Wednesday, 9 April 2014 at 11:47 AM *[14 Noble Ave, Yonkers, NY, United States](https://www.google.com/maps/search/?api=1&query=14+Noble+Ave,+Yonkers,+NY,+United+States&map_action=map&basemap=satellite)* # Out of the Hole, On to the Rock I've always wondered how people climb rock faces when there's not a rope already hanging there. I went out to the [Shawangunks](http://offmetro.com/ny/2008/05/15/rock-climbing-in-the-gunks/) over the weekend and got to learn the ropes firsthand. Here's how rock climbing works, if you've never been: It takes two people (unless you're free climbing or have an auto-belay device, but those options are dangerous) and these individuals are alternately the **climber** and the **belayer**. Both wear climbing harnesses and safety helmets, and they're connected by a rope. Getting off the ground is as scary as you think it is. The **lead** climber has to climb up the rock face about ten or fifteen feet to create the first **anchor point**. I was primarily the belayer for these leads, so I stood below my friend John with arms outstretched to ease his descent if he should fall. John looked for a crack where he could place a [cam](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring-loaded_camming_device) or a [nut](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nut_(climbing)). This was a slow process, because both cams and nuts come in several sizes, so finding the right one on the first try was a challenge. It's even more challenging, because he had to hold on to the rock face the whole time he was checking for a fit. Lead climbing is very demanding of your stamina, because you have to hold a position for several minutes while trying to protect the route. Imagine climbing a ladder and having to hang off of it while you rummaged around on your belt for a tool. Once John found a good fit, he clipped our climbing rope into a carabiner attached to the anchor and I breathed a sigh of relief. Now I could go back to belaying, instead of doing dual duty as a spotter. Belaying meant feeding John more rope as he climbed upward, but also keeping enough tension on to catch him if he fell. Since it was my first time belaying outside the comfort of a gym (usually, I go to [The Rock Club](http://climbrockclub.com)), John surprised me with a couple of test falls to make sure I would catch him on belay. I caught him. After about fifty feet or so, I lost sight of John and had to rely on the tension of the rope to tell me his status. If I felt it go taut, I knew he was climbing and that meant I had to feed him more rope. (Don't worry, there's a specific way to hold the rope to make sure he's still safe even as I'm letting the rope out.) If I felt the rope slacken, it meant he had stopped and was looking for a place to anchor. It was a lot like fishing, I would watch the rope dance a little bit, then a quick tug meant that he was lifting the rope to clip in to the anchor. Steady pressure meant he was climbing again. Once John got to the top, he shouted out "SAFE!" which was my cue that he had reached the fixed anchor at the top of the route. That meant it was my turn to climb. I unclipped my [belay device](http://blackdiamondequipment.com/en/climbing-belay-rappel/atc-belay-rappel-device-BD620045) from the rope and tied in to the end of it. The rope was still threaded through the anchor points John had left, but he was standing at the top to belay me as I made my way up. My job was to clean our gear off of the route, disengaging the cams and dislodging the nuts. It doesn't take as long as it took John to set the anchors, because I don't have to worry about where to place which piece of equipment, but it still meant I had to stop every ten feet or so to remove something from the rock. Ours was a **two-pitch** route, which means that there was a little shelf about halfway up where John was waiting for me, and where we would trade places to finish the rest of the climb. The view was spectacular! John helped me create three anchor points so I would be safe to belay him up the next half of the route. Safely tied in, we repeated the process from the beginning. The wind was fierce that day, and my teeth were chattering until it was my turn to climb. (I shouldn't be complaining though. I had the foresight to bring my [cold-weather jacket](http://www.montbell.us/products/disp.php?p_id=2301344), and I was fairly toasty compared to John, who left his windbreaker in the car.) Once I reached the top, we had to pull up all of the rope and find the halfway point so we could create a solid anchor from which to rappel down. John had marked his rope at the middle with two large black blazes, and we anchored ourselves to a tree that had a strap and carabiners on it for just that purpose. You've got to appreciate fellow climbers. The Gunks are world-famous, and all of the routes, over the years, have accumulated these permanent anchor points at the top. If we were the first ones to climb this area, we probably would have had to leave some of our gear at the top to get down safely. Once the rope was set, John gave me a crash course in rappelling (I had never rappelled off of anything like this before,) since he had to go down first. Remember how this was a two-pitch route? That meant we had to be careful about our descent and make sure to land near the first pitch's rappel anchor. John had the guidebook, so he had to rappel down and find the anchor. He disappeared over the edge, leaving me shivering in the wind. I had put my jacket away because I didn't want it to get rope burn, and the wind was a steady 20mph coming toward me. It was so loud that I couldn't have heard John if he had shouted that he reached the marker, but I kept an eye on the tension in the rope. When I saw it slacken, I knew it was safe for me to get on. John warned me that rappelling was the scariest part of climbing outdoors, because you quite literally have your life in your own hands. There is no safety, no one else to catch you, it's just you, the rope, and your fists. This should have concerned me, but I understood the belay mechanism as soon as John showed it to me and had ultimate faith in the process. I hopped over the ledge and skipped my way down the rock to meet up with John in the still air below. Then we rappelled down again. That's how it works, that's everything involved in 'scending a two-pitch route. Now, when I got back to terra firma, I was overwhelmed with a sense of accomplishment. Together, we had climbed more than two-hundred feet using nothing but our hands, feet, and wits. The mountain was conquerable, and we had conquered it. I had to stop and appreciate this development. A little over three months ago, I started climbing at the Rock Club several times a week on a whim. It was something I had always been curious about, climbing indoors, and I finally took the plunge with a little encouragement from some friends at work. Now, I was climbing out in the wilderness, with real rocks and real height at stake. Aside from a couple of rough starts on the Belly Roll (all of the routes at the Gunks have affectionate little names,) I hadn't fallen at all. Looking back up from the bottom, I realized that I could have climbed the sheer rock face unaided. I did even better on the Horseman, making it all the way to the top anchor point without even so much as a misstep, trusting only my body to keep me on the rocks. Well, that's not entirely accurate. There's a lot of machinery involved to make sure the climb is as safe as possible, just in case I did slip or fall. I also have to have complete trust in my friend John (and he in me) because he is holding my lifeline. I have to have faith in the anchor points he places along the way, knowing that they will hold me in case of emergency. A long time ago, I had an explosive argument with a girlfriend. We were in it to draw blood, and I told her that she was a green, leafy, organic thing and I was a machine, with wheels and gears inside my head. I spoke to the fundamental incompatibility therein, that all I could do was choke out her vines, and all she could do was clog up my mechanisms. But climbing has taught me otherwise. There needs to be a symbiotic fusion of organic and artificial to make it achievable and exhilarating. I can climb without any gear (lots of people do, it's called **bouldering**,) but I wouldn't get very high off the ground. With only my arms and legs, I can only safely ascend about fifteen or twenty feet, and I wouldn't be treated to such spectacular rewards. Neither would the gear alone get me up the mountain. John and I weigh about the same, so it would be silly to think that either of us could pull the other up. Instead, a reciprocal, cooperative relationship has to exist between human and machine. We work together to achieve things neither of us could do on our own. I was wrong to think of our personalities as incompatible. I had been looking at our characteristics as antagonistic, not complementary, and that precludes the possibility of some truly great accomplishments. Now, I think differently. --- Wednesday, April 09, 2014 in [Day One](dayone://open?date=2014-04-09) #dailynote ```query file:20140409 ```