Merced Valley, Yosemite National Park, CA

October 1988

Brad sat with a pair of binoculars in El Cap Meadow, at the base of the most famous piece of granite in the world, on the hallowed ground that climbers reverently and simply call “The Valley.” Looming 3,100 feet above him and the tourists who also flocked to the Meadow, El Cap today had, he counted, thirteen teams of climbers angling for one of the most coveted ascents on his favorite planet. Such was the scale of this cliff that it was nearly impossible to even see climbers on this face without the aid of binoculars.

            “Thirteen teams to pass.” He thought out loud, shaking his head.

            He looked down at his watch. He did a lot of that when he came to visit Hans. Nothing on the radio – a handheld walkie-talkie – just yet.

            He was listening to a guy on his left tell a girl he had approached what he thought he knew about the rock climbers she’d been watching. Before long, she’d asked the second-most common question climbers get asked by the uninitiated, but she was asking the wrong person:            “How do they get up there?” she wanted to know. People who thought about it enough would eventually question the disparity between fifty-meter ropes and 3,100-foot cliffs…but they didn’t know the answer and there were few people – especially in the late eighties - to ask.

            “Well,” the fledgling suitor had begun, mustering all his feigned authority on the subject “they take the ropes…okay…and they use, uh, grappling hooks that they throw up to a ledge first.” Brad had heard this one plenty of times before, and chuckled to himself loudly enough that Romeo had to ignore him.

            The young lady was incredulous, her voice dripping with doubt as she responded with the verbal equivalent of a stiff-arm “you mean they pull themselves up…on the ropes, then?”

“Uh huh.” The now floundering suitor responded, sounding less than confident but obviously glad that she had filled in the next bit of imagined information for him.

She processed that, and then responded with “that doesn’t really seem like rock climbing. I mean, that would just be climbing ropes.”

Good for her, Brad thought. One of the two of them had common sense.

Brad smiled inwardly as the now foiled suitor eventually got the hint and drifted away. Brad reckoned that next time he wouldn’t try that particular line. He should stick to the bar scene if he wanted to pick up girls.

Brad’s walkie-talkie finally came to life, and he responded into it. The girl heard him and looked his way, smiling that ‘plausible-deniability’ smile that someone transmits when they aren’t sure whether to acknowledge noticing someone. Another look at his watch, and he began to gather up his things and put his Teva sandals on. Getting up, he tossed the book he’d been reading into a Mountain Hardware back pack and rose to leave. As he did, the girl made eye contact.

            She deserved an explanation, didn’t she? He thought. There should be time.

            He walked over to where she was sitting, and offered to clear up any confusion her last visitor had created.

            In answer to her question, he explained that big walls like El Cap were climbed in stages – called ‘pitches’ – each of which roughly corresponded to a rope length. One guy would lead off and climb, while his partner stayed put – anchored to something unless he was standing on the ground - with a metal friction device that he passed the rope through. The proper use of that device, Brad explained, would catch a climber if he fell. That use of the rope through the metal braking device is called ‘belaying’… as in ‘to belay’ someone.

            “So the rope is there just in case he falls…but the lead climber doesn’t really use it unless he falls, right?”

            “Exactly.” He affirmed, impressed. Most people thought climbers used the rope to pull on and make their way upwards. “The rope is only there ‘just in case’ of a fall.” He confirmed. “The belayer is concerned with the rope, but as far as the climber is concerned, the rope’s invisible unless he’s clipping into the anchors. And the anchors are also only there just in case. They aren’t pulled on either.”

            Of course, he was thinking, an ‘Aid’ climber does pull on the anchors and other gear, but that was too much to get into just yet.

            “And” she said, stopping to think a little “anchors are what the rope is hooked to, right? I mean, it wouldn’t do any good to have a rope if it’s just strung between the two people, would it? It has to be hooked to something. That’s what you mean by anchors, right?”

            This girl had obviously gotten in line twice when they handed out brains. Brad pulled a carabiner out of the small day pack he was carrying, and showed it to her, with the spring-loaded gate open so she could see how the “clipping” action worked. Of course, she’d seen these before…most people had by now, climber or not, even if it was a plastic version they used on their school backpack.

            “They clip the rope to these carabiners,” he explained “which are also connected to the anchors. The lead climber takes the anchors up with him and places them into cracks and other features in the rock.”

            “Anchors. Lead climber. Belayer.” She repeated, processing all of that as she accepted the carabiner he had extended to her. “So are anchors those metal gear things that you always see clipped all over a climber when they’re going up?”

            He nodded.

            She continued “And what are they exactly? How do they work?”

            Again Brad went into his pack and this time pulled out several different types of anchors. He showed her the ‘passive’ type that consisted of just wedges and other shapes of varying sizes that had no moving pieces to them, and explained that these were simply (actually, expertly) wedged into cracks and other constriction points in rock features.

            Next he showed her the ‘active’ - or mechanical - type of anchors that had spring-loaded moving pieces. He showed her how they expand into and ‘grab’ the features they’re placed into when a climber’s falling weight is applied to it. Commonly known as ‘camming’ devices, or ‘cams,’ he opened and collapsed the spring action on some of various sizes to show her how they held in place.

            She looked at the device with the same dubiousness that most people did, taking it from him and looking at it the way a horse might look at a wristwatch. Most people could buy that the wedging action of the non-moving ‘passive’ devices would hold the weight of a falling climber, but these spring-loaded devices didn’t look to the untrained eye as if they could catch anyone.

            He understood her doubtfulness - even these days he marveled at it himself on occasion - and he answered her as-yet-unasked question without prompting:

            “They hold about 3,000 kilograms before they pull out. If…” he qualified…“they are placed expertly - and into good rock.”

He always felt that every answer to these questions had about a half dozen qualifiers.

            She didn’t believe him about the cams’ holding powers, and he didn’t blame her. You kinda had to see it work to believe it, and even experienced climbers who had been caught by cams in the past did all they could to keep the devices from doing what they were designed to do. 

            “And this gear” she wanted to know “is what climbers always rely on to catch them?”

            Brad let out a big sigh and smiled one of those smiles that people use when they want to say ‘well now, there’s no short answer to that question.’ Yea, he thought, she was probably bright enough not to be too confused – as most people were – by having the myriad different types of climbing styles and safety systems explained to her. But he figured she had heard enough for now, and he was about out of time anyway. She now had enough information to understand the very basics of what climbers called ‘Traditional “Free” climbing.’

            No sense explaining pre-bolted ‘sport climbing;’ the growing Bouldering scene, or the thirty-something other styles with their own cultures, sub disciplines, terms, training requirements, difficulty ratings, motivations, personalities and partisans.

            He concluded with her by promising to explain more if she wanted a guide for the day tomorrow, but he had to go.

            “Are you climbing today?” She wanted to know.

            “Yea.” He responded.

            “On El Capitan?”

            “Yea” he confirmed, looking at his watch again. She noticed.

            “Are you late for lunch, or do y’all time yourselves or something?”

            Brad smiled big at that one, before responding “Well, yea…a few of us do.”

            She asked about his daily rate for guiding and he told her. It’d be a welcome way to pass the time on his rest day tomorrow, and he might be able to get her check in the bank before the one he’d written for groceries cleared. They traded contact information and arranged a time and place to meet in the morning.

            Her name was Lynn, she informed him.

            A quickly dismissed consideration, in his mind, was the fact that guiding was only ‘permitted’ in the Valley if it were conducted by the sole-concessionaire guide service contracted with the park. Brad swore her to secrecy and she was on board with why. The arrangement the guide service had with Yosemite was just one of the thousand-and-one things that made The Valley less and less wilderness all the time, thanks to the beauracratic inertia generated by the oppressively restrictive park service. And you couldn’t stretch your legs here without kicking a park ranger. They had turned the Valley into what a lot of climbers increasingly called the “Yosemite Police State.”

            Stealth guiding was common among Valley-Bum climbers like Brad, many of whom used it as their sole income to support their climbing lifestyle. And why shouldn’t they? All climbers were pretty free-spirited by nature, and it was as counter-culture to them as leg warmers and leotards to have what they can and can’t do – especially as a climber – dictated to them by beauracrats. And it was more grating still when such restrictions were imposed by other climbers!

For a resident of the legendary Camp 4 to guide here was considered an easily justified form of civil disobedience.

            But of course, Brad no longer had to stay at Camp 4, unless he just wanted to absorb its history – a history that grew to mythic proportions during the 1960’s Golden Era with Homeric climbing pioneers like Royal Robbins, Warren Harding, and the hundreds of rock stars that had followed in their footsteps to make Yosemite Valley into….well, suffice it to say that if climbing were a religion, the faithful would bow five times daily in the direction of north-central California. 

            “Do you mind if I watch y’all through my binoculars?” she asked.

            “No problem.” He responded, smiling at the way she, refreshingly, had no idea about the circus of photographers and film makers who normally showed up when he climbed – especially when he was with Hans.

            “But,” he cautioned “just know that what you’ll see me and my partner doing won’t much resemble the multi-pitch method I just described to you.”

            “How’s that?” she asked, a little puzzled.

            “Well,” he was thinking how best to respond to that. “I told you that big walls are climbed in stages, called ‘pitches’….and that the leader stops every time the rope runs out and brings up the second guy. Then the second guy removes the anchors that the leader placed on the way up. Then they exchange gear and start the next pitch.”

            “Right.” She nodded, slowly.

            “Well, Hans and I will only be stopping to exchange the gear five times.” He was hoping he hadn’t finally reached and surpassed her ‘information saturation’ point.

            “And how many times do most people stop and exchange the gear?” she asked, mentally groping.

            “Um” he thought for a beat while he did the math…“about thirty-one, I figure.”

            “Huh?” she couldn’t grasp that one. He couldn’t blame her. Even elite climbers had a hard time getting their brains around his - and Hans’ - exploits on the ‘Big Stone.’

            “How and why would you do it that way?” she asked, knowing she was pressing his time limit, but needing to know anyway.

            “It’s faster.” He said, shrugging.

            A pause while she thought about that one.

            “Is it….more dangerous?”

            He was shouldering his pack as he stood, and just said, confidently and matter-of-factly “Yea. It is, actually.”

            “Wait a minute.” She stopped him one last time, grabbing his arm as he half-heartedly tried to trot off. He stopped and turned back to her. The touch of her hand made the hair on his forearm stand on end, despite the warmth of the early afternoon, and he felt his veins rush. “You and I are climbing tomorrow, right?”

            “Right” he confirmed, looking down at the hand she hadn’t yet removed from his arm. Noticing the look, she took her hand back, but she took the long way.

            “But,” she started, fairly blushing “How will you be free tomorrow if…I’ve heard everywhere that expert climbers take, like, five days or something to climb El Cap?” She was already starting to sound like she knew what she was talking about, after listening to his lingo.

            “The average is about three to five days for a very experienced team, yes.” He confirmed. He was beaming another self-assured smile at her as he said “We’ll be finished and down before dinner today.” Now beaming, he waited a moment to let that statement settle in, and turned to trot off in earnest this time.

            As he headed towards the big stone, Brad was momentarily ashamed that he’d been unable to resist dropping the “down before dinner” one-liner on her. He realized fully that he had been more than a little immodest. Was he trying to impress her? Well of course, he admitted to himself.

            Fifteen minutes later, Brad was making his way up the short trail to the base of El Cap. One thing nice about climbing in the Valley was that most all of the climbs were an easy approach from the car. And this time he wasn’t carrying a two-hundred pound haul bag full of ropes and other gear. The “fast and light” mentality was always one of the great things about climbing with Hans.

            He took out what gear he needed and hid his day pack behind a bush, marking it with the prearranged marker so that Steve could find it.

            Satisfied that the gear was in order, he waited just three more minutes before Hans came jogging up the trail himself, a mass of tangled blonde hair streaming behind him. Brad marveled again that the man who would come to be universally regarded as the fastest climber in the world didn’t seem to be in a rush.  

It isn’t about rushing. Hans always told people who were surprised by his pace when they actually witnessed it. It’s about efficiency and the elimination of mistakes.

            It was not unrelated to a saying Brad had heard about from friends, but from another discipline: slow is smooth; and smooth is fast.