Sport Climbing and the Ongoing Battle Against Impermanence
Thanksgiving this year was a little unusual. Rather than opting for the usual display of drier-than-bone honey baked ham and loads of other visually unappealing food (to all the good cooks out there, it’s not you, it’s me) I skipped town to go climbing. Departing a little late, we were determined to make the most of an uncharacteristically warm break in the clouds by visiting a local crag. Just days before the sun had managed to hit every other rock while we were out there, and we weren’t going to make the same mistakes when choosing routes.
Being a fairly new climber(and for that you can hopefully forgive my attempts at jamming new climbing vocab in here) I was surprised if not somewhat nervous when my friend suggested a multi-pitch climb, something that I felt was a long way off. At least a hundred extra feet off, actually. Luckily, his experience eclipses mine by at least a decade and after consulting the seemingly all knowing Mountain Project, the Google Maps of climbing, we were off.
Our region was hit by significant fires in the past few years, reducing a once teeming forest to a barren wasteland. The effect of this while climbing is a much greater feeling of exposure than how it really is, without the trees stretching up towards the sky alongside you. Although after a certain point, particularly on a longer climb, the exposure doesn’t seem to increase anymore so a hundred feet more is mostly a logistical concern if you have the gear. Being new to the systems, I didn’t have to do any lead climbing and instead got to savor the ride and discover the joys of properly managing 70 meters of rope (I too agree that the US should adopt the metric system, with already one glaring measurement inconsistency in this post alone)
It can be easy to get psyched out while climbing, but provided you did all of your safety checks and have redundant systems and nothing goes catastrophically wrong for some reason, you aren’t going anywhere but up. Finding that eye of the hurricane “zone” and a deep focus on the act of climbing itself is the key. Curiously, I’ve found that it’s usually best to save pondering the absurdity of the whole thing for when you’re back on the ground.
At the top, someone had placed a nearly rusted shut ammo container that we pried open. Inside was a logbook with a long list that we proudly added ourselves to. We’d been there, we’d done the thing, we’d existed, and we’d now written our names in ink upon this odd bit of rock jutting out of the ground. After taking in the scenery, or what was left of it, the initial glow began to fade and it was time to rappel down. After all, we were still here on the rock’s terms and not our own.
Years before, some forerunning folks had taken the time to come out and laboriously place bolts up the rock so that others like us could enjoy getting outside and for a brief moment feel a sense of conquering something greater than ourselves. The experience of being in nature is deeply humbling, but the experience of being in nature and climbing affords itself a unique level of audaciousness:
… I just saw a bird flying below me
In reality, the rock has been there long before me, and will be there long after me, and in spite of various attempts to “tame” it whether by means of permanent anchors or trad gear, the rock still wins the battle. All that remains after us are some stainless steel bolts and chalk marks, another futile attempt at humans leaving a mark that will remain long beyond us, albeit a pretty damn interesting one. That literal high and mighty feeling of getting to the top is quickly deflated by the descent back to earth. It turns out that sport climbing is actually a microcosm of the human experience and you heard it here first.
All that being said, I wouldn’t go as far as claiming that the climb, or any other climb, is ever done in vain. It seems that the best place to scream up at the sky and shake our fists at the things we don’t understand is probably from higher up. In this regard, climbing seems like the most sensible approach.
Disclaimer — I’m definitely not intending to take jabs at sport climbing and permanent protection in regards to leave no trace principles. I wouldn't go near traditional climbing. Yet
