Rifle Mountain Park is a lush enigma that shimmers like an oasis between natural gas rigs, starched-yellow cow pastures and a thirsty range of mountains that undulates towards Utah. It is a perfectly carved canyon lathered with limestone - rock that looks as if it has been run through a rusty, mangled cheese grater, transforming the crag into prickly ripples, chiseled punctures, perforated veins. Between the walls, a slate-gray creek purls and curls through the greenery, an endless silver shoal, ankle-deep, purring in a delicate aural landscape - one that is assaulted depending on the time of day.
You just need to close your eyes to absorb the culture clash: Roughnecks with shit-kicking Chevy trucks blasting country, tossing Bud's into the creek; Hispanic families cranking trumpet-tuned-Spanish-sung songs from their radios; Earth-loving climbers emerging from their dirt-splotched Subarus, clinging to the crag, adrenaline-juiced yelps echoing up and down the canyon.
They all come to Rifle Mountain Park, each with their own purpose, aesthetic and ethos, creating an environment as unique as the characters that inhabit it.
And this is exactly where I found 26-year-old Sam Elias of Glenwood with his body leeched against a climbing route called, dramatically, "Truths and Lies." It was a nasty, bloody knife fight - his back a shivering mess of muscles, swollen sinews extruding from shoulders, sweat falling from his face, splashing on the rock below. One of his knees was wedged in the rock - a "knee bar" - while he looked up, panting, analyzing the crag. Again and again he tried to maneuver an overhanging section of the cliff that looked so impossibly painful that I even began to feel physically uncomfortable just watching. Every fall brought a new surge from Elias, another hell-bent attempt to scale the beast.
Over and over, hour upon hour, with the sun fading and fatigue setting in, he fought with an inexorable stubbornness, until, finally, with a deep growl, he flung his body upward, connecting with a hold inconceivably small - a moment of truth in which every reserve in his body was scraped clean. It was tenuous nightmare - his chalky hands slipping - the weight too much - the fall inevitable, it seemed. Just give up. It would be so easy. But he willed his flailing body up, inch-by-inch, forearms bulging, face bursting, until he reached the top.
"Welcome to Rifle," he yelled down towards me. "This is what happens every time you try a new route here."
Since Mark Tarrant and Richard Wright bolted the first routes in 1991, Rifle has steadily become one of the hottest climbing destinations in the West. With more than 240 bolted routes, fans of sport climbing descend upon the park in droves, both as temporary residents camping in the park and as weekend or evening warriors that organize their lives to spend as much time on the rock as possible. A glance of license plates in the park will reveal just how far people drive to climb Rifle - California, Tennessee, Kentucky and New York, just to name a few.
"After a day climbing in Rifle, every muscle in my body is sore," said Elias. "Rifle requires a very physical climbing style. On every route there is always some opposition in the body, whether it is between your hands and feet, or a 'knee bar' and a hold. It's not easy."
What is easy about Rifle is the accessibility of the different routes. For the majority of climbs, you simply need to park your car on the side of the road, walk 15 feet across the creek, strap on your harness, and get to work.
And this is exactly where Elias comes to work, sometimes four times a week.
Born and raised in Michigan, Elias has always been a natural athlete. His sport of choice, however, was not originally climbing, but alpine ski racing. In high school, he even moved to Salt Lake to attend a school that focused primarily on skiing. From there, he raced at the collegiate level in Idaho.
After graduation with his ski racing career behind him, Elias set out to test entirely different waters. So, he pocketed a little bit of cash, loaded up his car and set out for a two-year climbing adventure throughout the U.S.
"It was a pretty amazing experience," he said. "At that time, I could fit everything I owned into my Subaru."
Luckily, he would need very little. Elias estimated that he was able to live on between $200-$300 dollars per month by camping out, eating simply and devoting himself only to climbing. And with this bare bones lifestyle came major changes in his internal, mental life.
"My mind really slowed down during those years," he said. "I adapted to the environment and needed very little to entertain me. I could really feel the time go by - each hour of the day - instead of suddenly looking up from a desk or TV and realizing that the day is already gone."
Towards the end of his trip, Elias experienced both the bliss of being completely free as well as the regrets of simply dropping out of society and living alone, with little money and few comforts.
"Along with all the great parts of that trip, I guess I also felt a certain emptiness during those days," he said. "Climbing is my passion, but it is also a very selfish pursuit. A major part of life is learning to give, and don't want to remembered as just a climber who only looked after himself."
NOTE: You can stop reading here if you want, because this is about to change, about to expand out towards a new direction. I am now going to write something - the last thing I am writing for Roaring Sports- about what this really means, at least to me:
It is not the climbing destination that makes this story what it is. No, it is the tale of Elias, and what we can extract from it.
In many ways, Elias's two-year climbing adventure represents an aspect of life that howls and aches within each of us, clawing in our gut. It is nothing more than a question: Do you have the courage to drop out of the world and pursue something you love? Can you separate yourself from everything that is expected from you in this soceity? This is a theme we have seen again and again in time. Thoreau went to the Woods, right? We have all read or seen "Into the Wild." It is a constant struggle, a primal urge to separate, test the boundaries and see how far we can make it, alone.
But in all out idealism, we hit an impasse. Thoreau returned from the woods. Chris McCandless died in a bus in Alaska, wishing to return to society. Chris Elias realized that the life of a full-fledged climbing bum can be exhaustingly lonely. So, what do we do? Do we stay where we are, leading lives that we are expected to lead? Do we live and die passively? Or, do we strike out, knowing that what awaits us is something daunting and solitary?
Or, perhaps, do we find another route, a Buddhist middle ground - just one thing in this world that can justify the banality of everyday life? Is there something out there - the perfect tonic - that provides a sense depth and direction in what you do, that keeps us within society, but also meaningfully detached from its vices. For Elias, this is found in the simple yet artful act of climbing. It is the point in which reality, if only briefly, exists between him and a rippling piece of rock.
"Everyone is searching for a way to live fully," he said. "When I climb, I can really feel my body, my pulse. I am completely present in the moment. Everything going on in my life fades away. I can finally hear the wind in the trees and the sound in the creek. It is connecting with all the many little things in life that we always overlook."
Yet, ultimately, what will define Elias and those of us that have found this passionate pursuit is not necessarily who we were or what we accomplished during those moments of mindful bliss, but, rather, who we were between the climbs, between the runs on the mountain, when the game finally comes to an end, and we are left only with the relationships and the life that we have created.
It is not what we have, but our relationship to it. Understanding this, molding this, bringing this to life, it seems, is the real pursuit.
bastian@aspendailynews.com
