Quietly Crushing

I met Amos during the summer of 2009 while I was working at a small farm outside Palmer Alaska.  I’d caught a ride up to Anchorage with my friend Rich, who had work lined up as a sea kayak guide out of Whittier.  Rich was gracious enough to let me throw my bike on his roof and stuff my bicycle trailer and gear in his trunk.  My original plan was to spend a few weeks seeing the state before riding back down to the states later that summer, but after our road trip through southern Utah and up to Alaska, I found that the meager savings of a ski bum really didn’t go that far.  So faced with a little new found perspective I spent some hours surfing the web and the WWOOF directory trying to line up some work-trade jobs and possibly something with some pay or stipend that could see me through the fall.  After cycling about 1000 miles back and forth from Anchorage to Fairbanks, catching a ride down to Homer, I managed to find some paying work with this small farm located in the Matanuska Susitna Valley.  When I wasn’t pulling weeds or washing vegetables, I hiked the nearby mountains, went for some bike rides, and sampled some of the traditional local harvest, Matanuska Thunderfuck.  That is, until I met Amos.

One day harvesting cherry tomatoes with the owner of the farm I mentioned I was a climber.  She suggested I meet Amos, a part-time employee who decided to move from his home in Ohio to Alaska to be closer to the mountains and climbing.  She didn’t seem to know the next time he’d be working but recommended we should meet. A few more days went buy before I noticed a younger kid working in slickers washing down some veg.  When I met Amos he was weeks out of a cast from a minor soloing accident that left him with a broken foot.  The reason he was only working part time wasn’t because he was too busy climbing, but because he was finishing high school, Amos was only 18.

 

Amos the Kid.

 

Most of us think we’ve got the world pretty well figured out by the time we’re teenagers.  We’re ready to take on the world and prove anyone wrong.  Amos’s was reserved, calm, and introspective, traits I wouldn’t usually associate with a teenager, but after hearing history and getting to know a little bit about him I realized that Amos was different, he had an unapologetic spiritual relationship with the mountains, he was unabashedly obsessed with climbing and the experiences it brought.  After I met Amos, we spent almost every day after work climbing, every weekend driving up to Hatcher’s Pass, Archangle Valley, or Reid Lakes to find some untraveled climb, or create our own.  Amos and I connected in a way that’s deeper then words, deeper then understanding, I don’t mean that in some bromance, hug-it-out way, but that I haven’t yet fully understood the serendipity of our meeting and the fact that through time and distance, our friendship remains and has grown.

 

The next winter, Amos was going to Chamonix to spend the season cutting his alpine climbing teeth.  With money saved from fighting fires he had tickets bought, a room reserved for a couple months, and enough left over for baguettes and a ski pass.  Before he headed over, Amos called me up and asked if I wanted to go climbing in Zion that fall.  Yes, I said, of course. After failed attempts with rental and borrowed cars, we finally solicited a friend of mine to come with us to Zion for a week in November.  Amos flew down from Anchorage and we set off on what would become a fall tradition of ours.  That first year we climbed the Northeast Buttress of Angels landing, and explored the amazing options for cragging all over the park.  The trip ended and Amos returned to Alaska, then went to France for the winter, I skied powder, he climbed ice and shivered.  I haven’t returned to Alaska since, but we’ve continued making our fall pilgrimage to Zion.

 

Amos in Chamonix

 

In the last couple years, my life has changed dramatically, I’ve met a woman I love tremendously, and we’ve begun to craft a life for ourselves that is at once creative, ambitious, adventurous, and satisfying. Liz has joined Amos and I on our last two trips to Zion, and will be again this fall for our fourth year.  Almost two years ago, Liz and I made the difficult but rewarding decision to be car-free.  In the time that’s followed we’ve encountered numerous pitfalls and setbacks, but even more triumphs and successes.  During our successful summer of cycling-powered alpine climbing in the central Cascades, I called Amos often to tell him how awesome it was, how much he would love it.  Amos was stoked and wanted to come down to bike and climb with us, but work and life had different plans for him then.  But once the fall came, Amos flew into Salt Lake City and we headed back to Zion.

 

Crushing on Dark Tower, Zion.

 

Last year we were hoping to cycle down to Zion and climb.  Riding high on our summer’s successes, we were excited to give it a go, but frustrated to find out that work and other time constraints simply meant the days of riding down and back wouldn’t make it reasonable, so being the obsessive climbers we are at heart, we rented a car and drove to Zion.  But for Amos, Zion was only the first leg of his desert adventures last fall.  While in Salt Lake city, we went to the Bicycle Collective and picked him out a beautifully refurbished Gary Fisher, which, along with his B.O.B. trailer,  we broke down and shoved into the trunk of our subcompact rental.  From Zion, Amos pedaled south to Flagstaff Arizona, then after climbing around Flag for a bit, got in a truck with his friend and drove to Potrero Chico, Joshua Tree, and back to Zion.

 

Zion to Flag

Amos’s ability to work hard, save money, and travel to amazing places and climb is inspiring.  Although he wasn’t able to bike down to see us in Leavenworth last summer, the seed had been planted.   So in early August of this year, knowing our annual trip to Zion was only a few months away, he packed up his climbing gear, and set off to meet us in Salt Lake.  55 days, and about 2800 miles later, he made it.  Most every part of his body that touches the bike is sore and bruised, after weeks of regular soaking rain and no tent, his gear had probably an extra 15 pounds of water weight in it, but Amos was as positive and enthusiastic as when I first met him.  Amos is one of those individuals who has the ability to take an idea, and turn it into something amazing.  Our unhinged ramblings and stoned musings on the awesomeness of bicycle touring and a car-free culture made for a stark contrast to Amos’s amazing accomplishment of riding his bike so freaking far.

 

On the Alaska-Canada Highway

 

In the last few months I’ve joined the ranks of smartphone users and instagram members.  While I’m intrigued with the possibilities and prospects of social media, ultimately I see it as a failure for our generation to accept the challenge that the world had given us, and the missed opportunity to use these mediums to help create a more vibrant and sustainable civilization.  I know my window into this world is narrow and obscured, but when I read about our generation’s professional athlete’s commonplace use of planes, helicopters, vehicles, and all the other fossil-fuel based transportation to access our adventure and recreation, I can’t help but feel like we’re blowing it.  This kind of behavior ultimately has no place in our future, and the sooner we accept and embrace that, the sooner we’ll move onto something better. But then, I think about Amos, about the countless other folks out there who are like him, quietly crushing it, traveling across continents, time zones, and entire hemispheres climbing hard and doing it with the style, ethics, and patience of our ecological future.  Cheers to Amos, and may we all live and dream so big.