ST. GEORGE, Utah (AP) - For Malynda Madsen, rock climbing is a moving mediation.
“Your darkest stuff will come up, like fear, insecurity, self-doubt,” she says. “You have, all of a sudden, this surge of panic that you could hurt yourself. This survival instinct kicks in and you have to keep moving through it. You have to deal with it.”
Madsen says this method of working through problems on the wall translates to her personal life, whether it’s a stressful job interview or a confrontation at work.
As she climbs the Chuckwalla Wall in St. George on a sunny spring morning, Madsen says she is in the middle of writing a 10-page paper for college. She feels as if she’s met a lot of failure during the writing process. It just wasn’t working out.
So she decided to get out on the rock. She wanted to do something that scared her but also gave her the confidence to confront a challenge.
It’s similar for Todd Perkins when he’s on the rock. Rather than worrying about pressures in his personal life, he instead finds himself confronting fears, solving problems and pushing himself physically.
“Everything else goes away,” he says. “You’re just focused on what you’re doing and what you have to do to get to the top.”
When he achieves that focus, nothing else gets in the way. It feels natural. His movements flow. The fears and doubts recede. And it culminates with a sense of accomplishment - the meeting of a goal.
That doesn’t mean he always accomplishes that goal. Sometimes he doesn’t make it to the top.
Failure is part of rock climbing too, says Perkins, who operates Southern Utah Guiding. Yet he likes how it teaches climbers to deal with that failure and to keep trying.
“There are some routes we may try to climb for years and years and we’ll finally do it that one time without falling,” he says. “It’s a pretty awesome feeling of success.”
Rob Myers is the director of Southern Utah University’s Outdoor Center in Cedar City. He views climbing as a lifestyle. Like playing music or cooking, climbing can either be a hobby or a profession. One thing that’s common among climbers is that they tend to be “genuinely happy people,” Myers says.
He first discovered climbing as a college student in 2003. He was hooked after only a couple of climbs. It’s now his favorite activity.
“For me, it’s a rejuvenation, a soul-touching moment,” he says. “It touches my core.”
CLIMBING IN SOUTHERN UTAH
Whether recreation or sport, passion or profession, climbing has certainly grown in southern Utah during recent decades.
Back in 1992, Todd Goss was driving around the country, looking for places to climb. While traveling through St. George, he saw a sign advertising climbing equipment for sale, so he pulled off the interstate. And he never left.
At the time, Goss estimates the area probably had fewer than 20 people who called themselves climbers. Now there are hundreds.
“There are certainly more climbers here than there were before,” says Goss, who is now a local climbing guide through his business, Paragon Adventures.
The Chuckwalla Wall was one of the first sport-climbing areas established in the area back in the early 1990s. It was named for an actual chuckwalla that would come out and sun itself while watching those early climbers ascend the rock.
Because Chuckwalla is so easy to access, it’s almost become like an outdoor climbing gym for local climbers, Madsen says.
Prior to the establishment of Chuckwalla, there were other established routes. Zion National Park and Snow Canyon State Park both had climbing routes as well as the Virgin River Gorge.
“Now there are thousands of routes,” says Perkins, who has established about 200 routes in southern Utah through the years. “It’s become known as an international destination.”
Perkins was recently climbing in Turkey, where he met a climber from Germany. The German was planning a climbing trip to the United States, and Moe’s Valley, located southwest of St. George, was one of his planned stops.
Part of what makes southern Utah such an attractive destination is its diversity of rock type - from the sandstone of Snow Canyon and the limestone of Utah Hill to the granite of the Pine Valley Mountains and the welded tuff at Brian Head. Perkins says each type offers unique characteristics.
Adding to the lure of southern Utah is its geographic diversity, including elevations that range from 2,350 feet in Washington County to 11,312 feet in Iron County.
“That’s the beauty of our area,” Myers says. “We climb year-round.”
Although Myers travels to the St. George area to climb during the winter, he frequents routes near Cedar City during the warmer months, including Pocket Rocks, Sprocket Rocks and Sweathills Wash, all located west of Cedar City. His favorite spot is The Overlook, by Brian Head.
While the Iron County climbing locations don’t see the same amount of climbers as the Washington County hotspots, he estimates there are a few hundred climbers around Cedar City. It’s also beginning to attract climbers from out of town.
“The word is that southern Utah has some great climbing,” he says. “You can climb year-round. Plus there is a variety of rock to climb on. Not many areas can boast that diversity.”
CREATING A ROUTE
While Goss and Perkins have established many of the local routes, Goss gives credit to those who came before him, including climbers from northern Utah who would drive down just to bolt a few routes before traveling back home.
“It’s been a community effort,” Goss says.
When establishing a route, it’s important to first determine who owns the land. Myers notes that it’s important to ask for permission before doing anything, like creating a route in a previously untouched area. It’s essential that climbers don’t damage any relationships with land management agencies.
Once permission is granted to establish a route, Goss says they examine the cliff face, looking for possible routes. Then they hike to the top, install an anchor above the potential route, and repel down the cliff to remove loose rock that could fall and injure climbers.
While repelling, they also determine where the line will go and install bolts and anchors along the way. They eventually do a deeper clean, using a brush to remove dirt from holes and pockets.
Finally, they have to figure out whether the route can be climbed or not, Goss says. If they can climb it from the bottom to the top without falling or hanging on the rope, then it can officially become a route. This is called a “first ascent.”
If you’re the first one to climb a particular route, you also get the honor of naming it. And once the route is established and named, it is eventually discovered by the greater climbing community.
Yet Goss says most local climbers will never witness the development of a route.
“We are probably the most spoiled climbing community in the world,” he says. “Most climbers don’t realize the amount of time and work and gas and money and labor and development that goes into these kind of things.”
That’s why climbing coalitions are important. Goss is the founder of one of those coalitions, Southern Utah Climbers Coalition, or SUCC. Perkins is the founder of another, Southern Utah Climbers Alliance, or SUCA.
Membership fees for both groups help with the maintenance of existing routes. While it’s still expensive to maintain the routes, it’s not the same kind of cost in materials and effort as a first ascent.
The local climbing groups are also focused on conservation. Perkins says they participate in trail maintenance and volunteer for clean-up events as they work with land management agencies to help ensure the sites remain open to climbing.
“Conservation is a big deal,” Madsen adds. “People really want to preserve this.”
GETTING STARTED
Madsen, who formerly worked as a climbing guide for Green Valley Spa, started climbing in the mid-1990s as a recreational activity.
“Dates would take me out - try to impress me,” she remembers. “In hindsight, they didn’t know what they were doing.”
Perkins got his start as a kid, shimmying up hallways at home and climbing his family’s rock fireplace. It was during his first year of college that a friend first took him climbing outdoors. He was immediately hooked.
“I went out and spent all my student loan money on climbing gear,” Perkins remembers. “I ended up eating potatoes and noodles for a couple of months. But it was worth it.”
After that initial attraction, Perkins says he began to appreciate the “mental puzzle” of figuring out how to move across the rock face. He is also intrigued by the social aspect and how climbers learn to trust each other.
“You see a lot of people just show up at the cliff and try to find somebody to climb with,” he says. “You’re basically putting your life in a stranger’s hands at that point. So it takes a lot of bravery but it also takes a lot of cooperation and trust.”
Goss discovered climbing while living in Maine and teaching survival skills for the U.S. Navy. He was particularly inspired by the instructor of his climbing class. So he got out of the Navy, took a hiatus from work and eventually landed in St. George, where he fulfilled his dream of becoming a climbing instructor.
For those interested in starting, Goss says the first step is simply to try it. Go with a friend or take an introductory course from a local guiding company.
“Climbing’s not necessarily for everyone,” Goss warns. “Frequently it’s painful.”
If you decide to get serious about it, then it’s time for a comprehensive instruction course. Goss says many climbers don’t follow this route, which can be problematic.
If you simply learn from a friend who learned from a friend, you may not learn all the principles, techniques and standards. This means it could be a longer learning process and possibly more dangerous.
“Climbing, if you do everything right, it’s very hard to get hurt or killed,” Goss says. “But if you make one mistake, you’re dead.”
THE FUTURE OF CLIMBING
While climbing has certainly grown in popularity since the early 1990s, Goss says some cultural aspects of southern Utah have limited that growth, including the lack of nightlife for young climbers. If St. George was Boulder, Colorado, there would be many more climbers, he says.
However, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Goss says he’s glad he doesn’t usually have to wait in line to climb a route.
But southern Utah is still getting recognition outside of the area, including articles in Climbing magazine. Goss expects the interest in climbing here will continue to grow at a reasonable pace.
As climbing grows in popularity it also means more wear and tear on the hardware. Anchors and bolts on some of the early routes established throughout southern Utah have aged and some have required replacement in recent years.
“We’ve done a lot of hardware replacement lately,” Perkins says. “The hardware gets kind of used and abused.”
Perkins urges climbers not to trust hardware unless they are familiar with the route. If faulty hardware is discovered, they should notify one of the local climbing associations. Both SUCC and SUCA have helped fund this hardware replacement, in part through grants they have received. However, it can be expensive and both organizations welcome donations for additional costs.
In Iron County, Myers says SUU has helped maintain the rock climbing sites it utilizes for classes and clinics.
Not only is climbing growing as a recreation and sport here locally, it will gain even greater international prominence in 2020 when it officially becomes an Olympic sport.
It was among five new sports approved last year by the International Olympic Committee. According to Climbing magazine, there will be three disciplines in the Olympic climbing category: sport, bouldering and speed.
Goss says popular climbing destinations seem to ebb and flow. Time will tell how the sport changes southern Utah.
Yet time can be a relative matter when you’re on the cliff, Goss says. It seems to pass at a different rate as everything else fades away.
“You’re doing something beautiful in a beautiful place,” he says. “That’s the essence of it. When done right, if feels as if you’re connecting these beautiful set of moves together into a vertical ballet.”
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Information from: The Spectrum, https://www.thespectrum.com
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