Dear Red Rock - Red Rock, NV - April, 2013 ("Crimson Chrysalis" and "Epinephrine")

Dear Red Rock,

    I apologize for this belated thank-you, I should have written earlier. I have immensely enjoyed getting to know you, and trust this is merely the inception of a long and fructuous friendship. To be honest, and I hope you don't mind me saying so, I was not expecting to be won over so completely or quickly. Long have I loved the mountains: the bare-boned Tetons whose spine I have crawled, the local range whose flank I call home and whose buttresses are my weekly escape from work and worry, the long scar of the Sierra Nevadas, and the prolific, precipitous peaks of Colorado.

   Though our first encounter was one of chance, having made your acquaintance I eagerly took the next opportunity to return and plumb your heights as you proved to be as interesting, enigmatic, and beautiful as the alpine geographies I have come, in part, to rely upon for my sense of place in the world. You'll excuse my candor, I hope, but I discovered in your arid austerity a quality that my human-privileged vocabulary  is compelled to call kindness. I don't know what word or symbol more appropriate to your sphere might communicate better the sentiment I'm struggling to express, but I hope this missive of sorts can flesh out, in a way you can appreciate, my deep affection.

    Your birth and maturation have been subjects of geologic scrutiny for ages and an impersonal review of your most intimate qualities can be had by even the mildly curious. Again, excuse my human bias, but out of a desire to touch a loneliness I might feel in your situation, I offer a more intimate appraisal, to celebrate you beyond the mere ego of my own exploits, but still within the language of my personal experience, for the selfless (ha!) good you have done me. Allow me to elaborate.

    Two features of your sand-scape are primarily responsible for these sentiments I'm struggling to communicate - first, an inconspicuous sub-peak of Rainbow Mountain known as Cloud Tower, and second, the impressive Black Velvet Peak.

photo: Jake Moon - we climbed a route up this tower known as "Crimson Chrysalis

photo: Jake Moon - we climbed a route up this proud mountain known as "Epinephrine"

     You have a long memory - eons of the earth's heavings and ho'ings are recorded in your sandstone sutures. I wonder, do you remember the morning of April 11th? My climbing partner and I had woken early, before sunrise, to climb a long route up Cloud Tower known as "Crimson Chyrsalis."  As we trekked in to Juniper Canyon, the dark fabric of space was torn by the morning's first daggers of sunlight.

    Such a sight I have rarely had the good fortune of witnessing. You were resplendently sonorous - as the high brass of dawn sounded across the Great Basin in incandescent notes of yellow and orange, the light refracted off the faces of your high summits in baritone shades of rose. I was transfixed by the intertwining notes that stirred something like nationalism in my breast, and I loved you fiercely.

Sunrise at Red Rock, looking east (4.11.13)

photo: Jake Moon - Sunrise at Red Rock, looking west (4.11.13)

     Is it fair to speak of your physiology? The heart is my center - the organ that transmits my life's blood and the poetic center of feeling and intuition. If I had to identify such a center for you, I might point to plates that shift beneath you, evidenced by the escarpments in your canyons. My heart beats, yours shimmies and shakes. If poetry is the language of the heart, mountains are the poetry of plate tectonics.

    That morning, trailed by the fading notes of dawn's rousing anthem, we came to stand beneath your tower that we would spend the day scaling. Our path of ascent would be that long, dark crack that runs up your arm, aged and weathered, like a varicose vein.

photo: Jake Moon - at the base of Cloud Tower. "Crimson Chrysalis," our
route up, ascends the prominent crack just shy of center that disappears into the dark varnish
above.

     I felt trepidation in those initial minutes as I ran my eyes up the steep muscle of your physique, that cracked, piebald face and your darkly-varnished, brooding brow.

     While I don't wish you to feel any undue concern for me, you have your own to look after - both of the prickled and scaled variety, all of whom you manage to feed on meager alimony - I want you to know that I have been as of late heavy with an anemic ennui that is the result of a static life, and the attendant uncertainty in how to properly dispose of this weight. Such things can greatly dull one's senses, and colors memory in listless, runny tones. At the time of our ascent, as well as a few weeks later when we climbed Black Velvet Peak via a route named "Epinephrine," I was particularly absorbed by disparaging thoughts. 

photo: Jake Moon - the "prickled variety"...

...and the "scaled variety" (chuckwalla) 

    Wouldn't you believe, and I tell you honestly--not to win your favor by flattery, your landscape that stores earth's memory took this additional weight from me? Did you notice the gain as you sapped both my strength and cynicism? Grace for grace -- I left a lot of sweat and a little blood smeared along that thin line, though if you look for it now I'm sure it's already washed away or replaced by those of others. Landscape has long been, for me and I suspect many others, a receptacle for memory. Finite minds cannot store much in great detail, but a mountain, a desert landscape, can prompt one to remember. 

    Your age-lines, by the way, are beautiful to me; it has been by way of the marks of your mortality that I came to know you, and our conversations have given me further reason to love the world and my humble place within it. As we climbed the lower pitches of Crimson Chrysalis, I forgot my own trifling woes as we pieced together our steep passage, finding no adequate rebuttal for your breathtaking arguments to be of good cheer and grateful disposition.

 

photo: Jake Moon - High up on Crimson Chrysalis

Jake Moon, loving the incredible holds formed by the patina.

   

     That sandstone! After the crack peters out in the upper reaches of Cloud Tower, where your brow is covered in a dark, blistered patina, we no longer twisted hands and feet into collapsed seams but pinched and balanced on the sharp edges of that varnish. For me and my partner the beauty of this tower, the canyon, and the entire preserve combined with the drama of the climb, both the fear and adrenaline, provided a powerful experience as cleansing and rejuvenating as a summer thunderstorm. 

photo: Jake Moon - on the upper pitches of Crimson Chrysalis

     

photo: Jake Moon - an awesome section of the 2nd pitch.

     As we stood on the summit, know that I felt no belittling feeling of conquest (god knows if I were to approach some of your proudest faces, or even try and spend a week in your lap on your own terms I would quickly concede your superior strength or get severely injured) - only gratitude for the permission given to stand at your shoulder and experience for a moment a fleeting exaltation. You may find my attempts to humanize you comical. I know you are none of these things. Think of these thoughs as another layer of varnish over your sandstone, not plastered on by the desert, but by memory, a kind of sedimentation of meaning.

    I was tired by the end of the day. We had hoped to tackle an even longer route, "Epinephrine," but it would be an even longer day and a more taxing climb and we opted for an easier day and to save that route for another trip. I thought maybe I wouldn't feel the need to see you again for a long time - it is a long drive after all, and the geography within a few minutes of my home is top-notch - but after a few days I missed you more than I thought I would have, and I began to see the deep impression you'd made on me.

    My partner has dreamed of you for some time now. He was eager to return. It took a few days of being back home, a few showers to completely wash the grit out of my scraped knuckles and the aches from legs and arms, before I finally realized that tiredness had bloomed, like your ornery cacti, into a kind of devotion.

   A week later we again were quickly covering the 400 miles to again take advantage of your hospitality. The feature we were fixed on scaling, Black Velvet Peak (and particularly the route, "Epinephrine," that ascends it) is one for which you are widely lauded.

   Maybe it is because human memory and particularly human resolve is weak and requires a constant shoring up that I think of returning to you again and again, but I think this most recent trip will be my last for the year, unfortunately. But what a farewell you gave!

  So we crawled back, driving over 440 miles south on the I-15 for a single day of climbing. The familiar drive through the Strip, its sharp, steel towers, the crowds of torpid vacationers and weekenders staring mute at gyrating panels, buffeted by an unremitting bleep-ding-ringing and flashing lights and enough liquor dispensed by buxom cocktail waitresses to float a yacht and sail it off the edge of consciousness. The Strip is  the final dying moments of a bad seizure.

   And you, just beyond. As Vegas is reduced to an indefinite incandescence behind us and your soft walls rise before us, visible even in the dark, I feel as if the desert rose you up from its planar basins to keep militant watch over the city you border, to hold this dissipation in check, let it not sour the land nor its dependents with its spurious, saturated excess.

   Develop no further, water-mongers and steel-worshipers, herein lie cacti, lizards, and other sanctities.

Blooming cactus high on "Epinephrine" on Black Velvet Peak.

     I stood in one of your many stone-tossed river beds, soaring sandstone monoliths before and behind, my partner uncoiling the rope and sorting our gear. The broad north face of Black Velvet Peak was bisected by the fading demarcation of night and day, the stone on the upper pitches glowing  a warm orange as we stood in chilly shadow.

 

photo: Jake Moon - looking up "Epinephrine" on Black Velvet.

photo: Jake Moon - me leading the first pitch that ends at the beginning of the infamous chimney pitches.

   
     To be truly loved is a terrible thing; it is a call to bear the ponderous yoke of memory, and to shoulder the inexhaustible wear of association. To love truly is essential, as its machinations serve as sieve by which the trauma of memory is sifted from meaning.

     Landscape, and I address you now, specifically, is not free of this yoke. Women and men, especially if they love the stories of their origin - both ancestral and celestial - love landscape as fiercely as kin, and often the two become alloyed. My writing to you is not a futile exercise. Though the complex calculations by which symbols transport meaning between two beings is perhaps not given to men and mountains (or women!) I feel you respond to my proffering in the abatement of memory's inflammation; in its place I find story and purpose.

photo: Jake Moon - finishing the second pitch, about to
enter the real business of the climbs, the infamous
chimney pitches.

 

  The canyon floor, with each pull upwards, focused into a shrinking center as its margins were crowded by an expanding view. Jake and I moved towards an up-turned corridor, vertical passage up great slabs of slick sandstone that seemed to form your open esophagus -- how appropriate then, that here you spake to me the loudest!

   

photo: Jake Moon - approaching the chimney on Epinephrine

 
     Climbing up initial plates, stacked vertically back to back between the outermost slab and the main wall of the mountain the climbing was relatively easy. Above, however, lay the darkness and the smooth rock I would ascend by applying pressure to both sides of the featureless shaft. As the plates petered out my feet moved out from beneath me and came up even with my waist as I sort of sat - hanging in the air with my back being forced into the wall behind me by my legs. My arms splayed to my sides, hands pushing down, I began to make my way up. At first the movements were easy, but the strain of applying constant pressure and the increasing distance from the last perch of rock beneath my feet began to wear at my mental fortitude.

    Sweat poured down my brow. Higher I went, facing a smooth slab, my feet pushing against it, my back to the other, compressed. No ground beneath my feet, only the gaping throat above and below. Cracks deep in the chimney provided occasional placements for gear.

photo: Jake Moon -click the photo to enlarge and you'll see me high up
in the steep chimney.

Jake (barely visible way down low in the chimney--click to enlarge a bit), following the first chimney pitch - this gives you somewhat of a sense of the incredible length of the chimney - and this is just the first section.

Jake, hanging it out.

 Everything disappeared. I was entombed, and with my interment thought vanished in the low chant of my hands, feet and back:

  don't fall don't slip don't fall don't slip don't fall don't slip 

My heartbeat matched the tempo of my chant and I moved and anxiety became kinesis. 

And there it is, you see. The stress of work and immobility - I sweat it out and left it in that long, hollow reach. Now when I revisit those old haunts of a familiar ennui - work, school, relationships, the future - instead of that heavy settling that sags tendon and sinew and I remember the touch of cool, tawny stone on my hands and the pressure of the air and how it tastes in my lungs and the firing of muscle that moves and does not fail in a setting large enough to take all of that other and to guard it with my own fear that now more closely resembles hope than cynicism. 

photo: Jake Moon

photo: Jake Moon - exiting the final chimney pitch

photo: Jake Moon - nearing the top of Epinephrine

And so we move, and as we do our histories and the weight of having to remember it all is lost on the rock, in its shadowy recesses and across broad faces that hide both light and pain in their dark fissures. 

Jake, high on Epineprine.

Until you're all that's left, that is, until there is only stone and desert and the joy of being there. Dehydrated and hungry, fingers bloodied, toes sore. After the drama is over and I'm back at my job and worried about school and the economy and money these new memories shore up old weaknesses - that familiar heavy settling - and it is your beauty that caulks the cracks.

View from near the top of Black Velvet Peak - Red Rock in all its beauty (just one small view of it, it extends much further behind me, broken up into several major canyons and peaks)

photo: Jake Moon

photo: Jake Moon - an exposed scramble over to the shoulder of the upper face that will take us to the summit

and up the final bit of ridgeline to the summit

And not only. The ties of kin and friendship begin to resemble geologic sedimentation the more I think of you. It is only fair - if you are yoked to me, that I should be yoked to you. When those affections for family and friend stir, it is also you I see in a reverse transposition.

photo: Jake Moon - ringtial

Continue on, dear steward of chuckwalla and ringtail, sun and storm, stone and water. Tend to the migrant colors which you shepherd in greens and reds through your low brush and flowering cacti, continue the mural painted in thick varnish high on your escarpments as you always have and always will, reminded or no. To those who seek respite in your carved canyons, or on any of your many precipitous faces, may you ever ease in your natural rounds the reaching ache of our estrangements.

Love,
    Stoneheart

photo: Jake Moon - Black Velvet Peak profiled in the background. Descending from our climb of "Epinephrine"

...and a happy Mother's Day to the woman who taught me to speak, read, write, and to value my own judgment.

 

    

"Stolen Chimney," Ancient Art - Fisher Towers, Moab, UT - March 20, 2013

"If something's low, I wanna put a little high on it/When something's lost, I wanna fight to get it back again"

Pearl Jam - "The Fixer" (from the album "Backspacer")

As the car slows to a halt an orange cloud unfurls from beneath its grill like steam and snot from a snorting bull. Ahead of us rise tattering mud castles with ribbed walls, capped by twirled spires. Looking up at these formations I feel as if we've been sucked into an eddy in time.

Climbing in the Fisher Towers began in the early 1960's; it was one of the first climbing areas to be developed in the greater Canyonlands region, attracting climbers with its strange, gothic formations. In the late 1950's a climber/geologist by the name of Huntely Ingalls, while on a geologic survey for the government, first encountered the area and was enthralled by a formation one of his climbing partners would later dub "The Titan." He brought pictures back with him to Colorado, where he drummed up interest among a few partners in climbing the formation. Eventually sponsored by National Geographic, he came with hammers and pitons (and big wall climbing techniques being developed at the time in Yosemite) to pound his way up the behemoth - the tallest standing tower in the US. He never came back to climb the other towers, though he did make ascents outside of the Fishers in and around Moab (such as Castleton, see Kor-Ingalls).

photo: Jake Moon - The Titan is the tower in the background on the right with the cocked summit. Ancient Art is the small needle that pokes up right in between the 2nd and 3rd major towers, counting left from The Titan (being the 1st) on the right.

While these towers seems to be comprised entirely of mudstone similar to the friable mass found on the Maroon Bells in CO, the mud, at least according to what I've been able to glean from various articles, is more of a stucco-veneer over the more durable, but still soft, Cutler Group sandstone (Permian age) that is prone to erosion and capped by younger sandstone from the more resilient Moenkopi Formation (Triassic period).

Only about a mile separated our parked car from the base of the climb, and in about 250 feet from the base of the first pitch we'd ascend millions and millions of years' worth of mineral deposits.

Jake Moon looking up at a tower called "Ancient Art." Along the ridge of the formation to the left, Ancient Art is last and tallest of the several sand/mudstone minarets.

A view of the route:

Our line of ascent - "Stolen Chimney," Ancient Art - if you click the photo to
enlarge you can see  a climber starting the final tower.

Quite literally, then, as Jake and I roped up, slipped on our harnesses and chalked our hands, we stood in the middle of human and geologic history which twist round each other like the phosphate strands of a DNA double helix. Like Huntley Ingalls over 50 years before us, we'd arrived to climb the base-rungs between, on the one hand held rapt by this "ancient art" wrought by time and element, on the other indebted to the first geologists and climbers that had reconnoitered the area, named it - which, as important as its geographic location gave it social prominence - and then climbed it. 

It is not so far off, to see the twisting geologic record which both encapsulates and intertwines human history as part of our DNA -- as Chief Seattle said in an oft-quoted speech given in 1854 during treaty negotiations with the very people that would plunder the land, "The earth does not belong to us. We belong to the earth." From its materials we arose, following the lead of the standing stone towers whose prominence predated our slow struggle to stand upright. At this moment, riding the crest of both histories, Jake hopped up the first initial blobs of sandstone on the first pitch, making his way to a rounded chute, smooth and worn.

Jake sending the first pitch of "Stolen Chimney" on Ancient Art in the Fisher Towers

I have often thought of a quote, and probably plagiarized it unthinkingly numerous times in various posts, by the evolutionary biologist Julian Huxley, "As a result of a thousand million years of evolution, the universe is becoming conscious of itself, able to understand something of its past history and its possible future. The cosmic self-awareness is being realized in one tiny fragment of the universe -- a few of us human beings." Is not climbing, then, a kind of naturalistic worship? If the deist seeks to admire the beauty of god by hymn and verse, pitch by pitch are we not praising our parent materials?

 And if we are the universe becoming conscious of itself, is there a more beautiful image than that of the inscrutable depths of time and inimitable space, reaching through a mortally fragile, incomparably young and  newly conscious extension of their own material to examine its own beauty, to feel and explore itself for the first time, and finally, seeing its visage through the climber's eyes, realizing by the spark of delight in this young thing's heart that it is beautiful and loved?

-----------------

Jake frees the tricky, slick rock and then belays me up to his ledge just below the chimney after which the route is named. The hollow tube leads like a secret passage to the obscured rampart above. After I've taken the gear I place one foot against one wall of the chimney and my other against its opposite and shuffle my way up the half-tunnel, traveling relatively quickly up walls that required more time to form than the collective span of human history can claim taken together.

photo: Jake Moon - me leading the chimney pitch

photo: Jake Moon - me leading the chimney pitch

After bending, pressing, and twisting my way up about 90 ft I pull out of the mud chimney to a ledge on my right. I set up an anchor and belay Jake as he climbs up towards me, repeating the same upward travel through an enduring monument to long-lost landscapes.

After the chimney a short, difficult section of climbing separated us from the final walk to the corkscrew-tower which has made this climb so famous. Jake impressively (for our experience level) climbs the short section of tricky 5.10 without aiding and again belays me up to our final pitch.

Jake leading the penultimate pitch.

photo: Jake Moon, a look down the climb and into the chimney below as I follow Jake's lead.

We stand high above the ruddy floor below on a thin plank of soft, granular stone, with such expansive views of the desert that my lungs suddenly seem liable to pop, there not being enough protection between the small, thin sacs and the enormous volume of uninterrupted sky that is rushing in to fill them.

It's my lead. I consider the narrow walkway that just barely interrupts the surrounding null-space and my heart flutters. I begin walking, taking small, quick steps as the plank narrows and slopes away at both ends, barely providing a wide enough platform of resistance against gravity's silent sucking as to allow horizontal passage. As I shuffle across this smallest of meager portals, my heart's rhythm sharpenens from its round thuds into quick, staccato jumps.

photo: Jake Moon - me making the walk

Jake, who also climbed this final pitch on lead, walking the runway.

I commit to the narrowest section with the biggest exposure, falling forward onto outstretched hands as I complete the walk, gripping both sides of a protruding tongue that reaches out from the base of the final tower. I remove a draw from my harness and sling it around the tongue, clipping the rope to secure myself against the smallest of eventualities, giving me some peace of mind as I literally jump, weightless for a moment as I transfer the pull of my body from my legs to my shoulders and hands. I lean forward as I do so that my feet swing slightly out from under me and back, taunting an astronaut's expanse of space like a matador before a flushed and disgruntled bull.

photo: Jake Moon - Me getting onto the final tower

Getting onto my feet I then clip the bolt that is up and to my right, then feel around for the proper sequence of movements that will get me up and around the corkscrew.

photo: Jake Moon

I climb into a squatting position, my knees forced beneath a shelf of stone that I have to carefully, awkwardly extricate myself from as I reach to my right and up. I pull across the face, extending out from my cramped position and moving onto a small, slightly sloping ledge so that I'm now situated on the opposite side of the tower. I'm past the crux; the climbing eases up from there. Soon I'm clipping in to the webbing slung around the cap of the corkscrew and getting to my feet atop the tiny, slanted summit.

photo: Jake Moon - Me on the summit of Ancient Art

Standing on the small platform, barely big enough for one person, I carefully center my weight on uneven feet before allowing myself to swivel on my hips and survey my surroundings. It's a wild, full-blooded moment and I savor it from atop my stolen perch for a few minutes.

Afterwards I rappelled down and reversed the walk, pulling the ropes when I got back to Jake and the anchor so that he could also lead the final pitch (experiencing a climb on belay vs. leading it is really, really different - you lose a lot of the raw, visceral energy when you have the mental and physical security of a top-rope).

Jake doing his best impression of the karate-kid.

Within the human spirit of rugged individualism something priceless is lost to the arrogance and courageous audacity that both settled the west and made our nation great: a sense of interconnectedness and dependence on the material world we erroneously believe we command. This primal intuition is buried low beneath steel cities and the fat girth of modern culture. One of the healthiest things climbing and mountaineering have done for me is to disinter that feeling and restore a sense of my deeper, natural humanity (in the sense of its connection to the non-human world). 

Again, to quote Chief Seattle, "All things share the same breath - the beast, the tree, the man. The air shares its spirit with all the life it supports." There is a kind of permeability I feel in these high places, as though my thinking retains clarity but the boundaries of my body begin to fade into the air and stone around me. As Jake and I rappel the route the moment recedes with the adrenaline that washed my brain in its heady cocktail, but  the fact of my all-belonging is now lodged in my memory like the small pebbles, a billion years old, that lie encapsulated in conglomerate layers of rock in the Fisher Towers.

These pebbles are remnants of a landscape long passed, bits of debris transported by vanished rivers from a highland in western Colorado and eastern Utah that no longer exists, deposited here in the sediment. Though this moment will pass and most of its finer details I'll forget, I'll carry these pebbles from the past with me into the future, ciphers for decryption by which to extract meaning from the puzzles we all, regardless of religious and scientific inclinations, come up against, protection should we fall.

A Brief, Non-Climber's Guide to "Trad" Gear and How It's Used: Cams, Nuts, and Anchors

***This post is not intended to instruct how to safely use rock climbing equipment. It is also not a history of rock climbing equipment or an explanation of the mechanics of why it works. This is, simply, a guide to help readers unfamiliar with the terminology and the gear visualize what it is I'm talking about in my trip reports.

******If you ARE a climber looking for a "how to" guide that will teach you not just what trad gear is but also how to safely use it, I highly recommend this book by John Long.

For friends and family that don't climb, I'll explain with pictures a couple key concepts that might help you to understand what it is I'm talking about when I mention:

-Cams (and "placing" cams)
-Draws (and "clipping" draws)
-Anchors (and "building" anchors)
-Nuts (and "placing" nuts)

Also, when I talk about "trad" climbing I'm distinguishing what I do from "sport" climbing. An excellent explanation of the difference can be found here.

To quote the article,

"...trad climbing is a style of rock climbing in which a climber...places all gear required to protect against falls, and removes it when a passage is complete [the follower, or 2nd, will do this]...Characterizing climbing as traditional distinguishes it from sport climbing (in which all protection and anchor points are permanently installed prior to the climb...)..."

1. CAMS

Cams are one of two basic types of "pro" (protection) I use in my climbing. While there are more, such as hexes and tricams, to know what I'm referring to in my posts you'll only need to know about cams and nuts.

Cams come in a range of sizes to fit different sized cracks and fissures in rock.

The quarter-circles that are stacked by 2 to the left and the right of the axle at the head of the cam are called "lobes." 

Here I've picked the appropriate sized cam for the crack in front of me. My pointer and middle fingers are resting on the "trigger." Metal wires loop down below the trigger and up to the lobes, so that when the trigger is retracted, the lobes also retract.

Here I'm "placing" the cam ("plugging" is another piece of jargon used). I've retracted the trigger and am inserting the cam into the crack. A good placement will have all four lobes touching stone, all of them more or less retracted at the same angle. A cam can be "over" cammed (the fit is too tight), and at the other extreme, "tipped out" which means the lobes are not retracted enough. There is a sweet spot you're always looking for.

The next step is to clip the rope.

 While leading, the rope is tied to the front of your harness. After placing the cam, you'll reach down, grab the rope, pull it up, and clip it into the biner at the end of the sling on the cam.

The rope is clipped into the cam and ready to take a fall.

If you did fall, this is what it would look like. I recently took a 25 foot, vertical free fall onto this exact piece of gear and it held wonderfully.

2. NUTS

While cams are referred to as "active" pro (there are moving parts), nuts are "passive" (no moving parts). Nuts come in various shapes and sizes, just like cams.

When placing a nut you look for a crack or fissure that constricts, i.e. gets narrower or tapers. That way a nut can be inserted at a wide point in the crack, and dropped down into where it tapers. This kind of pro can take massive amounts of force generated by a fall if placed properly.

This is a "bomber" (really safe, solid, strong) nut placement. Notice how the crack constricts, and both sides of the nut are fully in contact with the rock. The more surface area is touching stone, the better. Nuts, unlike cams, don't have a "sling" or a biner pre-attached to it, so you have to "clip a draw" into the loop at the end.

This is a draw. It is composed of a runner capped by two biners.  

The nut has now been clipped into with my draw and is ready for the rope. I would clip the rope into the end of the draw the same way I demonstrated with a cam.

3. ANCHORS

When a climb exceeds the length of a rope, or for various reasons must be broken down into distinct segments, it is called a "multi-pitch" climb. At the top of a pitch the leader must devise a way to safely get his follower, or second, up to his perch. To do this he must first build an anchor. At popular climbs there will often be bolts so that you don't have to do this, but in the mountains one must frequently use one's own gear.

The general rule of thumb is to place 3 pieces. In a pinch, like if there's only really one or two placements, you could build an anchor off of 1 or 2 pieces, but this is far less safe. 

So, going back to my first cam placement that I pictured above, if I were at a perch and wanting to build an anchor I would look for 2 more cam or nut placements.

A second cam placement above my previous placement.

My third placement above and to the left of the other two cams.

After three pieces are in you want to "equalize" the force being transferred onto the pro by downward pull. 

There are different ways to do this, but I usually will use an "alpine equalizer," a piece of gear that's been manufactured to be set up and equalized across 2 or 3 pieces very quickly. Here I've clipped 3 separate loops from my equalizer into the 3 cams, and adjusted them in such a way so that, even though the cams are unevenly placed (they almost always will be), the same amount of force is being transferred to all of them.

At the end of the equalizer is a loop which I clip a locking carabiner onto.

These are locking biners.

After I've attached a locking biner to the loop at the end of the equalizer, I attach my belay device to it.

I then loop the rope through the belay device...

...clip another locking biner through the rope and the loop on the belay device so that it doesn't pull through and adds some friction to keep the rope from sliding too quickly...

...and when all is ready, call down to my partner below, "On belay!" notifying him that he's safe to climb. The strand of rope picture-left feeds straight down to my partner, who has the other end tied to a loop on his harness. I pull the side in my hand as he climbs, making sure the rope stays taut between my anchor and his harness.

Again, this is what the anchor would more-or-less look like.

And there you go! These are a few basics that will help you to understand and visualize what I mean when talking about placing cams, placing nuts, clipping the rope, and building an anchor.