Rock Climbing, Bouldering Find Niche in Bishop Area

The sky was a dazzling blue, yet those climbing Iris saw only her gray granite face.

She stands sentinel over the vast and beautiful Rock Creek Canyon, over a lush meadow of the same name, over a stream teeming with trout.

Most catch only a glimpse of Iris as they whiz by on the highway below, following the canyon to the lake that feeds the creek, or to one of the nearby campgrounds.

But rock climbers find her irresistible. The small cracks and almost indiscernible bumps on her otherwise sheer face enable them to play the role of a spider--one with funny-looking climbing shoes, purple laces and all.

Iris Slab, as the 60-foot wall is called, isn’t the most exciting rock-climbing venue in the Eastern Sierra. To the contrary, there are dozens of others, including the nearby Owens River Gorge, a mecca in its own right, with hundreds of documented routes that attract climbers from all over the world.

But Iris, about 35 miles north of Bishop at 8,000 feet on the northern wall of Rock Creek Canyon, offers prospective climbers an ideal opportunity to get a taste of this obscure but burgeoning sport, in a pristine setting only a short hike from the highway.

And so it was, on a beautiful spring morning, that Shawn Arnold and Joe Trgo from Huntington Beach, with a curious reporter along, found themselves about to do something they weren’t sure they wanted to do, or whether they could even do it.

With them was Todd Vogel, 37, co-founder of Sierra Mountain Center, a guide in the area for 13 years.

It was his task to show the climbers the ropes, literally, and to chase their butterflies away.

“For people who have a clinical fear of heights, a climbing course like this is not the place to learn how to deal with it,” he said. “If you have that normal fear of heights that any human brings to edges, you’re OK. That’s what keeps us from jumping off of buildings and stuff.”

That said, he instructed the climbers how to step into and secure their harnesses, how to tie the proper knots and clip into their carabiners. Then came the subject of belaying, which brought the butterflies back in a flurry.

“The belayer literally has the climber’s life in [his] hands,” Vogel said, smiling as his pupils looked at one another as if to measure their trust. “And that can be pretty intimidating, but in reality it’s such a simple and very effective system.”

The belayer, using a braking device attached to a harness, takes up slack in the rope--which is also attached to an anchor atop the route--as the climber ascends, restricting the distance a climber can fall to only a few inches.

After practicing “moving on the stone” near Iris’ base, Arnold decided to go first, with Trgo as belayer.

Though not especially nimble, Arnold made his way slowly up the face, probing for any protuberance he could find, unsure of his steps but stepping nonetheless, eventually finding himself 50 feet up and visibly concerned.

With the last 10 feet especially sheer and seemingly with nothing left to grab and nowhere else to step, he called it quits, signaling the belayer to assist with his descent by slowly letting out rope, enabling the climber to lean back and walk backward down the face.

I jumped at the chance to go second--wanting to get this over with before changing my mind.

Once I started, I found the challenge intriguing. I chose a slightly different route, finding a series of cracks and knobs that became my stairway to heaven. Vogel said to treat Iris like a puzzle, not a wrestling match, and they became words to live by.

With a slow but methodical approach, I managed to reach the spot where Arnold had stopped and pressed on the final 10 feet, pressed against the wall like a spider in the wind, to the pulley that signaled the end of the climb.

Back on horizontal ground, I remarked that scaling a 60-foot wall, attached to a rope that was there simply to break a fall that never came, gave me a feeling of accomplishment difficult to explain.

Arnold agreed and so did Trgo, remarkably agile at 250 pounds, after his ascent.

Suddenly, we were able to enjoy the canyon view.

After scrambling gracefully up the face of Iris, collecting his ropes and hiking down the adjacent canyon wall, Vogel seemed pleased that everything had worked out.

Arnold and Trgo had come up to go trout fishing; they left with the realization that the Bishop area, and all of the Eastern Sierra, had much more to offer.

Bishop, which has long promoted fishing, only recently has begun to boast of a booming interest in not only rock climbing, but bouldering, which is climbing without ropes or anchors. Thousands visit the region annually to climb routes in the Gorge, just as they do to practice bouldering in the nearby Buttermilk Range.

Vogel adds that they also flock here as Alpine mountaineers, to climb the 14,495-foot Mt. Whitney, to negotiate the intermediate and advanced routes on Lone Pine Peak, Temple Crag, the Third Pillar of Dana or the South Face of Clyde Minaret.

Vogel moved to Bishop from the Santa Cruz area to be closer to the Eastern Sierra, a range he says is unlike any other.

“The Eastern Sierra is really unique because of its geology,” he explains. “You have 10,000 feet of relief from the valley to the crest in a really short distance. You have a semi-desert [climate], which makes for good fair-weather climbing.

“You have a lot of exposed rock--routes that are just long enough so you can squeak them in in a day, if that’s what you want.”

Sierra Mountain Center, founded three years ago by Vogel and Robert “SP” Parker, lists these adventures and more in its brochure and on its Web site, https://www.sierramountaincenter.com. Both have traveled around the world and proclaim theirs to offer as much or more variety as anywhere else.

“The wilderness is a huge attraction, especially to foreign visitors,” Vogel says. “It’s something that U.S. citizens take for granted, something that a lot of places the rest of the world don’t have.

“You can go climb peaks in Spain and there are good climbs and they’re beautiful and everything, but you’re likely to get up there and encounter a herd of sheep.”

Vogel recently returned from a multiday back-country ski tour, which he lists as one of his favorite trips.

“You get a feeling of solitude that you really can’t get anywhere else,” he says. “In the summer you can find plenty of solitude in the wilderness just by going a couple of hundred yards off the trail, but you know there’s always somebody camped around the corner.

“On these tours, it’s so rare to encounter another group that you almost look forward to it so you have a little chance for some social interaction outside your group.”

Of Iris, he says, “It’s a great place to start a basic climbing course. It’s hard enough to present a challenge but doable for most people. The route is just long enough so people feel like they’re pushing their envelope.”

Envelope pushed, it was time to go fishing.

News and Notes

* Local saltwater: On again, off again describes the white sea bass bite at Santa Catalina and San Clemente islands. One-fish limits were the rule Monday, getting skunked was the rule Tuesday and the action was fast paced again Wednesday and Thursday. On Thursday, the crew of the Cat Special out of Cisco Sportfishing in Oxnard radioed in the first good sea bass haul of the season at Santa Cruz Island. . . . A strong showing of barracuda at Huntington Flats has been keeping the morning half-day boat anglers smiling, and sea bass have been moving through periodically to spice up the action. . . . Capt. Ricky Carbajal of the New Del Mar out of Marina del Rey Sportfishing on Thursday reported the first significant barracuda bite in Santa Monica Bay this spring, with nearly 100 landed by 3:30 p.m.

* Baja bite: The East Cape marlin bite finally seems ready to become a reality, as warming water (it’s up to 78) is putting some life into the scrappy billfish. “One of the problems, though, is that we’re having trouble getting mackerel, which is what the marlin like,” says Punta Colorada beach master Alejandro Flores. The hotel’s manager, Eddie Van Wormer, with help from his crew, caught the season’s first blue marlin Tuesday, a 550-pounder landed four miles offshore after a two-hour fight.

As is the case at the East Cape, there are plenty of marlin off Cabo San Lucas but not a lot of takers. Probable factors: unseasonably cold water (70-72) teeming with squid, which the marlin are gorging on. Yellowfin tuna were filling in nicely until commercial seiners swept through last weekend.

* Surfing: The Bic Sport Back to Blue Surf Fest is Saturday and Sunday at Leo Carrillo State Park. The event, held in partnership with California State Parks, includes a Woody car and surfboard display, an art festival, live music and a pro-am longboard contest. Tickets are on sale for a luau Saturday night. Proceeds will help build the Leo Carrillo Visitor Education Center. Admission is free but parking fees will be collected. Details: (805) 986-8483 or (310) 457-2775.

* Scuba diving: The local site of Sunday’s International Dive-In Day, a group dive to raise awareness for clean waterways, has been changed from Leo Carrillo State Park to nearby Nicholas Canyon County Park because of the aforementioned surf festival. Details: (619) 234-0345.

* Adventure racing: The Hi-Tec Adventure Series kicks off Saturday night at Castaic Lake, featuring three-person teams competing on foot, mountain bike and kayaks over a grueling course that includes “special test” obstacles. A race for kids also is on tap. Registration information can be obtained at https://www.mesp.com.

FISH REPORT: D15