Tell Me Your Story

John Shaw
My Rock Climbing Experience
Interview and text by Fabricio Valdivieso; edited by Jorge Angel-Mira, assistant Dorota Mroz; art by Blueprinted Education

"I am John Shaw, 49 years old, I was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in the year of 1967, November 6. I grew up in North Vancouver, and I had a lot of outdoor experience there, just had a climbing lens to a lot of this... a lot of playing around as a child building tree forts, riding bikes... the beginning of riding mountain bikes started in Vancouver, hiking and playing sports, hockey, has had a big influence on my life.

How I started getting involved in rock climbing was...ahh, I met a women in Seattle. I got married, we lived in Seattle for four years then we moved down to California, Los Angeles, where I get in the landscape lens itself to summers sports. So in California, either I gonna ended up  surfing or rock climbing. Those were my two choices, or both. I tried surfing a little bit here and there, but I was more naturally gravitated towards rock climbing. First I started out hiking, and then was a small crag on my way back and forth to work in the San Fernando Valley.

In the North Eastern part of San Fernando there is a famous crag called Stoney Point, and a lot of American climbing history comes out of this place. It's a really beautiful place, I described as a ghetto crag, there is a lot of broken beers bottle and graffiti, but at the same time is a very beautiful place.  Around 1999 or 2000, around that time I stated bouldering at Stoney Point.

I started involving in climbing by seeing the rocks at Stoney Point. It was a natural progression. I started hiking in the Hollywood hills, in Pasadena. And at the same time I would driving past these boulders at Stoney Point, and just curiosity took me to this place, and I explored there, scramble at the rocks in my wrestling boots, I had a pair of wrestling boots. My ex-wife was into the movie industry and one of her clients knew about rock climbing and they took me out to the Joshua Tree and it just kind of naturally progressed. The outdoors, hiking and then climbing, all, becomes one, there is mountain climbing, rock climbing, bouldering, everything was there, it was a natural progression. I naturally gravitated towards it. It chose me as soon as I started climbing at a young age, I started climbing fences when I was just three years old in Prince George, I broke my arm doing that, so that was my first accident."

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The Equipment

"For your basic rock climbing you gonna have a harness and your main equipment is your rock climbing shoes, which have rubber soles on them, so you can stick to the rock better. If you're not rock climbing your going to have hiking boots and your harness is your main and most safest piece of your equipment is your rope and a helmet. These are some of the pieces you will get but if you are going to start bouldering you just need a pair of hiking shoes. And after that as you progress you're going to get more equipment, you're gonna get a harness, you're going to get a rope, then you're going to get draws, and umm... all the stuff to play with."

Choosing a place, choosing a rock
"You can find good places in guide books in your area. After that I would be looking at the lines on the rock, what attracts me... like if there is crack;  there might be a natural line up the rock. Or what attracts me is bouldering type of climbs that are overhanging with big holes and that you have to challenge yourself  to make moves on. and just, you look at the beauty of the lines and the beauty of the rock too as well. There are certain rocks climbs that call to you saying “come to climb me,ˮ and you go and climb it.

The two best places to climb in Canada, hands down, are Squamish and Penticton. Squamish has absolutely everying, they have bouldering, big wall climbing and sport wall climbing. But, I would say in Penticton and this is where I said the best sport climbing in Canada is in Penticton, BC. Sport climbing is not traditional climbing."    

Rock climbing is classified as an extreme sport.
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"I think in order to be a good to great climber, you need to be climbing like all the time; you know, five times a week at least, and for hours on end. But that being said a person working can go into a climbing gym and climb three times a week for an hour and get really good at as well. So, the sport changes with the gyms. Everything depends of your situation at the time of your life.

I played Junior A hockey when I was 17, 18, 19 at a very high level, but the feeling that you can get rock climbing is quite exponentially better than a team sport, or any other sport. I think because you are using a technique, your mind and your body, all in one, you are solving puzzles when you are up on the rock, exerting yourself. The challenges against nature is not in a controlled environment. To me it is much more rewarding than any other sport. I don't even know if you can define it as an sport.

I started out bouldering, and climbing and at this point in my life I have come back to where I started and now am more into bouldering. I do climb on a rope once in a while in the summer, like maybe once every two weeks on an easier rock. I think is mostly, believe it or not, climbing without a rope is safer, but this is at a bouldering level, this is not rock climbing, and I don't advocate free soloing. I think this is hyped up, and the facts are the fifty percent of the people that they grow up and rope solo and they do it as a sort of the career, they end up dead. So I am not an advocate of rope soloing. But I am advocate at bouldering, and for me I feel this is a safe place, and at the same time it is at the process at my mind and the hardness of the routes is more challenging than any rock climbing I've done before. So it is where I wanna be right now."

"There is also something that happen out of the bluffs a couple of years ago, and I was bouldering at the time. I came back from a bouldering in Squamish, and, when I was a way out of the bluff there was a guy up from Washington who fell to his death at the bluff. I think this impacted to me, makes me gave second thoughts about bigger longer routes. I definitely don't recommend free soloing for any soul. The damage that that can do to a person is too much, its not worth it. It's either death or excruciating pain, the loss of limbs, the loss is too big, the pain is too great, and is not worth it."

Overcoming fear

"In rock climbing, when you higher up, there's just fear of heights. I think there is a place where you have to get into a zone, and that comes back sports too. Its gonna be in focus, and even know you are high, you have to kind a think in a box, and just kind a look it the next hole or the hole that you are holding, so is one little thing at a time, and concentrate on that “box,ˮ maybe a box of eight to ten feet that you're traveling with in on the rocks and just stay keeping your mind focus on that. I would said just sometimes I'm upon the wall like just telling myself to remain calm and to concentrate on my breathing, and remaining positive and telling myself that I can do this. Again there is fear on the boulders that maybe a little higher or the move is a little bit harder, but my fear is kind of more overtaken by focus on what I doing at the time, bearing down and using all my strength, and persevering in get through the moves and knowing that I am in a lower boulder, that if I fall I not gonna die, and I might injure myself, and this should be part of what is accepted in the climbing, I mean, I have broken my leg climbing, and other people have done this bouldering. A lot of people get judgemental, but I think this also happen in other sports: in hockey there are broken legs, arms, fingers and teeth, that those are accepted facts. I think there needs to be a bit of more acceptance of injuries in rock climbing, is an extreme sport, is dangerous. But here, death can also be part of it, so we should mitigate the causes of risk."      

The accident in Skaha Bluff
"So, on June 21, 2010, I had made my way up on my mountain bike, and I met a couple from Victoria. I made a bad decision not to climb with them, because I previously the day before I climbed these routes with a new friend that I met, Wolf and his friend Maria."

"That day I climbed three easy routes in that place.  At that point, I was climbing at free soloing. I was in an excellent mode that day, I was just having fun, but I made a poor decision in not climbing with the rope, and free soloing, which I regret.

After I while, I decided to climb one more again, although I started to get tired when I was above the tree. I figured to be forty or fifty feet high, it's slab, and I shouldn't been free soloing on slab."

"Then... my foot slipped...

I slipped down the rock, and I hit my leg on the ledge, and my leg popped up... and then my head said “your leg is brokenˮ. It all happened very fast. First, my finger were scraping on the rock, peeling skin off my hands (pause)... and in one point I hadn't stopped and I kept sliding down, and I flipped out on my back, and I got very hurt at that time. And then I was alone in the woods with a bad injury."

"At that point I was on the ground, and clearly on my own.  Thankfully I had some supplies with me from my rock climbing gear. Some slings, and lit of bit of first aid. At this point my plan was try to get back on my bike, but... I couldn't get off the ground.  I tried to stand up, and I tried to grab my bike... I tried to stand up on my bike. I was crawling  around the ground.

I did self rescue, which I did a tourniquet on my leg to stop the bleeding, that was with the slings, and I wrapped my leg with my shirt to stop the bleeding where my foot was turned the opposite direction of my leg. And basically, I tied my foot back on my leg. And then I started screaming for help. This went on probably for fifteen to thirty minutes, and then some kids walked by, and I just waited for them, and they were astounded, and I told them that I needed help. They really didn't know what was going on, and then there moms came walking through and again I said I really need some help. One of the women came to me and started doing a lit of bit of first aid. The other women phoned the 911, and after that the BC ambulance service came, paramedics came, and started also doing first aid on me.

At this point I was getting into some of the most painful things that can happen to a human being. It was like they were twisting my leg to put it back in place. The one paramedic couldn't  look. He had to go, he had to turn it around, he couldn't look at this point what was going on. And I was also not allow to eat food, though I was hungry and hot. I was only allow to drink water and there was no pain medication involved in this whole situation. I think at one point they gave me oxygen. That was all I was allowed to have.

Then, Penticton Search & Rescue came and got me, and they put me on the stretcher through the helicopter leaving the place."

Afterward
"My recovery took a long time. It was a long complicated process. It started with thoughts of what I physically needed to do to get better. I set my mind on doing that. Doing physiotherapy. I had little incremental goals that I would look at. I just had little goals while I was waiting, and maybe I just wanted to get back to climb or hike. I didn't even know if I would be climbing again.
 
I got to go swimming, I started swimming, which was really good for my leg. When I made it to swimming, I couldn't wait to go biking again, and I set my mind to that, and in the mean time I went to lift weights with every other muscle of my body, and I became stronger. All my muscle became stronger, and other areas, except  for my left ankle that was weaker these days, but I became a better climber.

"One day, I remember listening to my IPod and walking around the baseball field. That was a great moment because I was actually walking again, to go hiking. I then went back rock climbing, but some of my therapy helped me particularly, art therapy. I made up little montages of pictures of healthy cells, of my bones, visualizing myself swimming. There was a lot of visual art, and art work included in my recovery. That was a visualization of pretty good goals, and then from there I was talking to a psychologists for years, and doing art work on my own, and doing something besides rock climbing. But in the same period I started rock climbing again. I started doing easy climbing. I did a lot of easy climbing, getting up and down the rock into an easy cliff, and that is how I started again, and that is how I recovered.

Years later I climbed harder than I did before my accident. I said, that was a pretty good recovery."

Our lesson
"We live in a society that is all about safety, we are all worried about taking our children to school; but accidents are part of the society, are part of human contact, part of humans. People makes mistakes, people run lights on a cross walk, and accidents happen, is just part of what we have to deal with. One thing I would say is that carry  a cell phone even in the woods, that is part of being prepared."                  

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