The Way of the Climbing World

I met my climbing partner yesterday at Camp 4 – He was the Yellow REI Tent who left an ad, I wrote him a note addressed to said Yellow REI Tent, and he ran up and caught me before I biked away.

The striking and distracting thing about Sean are his rings – a pair in his lip and a pair in his nose, on the same side of his face, and he likes to play with the lip studs, running them in and out in a way that’s kind of disgusting. On his right hand is tattooed “SOLIDARITY” up his forefinger, and I wonder how old he is now (I’m guessing 21) and at what age he got it. His fingers are grimy, the pads pink under the brown, the mark of a boulderer. He just came up here from J-Tree, so his skin must be a little thicker than most. Rail-thin, shortish, he could pass for punk in San Fran. Fine features and curly dark hair (from what I could see under the hoodie) give him an alternately dark or young look. He could pass for a girl.

This is my climbing partner today. We talked for maybe 20 minutes, half an hour. I don’t know how much climbing he knows, except by what he says he’s done, which is more than me. We settled on doing Royal Arches today, a nice traversing 5.7 A1 or 5.9+ classic that’s not too committing, that we could build a relationship off of. He was hesitant to tell me how long he’s here for – it’s difficult to stay more than a week in Camp 4 without becoming paranoid the rangers will kick you out. We’re having breakfast together this morning.

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I am trusting my life to someone I’ve known less than 24 hours. This is the way of the climbing world, these are the skills we share. Everyone knows the basics, everyone has their own philosophy and individual experiences that compel them to do what they do. Thanh, the guy I climbed with on Sunday, ties a sling around his waist and ties the rope through the sling, so that if the belay loop were to fail, he has a backup. I met a Spaniard the same day who very casually belayed his partner, taking his brake hand off the rope to gesticulate a lot. I stopped talking to him so he’d go back to holding the rope.

I have my own hang-ups about climbing. I always have a hand on the brake, I lead belay with an ATC and not a grigri if I can help it, I lower with two hands, I don’t talk while I’m lead belaying. I’ve seen too many close calls because of slacking belayers, I’ve been in too many because of my own negligence. There’s the time I slung a tree whose root structure moved when I belayed. I prayed the whole time my partner wouldn’t fall. The time I lowered my partner off the end of the rope – he fell all of two feet. The time a cam bounced off the rock a foot to my left, dropped from 60 feet above me. I wasn’t wearing a helmet, wasn’t even wondering if I should be climbing below another party.

Today we shall see. I rely on my feelings in picking out partners. I feel neutral about this one. Possibilities await.