Lessons from Skaljari -- Prologue

Indian Creek circa 2006

           I heard a message from home – whispers from the Front Range. Perhaps the Chinook winds caterwauled it through Eldorado and Clear Creek and Boulder Canyon and moved it along the Great Plains, arching it beyond the rolling Appalachia and over the whiteheads of the Atlantic. The message managed its way up through the Adriatic, and landed here in Boka Bay, Montenegro.

The old ways are dead, it said.

            And I wondered if it could be true. I wondered if the days when a man took an apprentice under his wing and taught him the good ways were over. Did they no longer admire men there? Were the masters dead along with their ways? Or did they follow this journey to what I still expect is its inevitable end – alone and content in the wilderness?

I learned in the old way. Outdoors. On real rock. I was taught how to be safe, yes, we all were taught that first. We had to be safe or else this passion of ours would be short-lived indeed. My father taught me. He taught me how to put on my harness, to make sure all the buckles were double-backed so that the buckle formed a “C.” “‘C’ for ‘closed’” we’d say. He showed me the two points on my harness to tie my rope into and reminded me that we make everything redundant because you only have one life but if you make all your systems redundant you’ve got two chances to save it. And he taught me the figure eight follow-through and how to back it up – like I said, everything redundant.

Once we came back from Camp Hale, I practiced that knot at home in the living room until I got it perfect. I didn’t know then that I’d be tying it a million times over the course of my life, feet planted on foreign grounds all around the world. That starting ritual would become like breathing to me. Neither master nor apprentice could have guessed that a simple skill like that, something a small boy could learn in an evening at home, would be the impetus for how the boy would come to define himself. That knot, what it allowed him to do, would affect him down to his marrow.

There was still much to be learned, of course. The climber is empty if he only knows how to protect himself. A true climber cares much more for his partner. I fear that if the message is true, if the old ways are dead, then this realization would be one of the first to go. I saw symptoms of it last time I was in the U.S., when I went to artificial walls steeped in air-conditioned fumes and I saw belayers who were inattentive and lackadaisical. They had not been told by someone they respect and admire that the belay is the apotheosis. To be in charge of another’s safety and well-being, to very literally have another’s life in your hands, is always primary.

I often hear people say that climbing is selfish. Those who look at it that way have erred greatly. They must be of the new ways. They look at climbing from the wrong perspective. They need to adjust their lenses. Zoom out.

Climbing, the whole act of it, has always had two roles: the climber, and the belayer. Sure the climber appears alone up there, muscles tensed and ready, mind engaged in the analysis of weaknesses (both his and the rock’s), moving upward and, more often than not, flying into the air when the rock benevolently tells him, “You’re still not good enough.” At this angle, up close, climbing seems a solitary struggle.

But if you zoom out and take in the whole picture, you’ll see the belayer too. He is essential to this passion we call climbing. The belayer gives all of himself to support the climber. He takes time to check that his partner has tied into his harness correctly. He gives words of advice to calm him before his ascent. He analyzes sequences and strategies for the climber, his friend, so that he can see him succeed. When the climber begins, the belayer raises his arms to spot those first movements, and when the climber has clipped his rope into his first piece of gear, the belayer now practices his art. It is an art that takes years to perfect, an art rooted in selflessness.

Though gyms may certify you after an hour’s course, the lessons on how to belay well will be infinite – refining and refining, ensuring that you can not only catch a fall, but that you can do so with mastery. The master belayer is there as a servant to the climber. He is anything but selfish. When the climber needs slack in his rope to clip a draw, the master belayer pays out enough to make it appear like he doesn’t even exist. When the climber calls for a take to rest, the master belayer makes the rope taught instantly. If the climber is falling from far above his last piece, the master belayer ensures that the catch is soft. If the climber suddenly breaks a hold, or slips, or is ejected from the rock in an instant, the master belayer can still catch him with ease and comfort. He knows when to shout words of encouragement and when to be silent. His brake hand is always on the rope, whether his belay device is assisted-braking or not; he knows that his partner’s life is entrusted to him, and that distraction and laziness and discomfort pale in comparison to the value of that life. There is no excuse to slip up.

Climbers suffer for their partners. I’ve sat for hours on ledges in freezing temperatures, winds battering me, cold, hungry, and tired, solely to belay my friends as they pursue that thing that drives them – an impossible route, a day in nature, a confrontation with absolute fear. And in turn my partners have done the same for me. At the end of a route, when I arrive safely down to the ground, I always thank my belayer, not just for protecting my life, but for giving me the opportunity to do what I love.

To do all of this, to put as much attention and sacrifice into belaying as you pour into climbing, is an essential element of being a climber of the old ways. I learned this first and foremost from my mentors. Those who accuse climbers of being selfish are ignorant of the old ways and themselves guilty of not seeing the whole picture. Again, zoom out. When we go out climbing, we are always both the climber and the belayer. And if we practice both, always striving to be better, the all-encompassing act of climbing will never be selfish.

Yes, the masters taught me. They taught me with their gracefulness as they danced up Yosemite boulders, and with their grunting and cursing as they wrestled desert offwidths. Some I knew were masters; their skills were beyond anything I could comprehend at the time. Others I only knew as my friends. But they trained me and we learned together and we grew into a comfort with these skills that made climbing much more than a hobby, more than a sport or a pastime. When we climbed we could revisit ourselves, recalibrate our minds with our bodies, aligning ourselves with who we wanted to be.   

These masters taught me how to be a good man, how to be well-rounded. They waited patiently through tirades I spit out against the rock, knowing that the real challenge was not the route, it was myself and my anger. They taught me that the route is a vehicle for understanding one’s self and that I must analyze those lessons as closely as I do the ones about body positioning, breathing, and efficiency. Self-control extends beyond the crag.

I learned that your sense of self will always be measured against the objectivity of the route. Arrogance will not make difficult climbing any easier. That axiom will be repeated again and again, at times making you face abject humility. Because in climbing, you are never good enough. What a beautiful lesson it is. Don’t misconstrue the lesson; once you embrace the reality that you are always flawed, then you can let go and truly enjoy the fall.

All these lessons were taught to me in the old ways and I mourn the new climbers just coming into this life if they are not learning them too. To climb the harder grades is one aspect of being a climber, yes. But it does not mean access into mastery. The grade itself means little compared to the journey to overcome the impossible. As you ascend the ranks of difficulty, beware if the numbers define you. As we move into 5.13, 5.14, 5.15, the same challenge will be present that was there on our very first routes; it is the most impossible challenge of this whole climbing experience and as we improve, it will loom ever stronger: the challenge of overcoming our own ego.

I have seen so-called “elite” climbers feign mastery and believe their climbing grade has earned them some new rights – the right to play music at the base of the crag; the right to cut into a party’s toprope route because it’s their warm-up; the right to spew beta at strangers, or speak patronizingly to beginners; the right to scream and holler and throw chalkbags like petulant children. Such climbers may be “elite,” but they are masters of nothing. Climbing purely for numbers and sloughing off all the other lessons is to miss the true virtues of climbing.

We climb for spiritual sustenance. Here the accusation of climbing being selfish again falls short. To accuse a person of being selfish by climbing is like accusing him of selfishness for eating. We need the fulfillment that climbing gives us as readily as we need the nourishment of food. The act of climbing gives us life. When we are both belayer and climber, giver and taker, philosophers of the myriad lessons climbing can teach us, then we become better. We break down and examine our egos. We learn patience, humility, and self-reflection. We give to our partners, we allow them to climb and in doing so, we feed their passion. The act of climbing is rooted in this balance.

Abandon this misrepresentation that climbing is selfish. A climber can be selfish, of course, but the act of climbing, the pursuit of everything it encompasses, is anything but. The old ways teach us this. That is why these ways must not die.

As climbing moves into gyms and Olympic platforms, we must make sure that the lessons do not become artificial as well. We will have great athletes practicing the sport, and ego-boosting titles of the “best climbers in the world” will make it seem like the pinnacle of this pursuit lies in an ability to do impossible movements on plastic monuments. We will adorn golden medals on great athletes, making the weight of ego that much heavier.

We still need masters – we the dilettantes who are eager to know how climbing enriches one’s life, those of us who hold the belay sacred, and yes, those of us who want to climb weightlessly, with perfect form, strong bodies, and minds light of ego. There is still too much to learn. Without masters, who will teach us? After twenty years of climbing, I still seek masters. This apprenticeship, I know, will last a lifetime.