ELEGANT SOLUTIONS : Climbers Converge on Stoney Point to Learn Ropes by Trying Not to Use Any

There are some people who just aren’t content to find their thrill on Blueberry Hill. Driven onward and upward, they feed a continuing need for adventure by scaling unchartered cliffs with their bare hands, nothing to keep them from plunging into an eternal free-fall but their wits and their seemingly cast-iron fingernails.

These would-be Spidermen are called rock climbers. The best of the breed spend hair-raising afternoons in Yosemite Valley on such exotic granite playgrounds as Elephant Rock, El Capitan and Middle Cathedral. Master climbers like Ron Kauk get written up in Sports Illustrated for free-soloing a 1,200-foot vertical slab at Yosemite Falls. That’s straight up without ropes, anchors or safety nets.

Steve Cole doesn’t use a safety net when he climbs, but sometimes he wishes that he did. A few months ago, he was halfway up a wall when he made two mistakes. The first was to snap his rope onto a bolt anchored into weak rock. The second was to miscalculate his next step. When he lost his purchase on the rock, he expected the rope to stop his fall, but the rock holding the bolt broke loose and Cole plummeted head-first to the ground.

Fortunately, he wasn’t at Yosemite Falls, which doesn’t forgive careless climbers. Although it probably seemed like a mile while he was whistling through the air, Cole fell only 20 feet. The impact knocked him out and opened a cut that required 16 stitches in his scalp. Two weeks later, however, he was back at the same wall, checking to see if his bloodstains were still there. They were. Undaunted, he resumed his climbing career.

Cole is a rock climber who will never get his name in Sports Illustrated and really doesn’t care. Nor is it possible that he will ever attempt to free-solo El Capitan, or even make a pilgrimage to climbing nirvana in Yosemite. Like a lot of Los Angeles-area climbers, Cole gets his thrills in the San Fernando Valley.

After a short drive from his Chatsworth electronics company, Cole removes his shirt, ties on a bandanna and starts his ascent on one of the sandstone faces at Stoney Point, a 22-acre climbers’ paradise in Chatsworth, a half-mile south of the Simi Valley Freeway at the edge of the Santa Susana Mountains.

The lunar landscape at Stoney Point provides the only major site in the Los Angeles area for both serious climbers and post-adolescents who have never outgrown their love of climbing--the type of kids who spent most of their childhood in a tree.

Although Stoney Point hardly ranks with national parks in grandeur and size, some of the best rock climbers in the world have defied gravity on its walls since 1935, when Sierra Club members made the first recorded climb there. Royal Robbins and Yvon Chouinard, considered the biggest names in climbing 30 years ago, literally learned the ropes at Stoney Point. They trained there because Stoney Point gives rock climbers something that Yosemite doesn’t--a chance to practice without the probability of killing yourself if you make a mistake.

The highest peak at Stoney Point is only 150 feet from the ground, so nobody goes there to follow two-inch vertical cracks into the clouds. The basic intent of most Stoney Point regulars is to work on technique. Rock climbing is a sport that requires strength, endurance and intelligence. A climber has to learn to “read” a wall and then often make a move in which success is dependent on balance, gymnastic ability and luck. Birds, bees, snakes, falling pebbles and crumbling rock are all potential booby traps.

On 3,000-foot El Capitan, even for climbers who use ropes, one slip can lead to disaster. But on the compact boulders at Stoney Point, it’s no miracle to survive a fall when you’re practicing a move only 12 inches off the ground.

With huge boulders scattered around like a prehistoric rock pile, Stoney Point provides all the basics of climbing, from simple traverses on low-rated walls to all-pro finger jams on horizontal overhangs. According to the “Stoney Point Guide,” a 70-page reference booklet by Cal State Northridge instructors Paul Hellweg and Don Fisher, a rock climber can do everything at Stoney Point except multi-pitch climbs.

“It takes a long time to practice specific moves at Yosemite,” said Mark Gaines, who is a paramedic and a veteran climber from Manhattan Beach. “But you can get in a good workout in a short time at Stoney Point.”

Gaines, who has clawed his way up El Capitan and the Half-Dome at Yosemite, was teaching a couple of novices on a Stoney Point rock called Boulder 1, which is about the size of a large motor home. Boulder 1 provides numerous climbing combinations, most only a few feet off the ground. But even for an experienced climber, traversing the boulder can be a difficult experience.

Gaines’ students were having trouble just staying on the rock, let alone moving upward or sideways. But their experience on Boulder 1 will enable them to climb sheer cliffs many times higher. When that time comes, they will be roped to Gaines as he leads them up.

“Watch me--or catch me,” a young climber said to Gaines as she hung three feet above the turf on Boulder 1, trying to figure out her next move.

“Put your right hand where your left hand is,” Gaines instructed.

The climber switched hands and swung her body laterally across the rock, but she couldn’t support her weight. She dropped to the ground, landing on her feet, embarrassed but unhurt.

Across the park, in an area that borders a horse ranch, a climber was practicing a potentially lethal move on a mushroom-shaped boulder called B-1. Chris Krzysztofiak was attempting to negotiate the overhanging lip of the boulder without using his feet. On a mountain, it is a maneuver in which even climbers like Kauk feel the need to use ropes.

But with the ground only about four feet below him, Krzysztofiak was unroped as he hung on the boulder, the fingers of one hand locked in narrow hole, the fingers of the other somehow grasping a ledge the thickness of a quarter. Swinging like a spider monkey, he grabbed a higher handhold, pulled himself up, then swung his other hand to another handhold but slipped and fell.

Was his confidence shaken? Not at all. On a real climb, he said, “The rope would have been there to catch me.”

Although Stoney Point isn’t considered dangerous, climbers have been killed and seriously injured there. A year ago, a 23-year-old man climbing alone and without ropes fell to his death, the first fatality at Stoney Point since 1979. Still, there are very few reported injuries involving climbers, according to unofficial L. A. County Fire Department statistics.

Aside from inexperience and carelessness, climbers often fall at Stoney Point because the sandstone is neither as stable nor as strong as granite. Cole’s accident occurred after he slipped because the sandstone couldn’t hold his weight and splintered. In the 1950s, even the great Royal Robbins fell. Leaning back after he placed a piton into the sandstone, Robbins plummeted 25 feet when the piton failed. He suffered a broken wrist and a sprained ankle.

Rock climbers aren’t the only people lured by the sandstone sirens at Stoney Point. Teen-agers like to party on the highest boulders, usually reaching the top by taking the relatively easy trail on the north side of the park. Most of the injuries at Stoney Point involve teens, according to the fire department. A few months ago, a helicopter had to be called in to rescue a man who had been drinking and couldn’t descend by himself.

Climbers complain about irresponsible teens who vandalize the park in the name of sex, drugs and rock-and-roll. It isn’t unusual for climbers to work their way up a wall--expecting to enjoy nature in its undisturbed, pristine state at the summit--only to find a cache of beer cans waiting for them. Many climbers routinely police the park, removing offending junk.

Although weather and constant use have slightly altered the look of Stoney Point in the last half-century, graffiti has made the most impact. There are sections of the park that look like a New York subway station. The Sierra Club has tried clean-up efforts, but the unrelenting Da-Glo cowboys are quicker on the draw, a fact that climbers seem to accept.

“What can you expect?” Cole said. “This is L. A.”

There seems to be disagreement among climbers, however, on what constitutes litter. Most climbers like to improve their chances by constantly smearing their hands with moisture-absorbing white chalk, which leaves a trail of smudges along the rock. Stoney Point is streaked with white chalk, especially on heavily used rocks like Boulder 1.

“I don’t use chalk,” said climber Dennis Yates. “To me, it’s litter.”

Cole disagrees. “It all depends on local ethics,” he said. “Obviously chalk’s OK around here.”

The biggest threat to the integrity of Stoney Point occurred in the late 1970s when the privately owned property was up for sale. In 1981, the Los Angeles City Council overrode Mayor Tom Bradley’s veto and bought the land for $250,000, thereby preempting the possibility of some real estate developer turning it into something like Stoney Point Estates and naming streets Belay Boulevard and Razor Crevice Road.

On most evenings at Stoney Point, even when the summer sun percolates the sandstone, dozens of cars are parked along the curb on Topanga Canyon Boulevard and the rocks look like a staging area for the Normandy invasion. Climbers seeking elegant solutions to problems are scrambling up ropes and rappelling down them. They are assaulting boulders with names like Hot Tuna and Mozart’s Wall. They are throwing their bodies against the steamy sandstone, walking up Slant Rock like fearless mountain goats, wedging bruised and bleeding fingers into jagged holes.

Why do they do it? “It’s challenging,” said Cole. “Climbers refer to a route as a ‘problem.’ You get on that wall and you think, ‘Where do I go now?’ But you push yourself to the limit and sometimes surprise yourself by doing things you didn’t think you were capable of.”

And when they’re climbing, they don’t need drugs to get high. “Your adrenaline is really pumping,” Cole said. “It’s a really nice feeling when you get to the top and all the jitters have gone away. Kind of the same as when you stop hitting yourself over the head with a hammer.”

But like drugs, Cole said, climbing, “in a way, is really addicting. I’m obsessed with coming out here.”

So are a lot of people these days, including a great number of women, who can excel in climbing because of their light body weight and small hands and feet. Articles in major magazines and exposure on ABC’s “Wide World of Sports” in the last few years seem to have increased the popularity of rock climbing. “It’s much more crowded out here than it used to be,” said Krzysztofiak.

There is a fraternity of hard core rock climbers to whom hanging out at Stoney Point takes on new meaning. Call them social climbers. “When your friends come around here,” said Krzysztofiak, “this tends to be a social gathering.” Swapping stories, giving advice, comparing notes and observing seem to be as much a part of the Stoney Point scene as the climb itself.

“There’s a lot of camaraderie out here,” said Bill Larson, a high school counselor. “You find guys with similar interests and you talk about climbing and learn new routes.”

In climbing, most of the male bonding takes place at night in front of the campfire at the national parks. “I like climbing the best when it’s all over,” said Yates, a carpenter. “You sit down with a cold beer and a steak. You’re with Ph.Ds and aerospace engineers and astronomers, and you sit around and talk about climbing for 12 hours.”

That kind of situation doesn’t exist at Stoney Point. As with a golf driving range, people go there to practice and then return home. But even though Stoney Point has neither majesty nor amenities, it is still highly respected in the world of climbing.

Royal Robbins probably said it best when he called Stoney Point “the first step up El Capitan.”