Climbers Find Their Niche at Stoney Point

It’s where the best came to learn the ropes. Not to mention the pitons, carabiners and belay devices.

Towering Stoney Point in Chatsworth has been an irresistible lure to some of the world’s greatest rock climbers ever since adventurers decided to make a sport out of gravity defiance.

Tjader Harris can tick off their names: John Long, Bob Kamps, Yvon Chouinard, Royal Robbins.

“The best climbers in the world can come here and get spanked,” Harris said. “No matter how good you get there’s a challenge here. That’s why some of the early best climbers learned here.”

Harris is a muscular auto parts manager who lives in Hollywood. For 11 years he has traveled weekly to Stoney Point, just south of the Ronald Reagan Freeway’s exit to Topanga Canyon Boulevard.

There, he slips into a pair of rubber-sole Boreal climbing shoes and carefully chalks up his hands from a cloth pouch clipped behind his back. Then he latches onto one of the house-size boulders that spill from the 300-foot-high mound of sandstone.

He was there Monday with climber James DeMalignon, a Hollywood personal trainer. The two of them spent three hours inching their way up and down the vertical faces of the huge rocks.

No ropes or spike-like pitons are required for “bouldering,” as climbers call the mini-ascents of the 20-foot-tall rocks that ring the base of Stoney Point. Just fingers of iron, toes of rubber and nerves of steel.

Stoney Point is a relatively new Los Angeles city park -- and one that almost did not come to be. Initially, parks officials and the city attorney’s office were reluctant to take title to the land because of liability issues with hikers and climbers.

The huge outcropping was privately owned until 1981. That’s when the City Council, at the urging of the Sierra Club and others, overrode then-Mayor Tom Bradley’s veto of the acquisition and purchased its 22 acres for $250,000.

The park was expanded to 76 acres in 1999 when undeveloped land north of the rock outcropping was acquired from a church. The city traded about 11 municipally owned Northridge acres and kicked in $2.8 million in cash to seal the deal.

The monolith was created from 60-million-year-old sandstone that was once under the ocean -- the outline of seashells can sometimes be seen embedded in the rock. And it can be dangerous. Officials caution that hikers and climbers use the park at their own risk.

Sandstone is brittle after rainstorms, as American rock-climbing legend Royal Robbins discovered in the 1950s. In those days Robbins was using Stoney Point to perfect mountaineering skills that he later employed as one of the first conquerors of Yosemite’s granite-walled Half Dome and El Capitan.

The sandstone splintered beneath a piton, plunging Robbins 25 feet. He suffered a broken wrist and sprained ankle.

Although records since 1935 -- when Sierra Club members made the first recorded climb at Stoney Point -- are incomplete, a handful of hikers and climbers have apparently been killed by falls there. The most recent death occurred June 7. A hiker’s body was found a day later by other hikers.

Climbers say they stay safe because most of their Stoney Point “free climb” practice takes place fairly close to the ground. No ropes or other special equipment such as carabiner line fasteners or fall-stopping rope brakes called belay devices are needed -- although many use thin foam-rubber “crash pads” to cushion their drop if they lose their grip while hanging onto a boulder.

Novices Jamie Clark, 18, of Thousand Oaks and Jonathan Banks, 19, of Moorpark were careful Monday to spread the pads beneath them as they ascended a locomotive-size rock. The pair, who clean swimming pools for a living, first came to the park in October to hike to the top of Stoney Point -- which offers a 360-degree view of the west San Fernando Valley. On their way up, they spied climbers and were intrigued.

Now they are hooked on climbing. “It’s mental and physical exercise,” explained Banks.

And it’s not just for young people, added 18-year-old Jason Hall, a chocolate shop worker from Moorpark who has regularly climbed at Stoney Point for a year and a half.

“There’s an 80-year-old guy who’s out here all the time in cutoff jeans who’s really good. Climbers are always coming up to him talking about the old days.”

That would be Bob Kamps. He’s been a Stoney Point regular since 1956. And these days he’s 71, thank you very much.

“Back when I began, climbing was so primitive. There was virtually no one else out there,” said Kamps, a collectibles dealer who lives in Sun Valley and scampers up and down Stoney Point’s rock walls twice a week.

It was nearly dusk Monday when Greg Olsen showed up at a rock on the west side of Stoney Point. Above him, the flat surface that climbers call the “Jesus Wall” was catching the pink rays of a cloud-challenged sunset.

Olsen, 35, is a surfboard shaper from Moorpark. He climbs three times a week. And he’s been doing that since the time he ditched high school with some friends and came to Stoney Point “to party,” as he puts it.

“When we got here that day, I saw some climbers, and I stopped at the bottom to watch them,” he said. “My buddies went on up to the top to drink beer. I did my first climbing that day in bare feet. It’s been a major part of my life ever since.”

Stoney Point Park is closed after sunset. But illegal nighttime partying on Stoney Point’s top -- which is reachable from the north by a fairly easy trail -- leaves litter and graffiti. Climbing groups hold twice-yearly cleanup days.

On Monday the sandstone was pristine-looking. At Stoney Point’s base, chest-high mustard plants cast splashes of yellow on a sea of green undergrowth.

“I’d say there’s something magical about this place,” said Jeff Paulson, a 27-year-old Redondo Beach retail sales manager who has climbed regularly at Stoney Point since 1988. He was resting after climbing a huge boulder that was wedged against a heavily canopied, 400-year-old oak tree.

“This was the training ground for America’s original iron men. There are pitons in these rocks from the 1920s that should be in museums. From the top you get a complete overview of the city -- you can see the character of the city change every time you go up there.

“Out here you’re close to nature, close to the earth. It’s very pure. It’s a friendly place.”