Rock Climbing Challenges: Scaling New Heights – The November day dawned cool and damp, the sun was bundled in banks of gray clouds. Now, in the early afternoon, the air has only warmed a few degrees, and a lingering fog is making the limestone slippery – terrible conditions for rock climbing. But I have to try. I spent three months training hard in the gym, torturing myself on a finger strengthening device called a hangboard and doing barbells like crazy. I gathered two friends to assist, and soon a drone would be sent up to capture what I imagined, in my daydreams, as a triumphant journey to the summit after nearly four years of trying to conquer this route and falling, falling, falling.
The goal seems simple: I must climb vertical rock faces for about seventy feet, using only my hands and feet to ascend—a practice called free climbing. A rope is only there to catch me if I fall. When I go up, I attach it to carabiners attached to screws embedded in the rock. If I reach the anchor, a set of bolts with chains at the top of the cliff, without falling or giving up, I will be the first to do so successfully. In the world of climbing, this means that not only can I claim the “first ascent” of the route but I also get to name it, a responsibility that as a professional writer I take very seriously. I thought for a long time what to call this type, with its distinct arête (prominent edge), and I came up with “Offisher, Arête This Man!” – Best to say in a drunken slur. Like I said, serious business. Until then, it’s just “the project”.
Rock Climbing Challenges: Scaling New Heights
I first saw the project in 2018. My partner and I, along with six friends, purchased land on the Pecos River, near Langtree, in the lush desert lands of Southwest Texas. By the time we closed on the 93-acre Rachito, none of us had seen the walls of the river canyon. On our first visit after the sale closed, we excitedly descended 150 feet into the riverbed, eventually reaching a huge ledge perched above a rapid chute of the raging Pecos. Above this ledge, the head wall. We craned our necks to take in the steep face of bullet-hardened limestone, covered here and there with white, yellow, and orange lichen: Jackson Pollock Desert. The rock deities smiled on this place – and on us. The climbable sections of the walls, tall by Texas standards, reach more than a hundred feet in places and boast many features: potholes, potholes, pockets, and ledges, as well as two huge man-eating cracks and a thin tongue, a brightly colored rock the size of a surfboard improbably stuck in the crack. The tongue rises above the rock like a Cretaceous guillotine.
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Austin Bullen, left, and Forrest Wilder invent “The Project” at Wilder’s Ranchito, near Langtree, on Nov. 11, 2023.
Since buying the property, my friends and I have developed a dozen routes, some easy, some difficult. Some required months of on and off effort to set up, from installing the lines to installing screws into the rock. The more difficult ones required many attempts before I was able to climb them free. But none grabbed me like the project. I started working on it during the pandemic, often making the five hour drive west from my home in Austin to do a fight. Some of my stronger friends can probably walk it up in slippers. But for me – a fortysomething with a dad and a mortgage, who only started climbing seriously in his mid-thirties – the route felt impossible at first. This involves 25 to 30 technically difficult moves up the wall without significant rest.
The hardest move, where I’ve failed dozens of times, requires standing with my right foot on a nail the size of a pencil eraser while my left heel clings desperately to the edge around the areta. Then the right hand shoots out to grab a half-detached sharp flake that is almost out of reach. When—if—I hold this move, I find myself in a ridiculous yoga position, staring down a fifteen to twenty foot drop, a terrifying proposition even though I’ll probably be fine. It took me many, many hours to understand this delicate dance. Sometimes I can’t remember which drawer in my kitchen contains the silverware, but I know every move in a project by heart. It might just be an obscure cliff in a forgotten corner of Texas, but it’s my Mount Everest. my white whale
At the base of the project, I tie a rope, put on my rubber climbing shoes, sharpen my hands and start rehearsing the beta – climbers talk to get the information needed to complete the route. “One more time to hack,” I think to myself. Shakespeare’s King Henry said it bravely; I do this in self-mockery. I warn my friend Austin Bullen, who as my protector is responsible for balancing my weight on the other end of the rope, to prepare for a big fall.
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My first surprise: despite the fog, the rock is dry. I’m almost disappointed because now I have no excuse for failure. The bigger surprise: Once I start climbing, instead of being scared or worried, my default on this route, I feel no emotion at all. I do not think so; I just do. I usually hear the sound of the river in my head, as if someone had put a shell in my ear. Or am I continuing an internal monologue…
. Now I don’t even hear the drone buzzing overhead. I’m in one of those rare, coveted flow states. The world is falling, and I’m just showing up.
By the time I grab the flake, about halfway up, I’m only slightly tired. Then comes the last part of the main, the hardest part of the route. It’s a tricky overhead sequence (horizontal overhang) that I botched during a practice run the day before. It goes flawlessly. Soon I’ll be sitting on a shelf, checking my tongue and holding my breath. The rest of the route is relatively easy. In a few moments, I should be at the top, celebrating. But while I’m on that ledge, disaster strikes: my brain turns on again.
Once an isolated, outlaw subculture that occasionally attracted outside attention, rock climbing has been thoroughly mainstreamed in the past decade, thanks to popular documentaries such as
Scaling New Heights: The Climb Of Junko Tabei
The sport’s debut at the 2020 Summer Olympics, and more than anything else, the multitude of climbing gyms. The appeal is multifaceted. Climbing is great exercise, it’s fun and social, and it rewards both mind and body. Brute strength is not enough to succeed in the vertical field – you also need skills, tactics and problem-solving abilities.
Although vast areas of the Lone Star State are flat and featureless, things get interesting from the Balcones Escarpment westward into the Trans-Pacos region. Over thousands of years, streams cut deep gorges into the ancient chalky seafloors of the Edwards Plateau, leaving behind steep cliffs in the river valleys. Water worked its magic on a smaller scale, creating toothed pockets, javelins and tubular ribs of rock known as tufas. Texas doesn’t have the attractions of mountain states like California, Colorado, or West Virginia—our cliffs tend to be short, and a lot of the best crags sit on private property—but we still have a lot that’s very easy to do. – Access channels. From the granite fissures of Enchanted Rock State Natural Area to the pocketed rocks of Rogers Park on Lake Belton, ten miles west of Temple, to the many limestone levels around Austin, the state offers a lifetime of vertical exploration. It’s also home to the Hueco Tanks National Park and Historic Site, outside of El Paso, one of the world’s premier destinations for bouldering, a popular sport that emphasizes powerful movement on short courses.
In addition to its natural wonders, Texas boasts some of the best climbing gyms in the country. More than thirty commercial facilities are scattered across the country, from Amarillo to Houston. Most of them didn’t exist ten years ago, a testament to the growing popularity of the sport. The best put a lot of emphasis on “setting” – the art of placing plastic holders to create movement patterns that can be thoughtful, fluid, acrobatic or just plain difficult. Indoor climbing is a very social activity, so different from the grumbling solitude that marks most regular gyms, where everyone seems to be lost in their own private pain caves. Climbing centers are to Gen Z and Millennials what bowling alleys were to their grandparents.
The internal movement gave birth to a new generation of crusher. Access to excellent facilities and professional coaches means elite climbers can be produced anywhere. Some of these young people are lured by the prospect of posting bad content on Instagram and TikTok, while others find their way into competitive climbing, where participants go head-to-head on artificial walls against each other and against the clock. Based mostly in flat North Texas, Team Texas has produced some of the best contenders in North America.
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