First Steps: An Impromptu Climb
My introduction to the vertical realm. Part 1 of my climbing journey.
Must have been middle school that I wrote a short story about my earliest rock climbing experience. I’ve looked but can’t locate the handwritten story now, who knows, my Mom may have it buried in a random keepsake box in her attic or could have been culled out long ago. At this point, I will have to rely on my memory to recollect the events, nearly 40 years later.
I’m guessing at the year, but I think it must have been 1985/86 timeframe; that would have put me about 11 or 12. My two younger brothers would have been around 9 and 6, respectively. My Dad, two brothers and I, had taken off to Red Rock Canyon for a weekend camping trip.
Located about an hour west of Oklahoma City, just south of I-40 and Hinton, Oklahoma, Red Rock Canyon is not the glorious, expansive, wilderness area that one might envision when they hear the word “canyon.” From an outsider’s perspective, some might consider it a stretch to refer to it as such. Perhaps it meets some geological bare-minimum to be called a canyon, after all, Oklahoma is also known for things like “the world’s highest hill,” so maybe Red Rock is the world’s smallest canyon. Nevertheless, it provides a respite from the ubiquitous flat landscape that Oklahoma is typically known for.
Being a dad myself with two kids, I now realize the benefit of Red Rock as an easy destination for a quick get-away, as a camping destination. It was close enough that if something went wrong, my Dad could make the drive home in a relatively short amount of time. (Such was the case on one occasion when my Dad forgot the tent poles and attempted to use rope and surrounding trees to tie up the tent. A storm blew in that night. The tent shook and blew like a half-deflated hot air balloon until finally, some of the small branches broke, the ropes gave way, and the tent ended up collapsing. That was it. We loaded up the station-wagon and headed home.)
Just past the entrance sign, the road winds down a series of steep hair-pin-turn switchbacks into the canyon. The gravel road (now paved) continues the length of the canyon with steep orange-red walls rising on either side.
Along the road are various pull-ins to park, picnic tables, camping spots, and rock walls.
There are short hiking trails that snake through corridors, across hand-crafted wood-slat bridges, through bunches of wetland reeds and tall trees ending at a cul-de-sac with a little waterfall and a tiny pond. As kid, I thought the place was amazing - like an outdoor discovery playground. These were idyllic adventures for my brothers and I, as we loved to explore.
The rock, an iron-rich sandstone, part of the Rush Springs Sandstone formation, varies in height from 25 feet to as much as 50 feet or more in some places. The majority of the rock is soft, so soft that it is easily scraped, carved and eroded by hands, boots, and kids with sticks and other tools. Because of this, the walls don’t lend themselves to being good stone for rock climbing. It tends to be slick, dirty, friable, and even more dubious after a rain. But that hasn’t stopped many from attempting climbing.
Red Rock has leant itself to a number of “firsts” for many newcomers to the vertical arts. Many scouts have taken their first backward steps over the ever-rounded rope-grooved edge of the canyon. Countless kids and adults find themselves scrambling up well-worn carved footsteps and traversing over uncomfortably steep terrain to reach the top of a wall. And unfortunately, each year, accidents occur when someone slips, rock breaks, or someone underestimates the difficulty of a what appears to be an “easy climb.”
Like other kids my age, I had no knowledge or awareness of the intricacies of climbing or the inherent danger of gravity. My experiences were limited to trees, zip-lines, and playground equipment. All of which, were just fun.
My brothers and I “helped” my dad pitch the tent for camping that night and were off in various directions to explore the cliffs. A few kids had found a wall to climb that reached the top. I saw a few older kids high up on the cliff face. Below, more kids were waiting their turn. It looked like fun.
Standing at the base of this cliff face, behind a few other kids, I was eager to follow the hand and foot holds up the sheer face. The cliff face was probably 40 feet high, but none of that really occurred to me as I watched the other kids approach and begin placing their hands and feet in each consecutive hold. The holds were what we might refer to in climbing as “pockets” but they were really more like teacups or soup bowls turned upwards. The line of kids shortened as each began climbing…soon it was my turn.
I stepped forward and placed a hand in a rounded, scooped-out pocket, filled with sand. I placed one sneaker in another pocket and stepped high. I grabbed the next hold with my other hand, placed my next foot. So on and so on. I looked ahead at the kid above me, now maybe ten feet up. With each step he took, I took one. Soon, I wasn’t paying attention to where I was, I was more focused on what I was doing with my hands and feet. Stepping, reaching, stepping, reaching; it was very rhythmic, until at some point, maybe twenty feet up or so, I raised my right foot up to where I expected a foothold, but there wasn’t. I poked around with my shoe, searching without looking down, expecting to locate the hole. But I couldn’t find one.
My vision narrowed. Suddenly, everything was very real. I sensed how high I was above the ground. I tensed up. My heart raced. My breath quickened. My hands perspired with sweat further reducing any friction that I had. My fingers slipped around precariously over the sandy surface of the already smooth stone.
This feeling was new. This wasn’t just fear. I’d been scared before. This was different. What was it?
Looking up, the kid above me had continued on and since disappeared from sight, somewhere up high.
I felt alone on the wall.
I continued with my foot still scraping around in desperation to find some reprieve but not really knowing what to do differently. I spotted my next handhold higher up, just out of reach without a higher foothold. The thought of climbing down was fleeting, though hardly a realistic option, surely I wouldn’t have made it anyway.
The thought occurred to call for help from my Dad, my brothers, someone, but I wasn’t sure where they were, and besides, I couldn’t muster the breath.
I reached a point where I sensed that there was no way out of my position except to fall. It was sure to happen, I was mere moments away from it.
Then something amazing happened. As if by some force-of-nature or miracle-like scenario, I felt this hand from below me, grab my shoe, force it up and into a foot-hold mere inches away from where I’d been searching. Apparently, the hole was there all along, I just hadn’t seen it. With that, I stepped up, grabbed the next hand-hold, placed my next foot higher. My heart continued to pound, the anxiety yet to subside, but I kept moving. I continued my progress, not allowing myself to stop. Perhaps there was some reassurance knowing that the kid below me was there. Eventually, I neared the top, it wasn’t but a few more moves and I was there.
I don’t remember my mental state upon reaching the top. There may have been tears. And I have no recollection of the boy who helped me. I feel like at some point I must have looked back at him, I must have said thank you…but I don’t recall. He probably just went running off. He might have saved my life that day, or at least saved me from a very bad accident, but to him, it probably wasn’t much of anything. I was in his way, I was holding up his progress, and I was risking his life by almost falling on top of him. By helping me, he was helping himself.
Let’s face it, I was a liability up there. I shouldn’t have climbed the thing. I realized my mistake and that I was really lucky to have made it without falling. I don’t remember what I told my Dad or brothers, most likely I minimized the whole episode. I probably swore to myself that I would never do anything like that again.
Instead, that event, likely provided the impetus to explore climbing even more wholeheartedly years later. I wouldn’t forget how close I felt to falling, or how I’d risked it beyond my abilities at that time, but there was a slight confidence bump too, just from knowing that I’d made it through.
And that feeling, the one I experienced during freezing up on the climb…I would later come to realize that feeling as “exposure.” I would certainly revisit that feeling too, along with being in-over-my-head, and having to curtail my own ego in combination with poor judgement. Thankfully, those types of adventures (and mis-adventures) were still years away.
