Why You Should Always Climb With a Partner Willing to Spit On You

“I’m sorry… did you just say five gallons of olive oil?” I relayed down the line.

Slack-jawed, I stared at my current situation—50 feet off the deck, my knee hopelessly wedged in a 5.11+ offwidth. Mary Eden—famous for her Instagram personality, brutal desert sends, and general aura of “desert goblin”—was dangling on a fixed line, laughing as she tried to free my leg from the gaping maw of a Moab splitter.

“Yeah,” she said between chuckles. “This guy’s knee was so stuck that they had to call SAR. After like eight hours, they finally freed him by dumping gallons of olive oil down his leg.”

Laughter below floated up through the shimmering desert heat, carrying with it mental images of Jason Kruk’s infamous 2010 Squamish incident—hungover, stuck in an offwidth, puking, and ultimately—after about 25 minutes and a bold-brown decision later—shitting his pants. That episode turned “Boogie ’til You Puke” into “Boogie ’til You Poop” and even earned a “web redemption” on the popular Comedy Central series Tosh.0.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t alone in my humiliation. Mary and I were in the middle of teaching a group of 10 people the finer points of offwidth climbing—and here I was, their instructor, offering a live demonstration of “what not to do.”

“I could spit on your leg,” Mary said, giggling like the demented impish fiend that she was.

“If I ever get free,” I threatened, “I will find you, and I will make you pay.”

I tried to stay calm. I did not want this climb to be renamed in my honor with any sort of bodily function reference or some sort of defecation-suit—the court of appeals would just laugh me right out of the room. After 10 minutes of awkward twisting, cursing under my breath, and bargaining with the crack gods, my kneecap Houdini’d past a constriction, freeing me from the sandstone’s iron-maiden-like grip.

With a bruised knee and an even more bruised ego, I sulked and reflected on my latest mess-up, but grateful my knee had ultimately freed its bindings.

But what if it hadn’t? What if the desert demanded more effort? We didn’t have olive oil, but climbers usually have… other resources.

Beer, for one, though not a microbrew; no one is sacrificing a $17 craft hazy IPA for a rescue. Chalk could work, I guess, if you’re into the “dry rub” method, but I thought chalk was supposed to make you stickier?

Duct tape? Only if you’re willing to make things much, much worse before they get better. But let’s be honest, there’s only one tried-and-true combo to free anything from stuck cams to elbows, fingers, knees, and toes from a crack. Beer and spit, which are basically the Swiss Army knife of the dirtbag medicinal arsenal, right up there with 10-cent cans of cat food, or the “walk it off” method.

Moral of the story? Don’t panic, respect the crack’s authority, and always have a partner willing to spit on you.

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