Russ Clune No Longer Keeps Pace With the World’s Best. He’s OK With That.
This story, originally titled “Regression” appeared in our 2024 print edition of Ascent. You can buy a copy of the magazine here.
I. Warm-up
It’s another Saturday at the Block, a small cliff home to some of the most in-demand hard routes at the Shawangunks, their popularity primarily due to how easy it is to set up topropes on them. Indeed, the two protection-less 5.14s have only ever been done as topropes since a lead would be a free solo, with a fall guaranteeing disfigurement or death in the jagged talus below. Most of the other routes, though originally put up on lead, are finicky to protect and typically climbed on toprope these days.
One of the best climbs at the Block is Scott Franklin’s Survival of the Fittest, a 5.13a he established in 1985 in the manner of the day: ground up and yo-yo style (returning to the ground after each fall). Survival was an important addition to the Gunks when Scott did it, but no one climbs it that old-school way these days, and few even bother to lead it. The only route on the Block that regularly tempts leaders is John Stannard’s 1971 masterpiece Persistent, an overhanging 5.11+ finger crack with a troublesome boulder problem at the start. But on this busy Saturday, when cords are raining down on just about every route, even that easily protected classic sports a toprope. The Block resembles a giant spider web, and the climbers hanging from the wall on their ropes resemble flies caught in their self-made traps.
After a couple of warm-ups on an adjacent outcrop, my friends and I queue up for fitness burns on Survival of the Fittest. I’ve done the route well over a hundred times over the years; it used to serve as a good start to the day before harder routes. But I now inhabit a very different body than I did in the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s, back when I traveled the globe and climbed with many of the best climbers of my era. Survival no longer feels so easy. Today, I’m just hoping I can manage to do it without falling.
People keep telling me that 60 is the new 40, that 5.12 is the new 5.9, but it’s total bullshit. I’m in my mid-60s, and my body feels nothing like it did in my 40s. Or even my 50s. And that pumpy final sequence on Survival? In recent years it’s gone from a wee bit uncomfortable to a desperate, messy thrash for the top.
I start up the route, moving quickly, passing the first overhang. As a power-endurance route, none of Survival’s moves are very hard, but neither are they mindless, and by the time I get through the first upper crux, known as the third rail sequence, my finger strength is ebbing. Survival’s exit moves involve a long surf move to a good edge—the last barrier to the top—and I manage to tag the hold, grabbing it with three fingers, but I don’t quite have enough strength or youth or whatever it takes to hold on. Though most of the crowd below are encouraging friends, I feel embarrassed and imagine them thinking, “Oh, how the mighty have fallen!” But even if they aren’t thinking it, I am. This is why so many peers from my younger years have dropped off the climbing map. It’s not that much fun to experience the regression.
II. Ropegun
My first vacation from my first real job—a position at Chouinard Equipment that I lucked into after years of dirtbag adventures—was in Yosemite Valley in October 1987. I’d previously climbed the Nose and the West Face on the Captain, and now I wanted to do a free-as-can-be ascent of the other mega-classic, the Salathé Wall, which had only recently been done without aid by my friends Todd Skinner and Paul Piana after months of effort. Partners, however, proved a problem, and after two buddies bailed, I was forced to limp out to the Valley alone, hoping to find good fortune and some friends.
After a few days of picking up partners and doing shorter objectives, I ran into Mark, an acquaintance from the Gunks. Over the course of a leisurely breakfast at the cafeteria, I expressed my disappointment in not being able to fulfill my mission for the Salathé. Mark’s ears perked up, and he enthusiastically volunteered to join me. But I didn’t know Mark that well. I hadn’t climbed with him back in New York very much, and a quick interview revealed he had never done a wall before. Never hauled a pig. Never even jumared a pitch. As much as I wanted a partner, I hesitated, red warning lights flashing through my brain. But with no other options, and finding it hard to dull Mark’s enthusiasm, I agreed to give it a test run.
The next morning, we flaked our ropes at the toe of El Cap. The chill October air felt good. My plan was to knock out the Freeblast slabs, which comprise the first ten pitches of the Salathé. I figured the Freeblast shouldn’t take long—half a day at most. If Mark did well and was still keen, we could then fix ropes, rap down, pack a haul bag, and jug back to our high point the following day.
I led the first pitch, and Mark slowly followed. I offered him the next lead, but he said I should take it, so I racked up again and scampered up the next pitch—and every pitch after that. I would have been mortified to rely so entirely on another climber on a wall, as Mark was doing, but I enjoyed the sharp end, and Mark didn’t seem to care about me hogging the leads.
Even though he was a good enough climber to free the pitches as a second, he was also a tortoise who clearly didn’t understand the need for haste on multi-pitch endeavors. I got it; he wanted to climb the rig, not just jug it. But at each belay, as I glanced at my watch or noted the sun arcing quickly across the sky, my impatience grew.
By the time we finally finished the Freeblast in the late afternoon, four or five hours after I’d expected to be done, I fully doubted the wisdom of continuing up the rest of the wall—another 2,000 intimidating feet—at Mark’s molasses pace. So, with as much subtlety as I could muster, which wasn’t a lot, I told Mark that I didn’t think he had the experience, the ability, or the speed for a climb like this. But Mark was steadfast. He wanted to climb the Salathé, and he wasn’t embarrassed about having to follow all of it. I relented, and we rapped, fixing lines for the next day’s takeoff. But back on the ground, walking to the car in silence, I thought we’d made a mistake, convinced that I was in for a long crawl up the wall at best and a major epic at worst.
As it turned out, I was wrong, and Mark was right. We had a great time. Mark got faster at cleaning and following my leads, and when the free climbing got too hard, he was happy to practice his jumaring in the midst of that beautiful vertical desert that is El Cap. We sure weren’t fast, but neither were we in a rush. The autumn weather was perfect, and the nights were comfy. Plus, Mark’s lack of experience came with a huge benefit: It allowed me to lead every bit of the climb and free as much of the route as I could without sieging any one pitch. On the Salathé Wall, that’s a lot of free climbing. Around 90 percent of it goes at 5.12 or less. It turned out to be great fun to serve as a ropegun for Mark.
III. Screamer
Like many older climbers, I noticed a downward but very gradual decline in my climbing performance starting in my mid-40s. But then, in February 2012, I took the worst fall of my life—and I wasn’t even climbing.
My partner, Amy, and I were taking a winter hike in the Catskills, a short drive from our home. The snow cover was slight and icy in spots, so we opted for our approach shoes and simple slip-on microspikes. The trail took us up a steep hillside, traversing back and forth over a series of short rock bluffs, and I was above the highest bluff when my feet suddenly lost traction, my spikes having balled up with just enough snow to make the short teeth worthless.
I slid toward the edge of the cliff, trying and failing to self-arrest with my trekking pole. If I’d had more time to think about it, I’d probably have seen the absurdity: After decades of hard and sometimes dangerous climbing, I was about to die on a nature walk. But before I could formulate such thoughts, I skidded over the edge.
I fell 25 feet onto a small ledge, hitting a tree with my arm and head. The quick descent didn’t stop there. I plummeted off another short cliffband, then skidded down a steep snow slope on my back. When I finally came to a stop, I was a good 100 feet below Amy, who was screaming down at me, asking if I was OK.
I wasn’t. I was barely conscious from the head-slam into the birch tree, and there was an intense pain in my forearm. “No!” I eventually managed to call back. “I think I broke my arm!”
When Amy reached me after navigating the icy ledges, I was still lying on my back and dizzy. “Oh god!” she cried. “I can see your skull!”
“I broke my arm!” was my reply.
“I can see your skull!” she repeated.
“I broke my arm!”
We were both right. When we got to the ER, a whole bunch of stitches took care of the head gash. My ulna, however, was fucked.
“It’s called a nightstick break,” the doctor told me.
“A nightstick what?” I asked.
“Like when you hold your arm up in defense against a cop’s nightstick coming down for your head,” he said.
The bust was bad enough to require surgery. My ulna now sports a titanium plate held in place with eight screws. I didn’t realize then how long—and compromising—the recovery would be. I was climbing again after a couple of months, but at nowhere near the same intensity, and certain types of moves, especially powerful left-hand underclings, hurt like hell and always will.
Of course, I understood that a requirement for aging as a climber is to let go of the past. But to do so, at least for me, first meant admitting that, well, I sucked—at least compared to my younger self’s definition of the word. I had been on the wrong side of the bell curve for a decade, but now the injury and my new limitations really crushed my confidence. And with waning confidence came new and uncomfortable questions about the level and volume of climbing I could expect to do. I had two options: quit climbing and start playing pickleball, or embrace sucking.
IV. Transition
In 2014, two years after my fall, Chris Thomas, an excellent climber and one of my colleagues at Black Diamond, said he wanted to do some big rock route with me.
“Hmm,” I thought. “Young, super-strong stud partners with aging, deteriorating carcass … this could be fun. But what route?”
As it turned out, Alex Honnold had just free soloed El Sendero Luminoso, a 1,500-foot 5.12+ in El Potrero Chico, Mexico, and he encouraged us to hit it. Alex and Cedar Wright had cleaned off the loose rock and prickly vegetation, and their tick marks were still fresh. I was keen to revisit El Potrero Chico, having not been since the mid-’90s, back when Kurt Smith was first hyping the place up and bolting those walls with his posse, but I was a little concerned about the length and difficulty of the route, which has seven 5.12 pitches. Was I up to it? Was my wounded arm up to it? Were my days of multi-pitch 5.12 wall climbing behind me?
Chris arrived in Potrero five days before me, and during those five days he essentially climbed everything in the area, including a “scouting mission” up the first nine pitches of Sendero. When he admitted that it would be a “big day,” I got a little nervous. A typical outing for my post-fall body was six pitches at a sport crag incorporating a couple of easy 12s. Could I even expect to survive Chris’s definition of a big day?
We got up in the predawn dark, gulped down some breakfast, and got to the base of the climb so early that we couldn’t see the holds. The wall loomed above, a dark, shadowy slab with no end in sight. Chris handed me 400mg of Ibuprofen.
“Take these now—you’ll thank me later.”
I dutifully swallowed the pills.
When it was light enough for us to see, Chris took off. He went so fast I could barely feed the rope quickly enough. It felt like he was galloping up a 5.9 at the gym. When I joined him at the first belay, taking twice the time to second what he had just led, I knew that I, like Mark all those years ago, was in the shadow of a much higher power. And I saw no need to further slow our ascent by demanding my own leads.
“Dude, just go.”
And he did.
We took a 15-minute breather for some water and to pull off our shoes at the ledge five pitches up, but the remainder of the climb was a blur, and we’d topped out and rappelled to the valley floor by midafternoon—in time to be among the first customers in line at the margarita cart. I had a great time even though I hadn’t led a single pitch.
A few days later, looking for a way to spend our last afternoon before flying home, I told Chris I’d enjoy a saunter up Yankee Clipper, a classic 1,500-foot 5.10- with a single 5.12a section at the top. I’d not done it, because it was usually jam-packed with teams, but it was later in the day, and no one was up there. I figured the 3 p.m. start wouldn’t be a big deal since it was mostly a lot of easy climbing with a harder move here and there. We’d be quick.
I didn’t realize quite how quick.
Chris had already done the route. Twice. The second time, he free soloed it. At the base, he racked up about two dozen draws on his harness, tied in, put headphones in his ears, and said, “Tie into the middle of the cord, and I’ll try to keep a piece in between us.”
Wait … What?
But before I even had a chance to protest, 35 meters of rope separated us, so I took off climbing as fast as I could, just trying to keep up with him. I’ve never been so out of breath on a rock climb in my life. We simul-climbed the whole thing in less than an hour. It was the longest and most petrifying toprope I’ve ever done.
Being ropegunned, it turns out, can be a lot of fun.
V. Rock Fossil
At my local gym near New Paltz, a bunch of the real geezers, even some remaining members of the Gunks’s fabled Vulgarians, still go to toprope on the plastic. Rich Goldstone, a contemporary of John Gill and a brutally strong climber in the 1960s and ’70s, is a regular there. He declared his gang of ancients the Assisted Living Climbing Club and had T-shirts made for them, emblazoning their status on their chests. When I turned 60, I asked if I could join the group. Rich laughed and laughed. It was as if I’d asked if I could marry his daughter. Then he said, “Maybe you can start a junior varsity branch.”
So I did. My friend Liza Mills helped me design our shirt. It features a skeleton climbing an overhanging wall of fossilized rock. Below the image, written in bones, are the words “Rock Fossil.” The back of the shirt steals a tagline from just about every stock brokerage advertisement: “Past performance is no guarantee of future results.”
I am learning to be okay with that. Climbing is too much of a blessed quest to give up just because, well, I suck. Climbing is more than grades. The world is still full of new adventures and cliffs, new people to meet and old friends to share a rope with. I plan on sucking in as many of those places and with as many folks as life will allow.
And besides, pickleball is fucking lame.
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