Into Thin Air
My hilltop is dominated by boulders. I haven’t really done an accounting of the exact number of boulders, but as I look at various drone photos I have of the property, I estimate that I have about 100 large boulders fairly evenly split between front and back hillside. It’s quite hard to come up with an exact number since one has to make an impromptu judgement as to what size rock constitutes a boulder versus just a rock. This high chaparral looks like other spots in the Southwestern United States and has always reminded me more of Tucson than anywhere else. There is a continuum of rock sizes ranging as large as perhaps the large front boulder on the property that must be 30×40 feet at least. If that sizing is accurate, then that boulder is approximately 100 tons of rock. If I assume the average boulder is half that size, that means I have somewhere near 5,000 tons of granite on my property. I could be off by an order of magnitude of 3X since boulders are probably like icebergs with only a relatively small proportion of their mass above the surface. Any way you slice it, I have a lot of rocks and boulders on my hillside and some of them have seen fit to stack themselves together for some reason into rather large piles. The most notable and interesting pile of boulders is off the south side of the house and defines the Cecil Garden on the upper level and the Rose garden above the Hobbit House on the lower level. This configuration represents approximately seven large boulders that make a small mountain of rock of sorts.
On the upper level, this pile of rocks has become the setting for my bonsai garden, which now has fourteen bonsai trees sitting in the shade of one of our two orange trees and our Irish Strawberry tree. On most days I sit on one of my concave teak benches and hand water the bonsais. I have noted that several of the trees keep losing their leaves and I am fairly certain that a rabbit has made a hutch in a gap in the rocks behind the bonsais. That rabbit seems partial to the deciduous trees and tends to leave the coniferous trees alone, or should I say that he leafs them alone. They are like man in their self-defeating ways, eating himself out of future meals, which he could assure himself of continuously if he could only leave a few leafs in place until Lewes ones can grow. But who am I to challenge a rabbit on grounds of eating habits. I am inclined, instead, just to replace the three deciduous trees with some new coniferous ones and perhaps move the three that keep getting chewed in hopes of bringing them back to health. One is a maple, one is a boxwood and one is a Japanese elm. That will be a project for later this week. I just need to think about where I can put the replaced deciduous trees to keep them out of rabbit harms way.
On this upper level, the dominant boulder is a rounded 10×10 foot rock that seems solidly set at the top of the stack. The base of the stack is made up of four other large boulders that fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. On one of them I have painted a two-tone blue agave that I am quite proud of. On the round flattened boulder above it, I risked life and limb to climb up on a ladder to paint a yellow harvest moon that I am far less happy with. It looks less like a moon than I had wanted, despite having used a combination of yellow and grey/white spray paint and having a moon model on my iPhone to reference.
It is to the left side of these samples of rock art that I envision placing a rock climbing wall for the kids. As I have looked up the various types of rock climbing on the REI website, it seems that bouldering is a very popular form of climbing because it is easily accessible to many people and is both somewhat safer (less height to fall from) and yet equally fun since it gives beginner climbers some good sense of accomplishment as they summit these boulders. In that sense I think I have a perfect spot for teaching the kids to climb.
I estimate that there is a twelve foot high base boulder topped by that bonsai-backing boulder for another six feet or so to the very top. The surface is relatively flat with a slight, say 80 degree, incline that makes the surface slightly less than perfectly vertical. That seems ideal for novice climbers, not to mention that the large boulder stacking gives the climbers crack interfaces to use in addition to whatever climbing holds I choose to place on the surface. My plan (admittedly formed without the wisdom yet of any experienced climbers) is to place a belay pulley on the top of the rock as well as a turnbuckle rig to suspend a knotted rope to allow for an additional way to assist climbers to the top. I will buy a harness to use with the belay rope so that kids can climb the wall and a adult can hold the belay rope to keep them safe from falling. This seems like a relatively easy plan to execute and requires a limited amount of climbing apparatus to buy and install. The biggest challenge will involve how to attach holds and turnbuckles to the boulder, but I suspect that will be done by drilling the rock and using some form of wedge bolts to secure things into the rock.
I will go tomorrow to REI in Encinitas to see what they think of my plan. My biggest question mark besides the attachment issue is the placement of the holds for maximum fun and practice for novice climbers. I’m hoping there will be someone knowledgeable and able to advise me. That may be too much to ask for, so I will go prepared to fend for myself in case no sound advice is forthcoming. How hard can it be? Famous last words, right?
What I should be more concerned about than anything is being sure that I have decent safety equipment so that no one gets hurt, including me. I don’t mean that I will ever try to repel down this stack of boulders or anything, but I do imagine that the act of putting this all in place is such that there will be moments on that rock pile when I will be on a ladder or splayed across that top rock with a power drill and an obstinate boulder in hand, exerting too much effort at an awkward angle and suddenly finding myself without a handhold. Not to overstate my concern, but I do not want to find myself inadvertently going off into thin air by accident.
I have always had a fascination with mountain climbing for some reason. It is so far from anything I would ever voluntarily do, that it intrigues my imagination. I wonder what would possess someone to climb Mount Everest, for instance. Why would someone go into the proverbial Death Zone above 8,000 meters (26,000 feet)? This is where there is deemed to be insufficient oxygen content in the air to sustain human breathing. There are fourteen such mountains:
1. Everest (Chomolungma – “Mother Goddess of the World”) – Nepal/Tibet – 8,848m
2. K2 – Pakistan/China – 8,611m
3. Kangchenjunga- Nepal/India – 8,586m
4. Lhotse – Nepal/Tibet – 8,516m
5. Makalu – Nepal/Tibet – 8,463m
6. Cho Oyu – Nepal/Tibet – 8,201m
7. Dhaulagiri – Nepal – 8,167m
8. Manaslu – Nepal – 8,163m
9. Nanga Parbat – Pakistan – 8,125m
10. Annapurna – Nepal – 8,091m
11. Gasherbrum I – Pakistan/China – 8,068m
12. Broad Peak – Pakistan/China – 8,047m
13. Gasherbrum II – Pakistan/China – 8,035m
14. Shisha Pangma – Tibet – 8,013m
My next task will be to find a name for my climbing mountain even though it will be about 7,500 meters shy of these eight-thousanders, and most of that is the elevation of my hillside itself as it climbs its way away from the Pacific Ocean. Since this is Casa Moonstruck and I have Moonstruck Madness as my play area in front and Moonstruck Shire as the name of my Hobbit House, I suppose something like Moonstruckpurna might work.