Bear Valley

[lizolas]

Bear Valley

September 14-15, 2019

For the last guiding activity of the season, I worked one (1) day at Bear Valley for a Boy Scout event. There were a few older boys who picked up belaying and rappelling reasonably well, but for the most part we just pretended that the 11-year-olds had any kind of competence while we actively backed up everything they did.

Matt belaying Sam during the Learn to Lead class

The requirements for the merit badge were:

• 3 different climbs
• 3 different rappels
• 3 belays of different climbers
• 3 backups of different climbers’ rappels

That’s a lot to get through for anyone in a day, much less for about 10 kids at varying levels of physical fitness and mental fortitude. Many of them completed the requirements after a concerted effort in the afternoon to cycle them through as efficiently as possible, but a few didn’t and were going to have to finish up at the climbing wall at a Boy Scout facility sometime later.

I thought it was funny when one of the adults keeping records noted that one boy hadn’t really done the tie-in independently. Not a single one of the boys working on the merit badge actually did belaying, rappelling, or rappel backing-up in a manner that could be called independently proficient. Nobody was worried about it, because clearly these kids are not about to go get themselves injured the following weekend, but a few rushed turns on each activity is not enough for them to figure out what they’re doing.

At the end of the session, Tim took the group back to the office while Richard, Matt, and I tore everything down. With everyone else gone, Matt let me practice the backed-up rappel on him for the SPI exam. Since nobody can ever just choose a normal body part or article of clothing to get stuck, I got to do the drill while he screamed about his foreskin being stuck in his ATC.

Since I had nothing to do the next day, Matt suggested I shadow his Learn to Lead class. It was just one client, who apparently had far less experience than is typically recommended for the course. Rather than having gym climbed for over a year with some familiarity with outdoor procedures, he’d been gym bouldering for 3 months with no idea how outdoor climbing worked.

Sam was a very attentive student and seemed to pick up a lot of things pretty quickly. Throughout the day he took lots of video of explanations and demonstrations, which I thought was a fairly smart use of resources, rather than hoping he’d remember it all later. We started by talking about some basics of climbing and how to be a good follower, then moved into gear placements. After discussing individual placements, we practiced anchor building. While Sam placed gear with the time allotment, Matt looked for places to do a short mock-lead. After we’d finished assessing the gear placements and anchor, then gone over some alternative anchor building (e.g. using the rope for the anchor) and the general flow of a multi-pitch climb, Sam got to do his first mock lead. On the first lap he placed mostly good gear, but spaced dangerously far apart - allowing a ground fall from the 2nd piece. He did a second lap on that crack and refined his gear. Then we went down to the ground for more mock leading. Matt did some more review of the way multi-pitch climbing works while I set up a rappel to practice the backed-up rappel procedure again. This time nobody got anything “stuck.”

The route Matt chose has good gear and easy climbing for the first half, then a huge ledge to deck on right before the crux and steep mostly unprotectable face the rest of the way to the top. Sam did a lot of overthinking, but was in fact thinking rather than just forging on “unprotected” because he was safely on a toprope. That allowed for some discussion of how in some places, marginal gear is all you have, and there aren’t always perfect placements abundant on a route. After that, Matt switched the rope to another route while I taught Sam how to do the “guide coil” to put a rope away. On this route, Sam only got to the ledge and wasn’t able to go farther due to a lack of ability to hand jam. While Matt set the rope up to rappel and pull, I tried to find a place to teach hand jamming, but there were surprisingly few good cracks at ground level.

We moved on to a bolted sport route which Matt led to get a rope up. He offered to let me lead it, but I decided maybe not in approach shoes. From his commentary while leading it in approach shoes, that seemed to be a good call. With just bolts to clip, Sam got to focus more on the climbing, and followed it while Matt belayed from the top. Next, they both came down and Sam mock led it with some slack in the toprope to simulate actually leading. After we were done with that route, I found a spot to demonstrate a hand jam while Matt was putting the stuff away. It didn’t quite click at first but after a couple more demonstrations from us, Sam had gotten into a position where he could pull on the jam while excitedly declaring that it wasn’t going to move no matter what he did. At that point it was time to call it a day, since we’d already gone several hours past the stated course time.