First climb keeps you tied in knots

Editor’s note: This is the second in a series of articles about a 30-year-old woman’s ascent into the world of mountain climbing through the annual Mountain School conducted by the Spokane Mountaineers. The club is celebrating its 90th anniversary.

Knot night in Mountain School nearly induced a seizure.

The rope makes a loop and becomes a tree, and goes up through the bunny hole and in and back out and that makes a what? A messy tangle of rope?

Numerous people showed me the tree in the bunny hole trick for tying a bowline knot, but I just couldn’t get it. I don’t think foot-stamping temper tantrums are allowed in rock climbing, and I really wanted to climb, so I dredged up every smidgen of self control, kept my feet firmly planted on the floor, and put the tree in the bunny hole once more.

Thirty-two fledgling mountaineers and I were about one third of the way through the Spokane Mountaineers’ three-and-a-half month long Mountain School and were beginning one of the most exciting components: rock climbing.

After spending a few hours indoors learning myriad knots and rope management techniques we would be encountering on the rock and in the mountains, we headed to Minnehaha Rocks, just north of Upriver Dam, for the first of four all-day sessions.

I’d climbed a bit before and had some idea as to what it was all about, but seeing the reactions of others brought back those initial feelings of thrilled anticipation mixed with a bit of anxiety and doubt.

It’s all well and good for Sylvester Stallone to dangle one-armed off a 400-foot cliff (on a Hollywood set) while placing a bolt for protection with a space age bolt gun, but I’m a mom with noodley arms, and for most of my life I was too terrified to stand on top of a ladder.

Most climbers have moments of fear. It can help keep them alive. They develop ways of dealing with it, some by visualization, others with breathing techniques.

When my “Are you insane?” moment invariably comes, I chew on my shoulder. I have suffered a self-induced hickey more than once. With a little work, however, I was soon quite happily hopping off the side of a cliff with only a few ounces of metal holding me to a rope, and I saw the same evolution with my fellow students.

Over the course of the class, I was grouped with all levels of climbers from a 26-year-old who had been an assault climber in the Marines to a 50-year-old man who had never attempted to ascend a pitch of rock.

Even though skill level varied greatly, we all went through the paces together and reviewed the basics: belaying or managing the rope for the climber; rappelling or descending the rope; and climbing techniques such as “smearing” – pressing the bottom of your foot into the rock and standing on an invisible vertical dent – and “edging” to stand on holds skinnier than a pencil.

After mastering the basics, we spent what otherwise would have been a beautiful Saturday morning learning the more advanced technique of ascending a rope. These aren’t the coarse, 2-inch knotted ropes from high school gym class. They’re more like a garden hose, no thicker than a thumb and very smooth; it’s no easy task to climb up one if you happen to have fallen into a glacier. The scenario goes as follows:

Space three or four climbers along the length of a rope. Attach a self-locking knot, or prusik, between the harness and the rope, and fix a contraption called the Texas T to the rope. Trot happily across a glacier. Fall into the yawning abyss of a crevasse. Don’t die instantly. Whip out foot loops from Texas T, loop them from knot on rope to your boots, transfer weight onto prusik — and breathe.

Scrunch up, get feet under butt, and haul yourself and a 40-pound pack into a standing position on quarter-inch cords looped under feet. While standing, slide upper knot to head level, fall back onto chest harness and upper prussic, taking weight off of feet. Slide lower knot beneath upper, get feet under body and do the whole vertical inchworm move once more. Repeat and repeat and repeat, up and out of the crevasse.

I’ve never in my life had a better whole-body workout from one activity; I’ll be getting buns of steel from this deal if it kills me.

Finally, after drilling us nearly to death, the instructors present the moment we’d been waiting for: a real rock route just begging to be climbed. No more lectures or pointers. Just climb.

We scrambled into position, careful to follow all the rules. The rules seem silly and redundant sometimes, but they need to become ingrained. We could easily end up having to do this in the dark, with howling winds and ice on our rope, so when someone says, “Hey, check me out,” don’t call back, “You’re ugly!” That’s a response for another place and another time.

In climbing, “check me out” means partners are ready and waiting to have their safety systems checked so they don’t plunge to their death.

Before every climb, climbers check that their partner’s harness is properly buckled, that the climber’s knot is tied correctly and the belay is properly set up and the carabineer locked.

“On belay?” the climber asks.

Once they safely have control of the rope, “Belay’s on,” the belayer replies.

“Climbing.”

“Climb on!” Such a sweet phrase.

Mike Billings, who celebrated his 50th birthday during the course of rock school and who had never before attempted any sort of climbing, started gamely up the face. I was his belay as he undertook his most difficult route to date.

About halfway up, he began to struggle, and after failing to progress for several minutes, wanted to come down. Being his belay, I of course said no and sent Mountain School Director Jason Lenhart over to coach him.

“Put your foot where your hand is,” Lenhart called up. Billings look doubtful, but managed, struggled up onto the hold, and breezed to the top.

That moment epitomized everything I love about climbing.

Sometimes you can struggle with every ounce of strength you possess and be ready to concede defeat. One word of encouragement though, even from yourself, and you manage to push one more step, one more inch, and the whole climb falls into place. Suddenly, you’re at the top, and if you’ve worked hard enough, you get a rush so strong that you want nothing more than to pound on your chest and howl at the moon.

You’ve accomplished something more difficult than you ever thought possible. You’ve pushed beyond your limits, conquered your fears and reset the standard. That’s what all those crazy climbers are addicted to.

Billings is catching the bug. I could see it in his eyes when he came down. He had the glow.

That moment alone made all the frustration of those stupid bunny hole knots worthwhile.