Ryan (Taco) Dacey

What draws you to the outdoors?

Real­i­ty. Soci­ety and the ‘real world’ are unnat­ur­al growths in the real world, and they are tire­some. Nature, that of the large­ly unmod­i­fied-by-humans uni­verse, is refresh­ing because it’s where we all came from and essen­tial­ly belong. A rich per­son and a poor per­son are equal in nature. Your own abil­i­ties deter­mine sur­vival. Mon­ey is mean­ing­less. Pop­u­lar­i­ty is often also mean­ing­less. The weird lit­tle worlds peo­ple con­struct for them­selves in the city are nonex­is­tent in the moun­tains. Don’t fall and die, don’t drown, don’t freeze to death, or die of dehy­dra­tion. Real­i­ty wash­es away the bull­shit, expos­es true weak­ness, and shows the per­son what they are, who they are, and how to grow. It can be very black and white at times. This is refresh­ing com­ing from spend­ing so much time in the city. I still like com­ing back to a warm bed where I can put my stuff down and it does­n’t get blown away or stolen by rac­coons, or eat­en by bears, I don’t get cov­ered in ants and I don’t need to wor­ry about flash floods or an avalanche or frost­bite. I like the com­fort of soci­ety just as much as any­one else, but I can only be my true self in the mountains.

Why do peo­ple call you after a tra­di­tion­al Mex­i­can Dish (Taco)?

As part of the first gen­er­a­tion of peo­ple grow­ing up with the inter­net, I had to pick a screen name for forums and stuff. I had a few ones ear­ly on but want­ed some­thing new at some point. I chose the name of my favorite local restau­rant, Taco Del Rio in La Puente, which I’ve since changed to Taco Del what­ev­er so I don’t take their name, once inter­net stuff changed and it seemed smart. Bud­dies in a sur­vival group I am part of way back when, short­ened it to Taco, and oth­ers fol­lowed suit and it stuck. Since there are a bunch of Bri­ans and Ryans out there, Taco worked well ’cause it’s not eas­i­ly mis­tak­en for any­thing else.

What aspects of the out­doors are reward­ing for you?

As soci­ety changes and I feel less con­nect­ed to it as I age, the indif­fer­ence of nature to an indi­vid­ual organ­ism is cru­cial. There are no safe­ty rail­ings in the moun­tains, no warn­ing signs, no safe­ty police try­ing to keep you from injury or what­ev­er, just the real world. The out­doors is the real world to me, in great con­trast to what every­one has called the ‘real world’, that of the human-cre­at­ed world a lot of us spend so much time in, a world where peo­ple spend most of their time inside struc­tures, dri­ve expen­sive auto­mo­biles around that burn gas while preach­ing ‘sus­tain­abil­i­ty’, struc­ture our lives com­plete­ly around mon­ey, often pro­duc­ing noth­ing we can con­sume or sur­vive on. I could spout off for­ev­er, suf­fice it to say I find the major­i­ty of what I see in the world I live in to be a per­verse and twist­ed ver­sion of liv­ing where the sub­jects give up their finite time in exchange for cur­ren­cy and the hope they can some­day retire with enough health to actu­al­ly do any­thing when they have time remaining.

In the GO Get Out­side Pod­cast with Jason Mil­li­gan you made some inter­est­ing com­ments about the sur­vival of the fittest. Tell me some of your thoughts on this.

As far as sur­vival of the fittest specif­i­cal­ly, I have a dis­ease which had I been untreat­ed when I was young would’ve and should’ve killed me, like­ly sev­er­al times, so by that ‘law’ I should­n’t be alive, and I agree with that law. How­ev­er, that pro­found­ly and com­plete­ly altered my mind­set for life and is crit­i­cal to my very being. I care lit­tle for most of the ideals of mod­ern life and instead like to spend as much time in the real world (out­side) with my friends. Time and love are my most valu­able ‘things’. I work as much as I need to cov­er my basic and lim­it­ed expens­es, and I put the rest towards my life out­side. I’m in a sit­u­a­tion where I can do that.

What lessons have you learned from the out­doors that can be car­ried over to the aver­age work­ing life or the non-out­doors aspect of your life?

My life has been pro­found­ly changed by my expe­ri­ences in the real world. It has helped mold me into what any nor­mal per­son would con­sid­er a total los­er, and I have found a deep lev­el of sat­is­fac­tion and hap­pi­ness in being alive as a result of being freed from the chains of ‘achieve­ment’ and ‘suc­cess’ in the nor­mal mon­ey world. I have pushed my mind and body fur­ther than I thought pos­si­ble, have lived a very ful­fill­ing life, felt the deep con­nec­tion and love of so many friends and gained an immense extend­ed fam­i­ly, have sur­vived sit­u­a­tions I thought I would die in, some­times alone, felt deep fear so strong it welled up as an acrid taste in my mouth and been forced by the very nature of com­mit­ment to press on to sur­vive, intro­duced many friends to the world, and so on. As far as how all this affects the non-out­doors aspects of my life, I am sim­ply a dif­fer­ent human. I can­not stand cities and large groups of peo­ple I don’t already know. I don’t give a shit about most things pushed by the mod­ern world. I don’t real­ly care what peo­ple think of me. Again, this has allowed me to feel free and hap­py in ways I’m not sure I could gain through reg­u­lar par­tic­i­pa­tion in the mod­ern world.

I ride a bike to com­mute and for work itself. The moun­tains have made me a much more phys­i­cal­ly and men­tal­ly resilient ape, allow­ing me to cov­er the dis­tances I do on a reg­u­lar basis with­out much trou­ble. Peo­ple often find this impres­sive, and to my own weak­ness I do find some enjoy­ment in that, allow­ing me to stroke my ego at the expense of the health of the soul, and in the end, I hope more peo­ple will, for exam­ple, find such dis­tances to be less of an obsta­cle and per­haps they will con­sid­er com­mut­ing by bicy­cle or using oth­er means to move about which engage their body, mind, and soul. You know, all that dis­tance means more time to think, some­thing most peo­ple here in the city world don’t have, which I think very strong­ly con­tributes to men­tal health issues. When you’re kept so busy all the time, you can’t fig­ure any­thing out for your­self and are often exhaust­ed and result to pas­sive enter­tain­ment such as tele­vi­sion when you do final­ly have the time. This is unfor­tu­nate. Engage the body to engage the mind, and take your time.

Tell me about the cul­ture of how routes are named in canyoneer­ing and climb­ing and who gets to name them. You did a route and named it “Crim­mas Skele­tor” which I’ve men­tioned to you a num­ber of times as I love the cre­ative and bizarre nature of your route nam­ing. To me, a bit of your per­son­al­i­ty is cap­tured in some of these names.

The first ascent/descent team gets to pick the name. Some­times the team would com­bine last names, such as the Beck­ey Chouinard route, and oth­er times the nation­al­i­ty of the team would be used, such as the Czech Direct route on Denali. One I’ve named in such a man­ner is Steele Taco, which is a com­bo of my bud­dy’s last name and my nick­name. Nor­mal­ly, I pick a name that sor­ta describes the route, but often­times you just kin­da go with some­thing fun­ny or what­ev­er comes to mind.

My bud­dy John came up with the name Crim­mas Skele­tor, as a result of me descend­ing that canyon close to Christ­mas, and because Skele­tor came to mind. That canyon went down an area recent­ly burned, and many of the anchors were dead bush­es in cooked dust and dirt, so it felt right. Near­by Wink­ing Mum­my Gulch is just a fun­ny name, also giv­en by John. Dan­ny and I recent­ly descend­ed Sacred Goril­la Gulch, the first route named after our bike club, Dune Ape Bike Squad.

I have named a few climb­ing routes deep and mean­ing­ful names, but eh, I dun­no. The expe­ri­ence you get as the first per­son lead­ing a loose trad route with iffy pro and bad fall poten­tial can­not be repli­cat­ed. You and/or the per­son you climb it with share that expe­ri­ence and the rat­ing and name reflect that. Peo­ple after­ward often say it was­n’t as hard, or some­times debate the name, but it’s often irrel­e­vant. I try to let go and for­get all that. I don’t climb to be part of that mind­set, of peo­ple things, just to be part of the real­i­ty of the expe­ri­ence. I don’t care what peo­ple think unless they think it’s fun­ny and they enjoy it or what­ev­er. I typ­i­cal­ly active­ly dis­cour­age climb­ing my routes as they’re more dan­ger­ous than most climb­ing routes. I like em, maybe I’m fucked up. Whatever.

Are there any favorite or par­tic­u­lar­ly unique route names (I think all of your route names are pret­ty unique) that you’d like to men­tion? And why you named it such.

Of cur­rent inter­est is Ant Jemi­ma, a route on Crys­tal Lake Wall my bud­dy named. It had a lot of those stinky ants on it, and my bud­dy Gabe gave it that name. He’s one of the fun­ni­est peo­ple I’ve ever known, and I love the name. It was ‘redact­ed’ by the admin on Mountainproject.com, as it was deemed inap­pro­pri­ate. I hate this sort of polit­i­cal­ly cor­rect behav­ior to no end, but I also like how such a sit­u­a­tion high­lights the philo­soph­i­cal and ide­o­log­i­cal dead end of such things. Per­haps if I had named it after a white food mas­cot they would­n’t have can­celed it. They prob­a­bly would­n’t have bat­ted an eye at Cap­tain Crunch. This high­lights their hypocrisy, their feel­ing that they need to defend minori­ties as if any of my black friends would be pissed we named a route after a fuck­ing maple syrup brand with a black lady as the face of the com­pa­ny. I sup­pose if you have no real prob­lems in life, you must cre­ate your own, and silence oth­ers who don’t think the same way.

On a slight­ly dif­fer­ent note, I usu­al­ly have friends who help me name things. There’s a 5.9 slab line at Crys­tal Lake Crag named Fin­ger­bang. One of my best friends Aman­da named it, cause there’s a tiny hole on the slab that’s crit­i­cal for upward move­ment which you stick your fin­ger in. It’s a real fun route. A crotch­ety old man in the com­mu­ni­ty (again on moun­tain­pro­ject) took offense to the name. Deal with it. Guess he does­n’t believe in fore­play, prob­a­bly why he puts so many pic­tures of flow­ers up instead of climb­ing, in direct vio­la­tion of the site rules he seems to support.

I like giv­ing names to some things that might make peo­ple think. A gay friend and I climbed a short cor­ner on Crys­tal Lake Wall which we named Adam and Steve. There was some politi­cian or oth­er unim­por­tant meat­bag who said some­thing to the effect of “it’s Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve!” in defense of tra­di­tion­al mar­riage or what­ev­er, so we thought that was hilar­i­ous. Hope­ful­ly, that piss­es off all sorts of peo­ple. Sucks to be you.

Are there any par­tic­u­lar goals or things that you’re work­ing toward at this time in your life? Vague or specific.

I would like to ride a bike around the world some­day. There’s a whole lot I want to see. I’d like to climb in Pak­istan, name­ly around the Charakusa Glac­i­er. I’d like to spend a lot of time in Chi­na, explor­ing the old cul­ture, eat­ing a lot, rid­ing down huge moun­tain pass­es, climb­ing big stuff, all that. I’m work­ing towards see­ing how fast I can ride down the coast from Cana­da to Mex­i­co, prob­a­bly in sum­mer 2022. 1,800 miles or so, 10–14 days maybe. I have a lot of bike tour­ing plans, not much climb­ing or canyoneer­ing ones since I don’t have a run­ning car. There are still a hand­ful of canyons left on my radar that need bush­whack­ing through. I’d like to ride up through the Sier­ra and hit some big climbs and fast descents on awe­some roads. I’m work­ing on a big list of high moun­tain roads, most­ly in Cal­i­for­nia, but some oth­ers else­where like Col­orado and Neva­da. I’d also like to cross Neva­da once or twice, as it’s sparse­ly pop­u­lat­ed, and thus qui­et. I’m obsessed with descend­ing paved roads as fast as I can. I’d like to climb the triple crown or what­ev­er in Tuolumne, that is Tenaya Peak — Matthes Crest — Cathe­dral Peak. All that kin­da stuff.

Bike tour­ing is pret­ty cheap once you have the gear (much like climb­ing), with the added bonus that my job is food deliv­ery on a bike, so I stay in excel­lent shape for it all the time. One must trav­el to do nor­mal peo­ple things, so there’s anoth­er part of the bike thing. Can be hard to find a hob­by that is also practical.

I plan and lead bike trips nowa­days. It would be nice to explore doing this pro­fes­sion­al­ly, but such jobs are few and far between.

I think I heard your Fish Fork sto­ry from our mutu­al friend Randy before I even met you. Can you tell me about that trip?

This is a very long sto­ry so I’ll do my best to con­dense it down mean­ing­ful­ly. Some­time around 2008–9 or so, some of the forum mem­bers includ­ing Joseph M. were talk­ing about how lit­tle infor­ma­tion there was out there on Fish Fork and that whole region. I don’t think any of us knew any­one who had been down that canyon. Zach C. and I decid­ed to go explore it over a few days. We drove down to Prairie Fork, parked, and hiked up into upper Fish Fork.

We found some old web­bing at the first rap­pel, so we knew we weren’t the first ones down. The web­bing was old and dried out. We still don’t know who placed it. The canyon was long (8mi), cold, shad­ed, and had a fair amount of rap­pels. We bivied part­way down, con­tin­u­ing the next day. In the after­noon we hit the big rap­pel, which is around 90ft I wan­na say, and I went first. There is a hydraulic (AKA drown­ing machine) at the base of the rap­pel in a big, deep pool, with a deaf­en­ing water­fall. I got off rope but could not escape the strong pull of the water­fall. I got back on the rope, which was dynam­ic as we were climbers and not sea­soned canyoneers yet, and could­n’t ascend. My pack prob­a­bly weighed about 60lbs after soak­ing in the pool. After fight­ing against the strong cur­rent, I told Zach I need­ed a res­cue. I was extreme­ly cold, as there is no sun­light in there. Zach acti­vat­ed his SPOT device and scram­bled way far around the area to come and get me from below. I was hypother­mic and did­n’t know what was going to hap­pen to me. After about 2 hours of scram­bling to reach my posi­tion, he climbed up the rappel/s below my posi­tion and, being the strong swim­mer and badass dude he is, saved me by pulling me to shore. He just hap­pens to be a nurse/EMT, so he made me change into my dry clothes since I had no idea what was going on. My skin was blue and I was­n’t mak­ing sense. We went fur­ther down to the big scree slope where I warmed up while he tried to go back to the top of the rappel.

A SAR Huey flew in and picked Zach up. He told them I was still down there, as they did­n’t know there were two of us. A Fire­hawk came in and hoist­ed me up after dark. It dragged me and the SAR guy through a mas­sive dead pine tree, where I slammed my head against a branch high off the ground. I’ve been hit in the head a few too many times and am used to see­ing stars, but this hit was so hard that every­thing went white and slow­ly fad­ed to dark spots before going back to nor­mal. I was­n’t wear­ing a hel­met and asked the res­cue guy if he was okay. It was a long day.

We came back and got our stuff in a long 22-mile day, hik­ing up from Heaton Flat. I’ve since descend­ed the canyon 3 or 4 times, and the big rap­pel always scares the shit out of me. We’ve had strong swim­mers get pulled into the hydraulic down there, it’s no joke. The stan­dard oper­at­ing pro­ce­dure for this rap­pel is to send the strongest dude down first with no pack or any­thing extra­ne­ous, then anchor the line to the shore which isn’t too far away. I often move right (sor­ta DCL I sup­pose), towards the shore on rap­pel, where there’s a lit­tle sort of inden­ta­tion on the wall. I get off-rope bal­anced there and jump close to shore into water deep enough for that.

Fish Fork is real­ly beau­ti­ful and there are almost no signs of human pas­sage, aside from the anchor web­bing and some air­plane crash parts. It is very long, very cold, and pret­ty seri­ous. It’s like a super ver­sion of Eaton Canyon.

Tell me about your hat.

The Pakol? My bud­dy brought a grip of em back from Afghanistan. Grow­ing up at the ass end of the cold war, I watched and read about the Mujahideen fight­ing the Sovi­ets in Afghanistan, specif­i­cal­ly Ahmad Shah Mas­soud, some­one I looked up to as a kid. He was killed 9–9‑01. Many things are con­nect­ed. In short, it’s a nice com­fy warm hat with a cool his­to­ry. I respect the peo­ple fight­ing for their way of life against a larg­er oppo­nent. I find this to be a core Amer­i­can val­ue in my lit­tle fan­ta­sy world in my head.

Any oth­er sto­ries or cool anec­dotes or things you’d like to share?

I dun­no, maybe just some unso­licit­ed advice. Turn your phone off and go far away. Take good care of your­self, espe­cial­ly your soul, and spend as much time with your loved ones as pos­si­ble. Enjoy every moment you can, for you’re still alive and many can’t enjoy that same free­dom. Make peo­ple laugh, help strangers, don’t be a bitch, don’t take shit from any­one, and choose time over mon­ey. When you’re lying in a hos­pi­tal bed or some­where else con­vinced you’re gonna die, you’ll fig­ure out what mat­ters to you.

Ryan is on Insta­gram @tacodelbicicleta