Social Dilemmas of a Big Wall Free Climber (Hardwear Sessions)

By Micah Dash

My good Jewish mother always wished I had become a doctor or a lawyer. To her great regret, I became a rock climber. All of the energy that I could have put into a professional career was completely flushed down the toilet and funneled into rock climbing. She of course blames it on my father. Needless to say, when I go home to visit I feel a bit socially retarded. It's as if my professional life has been severely underdeveloped.

This summer after an all-free ascent of El Capitan's 3,300 foot Freerider, VI 5.12d, 33 pitches, I found myself on the road headed to my mom's house for a few days of R&R and maybe even some homemade chicken soup. But first I stoped for a shower, shave and to do some laundry. Showing up at mom's house completely "disheveled," as she would say, is unacceptable especially at 30 years old. It's one thing to live out of my truck but it's another to look like it.

Upon my arrival I told her that my climbing partner, a good Jewish boy from Florida, Matt Segal and I managed to free climb El Capitan.

"Free climbing!" my mother exclaimed. "You mean you didn't use ropes?"

"No mom, we climbed El Cap by only using our fingers and toes on the rock to make upward progress. We pulled on small flakes of the rock and stuck our hands into cracks. The rope was merely a safety device and not a means of ascending."

"Oh that's nice, how's your father," she interjected, as if she suddenly remembered how many times I had explained this to her over the past decade.

I tried to clarify to her that an all-free ascent of El Cap is a crowning achievement in a climbing career especially, among the 25 people in the world or so who have succeeded in doing it. Yet, my body was sore, my elbows and knees raw from groveling up gnarly six inch wide off-widths that sit below the steep hand and finger cracks that made up the crux climbing 2,600 ft. above the ground. So, after a few minutes I stopped explaining.

No matter what I had climbed, or not climbed, Mom was glad to see me. We decided to go out and meet up with some of her friends. Although I didn't really want to go my mother at 4'9" and 90 lbs. can be quiet convincing.

As I followed her down the stairs I noticed that my feet where still cramping from the lack of water that I had not consumed over the past week on the wall. I could feel the cuts on my knees sticking to my pants; cuts that I gotten while being 30 feet run-out on a burly 5.11+ off width. But, knowing better than to complain I followed her to the car.

At dinner she introduced me and reintroduced me to a host of friends and family as her son "the mountain climber." It was if I had become a character on some outdoor TV show. Instantly, I felt like I was 10 years old.

"Oh, a mountain climber," they would say, "have you climbed Everest?"

"No," I would respond, "I've never climbed Everest." Which, in their urban reality, pretty much meant that I sucked.

The next morning I headed back to Yosemite feeling rested and ready for some more big wall free-climbing action. I arrived back to the same scene that I had left a few days before. People where congratulating Matt and I for a job well done. Once again I was back in a community as professionally retarded as I. While I never became a doctor or a lawyer at least my friends understood that free-climbing El Cap was the equivalent of winning a case of a lifetime.