Rock and roll. Rock-a’bye baby. Rock around the clock. Hard Rock Café. Rock my world. “We will, we will rock you.” There is rock and there is rock. What really rocks me is the real stuff.
My daughter, Ilona, and her husband, Yoav, just climbed Half Dome in Yosemite, not via the exhausting but safe backside trail that concludes with a few hundred vertical feet of scary fixed cables—as I have done—but straight up the vertical face, as befits the world-class mountaineers that they are. I take some responsibility (albeit no credit) for my daughter’s accomplishments, having introduced her to the magic of mountains … even as I dearly wish she would take up shuffleboard instead!
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Rock and roll. Rock-a’bye baby. Rock around the clock. Hard Rock Café. Rock my world. “We will, we will rock you.” There is rock and there is rock. What really rocks me is the real stuff.
My daughter, Ilona, and her husband, Yoav, just climbed Half Dome in Yosemite, not via the exhausting but safe backside trail that concludes with a few hundred vertical feet of scary fixed cables—as I have done—but straight up the vertical face, as befits the world-class mountaineers that they are. I take some responsibility (albeit no credit) for my daughter’s accomplishments, having introduced her to the magic of mountains … even as I dearly wish she would take up shuffleboard instead!
When it comes to sports and hobbies, I’m much predisposed toward those done in conjunction with nature and more or less by one’s self, rather than on man-made terrain by artificial rules, as part of a team, and typically employing a ball of some sort. Give me the joys of snowshoeing, horseback riding, kayaking, snorkeling, bird-watching, or backpacking any time. (Climbing, too, but for me, that’s more a remembrance of things past.) As regular readers of this blog will have noticed, getting high on mountains occupies a special place in my heart. So much so that I can’t resist writing about it.
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It is therefore in celebration of climbers everywhere, and of how the snow in my beloved Cascade Mountains has finally realized that it’s warming up and has seasonally begun to inch back up where it belongs, leaving the high country increasingly accessible to those similarly obsessed, that I dedicate this mountain meditation.
Mountain cliffs and walls seem so natural, so unstructured—when seen from afar—as to appear almost homogeneous in their featurelessness. It is difficult for non-climbers to appreciate that these tumbled rock piles, grim and reckless, these heaven-ambitious peaks, what Walt Whitman called “these formless wild arrays,” are actually crisscrossed by known routes, as real to the climber as boundaries between states or nations are to the geographer. There is a “fine lead,” we are told, up the granite wall just beyond where a thin stream cascades over the third gulley, a nifty chimney to be found between the largest boulder and the southwest cliff face, a glorious overhang below the second belaying ledge, and so forth. Not only are such routes precisely known, evaluated, and pointed out, there are even specific instructions detailing how to follow these invisible pathways: Hence, a guidebook might announce “toe jam on left, five feet above the ‘open book’ in center gully; then smear right and lay-back fifteen feet to a challenging overhang past the second red vein.”
Good rock-climbing spots tend to be especially well known and increasingly popular. Prominent handholds may even be spotted from a distance, coated with the chalk dust used to enhance friction (as in gymnastics) while convenient footholds are often rubbed shiny by the smooth-soled boots of specialized climbing shoes, typically sized one or two notches too small for comfort, but helpful for squeezing into narrow places. Often visible from a road, rock climbing differs from most forms of mountaineering in that it has become something of a spectator sport, with ascents often watched by non-climbers in lawn chairs and Winnebagos, as at the cliffs above Squamish, in British Columbia’s “sunshine coast.”
Not surprisingly, therefore, there has come to be more than a little narcissism on rock, with bare-chested rock-jocks conspicuously carrying their personal bag of chalk, to be used before an especially difficult “move.” Aficionados strut their stuff on three hundred foot cliffs at the Shawangunks near New Paltz, New York (affectionately known as the “Gunks”), or six hundred feet or so above El Dorado Canyon near Boulder, Colorado, or three thousand feet up on the “big walls” of Yosemite such as El Capitan and Half Dome, or in Zion Canyon, Utah. These days, however, I suspect that far more people climb in indoor gyms, which provide not only exercise but often serve as the only goal of their endeavors. Just like the body-builder who never, ever pulls a barge or lifts a bale, some “rock climbers” never seem to bother climbing mountains.
For those who do, there is a curious but widespread ethos, one that may actually discourage conditioning and despises excessive healthiness, perhaps because doing it out-of-shape enhances the accomplishment. Some of the most revered feats within the rock-rat community have been those performed with a notable hangover, and many an imposing wall has been ascended by stalwarts fueled largely by cigarettes, pretzels, Pepsi, and marijuana. (The latter isn’t used for the climbing itself, but rather for enhancing the sunset, as witnessed from a cliffside hammock ... although to my mind, such events hardly need enhancement.)
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It isn’t feasible to brush up on crevasse-rescue skills whenever the mood beckons, or to get in a bit of ice climbing on your lunch hour (would that it were!). But all you need to practice climbing rock is, well, some rock, and this can often be found without too much difficulty. One of the more popular pastimes, in fact, is “bouldering,” clambering up and over the boulders that seem to abound wherever there are mountains nearby. Hanging around camp, waiting for the weather to clear, or after dinner and before sunset, ardent boulderers can be seen working out satisfying little “problems,” perfecting their confidence and technique.
It takes some learning (I’ve never really mastered it, except occasionally on a medium-sized boulder with terra firma—the more firma the less terra—reassuringly close at hand) to trust your feet and stand directly over a foothold, leaving hands free to use only when needed. The neophyte’s error is to lean in toward the rock, thereby either occupying one or more hand-holds or bumping the mountain with your nose. It also takes some learning (I never really mastered this either!) to avoid jerkiness or desperate pawing at the rock, and to move like a carefully choreographed ballet dancer, climbing first with your eyes, using limbs not to find or create a purchase but to take advantage of what is already there, just waiting for you. (Kind of like the famous sculptor’s claim that the statue already resides in the marble, merely waiting to be revealed.)
But when it clicks, even if just for a moment or two of what psychologist Mihaly Csíkszentmihályi dubbed “flow,” the marvelous aroma of self-transcendent mastery lingers, a whiff of wonderment at how a soft body can—if only briefly—work its way upon the harsh, unyielding bones of our extraordinary planet.