An Exercise in Faith and Trust

The looming rock face dwarfed 12-year-old Jose Avila. Unfazed, he stepped forward to tackle it.

“Feel the rock!” his guide urged him, so Avila rubbed his palms across the warm granite. Then he was crawling right up the face, hands feeling for cracks, his cherubic face serious under the yellow helmet.

Jose is partially blind. The Santa Ana seventh-grader can see shadows and light, but not those little crevices so essential in rock-climbing. Even so, he made it halfway up the rock face Saturday, aided by a harness, a rope and a veteran climber who called out directions like, “Go right!’ and “No knees!”

His foot slipped once, and his whole body swung, his helmet bumping against rock.

“Too hard,” he called out once, and his guide called back, “It’s not too hard.”

And when Jose landed back on solid ground, he pulled off his helmet with both hands and grinned, his face alight. “That was fun,” he said.

Jose is one of 11 blind and visually impaired youths from Orange County who are spending this weekend rock climbing and camping at Joshua Tree National Monument, the sprawling expanse of rock formations, sand and desert plants in Riverside and San Bernardino counties northeast of Palm Springs. The yearly trip is organized by the Braille Institute, a nonprofit organization, with help from volunteers from the Southern California Mountaineering Assn. In all, 45 youths from around Southern California, aged 12 to 19, braved harsh sun and heat Saturday to scale a rock formation called Hodgepodge.

The outing’s purpose is to increase the youths’ self-confidence, said Anita Wright, 37, a consultant with the Braille Institute youth center in Los Angeles.

The climbers learn to trust not only the volunteers helping them but their own instincts and abilities, she said, watching as three more yellow-helmeted youths moved up the rocks.

“If they can do this, they can conquer any obstacle that’s put in their way, just by trusting themselves,” she said.

Rock climbing can be a risky business, even for fully sighted adults. But the Braille Institute pairs these youths with volunteers, veteran climbers nicknamed “angels.”

Sigrid Sexton, 40, of Cypress, a 10-year climbing veteran, has volunteered on three Braille Institute treks.

“When I get home, I’ll know I’ll have done something worthwhile,” she said.

Volunteer David Lutz, 31, of Newport Beach, watching Jose take a few tentative steps up the rock, said he remembered “the first time I climbed. I was nervous about the whole thing. The same feelings and emotions I went through, they’re going through.”

Jose’s angel was Gerry Cox, 40, of Long Beach, who climbed beside him without a rope, urging him on to the next ledge. As Jose started downward, Cox advised him to lean back in a Batman-like stance.

Most climbers depend heavily on what they see, but these youths have learned to feel for crevices, cracks and ledges. Some have been climbing rocks for years.

Juan Ruiz, 15, who is blind, first climbed with the Braille Institute two years ago. On Saturday, he moved breathtakingly fast, like a spider speeding up a wall.

“Slow down--take your time,” guide John Stark, 41, of Los Feliz, urged him. “That’s it. That’s it--good man!”

Juan climbed the rock face twice in a row on Saturday. He tried a more challenging route the second time around, and Stark, climbing beside him, pounded his palm near convenient crevices so that Juan could find it.

Juan, an Anaheim High School freshman from Fullerton, described climbing as an exercise in common sense.

“You’re figure out what your next move is going to be. It’s kind of like a puzzle,” he said. “You don’t want to step up without knowing your next move--where, exactly, you’re going to step up.”

Shanda Taber, 15, of Anaheim, scrambled up and down the rock face in the afternoon heat, her face shiny with perspiration as she finished. Partially sighted, she began climbing five years ago. She can see the larger handholds, but not the small ones.

“Probably the hardest part is finding the handholds and trusting that you won’t fall,” she said as she gulped down water after her climb.

And does climbing scare her? She shook her head.

“I don’t get scared because I know I won’t fall,” she said matter-of-factly. “And if I do? Oh, well.”