Words by Jackie Hueftle
From Urban Climber Magazine #18
Josh Haynes is 19 years old and he’s sobbing. He’s flat on his back in the Harris Hospital Emergency Room in Fort Worth, Texas, and can’t move for the IV in his arm and tubes sticking out of his chest. He is about to have surgery to repair a collapsed lung for the second time in as many weeks. After the first one the doctors told him that lung surgery ranks up there with giving birth in terms of pain. Now he’s back for more pain, both physical and emotional. The physical pain will leave him bedridden for several weeks and unable to exercise for over six months. It will be so intense that for three months after surgery he will not be able to sneeze without falling to his knees. The emotional pain will be worse, first when he is here, in the emergency room, and is realizing how insignificant his life is; and later, when he has accepted that he will live, that he will not become a professional baseball player, and that he must find a new direction for his life.
Josh’s disposition is surprisingly sunny for someone whose life has been so full of strife. He was adopted at birth and has never met his biological parents. Furthermore, he was born with a clef palate and lip, meaning his mouth didn’t form right and his lip wasn’t grown together like it should have been. He had several surgeries to correct it in childhood but his teeth on one side are still bent in and his lip is a bit scarred. The problem was compounded by several broken noses—the last time by a baseball traveling at a very high speed—leaving him with a very distinctive look. “If anything I feel it gives me more character,” he says. “My sister says it makes me different...original.”
It was when he was 18 and pursuing his dream of becoming a pro ball player that one of his lungs partially collapsed. He was forced to take a year off all athletic activity to let it heal, but as soon as the year was over he began training again. Then one day he felt a strange pain in his chest, and three days later he woke up one morning, sat up in bed, and passed out. The next time he woke up he was in the intensive care unit after having emergency surgery. The doctors told him the air pressure in his chest was so built up that it was pushing his heart to the side, kinking off a major artery and slowing the blood flow to his brain. If he had entered the hospital even an hour later than he did he would have died. To make matters worse, a few days after his first lung surgery his girlfriend of over a year told him she was leaving him for one of his friends. Then, three days after that, his other lung collapsed, sending him back under the knife for another painful surgery, and sending his life in a different direction.
“It’s funny, because I wouldn’t wish this pain on my worst enemy, but at the same time I am so grateful to have gone through it because it helped make me who I am today. It was after lung surgery that I realized life is to short to waste worrying about a ‘real job’, or money, etc….” With his new outlook on life he moved to Denver to become a ski bum. Away from the things and people that influenced him growing up, he found himself working in a bagel shop, going skiing, and partying “way too much,” until he eventually ran out of money and moved back home to get himself together. It was then, back at home in Arlington, Texas, that his calling found him. He was working at Starbucks one night and a fellow employee asked him to go climbing at Dyno-Rock gym. That was in December of 2001, and he’s never looked back.
Now it’s 2007 and Josh is living the dream. He’s spent most of the past two years on the road, and if you went to Hueco this year you probably saw him around—he‘s that guy, the one with orange hair who lives in the ambulance. He bought the ambulance in August of 2005 and converted the inside into a traveling climber’s dream with a bed, a small countertop, a small microwave and fridge (both of which he later took out because he wasn’t using them) and floor to ceiling shelving running the length of one wall. It’s a bit of a hog on gas but the comfort it provides more than makes up for the extra cost. Oh yeah, and the lights still work. All of them.
Josh has been living at Hueco because the climbing is amazing, and he’s been affording it by working as the guide manager for the Rock Ranch commercial guide service. You’ve probably heard the Hueco story—it is a world class bouldering area that used to be easy to access and is now burdened with so many restrictions that unless you’ve planned ahead it’s very difficult to climb there. If you have planned ahead you’ve got North Mountain or tour reservations for all your climbing days; if you haven’t you’ll find yourself sitting outside the gate, waiting for someone to leave so you can go in. You might get up early so you can be first in line, only to find yourself behind someone else who got up earlier. After a while you might get sick of waiting and try to get on a tour to the backcountry. This is where Josh comes in.
It is 10:00 a.m. on New Years Eve day and Josh is swamped. As he walks back and forth from the barn to the house he has a small entourage of hangers-on hoping he can find them a spot on a tour or on North Mountain. He calls the park and finds out that North Mountain has been full since 8 a.m. There are no extra reservations floating around the campground, so he tries to shuffle people around on tours. This works for a minute, but then the tours are full too—and then the other guides have all gone out and he should have left ten minutes ago to help guide the twenty kids on team Dyno-Rock. Luckily he got most people taken care of, and the few stragglers resign themselves to rest days.
Josh has been working here for four months. He does not have any days off. Every morning Josh gets up and sorts out the tours for the day. He checks in with the scheduled guides and gives them clipboards and radios. He finds more guides for all the people who decide, at the last minute, that they want to go on a tour. He tries to find North Mountain reservations for anyone who needs them, and will make the extra effort to walk around the campsite offering reservations if he’s found extras. He deals with tours that have too many prospective clients, and tours that don’t have enough. He deals with the park staff when there is a problem, and with a system as misunderstood as the one in place at Hueco, there are problems almost everyday.
10:30 a.m. Team Dyno-Rock gets as far as the gate before they are stopped by the park staff, who are stopping everyone to keep the office from being overrun. Wanda, the Park Manager, comes out to the gate to see how things are going. She tells Josh that the backcountry is close to full today, and she needs to go count how many people are already back there. The max is 160. She radios back a few minutes later to say there are 125 people in, and there is a twenty five person bird tour scheduled to go out later so there are only ten spots left. The guide in line in front of Josh has a nine-person tour. Josh tells her to go in and says he will figure out what to do with Team Dyno-Rock. Team Dyno-Rock had North Mountain reservations for the day but they gave them away because they were going to go on tour. Now they are stuck at the gate.
You could argue that running around outdoors is hardly a job, but any activity, when done repeatedly and when subject to so many variables, can become stressful, and Josh’s job is no exception. Because he cares about the happiness of his clients and guides he often makes personal sacrifices to ensure that other people have a good time. Many days this means taking out a tour himself, even though it’s supposed to be his climbing day. Josh does not get as many climbing days as a person living in Hueco for five months should.
Some might say it’s not a good sign. Josh would disagree. Photo: Rachel Johnston
Some might say it’s not a good sign. Josh would disagree. Photo: Rachel Johnston
10:45 a.m. Team Dyno-Rock realizes they will not be climbing today and Josh promises to guide them at 8 a.m. tomorrow, New Years Day, meaning he won’t be able to celebrate New Years as much as he’d like to. This is fine for all but the kid who is flying home early, and because there’s one spot left in the backcountry Josh decides to escort him out to a tour with an empty space on it. The rest of the team heads back to the ranch.
When he does get to climb he often goes to North Mountain so he can work on one of his projects there. Though he has only been climbing for five years, he has bouldered V13 and hopes to do his first V14’s this season. Because of his achievements in climbing and his kindness towards other people, he has become a valuable part of the Flashed, La Sportiva, and Blurr climbing teams.
11:30 a.m. Josh drops the kid off and picks up two clients from a nearby tour who need to be escorted out of the park to catch a flight. Then another guide flags him down and says that he has a client who needs to be escorted out at 12:30. The walk is about 15 minutes each way, so Josh won’t have much time between dropping the first group off at the parking lot and going back for the second guy. He could make the second guy come now and save some trouble, but he decides to do more work himself to give the guy the extra hour of climbing. He still hasn’t eaten breakfast.
Josh breezes through the classic Hobbit in a Blender (V5) at Hueco Tanks. Photo: Dylan Spurgin
Josh breezes through the classic Hobbit in a Blender (V5) at Hueco Tanks. Photo: Dylan Spurgin
When I called Flashed to ask how they like having Josh on their team I got Mark Fraser, one of the head design guys, who told me that they couldn’t ask for more in a sponsored climber: “Josh is not only one of our athletes, he has also become an integral part of the Flashed design process. Basically, we build a 'perfect' product, then Josh tells us where it sucks. It's a love/hate relationship really,” he laughs.
12:50 p.m. Josh has escorted the second guy out and is excited to go back to the ranch for lunch when he hears a call from the park staff that someone on some tour is improperly parked. It takes him ten minutes on the radio to figure out whose car it is and what tour they’re on, then he’s off at a jog to the East Spur Maze for the keys. He’s halfway there when another call comes over the radio—an inexperienced guide has taken wrong directions from a twelve-year old on his tour, gotten lost, and is calling for help. Josh changes his course to rescue the offending guide, who is on the far side of East Mountain.
This season Josh has been testing the Samurai, a smaller version of Flashed’s new highball pad the Ronin. The Ronin and the Samurai are the first of their kind—revolutionary crashpads filled with FAT (Flashed Air Technology) cells that respond dynamically to falls, meaning that the foam reacts differently depending on how hard you hit it. Fall from the top of a highball and the cells stay firm to protect your ankles; fall low and the cells stay soft and cushy—nice when you’re climbing under a roof or using your crashpad as your camping bed. The pad disassembles for travel so you can take it to all those exotic locals you’ve been meaning to visit (South Africa, anyone?), and, as Mark says “It holds up during those late-night karaoke vaults from the Rock Ranch balcony as well.”
2:15 p.m. Having found the lost guide Josh is again headed to the Maze for the keys. When he gets there the tour he needs is already gone but two other tours are there and the guides are having a discussion with a ranger on foot patrol. The ranger is upset because when he walked up there appeared to be too many clients at one area. There is a reasonable explanation and Josh is able to smooth things over, then is fortunate to get an energy bar from one of the guides before he continues his search for the keys.
Josh guiding at East Mountain in Hueco Tanks, Texas. Photo: Dylan Spurgin
Josh guiding at East Mountain in Hueco Tanks, Texas. Photo: Dylan Spurgin
So what’s next for Josh Haynes? As soon as the Hueco season is over he’ll head back home to see his parents, then north to spend the summer climbing and helping out at the Flashed factory, sewing pads and designing new products.
3:45 p.m. The car is moved and the keys are returned to their owner. Josh thinks his day is coming to a close when another guide radios that a client needs to be escorted out. Josh could tell the guide to walk the client out himself, but instead hikes across the mountain yet again to find the tour, saving the rest of the paying clients the trouble of a hike back to the parking lot so one guy can leave early.
So if you see the ambulance, don’t be shy. Feel free to stop by and say hi. There’s a good chance Josh will let you check out Flashed’s latest pad, and if you’re climbing together, he might even let you fall on it.
4:30 p.m. Josh’s hectic day seems to be over and he heads back to the ranch. He eats a very late lunch, then calls the park to find out if there are any problems on their end. The Park Manager is relatively happy, saying that, considering today was the busiest day on record in the backcountry, things went rather well. A large part of the reason for that is the several hours Josh spent running in circles and helping people sort things out, but the park doesn’t have to know that. Relieved to hear that the park staff is happy, Josh is finally able to relax. All in all, it was another successful day at Hueco Tanks.
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