Thoughts on Climbing

In high school, though I didn’t think of myself as a child, I was still a child. I did ok in school, but didn’t really apply myself, and was bored. I had a part time job in the back end of a restaurant, bussing tables and doing dishes. I got along with the other staff, and I did well there, making friends, working hard with my Midwestern work ethic, and learning that I didn’t want to work in restaurants the rest of my life.

When the opportunity came along to graduate high school early, and take the “senior option program” – to work part time and take college courses in leu of high school - I jumped at the chance. I thought the supervisors of the program weren’t paying much attention when one of the required college courses I signed up for was Rock Climbing and Wilderness Survival (this was at a community college). 

The bright ropes and cords, and exotic equipment in the local mountain shop had long before caught my eye, and I spent hours in the store after school, talking with the owner about his climbing adventures to the greater ranges (which would be any range, this being Michigan, after all), and dreaming of my own, future, mountaineering trips. I believe the shop, Great Lakes Mountaineering, was later shut down for tax evasion, but that’s another story.

As unlikely as it seems, growing up in Michigan, I learned a bit about climbing on that course, moved West, got a job in a mountain shop during my on again, off again college career, and became a real climber. I lived for climbing. A few years later I was making a living by teaching climbing. After a year where I realized I’d driven to Yosemite 32 weekends in a row I figured it was time to move closer to the hills, and landed in the Eastern Sierra, and became a teacher of climbing and mountaineering. Thirty years on, thousands of students have passed my way, to learn climbing and outdoor skills.

So what is all the fuss about climbing? A rich body of literature exists to explore this question, think John Muir’s “Climb the mountains and get their good tidings”, or famed mountaineer Edmund Hillary’s statement “It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves”, to get that ball rolling.

The purpose of climbing is to challenge ourselves. We do it by ourselves and we do it in teams. These challenges offer metaphors and lessons for other aspects of our lives. A student, a child of ten or eleven, on a climbing course told me “I had no idea anything existed that was this fun!” More recently an adult student told me “This was life changing”. Of course we also climb because it’s simply fun.

Climbing is a physical meditation –  the simple joy of moving one’s body through a sequence of ‘moves’ – linking up hand and foot holds, alternately tensing and relaxing muscles as one progresses up a rock. “Scrambling”, the simplest form of climbing, requires no equipment other than optionally a pair of hiking, climbing, or approach shoes. Who, in their youth, hasn’t experienced the joy of scrambling through some rocks to find the top of some interesting hill?

Bouldering is a more focused type of scrambling, also requires no equipment other than usually a pair of specialized climbing shoes, a hiking shoe that has been morphed to have a smooth sole, outfitted with stickier rubber and a tight sock-like fit. The perfect rock for bouldering offers a smooth landing should one jump or fall off, and a range of ways (called “problems”) to climb up, but an easy way to climb down. Bouldering is focused on the movement aspect of climbing: how to link up the features (hand and foot holds) present so as to make upward progress and get to the top of the boulder. With no rope used, bouldering has obvious risks which are mitigated by the fact that this kind of climbing takes place on smaller rocks where a jump or fall off the rock doesn’t have terrible consequences. Bouldering specialists often use pads to cushion their landings, and a team of spotters to help direct their falls. Bouldering problems tend to offer moderate to extremely difficult movement sequences and “boulderers”, as specialists are known, can spend hours to weeks working a problem until they finally have the full sequence of moves to complete it.

Classic roped climbing involves a team of usually two climbers, each dependent on the other for the safety system of a rope and belay. “Belay” means to catch or prevent a fall by using a rope. This type of climbing can be applied to a cliff of any height. The first climber, “the leader”, heads up, placing strong safety equipment, or “protection”, in cracks as they progress, through which the rope is clipped. Should the leader fall the belayer will catch them via the rope, which is hooked through the protection. Once the leader runs out of rope, or gets to a good spot, they will anchor themselves to the rock and use the rope to belay up the follower, who will remove the protection as they climb. The cycle repeats.

A variation on this system, called top roping, involves a short cliff, where the top is easily accessed. The rope can be anchored at its mid point, at the top of the cliff, so that both ends reach the ground and so that the rope can easily be pulled through the anchor. A climber connects to one side of the rope and a belay is provided on the other side of the rope. This is called top rope climbing and is how most climbing instruction takes place.

The climbing safety team – a climber, a belayer, and often a back up belayer, is a sacred trust. The belayers literally hold the climber’s life in their hands. For both new climbers and old hands the belay is a profound relationship that can foster many interesting questions. Who is the leader, the climber or the belayer? Which job is harder? How do I earn the trust of the climber? Why should I trust my belayer?

Climbing itself fosters many questions – how do I show up when I’m challenged? How do I help my teammates meet challenges? How do I push on when I am in fear? When do I know it is time to give up? And, of course, what is on the other side of this hill!?

“To see what others can not... You must climb the mountain.” (unknown)