Lowdown, dirty danglers

FOR A FEW ETERNAL SECONDS, THE LANKY climber hovers beyond vertical. She clings to the rock at a 45-degree angle, fingers crimping a limestone edge, feet smeared onto nubbins. Every muscle in Lizzy Asher’s body ripples. She briefly studies the rock, then positions one foot on an impossible kernel, tests it and rockets her upper body across the stone. At the same time, she grabs a slick, sloped pocket with one hand -- chalked to prevent slippage -- gripping a flake with the other. Within seconds, she has passed the crux of a classic rock “problem” at McKinney Falls State Park near Austin, Texas.

Asher is not dangling 100 feet up a cliff; she’s 8 feet above terra firma, bouldering, an offshoot of rock climbing that pits human against rock without the usual tools of vertical combat, such as ropes and wedging devices. The high school student makes her gravity-taunting moves in quick, ballet-like sequences. She wears no special gear besides a chalk bag and climbing shoes. Below her is a 6-by-4-foot chunk of foam -- a “crash pad” -- and her sister Alexis, 21, a fellow boulderer who is spotting Lizzy in case she peels off the wall unexpectedly.

The 17-year-old pro is part of a bouldering subculture spawned at least in part by the rock gym craze of the ‘90s. The rocks around Bishop, Calif., the activity’s current hub, have become so popular that some residents of the area blame a local author and bouldering booster for an increase in housing prices.

The sub-sport’s growth has touched off a rivalry with some old-school climbers, as well as environmental concerns ranging from how wildlife will react to the intrusions to the splatter of chalk holds that don’t wear or wash away.

“I hope I’ll never be accused of being a climbing curmudgeon,” says Colorado-based alpinist Jim Donini, 60, who has racked up first ascents in Patagonia, the Himalayas and Alaska and used to boulder to train for mountaineering jaunts. “But I have my own feeling about alpine climbing being the epitome of the sport. ... You love it for the remoteness and beauty.... But you go to some bouldering areas -- not all of them -- and you find cigarette butts and candy wrappers. It just seems like the younger bouldering set is there for pure physical enjoyment and the challenge, and not so much for the spiritual aspects of climbing. People want to go out and get their quick fix and get back home by dark.”

Lizzy Asher, who doesn’t smoke or chuck candy wrappers, sees it, not surprisingly, quite the opposite. “Bouldering is almost the purest form of climbing. You’re not putting in any gear,” she says. “So I totally disagree with people who say it’s not the real thing.”

Unlike traditional climbers, boulderers define their sport not by altitude, endurance or rope lengths (pitches) up a route, but by degree of difficulty and brute strength. While traddies might spend days on a long route or weeks on a mountain, boulderers bust in, top out, then head home.

Bouldering was used over the years in the U.S. as a training tool for mountaineers. It allowed them to try high-risk moves without having to be far off the ground, says Scott Isgitt, a trad climber and boulderer who owns Austin Rock Gym in Austin. “It was about pushing the limits of the human form.”

Isgitt, 34, has seen the sport spurt as gym rats who learned to climb indoors took their newfound moves to real rock. Now there are magazines, videos and gear dedicated to bouldering. “There are people who say it’s not real climbing,” adds Isgitt, “but I think it’s legitimate. Whether some of the old school like it or not, it’s here to stay.”

The naysayers mistake quicker for easier, says Lisa Rands, a 28-year-old Bishop resident whom many consider America’s best pro female boulderer. “Individually, the moves are a lot harder than anything you might find on a route.

“It’s not that it’s easier to do; it’s easier to get to,” notes the compact climber, who vaulted to celebrity status after embracing the sport in 1999 when she often found herself too busy to do longer “route” climbs.

Sit a spell in front of Rands’ “Hit List” video, which trails the petite, buff, Hello Kitty-collecting blond doing crazy-hard boulder problems (sections) in the Sierra, and it’s immediately clear: There is nothing easy about these rock rambles. Whether it’s a 3-foot-high overhang parallel to the ground (a “roof”) or a 15-foot “highball,” with the toughest moves at the top, it requires utter focus. Clinging to microscopic crimps on bare rock, Rands is a picture of hard-body athleticism.

She and fellow California climbing luminary Chris Sharma (also a revered sport climber) tend to stick to problems about 3 to 20 feet high, finessing and powering through highly gymnastic sequences. Unlike alpine or big-wall climbers, who haul reams of clinking protection devices as they ascend, boulderers work the same problems over and over until they top out, doing it for the physical and mental gratification.

Bouldering’s popularity has been fueled by affordability -- it’s way cheaper than trad climbing, which requires a lot more gear ($200 gets you a boulderer’s shoes, chalk bag and crash pad) -- and by its appeal to social climbers. Route climbers usually go up in pairs or solo. But boulderers, especially the younger ones, tend to hang together at the base of a favorite problem, waiting to one-up their compadres while catching up on the latest. Overlapping their pads like waterlilies on a pond, they frequent the limestone formations around central Texas, the ancient syenite blocks of south Texas’ Hueco Tanks, the monzogranite of Joshua Tree National Park and the gnarly granite and volcanic rock near Bishop.

Bishop has become the country’s bouldering epicenter, luring the “pad people,” as Donini calls them, to places like the Buttermilks and the Happy Boulders. They bring money and start-up businesses into the region, but they also leave chalk on the rocks (as do trad climbers) and sometimes trample vegetation.

Yvon Chouinard, a climbing pioneer and founder of mountaineering equipment maker Patagonia, has publicly dissed the sport as not quite legit.

“It’s a generational difference, that’s for sure,” says Donini. “The reason I got into climbing was to do a new route in Patagonia [South America], get on a ridge or a face that’s never been touched before. You bivouac on a ledge that nobody’s ever been on.... It’s discovery.” Though he appreciates bouldering’s physical skills, he sees it more as a pastime, not the true embodiment of climbing.

But boulderers find their own version of transcendence facing down a granite or limestone problem.

“There is a mental aspect of bouldering, not just a physical one, like some people think,” says Rands. “It’s about training your mind to overcome fear and to have control.”

Rands is blase about climbing controversies, especially those in Bishop, where she has lived for years. She says true climbers, trad or otherwise, focus on the rock rather than getting caught up in mud-flinging. But some worry that the ever-increasing traffic on area rocks will cause land managers to limit access. Others complain that outsiders are usurping their favorite bouldering haunts, once unpublicized.

“People come to Bishop from all over the world to climb, and you’ll hear a lot of different groups here say, ‘Oooh, access this or access that,’ ” says Rands. “I don’t see that anything’s changed at all.”

She laughs at the notion that her buddy Mick Ryan, the author of guidebooks such as “The Bishop Bouldering Survival Guide,” is to blame for a spike in the cost of living.

Ryan, a 42-year-old British transplant who works with the regional Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service to minimize the environmental impacts of bouldering, has gotten some pointed reviews from the rock faithful.

“Apparently some local climbers have had meetings about me,” he says. “We’ve had eggs thrown at our windows.... People have shouted at me in public places, one sales assistant at a local climbing shop threatened not to stock my guidebooks, and one climber even threatened to let down my car tires.”

But Ryan, along with the BLM’s Jim Jennings, who sits on the Bishop Chamber of Commerce’s board of directors, has dual interests: protecting nature while cultivating the climbing scene. Jennings, a recreational planner for the BLM’s field office, says that, overall, the climbing community has been quick to educate itself on the region’s environmental idiosyncrasies, which include petroglyphs and a semi-primitive plateau area. The lingering trails of chalk on the rocks, which hikers and birders may complain about in other regions, seems to be a nonissue around Bishop, says Jennings.

“Every outdoor recreational activity has impacts, whether it be off-highway vehicles or hiking. We look at it as just one of those impacts we have to deal with,” he says.

The BLM is currently exploring bouldering’s effect on raptors and whether the birds are still using traditional areas or if climbers have displaced them in places. If a current study indicates that bouldering is harming the birds’ habitat, the BLM and Forest Service will meet with climbers and propose solutions for cohabitation -- particularly at the Happy Boulders and Sad Boulders areas where traffic is heaviest.

Back in Texas, the calf-popping ways of Lizzy and Alexis Asher, multiplied by an increasing number of their peers, suggest that there are collisions ahead for the boulderers -- from environmental to gravity-driven. As Lizzy “campuses” across another problem at McKinney Falls State Park, using only arm and upper-body strength, Alexis stands with arms up and feet firmly planted, ready to steer her sister toward the crash pad if need be. “I’ve got ya,” she calls out.

Lizzy eventually peels before topping out, but in a controlled way, landing square on the mat with both feet. But another time, farther up the rock, it might be different in a sport where injuries are as common as the chalk marks -- usually ankle sprains and shoulder strains.

The pull, says Lizzy, is as much about getting outside -- and outside herself -- as it is about knocking off problems. “I like those days where you get up early ... because you’re out there to climb and nothing else matters. You don’t even think about what you’re going to eat for dinner or what you packed for lunch. You just stay out all day, from when the park opens till when it closes at sunset.”

For Alexis too, bouldering provides a connection to natural rhythms. “It’s so much about body movement, but you also have to be in tune with everything. I love the footwork. I mean, you do weird moves on the rock. It’s almost like modern dance sometimes.”

On a vertical stage.