John Nguyen is a rock climber who enjoys a challenge.

My friends and I were in Squamish, British Columbia, Canada. We started off one of the last days of our trip with a group of six on this two-pitch romp of a sport climb, graded 5.8, which we finished around 1 p.m. I was hungry to tackle a route that was on my to-do list, a pure crack line called St. Vitus’ Dance. It’s a five pitch route, graded 5.9, 600-feet-long. I wanted to do this with a party of three, max, because any more than that, it’s going to take awhile. But my friends are like, “Can we all join you?” 

It was hard to say no. I tried to persuade them: This is pure crack climbing, they didn’t really have that experience. Crack’s a pretty ruthless, unpleasant style. You’re wrestling, not bearing down on nice positive holds. Two of my friends who wanted to join had no crack experience at all. We did do that 5.8 route in the morning, so they’re like, “It’s only one grade harder. How hard could it be?”

My bright idea was, “This is gonna be a long day. I’m a little tired, and I can use a boost of energy.” So I downed a bunch of Cà Phê Sữa Đá (Vietnamese coffee), which would give me all the energy in the world to get my friends through this. Mind you, I’m not a regular coffee drinker.

We started climbing at 6:30 p.m. In our group of six, only me and my friend Alexis were avid trad climbers, so we split into two groups of three. The two friends that did not crack climb, we separated them one per group. We did what I call Caterpillar style. I’m leading each pitch, and I’m attached to the middle person, who’s attached to the third person. You climb one at a time, so I would wait until the third person got up there. It takes a while.

It starts off great. Very chill, low angle crack climbing at the start. After the first pitch, my friends are saying “Crack climbing is kind of hard.” I’m like, “Yep, I wouldn’t lie to you guys.” We get to the top of pitch two and it’s getting dark. One of my inexperienced friends says, “We’ll get done by 10 p.m. right?” I’m nervously laughing. This is a five pitch climb. We’d be lucky to finish at midnight.

I belayed one friend to the top of the third pitch. She was visibly having a panic attack. We were higher up than she expected. When she looks down, it’s a black abyss. She’s sitting next to me by the anchor as I’m bringing up our third person and she’s crying. While she’s having this panic attack, the Vietnamese coffee really starts kicking in. I don’t mean the energy, I’m just tooting away. I thought we were high up enough, maybe she wouldn’t smell it. Usually, there’s some wind when you’re a couple hundred feet up. 

After a few minutes, she turns to me, sniffling, “Are you farting?” I’m like, “Yeah, I’m really sorry. I can’t help myself.” I was laughing about it, but I don't think she appreciated me laughing. Then something came to mind: She likes country music, I’ll start singing country music. This poor girl is crying as I’m farting and singing to her. She’s never multi-pitched with me again. I understand why. She did say the singing helped because I sounded really dumb.

We got to the top at almost 1 a.m. Then we had to worry about getting down. Four of us have rappelled descents before, but the other two didn’t know how. So I’m giving a rappelling lesson in the dark. We got back to the parking lot at 3:30 a.m., but the lot was gated and locked after sundown. We had to call one of my friends, who’d opted to stay behind, “Do you mind grabbing us? Please.”

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