I looked in the mirror this morning and saw my brother, John. Not in the metaphysical way of siblings sharing thoughts, or in the way I occasionally see my father peeking out from beneath my brow as I grow older and greyer. No, this weekend I came across an old photo of John in his rock climbing gear and he was sporting long sideburns very similar to the ones I am now growing out for our production of Pirates of Penzance.
In the photo from 1970, John is standing jauntily with a climbing rope over his shoulder, wearing a purple shirt, swashbuckling hat, bell-bottom pants and the afore-mentioned sideburns. He and my dad had taken up rock climbing while on a family vacation to the Grand Tetons in August 1967. They both enrolled in a climbing school and had been thoroughly hooked.
From that point on, our house was filled with gear - pitons of all sizes, hammers, carabiners, nuts, bongs (not the kind you're thinking of, more like cowbell-sized anchors), RURPs (Realization of Ultimate Reality Piton, named because they were for the tiniest of cracks, having a blade only about an inch long and 1/4 inch deep), jumar ascenders, harnesses, and miles of parti-colored climbing rope. There were even anchors on our roofline, put there by my dad to work on ascending techniques while hanging from our eaves. My brother and father's home-away-from-home became Camp 4 in the Yosemite Valley, which had been taken over by the Bohemian climbing community. It was only natural that I would be eventually be introduced to the sport, too.
My first climbing experiences were with the Boy Scouts. We occasionally got to practice rappelling down large boulders during weekend camping trips and also from wooden platforms at Scout-a-Rama expositions. I was pretty good at that. Then we went on to learn about actual climbing up on Mount Tamalpais, which has several nice routes that are easily accessible from the path that leads around the East Peak from the uppermost parking lot. One of those was the infamous "overhang," which required you to crawl up a short wall and then out across a ceiling like a human fly. My brother was quite adept at this difficult maneuver and it was both scary and amazing to see him make the final moves that took him out up over the edge.
My first climbs were on much easier routes. Still, despite being secured by "top ropes," it could be very nerve-wracking, especially when you reached a tricky spot and didn't know where or how to make the next move. I can still recall the shaking legs and arms that signalled both physical and mental fatigue. There was also one experience that permanently changed the way I felt about climbing.
We had gone up Mt. Tam one afternoon with a bunch of Scouts that included the Gallagher twins, Steven and Scott, who were my age. The routine we practiced was that the person on top, or belayer, first wrapped a length of webbing around his waist and secured that with a ring bend and two half-hitches. Then he would "clip in" via a couple of carabiners and a short piece of webbing to an anchor, which could be a piton driven into the rock, a permanent bolt attached to the rock face, or by some other means. Once tied in, the belayer would hold on to one end of the climbing rope and toss the rest of the coil off the cliff while yelling "rope!" (Getting hit by a length of tossed rope can sting pretty bad.)
As the climber below tied himself onto the rope with a bowline knot and half hitch, the belayer would take his position, bracing his feet against something solid and feeding the rope around his waist. A call of "on belay!" from above and "climbing!" from below signaled the start. Intermittent shouts of "slack!" or "tension!" kept the belayer tuned into the needs of the climber as he sped up easier sections, or struggled to negotiate tough moves.
We took turns practicing up a pitch that was probably only a hundred feet high. But as we used to say, a fall from 50 feet can kill you just as easily as one from 500. I climbed up the route as Steven belayed. Then, when I got to the top, I belayed Scott as he climbed. Everything went fine until he got to the top and gave the final command of "off belay," which didn't need to be shouted because he was standing next to me and simply telling me that he was unroping. I stood from my belay position and turned to unclip from my anchor, only to discover that I had never clipped in. A chill ran down my spine. Sure, I could probably have held a fall with just the way my feet were braced and the friction of the climbing rope on the rock. But then a vision of Scott falling and launching me into a headfirst flight off the cliff entered my brain, where it has stuck till this day. Needless to say, that was an error that I never repeated. Unfortunately, it also shaded my appreciation for the sport.
Some months later, I found myself belaying the twins' older brother, Michael, up a more difficult route when he fell hard. I was pulled from my braced belay position and fought to bring him to a quick stop. I did, but at the cost of some nasty rope burns on my palms as the woven nylon line zipped through my hands. They hurt like hell afterward and the only relief I could find on the ride down the mountain was to place them on the cool car windows. Had I not been clipped in that time, things might have ended up much worse. Luck? Guardian Angel? I'll take either.
Despite numerous attempts, some pleasurable, some scary, climbing never caught on with me. I think the main reason is that it revealed my fear of heights. I can keep it under control when I am being active, but simply sitting on a ledge eating lunch during a climb used to turn my stomach, despite being fully secured to anchors.
It's sometimes disconcerting to realize how thin the veil can be between this world and the next. A missed belaying anchor, a moment's inattention on a twisty mountain road, a fall in a kitchen, and that's it. Then again, people can overcome incredible adversity at other times, such as earthquake victims who are rescued after being buried alive for days.
So which is it to be? I guess we'll never know until the time comes. So, pardon me if I pause to check the tires on my road bike for cuts, give you a bad time if you're not wearing safety glasses while building theater sets, or if insist that my daughter learn how to handle a car really well before she gets that coveted license. I've stood on the edge of the cliff, looking down and imagining what might have easily been - and I don't want to go into the Great Beyond without a fight.
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