people because you're all moving like an animal and you all and it's smooth because they're going quit you know who the fast people are and they're all cooperative and uh

(42:02):
Dick and NatalieOnce you know that and you you get the right group of people, you'll trade, you'll share routes. Hey, can I have that route? I haven't done that. If you want want to do this one first, the real cooperative people. And then every once while you get the the jerks that Jeremy ran into a jerk one time. He was going for 300 routes.
Dick and NatalieAnd the guy wouldn't give up the route ah to let Jeremy run up there in 20 seconds. and they and And he said, there was plenty of routes around. He said, but I'd already done them all. And he just really needed one route.

(42:29):
RobertYeah,
Ari GrodeYeah.
Dick and NatalieBut 99% of the time, people are real cooperative. And we almost never end up in a group with people we know right off the bat.
Robertyeah.
Dick and NatalieBut we after 24 hours, we know him pretty well. Yeah.
RobertYeah, yeah. No, no chance.
Dick and NatalieBecause of my work in the past, and I'm writing the software and helping get this going, because let's face it, this is not possible without software.

(42:54):
Robertno no chance
Dick and NatalieThere's just too many data items. Take 300 people with 100 data items each. That's a lot of data items. to type in. But we have a we always have a cabin right right next to where the the volunteers are.
Dick and NatalieSo we we have ah an ace in the hole whenever we need something up at the crack. Hey, you need a shower?

(43:22):
Dick and NatalieSo I said, what? I said, I'll give you a shower. You can have a shower at our at our place if we can have that round. often
RobertOh, wow. Talk about a bargaining chip.
Dick and NatalieNever fails.
RobertThat's incredible.
Dick and Nataliefor Or just the bathroom. Yeah.
RobertYeah.
Dick and NatalieWell, now they have bathroom down in the lower, the lower campground has a bathroom now.
Ari GrodeYeah.
Dick and NatalieI don't know if you know that.
RobertOh, amazing. No.

(43:43):
Dick and NatalieOn the east side. east side. Yeah. They opened the lower campgrounds.
Ari GrodeOh.
RobertYeah. yeah
Dick and NatalieYeah. So yeah they're reserved campsites. So, i yeah, we have, we have a season pass, which is camping and climbing, but it doesn't apply to the reserved campsites.
Ari GrodeOkay.
Dick and NatalieSo you have but they have their bathroom down there, which will really help the east side campers in the 24.
Ari GrodeYeah,
RobertGotcha.
Dick and NatalieI'm sure.

(44:03):
RobertYeah. I mean, that'll help the the brave souls that are doing the 30-minute canyon crossing during the 12, too.
Ari Grodeand no kidding.
RobertYou never know. So that's it.
Dick and NatalieHmm. that that's
Ari GrodeI'd be kind of curious to hear, you know, you talk about like, you know, adding new routes and a couple of things that allowed so many people to
RobertGo ahead, Ari.
Ari Grodeyou know, get to a hundred or or whatever the progression was, was there any, like a couple of impactful moments that kind of happened throughout the years that like people went like, aha, that kind of changed the game.

(44:37):
Dick and NatalieThat's an interesting thing to think about. mean, was pretty impactful that pros showed up. Well, I think when the people started doing that that trick was with the carabiner where they could just switch it back and forth, that was I think that was pretty good.
Dick and NatalieThe thing I think that was impactful in a different way was we started having to make some rules about you have to clip the first or second bolt on every support route. You have to put enough ah gear in to keep from ground fall, which That's all a matter of opinion on some of that stuff. But you you can't just run up like some people would do and throw a sling on a horn right next to the bolt, next to the anchor, and say they did it fine. But they really sold the rack.

(45:21):
RobertRight, right.
Dick and Nataliethat That didn't affect very much, but I think it did make it make it safer. I can tell you what affected things was when you wrote up that. They put it on 24-hour website. Dick wrote,
Dick and Nataliedick wrote Basically, this is what we do. these These are all of our tips. And I was still competing pretty hard. I was like, don't tell them everything. You just told my competition what we do.

(45:48):
Ari GrodeHa ha ha.
Dick and NatalieI did tell about taping and out now gloves. For some people, for us, gloves are huge. ah We climbed up to 10C with gloves on.
Dick and NatalieFingerless gloves, you know, that...
RobertYeah, yeah.
Dick and Natalietips are gone, saves your hands. oh but on a tape But a lot of the stuff we talked about, stashing, stashing your water um and your trad and having a like cards with all your trad beta, little things, but mainly how we go about things.

(46:24):
Dick and Natalieah Some things aren't on there that we tell people.
Dick and NatalieYou don't want to have use the restroom very much if you can help. And the women, Natalie said she'd climb out the top sometimes to top out to go to the bathroom because there's just too many people in the bathroom.
RobertNo.
Dick and NatalieBut other but things, you don't want to run around with a wag bag either.
Ari GrodeOh wow.

(46:47):
Dick and Natalieand so So try to take care of those things.
Robertno
Dick and NatalieAnd eating, the right thing, i would tell what we did for you. I've never cramped up. We've never really bonked or cramped up, either one of us, in almost 20 years now.
Dick and NatalieBecause we we weren't eating pizza and we weren't eating you know you know just weird stuff. We weren't eating all carbs. we were chugging energy drinks. you know We do a five hour energy around one or two o'clock.

(47:17):
Dick and NatalieBut other than that, we weren't doing a lot of the stuff that other people were doing. But other than that, that that' probably helped quite a bit. At least the new people, it helped them a lot. The people that have been around for a while, they we all just kind of came to the same conclusions about how to and where to start and what to do.

(47:37):
Dick and NatalieI think the main thing people don't understand say, yeah, I can eat a bagel with with peanut butter while I'm belaying. I'm not going to sit down. And it's so hard to start again if you sit down for very much very long.
Ari GrodeOh, absolutely.
Dick and NatalieIt's so hard.
RobertOh yeah. Body in motion stays in motion. Don't you dare put your butt on the ground.
Dick and NatalieGreat. Trail shoes made a big difference to a lot of trail shoes on easy routes because then people could run, literally run up the hill and get on a route.
Robertoh yeah.

(48:03):
Dick and NatalieYou didn't have to sit down.
RobertYeah.
Dick and NatalieAnd I remember when your friend of ours was just going nuts because her partner was taking her shoes off after every climb, just going nuts.
RobertOh my goodness. Yeah.
Dick and Natalieah You know, and she was going hard. She wanted to go, you know, do a lot of routes. And so, so That's, I think after a couple of years, if you're somebody that returns, you got to find the right partner.

(48:27):
Dick and NatalieA lot of people, you'd see them show up with different partners and sometimes it's because yeah one of the partners was was just a jerk or they just didn't have the same motivation.
Dick and Nataliethat That's huge. You gotta to have somebody that wants at least similar things. Like Natalie and i I'm willing to let her go as hard as she wants, as many routes as she wants. And I just wanted to, I may be sitting out while I get the hard routes that I wanna do.

(48:51):
Dick and NatalieSo we we can be compatible without doing the exact same agenda.
Dick and NatalieIt was interesting how Rob and Basia figured their stuff out like that.
RobertYeah.
RobertOh, yeah.
Ari GrodeYeah. but
RobertYou talk about dialed. My goodness.
Dick and NatalieOh, God.
Roberti yeah I do think that...
Dick and NatalieTheir spreadsheets, oh my God.
RobertOh, my gosh. Yeah. And i we we were... that two years ago already when they were first trying to the 50 or whatever it was uh we were cleaning a bunch of routes because that was the year we were doing a lot of trad so we kept running into them like the days leading up to the the comp and everything and they were talking to to us about their spreadsheet and it was just mind-boggling to think about how quickly they were supposed to be moving over some of these routes like for 24 hours it was it was incredible

(49:36):
Dick and NatalieWell, I videoed them on some of those routes just because I was interested. And they never looked hurried.
Ari GrodeYeah.
Dick and NatalieAnd when they were doing trad routes, they're putting the gear in. When they're doing sport routes, they're clipping the appropriate number of bolts. I even had a post about it. I said, you don't have to do all these stupid tricks to try to gain a few seconds.
Dick and NatalieAnd here are the guys with all the records, and they do it the right way. They do it the the safe way, and and and they do it by the rules. So, yeah, it was we watched them do... went over on Kindergarten Boulder, a trad route. He just floated up it, no hurry, came down, they're talking. in And I think I saw a picture of his, I don't know if he sent it to me or it was opposed, his spreadsheet one time. it was It was mind blowing to see all the different colors on it.

(50:24):
Robertuh,
Ari GrodeI, I, I climbed with him, um, a few times since I've moved to Colorado and we've done some gym sessions and it, like you said, it's like, he's so fluid at climbing.
Ari GrodeLike, you know, the five 10, him climbing a five 10 looks the exact same as climbing a five 12. It's just, he's not moving incredibly quick, but he never stops. And it just all the way up to the top.

(50:44):
Ari GrodeYeah.
Dick and NatalieAll those guys I think what you see about those climbers, and I've seen the pro climbers that I've had the fortune to watch climb, is their footwork is impeccable.
Dick and NatalieI mean, it's just like you never see them scratching the toe scratching to try to get their foot on a hole. They just place it on the hole, just like, oh.

(51:08):
Ari GrodeYeah, they save ah save a lot of money on re-souls, huh?
Dick and NatalieOh. I just had to find a little piece of rubber to stick on the toe my TC pros because they're not in one car. I wish they had they had a blunt nose ah version that has an extra inch of rubber on the nose.
Dick and NatalieAlways wear it out. So are you doing the 12 and the 24 this year, both of you guys?

(51:33):
RobertNo, not this year. We did,
Ari Grodewe We did that. Was that last year we did that?
Robertyeah we did the 36 last year and we did, was the final tally?
Ari GrodeYeah.
RobertWas 109?
Ari GrodeWe tied Jeremy's
Robertnine
Ari Grodeah ah
Robertindividual tread.
Ari Grodetrad trad in the 12 record. We both got 100 trad routes each.
Dick and NatalieOh, nice.
Robertso yeah the day The next day was brutal.
Ari Grodeum And then it was an absolutely pitiful, pathetic attempt at the 24 after that. So I don't know if we'll ever do the 36 again.

(52:00):
RobertYeah.
Ari GrodeAt least I don't know if I will.
RobertI think, I feel like we we did it to our best ability and that's good enough for me.
Ari GrodeYeah.
RobertThat's what I'll say. So I think we're 24 is for now.
Dick and NatalieThat's the same conclusion we came to. We did it first year there was a 12.
RobertYeah.
Dick and NatalieWe did them both.
RobertOkay.
Ari GrodeOkay.
Dick and NatalieAnd yeah, we were like, been there, done that.

(52:20):
Robertthat
Dick and Natalieand And it wasn't horrible doing the 24 because we didn we didn't try hard in the 24, even though we ended up doing okay. But we found out the 12th show was a lot of fun. You know, you don't have to worry about lights.
RobertYeah.
Ari GrodeYeah. Oh, so fun. It was so fun.
Robert12 is a great day of cracking. It's just like a, ah ah just a jam packed mega day.
Dick and NatalieNo lights, no check-ins. You can socialize a lot and everybody yeah everybody has a lighter mood about them.

(52:41):
RobertYeah.
Dick and NatalieAnd I think... That's another thing when you see what what changed. When they made the qualifications, for instance, 100 routes, all of a sudden, people weren't hanging out.
Dick and NatalieThey were getting serious. People were moving fast. That changed a lot. So when you showed up somewhere... You know, first thing you're asking is how many laps. that That's always the first thing you ask, how many laps.

(53:11):
Dick and NatalieBut it used to be, they're sitting there will m there didn't used to be a rule until we put it in. If you're not tied in with your shoes on, you're not in line. That helped.
Ari GrodeYeah.
Dick and NatalieSo people can't say, hey my partner's over going to the bathroom and say, sorry, we're going.
RobertYeah, yeah.
RobertYeah,
Dick and Natalieyou know Or or they they're just sitting around and you show up and they say, well, we're next.
Robertyeah. No.

(53:31):
Dick and NatalieThey say, no, you're not. you don't You're not tied in with your shoes on. And you're not being a jerk.
Robertno
Dick and Natalieyou're just You're just saying, that you know take your rest. We'll be done pretty soon. oh Little things like that help move it along. But any more Most of the people now have serious intentions. They want to come back.
Dick and NatalieAnd to come back, you've got to work hard. And so the weights aren't near as bad. And it's not near as frustrating as it used to be, having people just sitting around. They were just there for the party.

(53:58):
Dick and NatalieAnd they got in They only wanted to do it once. So they didn't care if they were clogging up around. you know they didn't
Ari GrodeYeah, yeah, yeah.
Dick and Natalieknow
Robertah dick you recently mentioned about like one of the biggest tips for horseshoe hell is finding the right partner to climb with obviously you two have both had like been climbing and together for such an extended period of time and like most not most but a lot of climbers don't necessarily get to experience like climbing consistently with the same person for so long like can you talk about how hell has helped like develop your partnership as climbers and like beyond it.

(54:33):
RobertAnd then also like what makes it so successful as well for you guys.
Dick and NatalieWell, okay. Kind of a little story here.
RobertOkay.
Dick and NatalieWe were both married to different people when we first did help.
RobertOh, gotcha.
Dick and NatalieOkay.
Ari GrodeOh.
Dick and NatalieA lot of people we know know that. Okay. But... um It went along that, Natalie ended up getting a divorce. She moved to Arizona and we would still do the 24.

(54:58):
Dick and NatalieAnd then I moved to Vegas and I ended up with a divorce. And we're still doing the 24 together. then Then we started dating. Okay. We knew we were compatible because if you climb with someone doing the 24,
Dick and NatalieI mean, pretty raw sometimes. you know You've seen each other have some pretty hard times. and And you see how supportive you are and you see how um how well you get along.

(55:26):
Dick and Natalieum If you have this, you're understanding when they're having a bad patch or understanding if you're not getting exactly what you want. Plus, you know you're cooperating with each other and and support.
Dick and NatalieAnd it doesn't take very many years of doing the 24 together to to know that your you're a pretty good match. And so you know when when I finally asked her to marry me, we had two weeks from then until we were married in a video in Vegas. And from then on,

(56:01):
Dick and NatalieThat's when we started living in Vegas. And then we were just, our climbing was mainly an awful lot of classic trad routes, multi-pitch trad.
Dick and NatalieThe 24 is a little different for us. That's not our favorite kind of climbing at all. you know But Natalie is super good at that type of endurance. And i I enjoy it well because the software I put into it, I enjoyed supporting the community. and um We just like doing it together because of the people you run into, our friends. We have so many friends down there. and Now, the volunteer group is a whole different group. we're in the vol We volunteer every year for the 24 after doing the 12.

(56:41):
Dick and NatalieSo the last three years, I guess, we've we've done the 12 and the volunteer afterwards. So now you have another whole group of friends.
Dick and Natalieso um Yeah, I think the way it was at the 24, it probably helped our relationship grow for sure. You know, we've seen people break up.

(57:04):
Dick and NatalieWe've seen some things. yeah we see You see people that that we've seen see dressing down their partner in front of everybody, stuff like that.
Dick and NatalieI mean, just just awkward. Like awkward, like you don't want to be there.
Ari GrodeHuh.
Dick and NatalieYou don't want to be there long enough. But I think when it's over, you you find out if there if the partners are still friends. ah Yeah, we I think the 24 had a lot to do with our relationship. And we...

(57:39):
Dick and Natalieyou know like they said it just developed along the way kind kind of we became close friends first let's put it that way you know and uh you can't if you have a partner well you know you got to be good friends in the to compete like that together and come out of it still feeling good good bad or indifferent because we've had some bad years especially when my some of my problems i've had with my spinal cord injury has come up that I just couldn't go, you know? And so you just have to back off and let her keep going. And I had to back off. And those are the years where she understands and I understand, but I still try to support her and she tries to support me.

(58:17):
Dick and NatalieIt's worked out great. so regret um No or no regerts.
Ari Grodeher No regrets. Yeah. So you guys have, ah you know, you've, you've touched on this a little bit, but you know, you've been coming for 20 years or will be 20 years, I guess here ah this year, but you know, what, what's the main thing that's kind of kept you coming back? You know, you just mentioned like, it's not your favorite style of climbing, but like why come back every year?

(58:42):
Dick and NatalieThe people it's, it's our, all of our friends. We see these people once a year and it's like, we just saw them yesterday. i mean, we wouldn't miss it. Even if we were both crippled, we would still go, we would be there, um, to support our friends and to see our friends.
Dick and NatalieUm, it's like, it's like extended family, you know, we, we messaged with them a little bit during the year and, um, It was a a good well ah good number of our friends actually visited us when we were in Vegas. um now Now they visit us for overnight because you know nobody comes to Kansas City to climb. They're usually on their way to somewhere that's actually cool.

(59:23):
Dick and Natalieso But we're right in the middle of this of the country now. So we see we see our friends you know passing through. Yeah, care if you're ever going to the East Coast, like if you're going to the Red or something, let us know. You can stop by and...
Dick and Natalieyou know if you're going yeah Do you live in Boulder?
Ari GrodeI live in Denver, or just just west of Denver.

(59:44):
Dick and NatalieOkay. i you It's a nice stopping point. And we just had some friends here at this past weekend that stopped overnight. And then he went on to Chattanooga. It's a good stopping point.
Ari GrodeOh, cool.
Dick and NatalieHe stopped and spent the night, have some coffee and hang out and go to dinner and then drive the next day. And so we've we've become that, those people. Well, we were those people in Las Vegas.

(01:00:05):
Ari GrodeOkay.
Dick and Nataliewe We really enjoyed having a lot of visitors. It wasn't, you know, um I mean, it wasn't an Airbnb. Nobody paid us to come, but we actually enjoyed having company.
Robertyeah
Dick and NatalieAnd i feel like it, you know, you just, get to have a lot of experience, different experiences with different people, different type of people. Um, I had some friends from, um, when I lived in Arizona that were actually, I'd climbed with them once in Arizona, they were Canadians and they came through. Um, we have friends that brought their family who spoke French and, you know, we had them for awhile. So, uh,

(01:00:46):
Dick and NatalieWe're people, people, people persons, whatever you want to call it. We just like people. So I wordle with jared Jeremy every day. yeah ah
Ari GrodeOh yeah?
RobertNice.
Dick and NatalieYeah, so some of those people, you know, like, you know, I got pretty close with a lot of the people that started it, like Andy and stuff like that when I told them I'd write the software for them. like Because my my job at the time was writing software for managing swim teams. I said, I can modify that to, you know, I've got some of this have already written that, you know, taking the competitors' names in, and I just have to change the way swim meets are scored with the way competition is scored.

(01:01:25):
Dick and NatalieEven the first year that we had it running, Andy came up with my portable up to the crag and I had to make ah a change to the database while he let somebody else belay Natalie.
Ari Grodeyou
Dick and Nataliebut Those are the types of things you remember and and the friends you make.
RobertYeah.
Dick and Nataliean you know it's yeah Some of our best climbing friends are definitely from Arkansas. or we meet in Arkansas, let me put it that way. that Sometimes I don't even know where they're from.

(01:01:57):
Dick and Natalieyou know There's people like a name right now. I don't know where they live, but I know I'm going to see them at the end of September and we'll all be hugging out. And and sometimes they'll move around. You won't even know anything about their lives other than what you see on Facebook or Instagram.
Dick and NatalieThen you find out you know quite a few things change and it's great just catching up. And you know what it is, the vibe down there is incredible. I mean, it's just, even even though we aren't headbangers in the and the dance-offs they have down there in the field.

(01:02:20):
Ari GrodeOh, yeah.
Robertah
Dick and NatalieAlthough we did go down there last year and sit up next to this, day oh Jeremy kind of got me to do that, stand up next to the cage and bounce around for a little for a few minutes.

(01:02:40):
Dick and NatalieThat's always quite a great, actually we do it just go for the beer, that's the truth. I mean, I think
Ari GrodeIt is pretty good.
RobertYeah.
Dick and NatalieThe other draw is just like, that's our climbing home. It's our where we cut our teeth climbing teeth. um You know, we have history there. It's a familiar place. We just like to be there.
Dick and NatalieThere again, I feel like even if even when it's not the 24, we like to go to Arkansas. We like, you know, course we climb, but we also like to hike there. There's just lots of things to do there.

(01:03:12):
Dick and Natalieum And it feels like our home away from home. It's four and a half hours, but it's our local, it's our, what we call our yeah our local crag, as opposed to five miles that it was to Red Rock.
Ari GrodeOkay.
Ari GrodeStill some good sandstone though.
Dick and Natalieoh Oh, yeah, wait we went to Yosemite. We've climbed some ah limestone in in Vegas and ah yo Yosemite granite and, uh-uh, I want sandstone.

(01:03:38):
Ari GrodeYeah.
Dick and NatalieWe're spoiled.
RobertYeah, it's hard to beat the reins for sure.
Ari Grodebut Maybe.
Robertit's a I think it's the closest thing to an outdoor gym I've ever been climbing on.
Dick and NatalieYeah. Oh, oh yeah. Yeah. I think that's what it's like when we get down there, even though I don't mind when Natalie talks about climbing the crappy routes.
Ari Grodebut
Dick and NatalieI mean the crappy sixes and sevens and stuff like that. But once you get up to the nines and stuff like that, even the North 40, they're pretty enjoyable to climb. From nines and up are pretty enjoyable. And you can have a good day. You feel like youve got a decent workout and they aren't as crappy as some of the lower grade routes.

(01:04:14):
Ari GrodeYeah, it'd be kind of funny to, it's funny to think about because there's some routes that are really enjoyable, like to climb. And then there's some routes that are really unenjoyable to climb during hell that, you know, are really enjoyable climbs like ah but Dancing Outlaw, for example, like great, great route, but I hate climbing it during hell.
Dick and Natalieoh Yes. Yeah.
Dick and Nataliewas like, oh, yeah. I don't know how to.
RobertOh,
Ari GrodeYeah.
Robertgot it. Although I think some of that might change a bit because now it's one lap, right? So it's like the ones that were like brutal on that second lap, you don't have to worry as much about, but now it's like the gimmies.

(01:04:35):
Ari Grodeyeah
Dick and NatalieYes.
RobertYou're like, oh man, we only get one lap on that. That's a bummer.
Dick and NatalieYeah. Oh, that's like Webster's. nothing
RobertYeah, yeah.
Ari GrodeYeah.
RobertYou get six laps.
Dick and NatalieWebster's is such a joke.
RobertYou don't have to move. yeah.
Dick and NatalieI mean, I I said, why why isn't oh but why isn't Jihad two routes?

(01:04:58):
Robertyeah
Dick and Natalieyou know yeah If you do the direct start to Jihad, it's like a Boulder problem. But if you do the regular one by starting on learning to fly, you know it's a 10B. I say, come on, Webster's is two grades and it's a one move, one move.
Robertyeah that's three if you do the trad version too you know yeah yeah
Dick and NatalieWhat the hell?
Dick and NatalieThat's true. People have abused the hell out of that. right that that was as always I've been trying to get rid of that. Make it one.

(01:05:26):
Dick and Nataliebut However they want to climb it, just make it one grade. And that's it.
Ari GrodeYeah, that's a funny one. Maybe, ah you know, you mentioned like that moment where Andy had you make a change to the software mid event.
RobertYeah.
Ari GrodeYou know, I'd be curious to hear, do y'all have any like, or both of you have any like favorite moments from hell you'd like to recount?

(01:05:49):
Dick and NatalieI have a favorite moment. i know what it is. Early, i would say in the earlier second, third, maybe fourth year, I can't remember what year it was, but we used to have the award ceremony in the upper level of the barn.
Dick and NatalieI don't know if you've ever been up there. Yeah.

(01:06:09):
Ari GrodeUh, we, the only time I've ever been in the barn was when they did that main event race and they had, yeah, they, you had to go in the barn.
Robertthe obstacle course race.
Ari GrodeYou had to like crawl through that like tunnel system they've got in there.
Dick and NatalieOh, the video box. Okay.
Ari GrodeYeah.
Dick and NatalieSo you've been up there. I mean, it didn't used to be that, the you know, it was just the upper level of a barn a long time.
Ari Grodehuh. Uh huh.
Dick and Nataliethat In fact, at the end of it was like a door that would open, I guess way back in the day, they'd throw hay out of it or something. But anyway, that's where they had the awards.

(01:06:40):
Dick and NatalieAnd what they did was all of these sponsors would donate stuff and they'd put them out on a table. And then Andy would read off the winners and you would just go up and grab whatever you want off the table.
Robertah
Dick and NatalieBut he didn't read them from like, okay, we're going to start with elite and go down. He wanted it to be random because he wanted it to be for every man. Maybe that's one of the reasons why we love this competition so much. I could never win a competition where the hardest climb, the one that can climb the hardest climb wins.

(01:07:15):
Dick and Nataliethis climb this competition is for every every man because there's like a bunch of different ways you can win heck you can win something if you have the best haircut or know whatever so anyway he liked that random thing and uh he called i can't remember i don't even remember who won what but jeremy won something and he was up there perusing the table and uh dick and i won something right after Jeremy and we all, we knew what we wanted and Dick grabbed a backpack and I grabbed a rope and Jer goes, he would, that was what he was deciding between those two things.

(01:07:51):
RobertThis.
Dick and Natalieneed just stop I think, I think I thought for sure she was going to say something else.
Ari GrodeThat's so funny.
Dick and NatalieShe was I stepped in the bed next to Tommy Caldwell. Oh, that was pretty cool too.
Roberta
Dick and NatalieYeah, and into yeah we were in a cabin with one of those lofts with the twin beds up there. And yeah, there were those pretty I was kind of a fan girl. I won't lie.

(01:08:21):
Dick and NatalieYeah. my i
Ari GrodeWho's not of Tommy Caldwell?
RobertProbably the best night's sleep Tommy's ever had.
Dick and Nataliegood It was funny because that year he was on his phone constantly with his now wife all the time. But for me, the year in Natalie won everything, that award ceremony, I sent you a video of that, that award ceremony was, man, couldn't have been better.

(01:08:47):
Dick and NatalieThat was pretty cool. But I also felt good that I was like 60, I don't know, 68 when I won the most five nines. ah And that's after my, injury and and rehab where my first year I was desperate on 5'7".
Dick and NatalieSo i like three or four years later, maybe it was five years later to do that. That was my proudest moment. wow Happiest moment it was when she won every day. That was my day.

(01:09:12):
Robertyeah all good
Dick and Natalieyeah she'll stop Hopefully. Sorry about her. Oh, she stopped.
Dick and NatalieThat was Ozzy? Yeah. We've got two Cairn Terriers, the Toto Dogs, Oz and Munchkin.
Robertyeah nice
Dick and NatalieSo yeah, they're, but yeah, those, of all the things, those as far as performance-wise, we've had,
Ari GrodeAh.

(01:09:43):
Dick and Nataliekind of hard to say other than that. It's just kind of fun. It used to be fun. It'd be great. They used to have arm wrestling up in the loft. They had slacklining, and they had also they had a push-up contest.
Dick and Natalieand Some of those things, there's just too many people, you can't do it anymore. It was kind of fun that way. But the funniest thing about that award ceremony one year was they had all this stuff and everybody picked it up.

(01:10:09):
Dick and NatalieAnd all that was left was like third place wreck. And Amy Johnson walks up to Sarah, oh, we forgot one of the prizes. It was this full-size crash pad. So third place wreck got this giant crash pad that would have been one of the first pick-offs it had was pretty funny.
Roberta
Ari GrodeUh,
RobertThat's awesome.

(01:10:30):
Ari Grodethat's hilarious.
Robertit's awesome
Ari GrodeSo, you know, now that we're coming up on, we've, we've alluded to a lot of the changes they're making this year, you know, the one route, you know, curious, where, where do you think, how do you think the event will progress over the next five or so years?
Dick and NatalieWell, I think it would

(01:10:52):
Dick and NatalieThey're going to have to wait and see how everybody responded to this. I think the the qualification standards are pretty stiff. It'll be interesting how many people re-qualify. I don't think the cycle will be any different. It'll just be like if if it's harder to re-qualify and they and they fine tune those.
Dick and Natalieum I think we're phasing ourselves out, I think. But I know. Every year, but and't know every year People are you know saying, oh, I didn't get in on the lottery. So as long as there's people that aren't getting in on the lottery, there's going to be new. But I do notice every year they say how many people are new.

(01:11:32):
Dick and NatalieAnd it seems like about 50% of the people are new. So we have their they base set of people that are kind of teaching the new people what's going on. And I think after you learn what it's all about, I think Usually you want to do it at least once.
Dick and Natalieoh you know And I've known several volunteers that are volunteering only so that they can get in so they can do it the next year because they've tried in the lottery several times and couldn't get in. ah I hope it stays up as as long as the the ranch keeps supporting it. you know there They've got their business agenda and hopefully it makes money for as long as it makes money for them, I think they'll they'll keep doing it.

(01:12:09):
Dick and NatalieAnd I don't know anything about that part of it. Especially if they start watching ating adding some of these things that they're talking, you know, it would be amazing if you didn't have an e-bike, but you could use a mountain bike during the comp, you know, but then you would go across the canyon real real fast.
RobertYeah,

(01:12:29):
Dick and NatalieThat would make some of those things interesting.
Ari GrodeI
Robertyeah there might be some people that go across the canyon a little too slow though if they're on a mountain bike. you know They might take a couple of spills here and there, so who knows?
Dick and NatalieI've been always worried out there now that they have cows and some other animals, I'd be worried on those mountain bike trails of running into some animal.
Ari Grodewouldn't... Yeah.
Dick and NatalieIt's just, but I'm not a mountain biker. I like to have two intact clavicles. Are you guys mountain bikers?

(01:12:54):
Robertbut i will I will do it in like on certain trips or something like that, but I don't um don't mountain bike regularly.
Ari Grodeand i wouldt yeah
Dick and NatalieNo.
Ari GrodeYeah, same here.
Ari GrodeSame here.
RobertYeah.
Dick and NatalieHopefully it stays the same. as As long as you intend to keep coming, I guess it'll it'll it'll stay high.
RobertYeah, yeah. I mean, it's it's funny, we ah like, I've got some friends here in New York that they used to joke around like, man, Rob never shuts up about horseshoe hell.
Ari GrodeYeah.

(01:13:21):
RobertAnd then they finally came last year and they're like, and they're like, now we don't shut up about horseshoe hell. And like, they love it, like they're hooked.
RobertSo it's like, it's like you said, when you get newbies that are shown the ropes and they like enjoy the experience, like all of a sudden everyone's bought in for for life. So I think it'll keep going for a long time, if I had to guess.
Dick and Natalieyeah we we had We had some friends from Vegas that showed it up at night, like early in the early, like 1 in the morning, maybe 11 at night, something like that, and came to our cabin.

(01:13:52):
Dick and NatalieAnd they'd never been to HCR. And they had all these dreams of what they're going to do Two strong, young climbers. Oh, we're going to climb all these right ten blah, blah, blah, blah. I said, yeah, OK, great.
Dick and NatalieAnd so we gave them a quick walk around before it started. And they crushed. They crushed, they did all these onsite and everything. And at the end I said, well, how'd you like it? He said, well, I don't know, was pretty rough. and And I talked to him later and he said, well, on the way back, we were planning, how are we gonna do a different next year?

(01:14:20):
RobertOh.
Ari GrodeMm-hmm.
Dick and NatalieSo it's kind of like type two fun, then it almost becomes type one fun. You know, it's like, it's like two fun, like, oh man, I don't know, that was really rough.
Ari GrodeYeah.
Dick and Natalieand But you're so happy you're so happy what first when the sun comes up.
Robertoh
Dick and NatalieAnd then you're so happy when you have your beer. Then you're so happy when you eat something good that tastes good. but Those three things, I think. Whenever you watch these shows on TV about survival stuff, and they talk about how good food tastes when they're in that state, I think the 24 puts everybody in that state where you appreciate your sleep, you appreciate your beer, you appreciate yeah you know there're your your pizza when it's over.

(01:15:03):
Dick and NatalieI think
Ari GrodeYeah, that post-competition beer is is maybe the best beer of the year.
Robertyeah The post-competition nap is one thing that i look forward to on my schedule year in and year out as well.
Dick and Nataliei
RobertThat is absolutely exhilarated.
Dick and Nataliei am a hard I have a hard time.
RobertOh
Dick and NatalieI've always had a hard time Well, when I wrote software, which they ran my software for like eight or nine years, um I had to go to work as soon as I was done.

(01:15:28):
Robertah no, that's brutal.
Dick and NatalieBecause i was I was the person that had to deal with any of the problems, so I couldn't take a nap.
RobertYeah,
Robertyeah.
Dick and NatalieBut after after luke took over, I was just so hyped up, I i had a hard time taking a nap. And that looked pretty easy, but I was just kind walking around.
RobertYeah.
RobertYeah.
Dick and NatalieI'd sleep well that night, though.
Ari GrodeYeah, that's a funny comment you made earlier about the ah you know how how you go from suffering mode to what can we do better. the the delta and The delta for Rob and I between when we finish and celebrate to like when we start talking about what we could do better the next year is usually about like two minutes on the walk back down to the to the trading post.

(01:16:09):
Robertyeah
Ari GrodeWe're already like, well, I don't know. We could probably shave a little bit of time if we did this next year.
RobertAnd then without fail, the next, the next year, we're already doing something completely different strategically.
Dick and Natalieyeah you
RobertSo it doesn't even matter. Different goals.
Dick and Natalielike you you you pick up You pick up pointers from let's seeing other people.
RobertYeah.
Dick and NatalieYou say, oh, I never thought about doing that.
Ari GrodeRight, yeah.
Dick and Nataliethat That was a really good idea. you know

(01:16:30):
Robertyeah
Dick and NatalieThere are too many of those aha moments out there, but every once in a while you'll see one and and make note.
Ari Grodeif
Dick and NatalieI think when people started climbing in trail shoes, that was one of them. Like, why?
Ari GrodeYeah, oh, for sure.
Dick and NatalieLet me go see if I can climb with some cruisers on and instead of my TC pros.
Ari GrodeYeah, if you could...
Dick and NatalieOr some different ways people manage their ropes. Like some people had laundry baskets or IKEA bags or, you know, we some of that kind of gave us the idea that why don't we just put it in a tarp and just like, we don't have to keep stuffing it in a backpack that way.
RobertYeah, i brought a

(01:17:07):
Dick and NatalieWe just grab it and we go, we don't have to keep rolling it back up in any perfect way. Also you're, you know, you pull the rope, it's in the tarp, you pull up the tarp, the four corners of the tarp and you go to your next route and it's already laid out.
Dick and NatalieLike you don't have to reflake or you know, so yeah, just little things like that.
Dick and Nataliei think one of the biggest thing for us as far as yeah you don't realize at first, um, doing two laps in a row, each person doing two laps in a row, you don't alternate people that alternate.

(01:17:36):
Dick and NatalieIt wastes so much time unless it's a hard route. There's no reason to alternate. You do two laps.
Ari Grodeyeah
RobertDoesn't matter anymore.
Dick and NatalieYeah, now we're got that's what that's what's so good. Yeah, now all this all these these fine crossover strategies that everybody had. um We're moving to the next route. What difference does it make if you have to untie and retie?
Dick and Nataliere We're going 30 feet to the next route. That's true. Some of those strategies are obsolete now. Yeah, that's true.

(01:18:05):
Ari GrodeHehehehe.
Robertyeah I feel like we just became fluent and then they changed the language on us, but that's part of the fun, right? Figuring it all out.
Dick and NatalieYeah. I think it was good that they changed them myself.
RobertYeah, yeah.
Dick and NatalieI just feel like it's kind of a passing of the torch, so to speak.
RobertA nice little challenge.
Dick and Natalieum You know, Dick's always been the oldest one in the competition. um is that it think, a

(01:18:31):
Dick and Nataliewho am I trying to think of? um Oh, no, they're not in new anywhere close. No, no, no.
RobertWhat about whiskey and tequila?
RobertOkay.
Dick and Natalieah Who am I thinking of? In um from Columbia? Yeah, Carpowitz, Carpowitz, Jim Carpowitz. No, they're 10 years below me. are Are they? Okay, 60. So I'm in my 70s.
Dick and NatalieRight. So even when you were we start when we started you were in your 50s. And you were still the oldest one. Their combined age was what it was their combined age more than our combined age. I've got 16 years on her.

(01:19:01):
Dick and NatalieRob DeCray. Yeah. They were two sixties and we were at the time. Yeah. right That's, that's right. Um, so Dick's always been the oldest one and I've been one of the older ladies, although there have been a few ladies my age or older that have climbed in it. And we just kind of feel like, you know, maybe most everybody else was in their twenties when they started. Now they're having, you know, having kids and all that stuff.

(01:19:30):
Dick and NatalieAnd it's kind of like time to pass the torch to uh,
Dick and Nataliethe the kids that have learned to climb in the gym from the time they were four, and now they're on the climbing team, then they are going to be crushing it. So...
RobertYeah.
Dick and Nataliewell
RobertYeah, there's going to be some, I feel like that just across the board, not to go on too big of a tangent, but it's like this whole year, i feel like has been to like a very, don't like big display of what the the product of gym climbing can lead to.
Ari Grodeyeah

(01:20:03):
Dick and Natalieoh
RobertCause it's like last year was Olympics and then this year is not Olympics.
RobertSo everyone that was training hard their entire life for that is now just unleashed on the world.
Dick and NatalieRight.
RobertAnd it's like, you know, 70s had records like, Brooke rabbit is doing like everybody's just Hamish is going off and it's like, yeah I'm sure somebody like in the next three, four years are going to do something hell that's going to be like mind boggling.
Dick and NatalieWe just see that. um We see the kids that I've been training. you know In the two years, give an example of like one girl, I've had her for two years.

(01:20:35):
Dick and NatalieShe couldn't do any chin-ups at all. Couldn't do one chin-up. Now she cranks off eight on offset with the upper one being a pinch. you know and And she can she can do you know like, she adds 30 pounds and cranks off four or five pull-ups.
Dick and NatalieAnd their finger strength and the stuff they can do the dinos they can do the man, this blows you away. I mean, it's just...

(01:21:00):
Dick and Natalieum I'm glad um I had something to do with some of their progress, but I'm dumbfounded by ah how strong they are and what they can climb at their ages, you know like 11 and 12 years old. It's just, we we have 16 kids on our team.
Dick and NatalieAnd when we show up after our warmup, which is extensive, when we show up down in the bouldering area, it pretty much everybody kind of clears out because they see these kids come in and run up, you know, the V6s and the V8s.

(01:21:30):
Dick and NatalieAnd then pretty soon it's like, hey, but we got the bowling area to ourselves.
Ari GrodeYeah.
RobertYeah, maybe that's the next real change we need to tell Jeremy is like, we need to like up the minimum age requirement to compete in hell just so like we all still have a chance.
Dick and Natalieyeah yeah right now 18 most of the most of the kids on our team. I mean, they're under 16, most of them. under sixteen most of and but One year they did have it where they they had some climbing team show up and that was a disaster.

(01:22:00):
Dick and NatalieThose kids didn't. Oh, man, their parents were bringing them food. They were trading off belayers. They were projecting routes. They were doing everything wrong. They they came for a crying day. Yeah, and so they finally had to say, no, 18.
Dick and Natalieand we just can't We just can't have that happen again. That was a whole disaster.
Robertyeah
Ari GrodeYeah.
RobertI'm sure they also saw some outfits that they probably didn't need to see anytime soon either as well.

(01:22:22):
Dick and NatalieOh, that's the other thing.
RobertSo yeah.
Dick and NatalieIt is not child friendly there at all.
RobertYeah, no, there's a couple.
Dick and NatalieYeah, I would not bring,
RobertYeah.
Dick and Natalieyeah That's another thing. child They'll probably say, okay, boomer, but there's a lot of us i didn' know yeah that I didn't approve of.
RobertYeah, yeah, of course. Yeah.
Dick and NatalieI don't want to look up and see that and at all, especially if there's a little kid next to me. But that's me being an old fuddy-duddy, I guess.

(01:22:45):
Ari GrodeHaha.
Dick and NatalieWell, I'll tell you what really probably makes us realize, i mean, when we're hanging out with our friends, lot of our friends are 20 years younger than us. But I think what makes us realize sometimes how much older we are is the after party and, you know, all of that stuff going on.
Dick and NatalieYou know, they have lights and people are wearing giant heads and bumping into each other. And we're like, let's get some chairs and go to the far part of the ranch and look at stars.

(01:23:15):
Dick and NatalieIt's just not our thing. So we definitely feel our aches.
RobertYeah.
RobertNo, you're certainly not the only ones. I mean, we go in there and we try to go enjoy the concert and like we always get to the edge of the mosh pit and I've always just left scratching my head like, i don't think this this part right here.
Robertdon't think that one's me. I don't know. i don't quite know how to ah attempt to enter that that circle. So I stay out of that one as well.

(01:23:36):
Ari Grodethe
Ari GrodeThe idea of someone stepping on my toe after I've been in climbing shoes for 24 hours is motivation enough.
Dick and NatalieWe used like, used to go to.
Robertyeah
Dick and NatalieThat's right.
RobertThank you.
Dick and NatalieWhen they headed up in the pavilion, it was great for us because we'd go down in the field where they now have the band now. And we'd go down in the middle of that field and and just sit there and look for shooting stars while the noise was up the hill. Now it's it's down there in the field.

(01:24:02):
Dick and NatalieBut I think that's one of the reasons if some people show up, they come for the party atmosphere, and yeah they which is you know more of a festival for some and more of a climbing competition for others, which is what it was always meant to be.
Ari GrodeYeah.
Ari Grodeyeah
RobertWell, this either way, i mean, obviously we all have our thoughts on how much we do or don't enjoy the after party, but I can confidently say like this conversation has been incredibly enjoyable for both Ari and myself.

(01:24:28):
RobertLike this was so fun to sit down and i don't know, like obviously we've climbed together a little bit throughout the years at hell and had little conversations here and there, the wee hours of the night, but getting to like sit down and actually hear it, like start to finish what your experience has been like, it's been awesome.
Dick and NatalieOh,
RobertSo can't thank you guys enough for doing this.
RobertThis is a blast.
Dick and NatalieI appreciate it. Oh, thank you.
Ari GrodeYeah.
Dick and NatalieWe enjoyed it.

(01:24:49):
Ari GrodeYeah. so we're We're stoked to see guys in not too long now, few weeks.
Dick and NatalieOh, for sure. it's true Yep. Part of the family now. yes
RobertYeah, we have a month, right?
RobertYeah, right?
Dick and NatalieAll right. Stop by our cabin. Yeah. ah Do you have a cabin when you're going down there?
RobertAbsolutely.
Dick and Natalieor do you have a place you're staying?
RobertWe stay like five minutes ah away at a cabin.
Dick and NatalieOkay. If you need a bathroom, knock on our door.
Ari GrodeYeah. Like a air but it's like an Airbnb, not too, not too far.
RobertYeah.

(01:25:12):
Robertappreciate Appreciate that.
Dick and NatalieYou know where we are, don't you?
RobertWe might take you up on that.
Dick and NatalieYou know where we are, right?
RobertIf you're behind the volunteers cabin then, that what you're saying?
Dick and Nataliewe're We're next to her you know where the Red Bull 10 We're in the right-hand side of that cabin.
RobertYeah, yeah.
Ari Grodeah Okay, cool.
RobertOkay, amazing.
Dick and NatalieWe're kind of grandfathered into that because of all the software work he did for free. yeah so yeah That was an agreement when they bought the ranch too.
RobertLove that.

(01:25:36):
RobertNice.
Ari GrodeOh yeah?
Dick and NatalieHe would keep the 24 and we got that cabin.
RobertYeah, written in stone, that's awesome.
Dick and NatalieWhat happened was after Tommy stayed with us,
RobertYeah, we've never figured out how to get a cabin on the premises, so we always just try to get the closest Airbnb we can find.
Dick and Natalieah
Robertcause
Dick and Nataliewhat happened was after after tommy stayed with us um he offered to pay us because we we paid for the cabin that year. And then we just kind of approached the Johnsons at the time and said, you know, um at the time I was running the software and that's when they accomplished the cabin. And it's been that way ever since.

(01:26:06):
Dick and NatalieSo it's been good.
RobertLove that.
Dick and NatalieAwesome.
Ari GrodeNice.
RobertAll right, all right, we gotta get on our

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