Activity: Climbing

The view from 30,000 feet above the Grand Canyon belies simplicity. By the time you’ve sipped your gin & tonic, and punched out a perfunctory work email, your sleek winged aluminum tube has left that distant earth scar behind in a hazy contrail.

But to go there and descend into this vast stone-strata-time-machine, carved for millennia, is to deeply connect to geology that is vast, complex, and confounding. The terrain is alive and every footfall a small act of faith, “Will this boulder roll and throw me, will this same hold I just barely pulled on now support my body weight, will the slick unroped edge fold me down into nothingness?”

Danny and Doom, my compatriots on this seven day pack-rafting, canyoneering, peak bagging, rock climbing journey are like idle dogs who sleep until they can run amok. As the sun sets, we arrive at the canyon rim and soon we are hustling below, nipping at one another’s heels. A brief pelting rain produces an impossibly huge, iridescent, double rainbow, from Mile 150 to Mt Sinyella. We dub it the “insanebow”, and a very auspicious omen. We scan for faint trails, from man and beast, and it’s often a jumble of boulders- around, under, over, in this place it’s always up and down. We discover the clues for the way forward as they will be, just as crucially, the keys to the way back.

“Where did we put the keys?”

What drives one to voluntarily suffer, to be #pooronpurpose and board the elective shipwreck, the place of immediate rations and endless toil? Perhaps to rehearse “end times” is to prepare for them, in that if you choose hard now, you will know its knock when it naturally arrives.

We go to the Canyon to reveal moments of transcendence, the sinuous narrows like silhouettes of hips and breast, a landscape that unravels me as I travel deeper into its intricacies, and mostly it’s to perform the requisites of life, that one breath, one sip, one bite amongst the rigors of wilderness- one step, one moment, one life, forever.

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Timmy O’Neill is a professional rock climber, fun-hog and co-founder of Paradox Sports, a non-profit dedicated to providing inspiration, opportunities and adaptive equipment to the disabled community. You can follow his adventures at @timmyoneill. 

Steve Fassbinder (A.K.A. “Doom”) is a rabid adventure storyteller and frequent contributor to Seek and Enjoy. For more of his work, check out The Republic of Doom.

I never chose to be an athlete. It is simply the way I am. As a child, I always felt a drive to push myself physically, be it through an organized sport or simply running around with friends, exploring the fields and hills where I grew up in Southern California.

When I was introduced to Rock Climbing over 25 years ago, I was instantly hooked.  From then on, climbing was incorporated into every area of my life – from scheduling classes around my climbing trips, to doing my homework between pull-up sessions on the Rock Rings that I hung from the rafters of my parent’s garage.

Becoming a “professional rock climber” just happened, it was never planned. This profession has taken me all over the world through a variety of climbing trips. I have spent a good deal of my time Exploring and training in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California. I have alpine climbed in Patagonia, developed new bouldering areas in South Africa, and also competed in climbing competitions locally in the United States and in more exotic places like Italy, Korea, and Chile.

I have come to realize that for me, exploring does not just mean to go out to see and experience new places. Exploring the physical capabilities of my body through athleticism is just as important to me as exploring new places. I cannot substitute one for the other, but must keep the balance of both in my life in order to feel content and complete as a person.

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Lisa Rands is a professional rock climber and climbing instructor who calls Chattanooga, TN home. For more on Lisa’s travels and climbing, check out lisarands.com.

One of the strange things about climbing is the number of climbers who want to write about it. I too felt the urge. I didn’t want the experience to disappear, but how to describe it? If I stayed with the facts, the page was clear, but cold. If I said how it really felt, the page ran hot with embarrassing confessions. I couldn’t get it right.

I combed the library shelves and read the mountaineering classics. In some of those books, I came across photographs that made me say to myself, “Yes, that’s it!” Towering, icy peaks, smooth walls with ant-like climbers on them, haggard faces after frosty bivouacs; those indelible images told the story as effectively as words could. I realized I could show what it was like, and not have to explain it.

So a camera strap was added to the clutter of slings around my shoulders. I started talking less and seeing more, watching conversations, parties, and gear sort-outs through my viewfinder, waiting for the images to appear. I caught some, but many got away.

Camp 4 was the launching pad for our adventures. Sometimes, it was a refuge from them. Here, plans were made, teams were formed, and the rest of life was lived. An odd kind of history was happening each day, and every night the quicksilver of our experience slipped through the cracks in the tabletops and disappeared into the grimy dust below.

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Born and raised in California, climber, photographer, and author, Glen Denny, was part of the first group of climbers to use the now-famous Camp 4 as a base for exploring the granite walls of Yosemite Valley. This is an edited expert from his book, Yosemite in the Sixties. For more of Glen’s work, check out www.glendenny.com