Don't Save Anything: The Uncollected Writings of James Salter(49)
There are climbs off campus as well. There’s a well-known layback on the Colorado Bookstore and good hand jams on the Public Service Building. “They’re about 5.9,” Kevin estimates. Climbers also practice on large rocks and the lower parts of the faces themselves. This is called bouldering and is a separate art. In the canyon many of the boulder problems are named: Green Hornet, Slap in the Face, Turok’s Mantle. Kevin, who studied modern dance to give himself more grace in his climbing movements, is a resident expert.
“There are some real nice moves,” he comments genially to a couple of visiting climbers. He is barefoot and wearing his white pants. “You guys are strong, you’ll be able to do this without any trouble.”
He’s sandbagging. The nice moves turn out to be excruciatingly difficult: two finger pull-ups to reach an overhang, horizontal levers, abrupt swings from one half-inch hold to another like an orangutan.
“Hey, neat! You almost got it,” Kevin cries. “Now bend back more.”
The visitors are barely holding on. “Your weight is entirely on your right leg, see?”
They can’t do it. They drop off like dead flies.
“Aren’t there any good finger cracks?” one of the climbers keeps moaning.
Extreme, acrobatic moves are not the sort of thing one does on a real climb—they’re too risky. There is a radical school that believes in the concept “No shoot, no loot,” that is, if you don’t take chances, you don’t win, and its adepts are willing to take ten or twenty short falls in a row, hundreds of feet up, attempting something hard. Of course, they are protected by the rope, but there is something impure about these repeated attempts, at least in the view of many climbers.
Technical climbing is done with a rope. The theory is faultless. One climber secures himself to the rock. The other climbs, protected against too long a fall by the rope, which is paid out to him as he goes and which, further, passes through carabiners clipped to loops on pieces of metal, called nuts, that are wedged into small cracks. The rope will not break. The danger usually occurs when the belayer is not well enough situated to hold a fall, when he has been obliged to stay in a place that is unsuitable. “If you come off now, we’re both going,” is a chilling warning. Accidents also take place during the descent when the danger seems past. Rappels are particularly risky. There are the dangers of “easy” places where one doesn’t bother with regular procedures. Finally there are the so-called objective dangers of rockfall, avalanche, and the like. In the U.S. last year there were forty-two climbing fatalities.
Kevin doesn’t take falls. He has fallen forty or fifty times, but that was over a sixteen-year period. Usually he expects it—when he’s overextending himself or trying for something too difficult. If he thinks he may fall, he goes down and comes back another time. The big change that has taken place during the time he’s been climbing has been the freeing of routes. Many of the climbs in the canyon and elsewhere were first done with what is called aid—pitons were driven into cracks in the rock and climbers clipped into them and stood in a kind of nylon sling. Gradually the idea became to do the climbs without aid, to do them free. The climber may use only his hands and feet, even when the rock is past vertical. To so much as hook a finger through a piton already in place is forbidden.
One of the main figures in making routes go free was Jim Erickson, a contemporary of Kevin’s. There is one particularly intimidating climb called the Naked Edge, located in what the guidebook describes as a superb position, 400 feet up on Redgarden Wall. It is a long, exterior corner high in the air and at one point must be crossed where it is said that a fall will cut the rope. It was Erickson who first climbed the Naked Edge free. A purist, he has never gone back to do it again. The climb is 5.11 and is now a classic. Kevin had been away from climbing for several years. As soon as he arrived back in Boulder, he called a friend.
“Hi, Ron, this is Kevin.”
The reply was simple. It bridged a decade. “The Naked Edge went free.”
It was a turning point in his life, Kevin says. “I couldn’t believe it. I was just blown away.”
He can do forty-five chins. Erickson can do fifty. Kevin is the more natural climber of the two, with the torso and thin legs of a gymnast. Erickson is shorter and chunkier—he has more of a mountaineer’s build. He had to work harder to become a climber and it was this extra effort, Kevin believes, that made him great. Climbing is superb exercise but it is not like other sports, not even boxing. There is more at stake. Kevin used to box—he was knocked down three times in the first round by Sandy Cisneros.
“Finally I just decided to stay down. It was all over. You can’t do that in climbing. You’ve got to go to the end. You can’t walk away from it when you’re up there. You’re responsible for yourself and you’ve got to do it.”
There is always something you cannot or are afraid you cannot do. Like everyone else, there is a point at which Kevin feels the anguish. It is usually on difficult climbs when the point of no return is passed and the only way remaining is up. Not all climbs have this, of course, but when they do he can feel it, the voltage, the adrenaline rush. It’s the adrenaline that makes your legs tremble. Too big a rush finishes you, you can’t go on.
“The thing is not to burn out, to control it. Don’t freak out, keep your head. You have to save your strength to the end.” The psychological element in the sport is immense. The space beneath one, the implacability of the rock, the move that must be made. Somehow you do it: on top at last. On top of Psycho with its frightening overhang, Rosy Crucifixion, or the Grand Giraffe. Across the way the Bastille is dotted with climbers. To the east as far as one can see are the plains. The scene is ravishing, the feeling of comradeship and victory, supreme.