KAYA Climber Stories
Joe’s Valley Heroes: Pete Lowe
Joe’s Valley Bouldering Guidebook
In celebration of KAYA’s launch of Steven Jeffery’s Official Joe’s Valley Guidebook, we’re highlighting the legends that have contributed to the development of Joe’s Valley bouldering.
Rather than participating in an interview, Pete Lowe, an attorney, father, and Ogden local, penned an essay for us to share. The piece beautifully details his personal history with Joe’s Valley and the impact it has had on him—we hope you enjoy it!
Pete is responsible for some of the American west’s most prolific lines such as The Shining Path (V12), A Clockwork Orange (V12), Show Your Scars (V14), Under Heaven (V12), and, as you’ll read about in his essay, Mask of God (V13).
“It was 1995, and I was sixteen years old when I first climbed at Joe’s Valley. We had just bought a VHS of the budget climbing film “Three Weeks and a Day,” which chronicled a road trip taken by some of my early climbing heroes, Boone Speed and Dale Goddard. With only the reservoir as a landmark, my older brother, Jed, and I embarked South in our maroon-red, family suburban in search of the beautiful jet-black and tan boulders we saw in the video.
By a stroke of luck, we entered the right fork and found a parking area on the right side of the road. For reasons unknown, we picked this spot as promising. We later found out the area contained the “Boy Size” boulders. The first boulder we saw was Golden Plates (V8), and I was ecstatic that we found one of the climbs from the movie. I remember watching Boone pull like a demon on the climb and come crashing off the top. I was certain that it must be a project of the utmost difficulty. Feeling the small grips and being a neophyte to toe-hook trickery, it certainly looked imposing. We continued exploring and eventually found another boulder that was in the movie. With its crisp edges, black rock, and water-sculpted huecos it looked specially carved for climbing.
With unbridled teenage enthusiasm, we threw ourselves at a handful of problems. When I watched Jed stick a dyno from the movie, I couldn’t believe it. How was it that he climbed this problem in a few tries that had caused a challenge for Dale and Boone? In many ways, the discovery of Joe’s was simultaneous with the discovery that we did not suck as climbers.
Later that day, we went on to explore the Man Size, Roadside, and Bowling Ball boulders. We climbed into the night with bloody, taped covered, fingertips and still wanted more.
I still have a vivid memory of first seeing Finger Hut (V10), which I believe was unclimbed at the time, and touching the jigsaw right-hand crimp and imagining climbing this one day. My first project at Joe’s was the right-hand traverse entrance into the mail slot jug of Finger Hut. With my limited technique, I couldn’t keep my feet from cutting away from the steep face. When my left hand snatched the mail slot jug, I gave a high-pitched victory roar as my feet swung out. This was climbing! Later we tackled the south facing V1, Up & Down, I felt like a true soloist as I sketched my way up the boulder with nothing but a Black Diamond Spot beneath.
As years passed, our perspective of what was big and what was hard would change drastically. However, the same frenetic enthusiasm remained and, if anything, escalated. In those early days, Joe’s had a spirit of endless possibilities. As more people caught on to the gems nestled within these sheer canyon walls, Joe’s got busier. However, there always seemed somewhere to go that had virgin stone and no people.
Our skill and strength increased. Previous pipe dreams like Finger Hut became circuit problems. As Pusher made bigger pads, what we considered tall drastically changed. We began to push our limits on highballs. Trent’s Mom (V10/11), Nerve Damage (V6/7), and Eden (V9/10) gave me an initial taste for the adrenaline and mental skill required to pull difficult moves while high above the ground.
I started to carve through the hard classics, but one problem stood out as the gatekeeper of truly hard, Steven Jeffrey’s powerhouse No Additives Sit (V14). Steven’s crowning achievement of linking together the finger-wrenching moves on No Additives Sit distilled the essence of what hard bouldering meant to me. The footage of him screaming his way through those moves, in a short Mike Call film, left an indelible impression. I think it was Boone who you can hear in the background of the movie say to Steven, “I thought you were going to pull the boulder over.” That is the kind of power this climb required!
As I joyfully threw myself at those same savage moves, culminating in a long jump to a perfect incut edge, I recognized I had a power addiction. Nothing feels better than to feel the veins bulge in your neck and your tendons dangerously stretch as you just barely eek out moves at the limit of your strength. I fell multiple times after having climbed through the sit only to just barely fail to hang the jump move, I felt it was just a question of time until I climbed it.
I was devastated to roll up to the boulder one crisp morning only to find the incut edge had broken. It is a sad reminder as to the temporal and fragile nature of our playground. Losing the chance to complete that line is one of my great climbing regrets.
Not long after that, me and my small group of friends began looking to make our own contribution in development. We marched higher up the hillsides, mostly in the left fork, in search of new, bigger, and harder problems. The Power Line boulder, first developed by Jason Kehl, would provide the canvass for my first significant FA. My good friend, Anthony Chertudi, had clued me into a potential direct finish to Kehl’s creation The Man from the Past (V11). It was big, with bold white swaths swirling through classic jet-black rock.
When I first saw Anthony try it, I did not think it would go, but the proud visage and gorgeous aesthetics captured my imagination. I gave it my all, and after unlocking an unlikely lunge into a gaston fin, I knew I had to climb it. Soon I was falling repeatedly as I lunged for the lip of the boulder. I had not inspected the line on top-rope (we just did not do that back then). So, I never saw a key two-finger pocket that helped avoid the savage lunge to the top. For days, I kept lunging to the lip and suffered the punishing falls over and over. I refused to give up, and gladly took the punishment for the chance to get the first ascent.
On a particular attempt, I didn’t feel strong at the top and out of desperation my hand pawed at an incipient seem. Unexpectedly, my fingers slipped into the pocket. With the intermediate, I managed to stick the lip. I was so shocked to be at the lip of the boulder, I missed a key foot for the mantle which resulted in me beach-whaled with my feet sticking straight out and trying to hump my way onto the boulder. My stellar technique failed, and I crashed down hard, but popped up with a huge grin. I knew I was going to do it.
After botching the first thrutchy move on the start a few times, I finally snagged the sharp pocket and then floated everything else, I experienced a huge jolt of adrenaline as I grabbed the lip again, carefully placed my foot properly, and rolled on top of the boulder. I named it, The Mask of God (V13). To this day, I cannot explain why being the first person to climb something is so powerful and special, but from that day forward I was hooked on first ascents.
Joe’s taught me so many lessons as a climber but so did the people I climbed with there. My lifelong friend, Anthony Chertudi, has a gift for finding boulders. He also taught me the subtle art of recognizing features and piecing together a line that just barely goes. I can’t say how many times he spotted a line and I thought it would not be climbable. He consistently proved me wrong.
One of my favorite ascents he put up in Joe’s, he named Zero (V12/13), after the ghost dog in Nightmare Before Christmas. Anthony had found the area and called it Halloween Town. One year on Halloween Anthony dressed up like a dragon with great big red wings and horns and proceeded to fire laps on many hard Halloween Town classics while in full costume. Immature antics and crazy ideas also seem inseparable from all the years climbing at Joe’s, particularly with Anthony.
What I love about Zero is the climb’s lack of conventionality. The boulder itself is high on the hillside and is an oblong tilted orb of stone that almost looks like a Killer Whale breaching. It has a classic V7 on the right side that climbs the arete of the orb. However, at its center, there are two amazing but small holds that you can just reach from the ground. Anthony figured out a crazy method where he started on these two holds, swung his feet out right, and clamped them down on an arete. He used his legs as levers to launch his right hand into a tight vertical slot. He then crossed his left hand down near his feet to an undercling. From this bunched contorted position, he stabbed his right hand into a mono undercling that linked into the V7 arete. The sequence was brutal.
Watching him perform these contortions, I never thought I could do the problem in a million years of effort. Yet, as I played with this esoteric sequence, I slowly understood the subtle body positions that made the moves possible. When I made the second ascent after several days of effort and stood on top of the boulder, I almost couldn’t believe it. More than any other boulder, Zero taught me that hard climbing was about much more than just pulling, you had to have vision and persistence.
I’ve heard climbers criticize Zero as contrived, and they are right. Using the arete with your hands instead of your feet puts you in position to climb the V7 and skip all the hard moves on his creation. But to me, Zero epitomizes the playful and rule-blurring game of bouldering. Anthony had a vision of where he wanted to start the climb and it produced an intriguing and challenging puzzle of movement, and isn’t that the point? After all, haven’t we all heard “there’s an easier way on the other side.”
Joe’s Valley was the first climbing area that I genuinely loved. I put in the time exploring its vastness, developing areas with my best friends, and testing the limits of my strength and mind. It was my playground on almost every fall weekend for at least a decade of my life. Like the elements sculpted the boulders, the boulders sculpted me as a climber.
Eventually, I would move on from Joe’s and a part of me hesitates to ever go back because I know it will feel different. The present hordes of pad-toting climbers covering the hills like busy ants leave me saddened. Of course, every person who climbs there has the same right to be there as me, and I contribute to the crowds as much as anyone else.
So, for this reason, I will go a separate way and keep exploring for something new that excites me just like Joe’s did in the early days. However, the memories and lessons I learned from my time at Joe’s are inerasable. It has left a permanent mark on my life even in a physical way. In fact, due to all the repeated big falls bouldering, I damaged my cervical spine to the point I severely pinched a nerve in my neck that required surgery and a fusion.
Because of my neck fusion, I do not boulder much anymore, and the thought of careening off a twenty-foot-tall boulder gives me shivers. So now, I chase my power addiction while tied into a rope and keep looking for the line that will make my tendons scream and my neck veins bulge. I also keep chasing the solitude and pristine nature that Joe’s Valley offered for so many happy years. Thankfully, they are still to be found and the still the memory remains.”
Pete, thank you for writing such a lovely tribute to Joe’s Valley, and thank you for contributing to the many gorgeous test pieces we all seek to summit.
Find these problems and many more in the Joe’s Valley Bouldering Guidebook, only on KAYA PRO.
