The North Star

Words by Sarah Conley
Photography by Ritt Pontepsiripong

The approach is what takes us from the house, car or campsite to the climb—or, what separates us from it. Now more than ever, climbers flock to the mountains to escape the jarring clang of big cities and tiring minutia of maintaining a ‘proper’ life. Paved streets and highways are like umbilical cords, tethering us to these realities. Tired and dull from a full work schedule, the weekend warrior seeks out climbs with the shortest approach possible. Climbs with ‘roadside’ written in the description are deemed desirable and the art of the approach is lost. Instead of receiving their communion with wilderness, the climber spends an intimate moment with the highway, its hum a constant noise in their ears—a reminder of their eventual return to society; an anchor to the mundane.

I was born and raised in a city and learned to climb in a gym. On one of my first outings climbing outside, I complained to my climbing partner that I was having difficulty scrambling up the large talus field with a crash pad on my back. My soft would be required just to reach the climbing. “Scrambling over this talus will be good for your climbing,” he said. “It teaches you how to move on rock.” I had no idea that there was an element of mastery to approaching climbs.

The longer I climbed the more it became evident to me that climbing was exploding in popularity. The evidence was everywhere; climbing was the latest recreational fad, and everyone was getting into it. Climbers used to be beatniks and punks, now they were office workers, baristas and tech CEOs. Even the elusive climbing spots were starting to get busy. The wilderness was losing its wild. And maybe that helped me understand why my climbing partner was willing to go the extra mile to get a little further from the beaten trail. As I climbed outdoors more, I learned that some climbs were given the label ‘blue-collar’ when they had long, arduous approaches. Ironic!

I think about the moment I complained about that 15-minute scramble up a talus field now, years later, on the trail up to my current project, appropriately named North Star. It sits at the very top of the northern face of the north gully in the Stawamus Chief Mountain. It would be the last pitch of a fine route if there was any that started from the ground and could join it but since there isn’t one, the best way to get there is by hiking two hours up to the mountain’s second peak. I make the trip about once every week, pack stuffed full of rope, harness, rock shoes, food, water, belay gear and other hard goods for the climb. I’ll do it twice in a week if I want to leave some water stashed up there to lighten my pack for the next trip. It’s been a punishing experience in the summer heat, joining the flocks of tourists as I trudge uphill. I am never alone on the trail and have plenty of time to ponder and envy the days of a less populated environment. While thinking about what climbing would have been like before my lifetime, I realized that the approach and the climb were once one and the same. Like artifacts of an ancient civilization, the tools are proof.

One year, I was home visiting my mother for Christmas when she told me she had a surprise for me. Something she had pulled out of the basement: a pair of my father’s old climbing boots. They looked like leather hiking boots but came equipped with an old-school Vibram rubber sole with deep lugs and a stiff tab at the front for clipping into skis. My father passed away when I was a child and some of my fondest memories of us together were when he took me skiing, which I knew was one of his greatest loves in life. But I had no idea that he was also a skilled and accomplished alpinist, or that my great-grandfather was one of the founding members of an Italian alpine club.

It was then that I discovered that the mountains were in my blood. Going back to seeing tools as evidence, my father’s mountaineering boots were proof that climbing, hiking, skiing—any path you could trace up or down in the mountains—were once considered parts of the same discipline. Maybe then you could trace the moment rock climbing broke off on its own to the moment the first ‘rock shoe’ came out. History around this fact is muddy but in North America, it would have been sometime around the late ‘60s or early ‘70s, which by no coincidence is also when the ‘free climbing’ movement began to take off. A group of climbers known as the Stonemasters challenged themselves to ascend only using the power of their feet and fingertips—thus, they began training their bodies to meet these new physical demands. Their gear had to follow suit.

Doug Robinson, an OG Yosemite climber, witnessed the appearance of the first approach shoe. He had been guiding in the Palisades for about a decade by the late ‘70s. Californian rock guides had adopted the Adidas Country as their preferred trail shoe for its ability to carry heavy loads up mountains and run back down long distances and steep elevations. They had a sticky, crepe-like sole that was good on soft trails and the rocky scrambles above. A pair would last about a year. During climbing lessons, Robinson would demo easy slab in them without bothering to change into rock shoes. During John Bachar’s most productive winter season in Joshua Tree, Stonemaster Charles Cole showed up one day with the first batch of approach shoes in the trunk of his car. Robinson sprung and bought a pair on the spot. He and his guide friends immediately upped their game to make them worthy of the name. A new genre of shoe was born.

Approach shoes are now a quintessential part of a climber’s quiver. As climbing has evolved, so has its tools. We could never imagine climbing 5.13 in hiking shoes, and yet many of today’s classic routes were given their first ascent in a pair of clunky boots. Now I make my journey up the Chief with several pairs of shoes in my pack: a stiff shoe for edging, soft shoe for slabs and—scuffed, muddy, but never taken for granted—my approach shoes on my feet to carry me there. Times have changed, both for me and the greater climbing community. I will never again dread a long hike to go climbing; I’ll be leaving my house approach shoes on, ready to work for it. Where would I be – literally – without them?

I have learned to love the approach.