With a New Urge to Climb, City Folks Head for the Hills

If you think of a rock climber only as an agile, outdoors person--a mountaineer as familiar with the mountains as a bighorn sheep--you are in for a surprise.

Today’s rock climbers are often executives fleeing job stress, couples on an unusual date, parents taking rock-climbing courses with their teen-agers, families on vacation, or the physically limited meeting the challenge of the mountains. These are members of a new breed of students who enroll in the classes of Bruce Brossman, director of Yosemite Mountaineering School.

Advanced equipment has made rock climbing safer, and with greater safety--as with ski touring and backpacking--it has become more appealing and accessible to a wider range of participants.

The ‘Pros’ Continue

But the “real” pros have not abandoned these sports. They’re still climbing, skiing and backpacking, and some of the best are instructors and guides at Yosemite’s mountaineering school. In addition to the basics offered by the school, Alan Roberts, Dave Bengston and Doug Nidever, among other instructors, emphasize survival skills--skills that can prevent injury or perhaps save lives.

Yosemite National Park is a rock climber’s paradise. Imposing rock peaks--El Capitan, Half Dome and Sentinel Rock--attract climbers throughout California and from around the world. It has now been discovered by the new breed.

“Might as well do it right,” said Bill Eyford, a Palm Springs paramedic who was enrolled in the five-day Alpencraft seminar. The course starts with the basics and progresses each day to more challenging climbs, culminating with a guided climb, often as high as 600 feet.

A Returning Student

Randy, a stockbroker from the Bay area, enrolled for three days one summer and came back for the final two days (the summer snow climb and the guided climb) the next summer. Courses can be mixed and matched to the student’s liking.

Rock-climbing students begin with bouldering, using smears (the foot twisted so the side of the shoe grips the rock surface) and hand holds and foot wedges in cracks. They learn to tie essential knots and belay their partners with ropes. (Belaying of a partner with ropes protects him should he fall.) Rappelling, (descending cautiously by rope when there is no other way to get down) is fun and provides opportunity for exciting personal photographs.

Students are taught to tie into a harness with a figure-eight knot and how to use carabiners (aluminum fasteners, similar to safety pins), nuts (wedged into cracks), runners (webbed slings) and jumars (two metal rungs that slide up and down the rope).

The climbs start short, 60 to 80 feet with free-style climbing on the face of Puppy Dome in Yosemite’s Tuolumne Meadows area. A fall is of little concern here because climbers are tied to a rope from above. They soon learn to anchor themselves and to belay their partner.

Then they move to hand and foot jams in small cracks and body jams in chimneys. (A chimney climb can be up walls of two close rocks, walls of snow or walls of rock and snow.) Gymnastic skills help here. Students also learn to use runners as a step ladder and jumars, when there are no cracks or no seemingly climbable rock surfaces.

Help for Hikers

After three days of rock climbing, Sonya, a city planner, took her fourth day in snow climbing, as did seven others. This is a popular course with hikers, because the dangers of snow and ice patches are not always apparent. Even in summer, hikers at high elevations frequently run into slippery patches of snow that can send the hiker downhill, out of control and crashing into rocks or trees. School director Brossman says several hikers at Yosemite have been seriously injured or died because they didn’t know how to stop themselves in a slide.

Glissading (sliding on foot as if skiing) is one way. When falling, the hiker or climber uses an ice ax to slow down. Dragged in the snow, the ax handle serves as a rudder, both steering and slowing the fall as the hiker slides downhill on the seat of his pants with feet straight out in front.

Snow training begins by climbing to the peak of a snow chute, one that looks like a vertical wall of snow (student climbers are belayed in case of a fall). In making the climb, the ice-ax handle is rammed deeply into the snow, then the pick is used as a cane for stability before taking another step. The process continues step by step until the top is reached and the climber gets a spectacular view of Dana Glacier Peak and sub-alpine meadows below.

Cost for the five-day Alpencraft course is $200 and includes three days of practicing the techniques of rock-climbing, one day of snow climbing and glissading, then a one-day guided rock climb. The five-day programs begin on Mondays, each session starting at 8:30 a.m., although each of the five sessions can be taken separately. For instance, the one-day snow training field trip is available for $40.

For the Backpacker

Guided backpacking trips through Yosemite are also offered. The trips vary from two to seven days, and emphasis is on pathfinding with a map and compass, fire starting and building, stream crossing and survival in adverse weather.

A popular seven-day backpack in the high country is led by a naturalist who provides a mini-course in botany, pointing out flowers, trees and birds. Overnight camping is in High Sierra tent cabins, with meals provided at Tuolumne Meadows, Glen Aulin, May Lake, Sunrise, Merced Lake and Vogelsang High Sierra Camps.

For more information, write Yosemite Mountaineering School, Yosemite National Park, Calif. 95389, or telephone (209) 372-1244.