Yoav Altman mid-chimney on “La Cierta Edad,” Red Rocks National Conservation Area (I. A. Barash photo)
Earlier, I wrote a bit about rock climbing, noting how it offers a corrective tonic for a scholarly life that often feels out of touch with the real world.
Navigating one’s body on rock nonetheless offers no shortage of mental challenges as well, beyond the requirements of logistical planning and the cliché of “extended periods of boredom punctuated by occasional moments of sheer terror.” I’m thinking about a kind of body-thought in which the climber seeks to become one with the rock, calculating instantaneously and fluidly how best to use its cracks, bumps, and rugosity to ascend with a minimum of effort … not so much imposing one’s will as using the natural features to surmount themselves.
On occasion, of course, complaining muscles must be overcome, along with the tendency of some rock to splinter, of cracks to shatter or be too narrow or too shallow for good purchase, of surfaces to be slimy with moss or dripping water, slick with frost and ice, or almost indomitably smooth and and thus ungraspable or impregnable. And so, rock climbing is not really mind over matter, even if it looks that way to the admiring observer. It is more like mind and matter (the very personal organic matter of very fallible climbers) over and around and across and through, in spite of and sometimes because of the enormously diverse matter—most of it inorganic and altogether indifferent to our needs—of this world.
But first, you need good rock. Say it again and savor the sound, because there may be no more sonorously meaningful and beneficent combination of two words in any language: GOOD ROCK. (And if all goes well, no roll.) Good rock means firm handholds, maybe some of them even delightfully shaped like a cozy jug handle, to fit right into the palm of a grateful hand. In means flat, stable platforms for your feet, at least a few inches wide (no more needed), so that your weight is not simply teetering from your toes until calf muscles cry out for relief. It means sharp, clean cracks that will admit fingers but not cut like a razor, and that allow feet to work flat, body arched and suspended by a combined and oddly reassuring tension, in what is known as a “layback.”
Good rock means the occasional “chimney,” walls obligingly separated by perhaps twice the width of one’s shoulders, allowing for upward progress by a variety of remarkably gratifying maneuvers known as “stemming,” in which pressure is applied on opposing walls, for example by pressing hands and feet against one wall of the chimney, shoulders and back against the other, or even right hand and foot on one, left hand and foot on the other, thereby ascending but with a lot of air around you, somewhat like a spider.
It means just enough unevenness to allow you to “smear” a hand when needed—flat like a pancake—and then use the friction thereby gained (even if no protuberance can be seen) to push off to a new hold. Good rock means a wonderfully diverse surface, providing endless variations on the theme of hardness, but without tedious repetition as on the outside of a skyscraper, or unpleasant surprises, as when a ledge crumbles or a flake shatters. It means abundant grooves and undulations, notches and crevices, opportunities to insert a foot, knee, elbow or hand, that is, to “jam”—with confidence. It means a texture that hints at providing actual suction, giving the climber the benefiscent illusion of being part octopus, or gecko.
Most of all, good rock means an absence of bad: Good rock does not crumble, flake, crack, or split like its opposite, “rotten rock.” It means that the cracks positively yearn for the placement of a well-chosen “chock,” a small piece of metal designed to hold without injuring the rock itself, and in good rock, every chock is cradled with a heart-warming firmness when you pull experimentally to seat the metal within the crack, never working free except when gently but firmly directed to do so.
When I first started climbing, in the early 70s, we made free use of pitons, special spikes that were literally hammered into the rock, thereby providing an anchor for “protection.” These days, pitons are not only frowned upon but essentially outlawed as uncceptably destructive. On really good rock, even less skilled climbers such as myself don’t miss them. But for any climber, good rock is redolent with delight, cause for celebration, poetry incarnate. And a good climber on good rock is little short of magic.
