Tiffany Hensley

In a nutshell, Anthony and I crashed off Hwy 80 going from Salt lake City to Donner Summit, in Tahoe, where we were going to take some portfolio pictures and work hard projects. Before we left we were mucking about in Little Cottonwood on Copperhead, this great razor-crimp-littered V10 that I was almost sticking the crux to. We were psyched to hit Donner at dawn, and planned to drive through the night, hit Tahoe, session, sleep, and skittle down to Santa Cruz and the stop at Planet Granite on the way.




Well, as I said, we crashed.


As we barreled east down Hwy 80 across the salt flats, lightening forked and flashed on our left before and bathed the mountains and sky with nano-second-long soft glows. We passed a sign that said "Tooele" and I wondered if Steph Davis' plans to jump were post-poned by the gruesome weather. (Sidenote: apparently not - she said she got a lot of jumps in, so maybe we'll hear how it went on her blog. Crazy awesome. I love what that woman does.) After two hours we stopped and he took a half-hour nap - then he slept a little extra, just in case.



I curled up in the seat and fell asleep, psyched to project the Saddle Boulders and repeat Nazgul with the new endurance I'd developed from playing with the medicine balls from Taiwan. I woke up as we were rolling. I got away with scrapes from the road as we rolled, but Anthony got a sinus fracture (below the eye, in the face bones) and a fractured arm. As I type, he's walking out of Reno's Renown Hospital, where I was discharged three days ago. And myself, I'll be climbing again next week with Grace Kane, miniature super-model and hardcore climber. She's half my age. She'll kick my butt, too.


Hopefully Dead Point Magazine will publish the article I wrote telling the details of the crash from my point of view. Hope it's not too gruesome. :/ The entire catastrophe unrolled on us like a horror movie plot, and the only thing I could do afterwards, since I couldn't write or walk, was type my experience out. I think my climbing lifestyle was the main reason I pulled through it so well - high pain tolerance, quick problem solving, and plenty of experience with skin injuries. Those things are priceless.


And so are seat belts.