Chapter 1 The Gym Smearing. That's what the situation called for, and luckily that's what Jake Evans was good at. With the toe of one shoe jammed carefully into a crack in the wall, and both fingers gripping the lip of the shelf above him, he needed only a little friction from his other foot to help move himself upwards. Pretend you're climbing El Capitan in California's Yosemite National Park. Pretend you'll fall to your death if you don't make this move -- now. He pressed the rubbery sole of his free foot against the unforgiving vertical wall, hoping the pressure would smear, or stick, the shoe to the surface for the split second he needed it. Then, elbows stuck out as far as they'd go and back muscles straining, he lifted himself onto the mantel. Breathing hard, he glanced two storeys down.
"You nailed it, Jake! Way to go. Nearly there." That was his blond and curly-haired buddy Peter Montpetit, looking pint-sized from this distance. He was shouting from the gym floor, cheering him on as crowds of mostly teen boys milled about. "Shhhh," Jake imagined his judge scolding Peter. That would be the bearded, clipboard-wielding judge in charge of Jake's fifth climb in today's indoor rock-climbing competition. Yes, Jake was now within feet of the finishing hold, marked brightly with a cross of red tape. Once he reached it, he'd get points for having completed "Problem No.
30," one of the five routes he'd chosen in the open-style division of Seattle's annual Tier Two Climb. Unfortunately, to get there from here required trusting much of his body weight to a one-finger pocket hold, a pretty extreme move. If he slipped, his belayer -- the safety person managing his rope far below -- would instantly tighten his grip and save Jake from injury. But then the judge would mark it as a fall, and all Jake's hard work on this route would count for zero points. Jake couldn't bear the thought. Pretend you're on the face of Mount Everest in a blinding snowstorm, and gripping that last hold is your only hope. Jake grimaced and stepped up to the footholds above the mantel, keeping his heels low to lessen the risk of slipping. Then, like a martial artist in slow motion, he lifted one foot and crossed it over the other, keeping his body and one arm frozen and balanced until his searching fingers reached the awkward hold.
He pressed it as if he were ringing a doorbell in an emergency. On the strength of that pressure, he maneuvered farther upwards until he was clutching the final, bulkier handhold just inches beneath the ceiling. It was the last hold on his 5.11-level climb -- 5.11 on a scale of 5.0 to 5.15. Solid intermediate, and as tough as Jake could handle.
His limbs ached from accomplishing five climbs in a matter of hours, but now he could call it a day. A good day. Pretend you've planted a flag on the peak of the mountain. Smile for the camera. "Okay!" the judge's voice boomed from far below. Relaxing his hold, Jake shouted, "Tension'." The belayer responded by lowering him gradually to the padded gym floor. As he descended, his face to the rafters and harness-secured body hanging almost horizontally mid-air, Jake let his feet walk backwards down the bumpy wall.
He loved that bit. Kind of like being a weightless astronaut or moonwalker. When his feet touched the floor mat, he untied from the rope attached to his harness the strong webbed strapping that was buckled securely around his waist and thighs. "Thanks," he addressed both his belayer and judge as he ran a hand through his sweaty brown hair and collected his newly stamped card, the "passport" of routes he'd chosen and completed. A bruising, congratulatory slap landed across his back. Even before he spun around, he knew who it was. "You looked a little tense up there, old buddy. Like you were on a real mountain or something," Peter declared too l.