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Wednesday, April 19, 1989 / University Daily Kansan
Student gets away from it all by rock climbing
by Christine Winner
Dan Hughes demonstrates rock climbing.
Kansan staff writer
Balancing on a 100-foot high cliff while clinging to a quarter-inch ledge with a slim rope as a security blanket can be a good time for Dan Huezes.
Hughes, olaethe sophomore, first became interested in rock-climbing when he lived in Colorado.
The sport is so popular there that the city of Boulder has an ordinance against "building near" ski areas.
Hughes said that he had face-climbing Stauffer. Fint Hall, with its climbing as done by the two men, also had holds rather strong.
About three years ago, Hughes started climbing on his own. He said that his mother was concerned about his safety, so he enrolled in a two-day class taught by the employees of Backwoods, a backpacking, camping and climbing equipment store in Kansas City. Mo.
Rock-climbing techniques have names such as laybacks, hand jams, bucket holds, and heelocks. "Your feet have to act like hands a lot." Hughes said
said. Your feet have to use like animals a lot! Singing!
For this reason, most climbers wear tight-fitting shoes with a rubber sole designed to grip the rock. Other equipment includes a harness and a
other equipment includes a nylon
specially-made nylon rope that stretches
Chalk is used to keep hands dry, whether it is the rock or the climber's palms that are sweating. Hughes said that it also served a psychological purpose.
"Sometimes if you get into a tight spot, you stop and chalk up your hands to get your wats about."
Also used are carabiners, which oval-shaped pieces of metal in various sizes with spring-lock clamps. Carabiners are attached to a loop of webbing which holds the rope and allows the climber to attach to the middle of the rope during his climb, not just its end.
Hughes estimated that he spent about $600 on climbing equipment during the past several years. A rope can cost up to $175, shoes up to $150, a pair of gloves. Then there are the various pieces of protection.
The two main ways to climb are called top-roping and lead climbing.
Pieces of "pro." short for protection, are an
essential part of climbing gear. Called chocks or rock stoppers are attached to the protrusion of the stairway.
In top-roping, an anchor is secured at the top of the climb. One end of the rope then is attached to the harness, the rope is looped up through the anchor and the belayer has the other end. The belayer is the person who takes up the slack in the rope.
In lead climbing, the protection is placed in the rock and the carabiners are hooked to the chocks as the climber goes up. A belayer also is used in lead climbing.
The importance of the belayer was stressed in a clinic that Hughes attended taught by John Pleasan.
"He told us, 'Never open up your heart because you've got a life in it.' It might sound kind of cornish. But it's true."
Hughes said that there were ethics involved in a climber's form. He said that good form included deliberate moves and keeping one's knees off the rock while climbing.
"You can tell a good climber from a bad climber by the number of skins on his knees." he said.
Rick Cameron, outdoor education coordinator at Robinson Center, said that rock-climbing was commonly perceived as a dangerous sport, but that a climber's attitude made the difference.
He said that if someone was competing with another climber, he might take shortcuts that would have given him doing it for their own pleasure and taking the time to use a lot of protection, they should be safe.
Cameron said that he would like to build an
artificial climbing wall so that he could teach climbing in his high semester class. High Adventure
"I really like rock-climbing. It allows you to focus on one thing. There are no other thoughts in your mind except for the rock." he said. "There is no need to worry about it. I am focused on one thing that offers a mental escape."
In the class, Cameron teaches windsurfing,
sailing, scuba diving, kavaking and rapolling.
For the section on rapelling, the class spends a Saturday in Manhattan practicing on the Tuttle Causeway.
"The most important thing about rapelling is the hook-up," said Sgt. Maj. William Waite, a senior captain on the boat.
Equipment used in rapelling includes a harness, a rope, carabiners and a figure-eight, which is a metal piece that increases the friction on the rope to control the speed of the descent, Cameron said.
Cope described rapelling as a controlled descent, with normal "bounds," or deserts, of about six to eight feet. It is taught to ROTC cadets in summer training at Fort Rilev.
He said that a person could be traped in soul two or three hours, but that they didn't mean the person was dead.
"A person can rapel with very little skill if he has good equipment," he said. "It's not something you just go out and do with no training. Rapelling can be a lot of fun if you have qualified people to assist people who are not skilled. It's a good recreational sport if you have someone with training around."
Hughes, who said he had rapelled about 200 times, had a different opinion.
"I think rapelling, in and of itself, is a necessary evil rather than a sport," he said. "In the context of mountainering, rapelling is the most dangerous environment. In climbing, it's mostly you, with your equipment as a backpack. If I don't have to rape, I won't."
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