Tuesday Voice: Growing up in America

Climbing rocks

By Rolf Dumke

Reading the NY Times article of the spectacular recent climb of Yosemite's El Capitan – “Pursuing the Impossible, and Coming Out on Top,” by John Branch, January 14, 2015 – I felt certain college memories resurfacing.

Tommy Caldwell, left, and Kevin Jorgeson, after completing
their 19-day free climb of the 3,000-foot Dawn Wall
on El Capitan in Yosemite National Park

During my senior year, after having taken off the year before, I became part of the newly-founded Yale climbing club, at the instigation of a roommate, John, who had transferred from MIT, where rock climbing was a well developed sport with many good climbers.
    After training – climbing with ropes in the gym – we went climbing in the sunny warm days of that fall, on a long yellow-red sandstone escarpment in a hidden valley filled with rioting red maple leaves under a blue sky an hour and a half drive north of New Haven, where John took me up on my first climb, on a 150-foot cliff on a route that included all major climbing techniques.
    We started with a small bulging overhead; then up along a long crack with an equally long slab of stone jutting out on the other side, allowing one to “walk” up simply by leaning back and holding on with my hands in the deep crack, shifting hands going up; finally, just jamming in hands and feet alternatively going up another deep crack.
    Arriving at the top, I was relieved – I hadn’t been able to pull myself up onto a ledge in the middle of the cliff because I had already used up most of the muscle power in my arms on the first part of the climb trying to make up for bad technique, and I fell ten to fifteen feet before being saved by John, who held my rope – and immensely elated to be alive after the terror of the fall. I felt that I had really earned the magnificent view.
    Another time John and I took my future wife, Susan, up on her first climb on the same escarpment, on an easier route. But having three persons on the climb, including a complete beginner, took a lot more time. We were stranded at mid-cliff at sundown, so we had to rappel down our rope into the darkness. Incredibly, Susan remained calm and followed John’s instructions with complete faith in his (real) and my (feigned) competence.
    Later that fall, a small group of Yale climbers drove down to see a slide show at the New York Mountaineering Club of the first climb of El Capitan, by Warren Harding and team [“50th anniversary of first ascent of El Capitan” [Peter Fimrite, SFGate, November 9, 2008]. A fantastic feat. The club’s august members treated the climbers akin to Sir Edmund Hillary, after his climb of Mt. Everest.

November 12, 1958. Warren Harding (far left), George Whitmore (far right),
and Wayne Merry (just coming over the edge) complete their ascent of El Capitan
in Yosemite National Park; George Whitmer is a member of the support party

    On the way back to New Haven, we took a young woman climber home to Greenwich, to a huge brick pile of a building. Everybody hustled out of the cars and began to climb all over the face of this house, only dimly lit by lights in the park. We all had an intensely felt urge to finally move and climb after the confinement at the club. The young woman’s father was amused to see us scrambling like a bunch of kids gone wild and scolded.
    Interestingly, our daughter Sibylla is a good rock climber, in Berchtesgaden, on nearby Austrian cliffs, and in the Dolomites of Suedtirol. She has become a far better climber than I ever was.

[The first installment of “Growing up in America,” “Two years at Shaw High,” appeared on November 18, 2014.]

[July 25, 2015 Postscript: The article “The Rise of Climbing,” published in today's NY Times, by Daniel Duane, an excellent older climber on the cliffs of Yosemite National Park, reports that the new climbing halls have incredibly improved the quality of young climbers. Mr. Duane turned up his nose at the aesthetics of indoor climbing until he found out that his young daughter learned fast and improved quickly and could climb well on real rocks and cliffs. Now he wholeheartedly supports this new sport. Unfortunately, it leads to long waiting lines below good climbs in nature, destroying the original fascination of how one could overcome the challenge of a cliff in solitary nature with just a friend or two. Has climbing been reduced to technique?]

Copyright © 2015 by Rolf Dumke