Geologic Time Includes Now
Interesting. I was going to create a post about a book I picked up, "Between a Rock and a Hard Place", but Aron Ralston - the guy who got his hand stuck under a bolder in a slot canyon in Utah and eventually had to cut off his own arm.
Here's a quote from the book (which is quite good BTW) that directly relates to yours:
"I hit the rock with the butt of my hand, still holding the knife, and ask out loud in an exasperated whine, "Why is this sandstone so hard?" It seems like every time I've ever gone climbing on a sandstone formation, I break off a handhold, yet I can't put a dent in this boulder. I settle on a quick experiment to test the relative hardness of the wall. Holding my knife like a pen, I easily etch a capital "G" on the tableau of the canyon's north side, about a foot above my right arm. Slowly, I make a few more printed letters in lowercase, "e-o-l-o-g-i-c," and then pause to measure the space with my eyes and lay out the rest of the letters in my mind. Within five minutes, I scratch out three more words, then touch them up, until I can read the phrase "Geologic Time Includes Now."
I have quoted mountaineer and Colorado Thirteeners guidebook author Gerry Roach, from his "Classic Commandments of Mountaineering." It's an elegant way of saying "Watch out for falling rocks." As most people who live on fault lines are well aware, the processes shaping and forming the earth's crust are current events. Fault lines slip, long-dormant volcanoes explode, mountainsides turn to mud and slide.
I remember trekking with my friend Mark Van Eeckhout through a field of boulders and coming upon a house-sized rock. We said to each other, "Wow, look at the size of this one!" We'd imagined what a spectacle it would be to see something that size separate from a cliff a thousand feet above and fall, spawning rock slides right and left, crashing with apocalyptic force.
But cliffs don't just form in the middle of the night when no one's watching. I've seen riverbanks collapse, glaciers calve and let loose tremendous icefalls, and boulders plummet from their lofty perches. Gerry Roach's commandment reminds climbers that rocks fall all the time. Sometimes they spontaneously break away; sometimes they get knocked loose. Sometimes they fall when you're so far off you can't even see them, you only hear a clatter; sometimes they fall when you or your partners are climbing below them. Sometimes one will pull loose even though you barely touched it; and sometimes one will fall after you've already stood on top of it...when you're using it for a handhold and it shifts...when your head is right in the way and you put your hands up to save yourself...
It's rare. But it happens. Has happened.
This chockstone pinning my wrist was stuck for a long time before I came along. And then it not only fell on me, it trapped my arm. I'm baffled. It was like the boulder had been put there, set like a hunter's trap, waiting for me. This was supposed to be an easy trip, few risks, well within my abilities. I'm not out trying to climb a high peak in the middle of winter, I'm just taking a vacation. Why didn't the last person who came along dislodge the chockstone? They would've had to make the same maneuvers I did to traverse the canyon. What kind of luck do I have that this boulder, wedged here for untold ages, freed itself at the split second that my hands were in the way? Despite obvious evidence to the contrary, it seems astronomically infeasible that this happened.
I mean, what are the odds?
I've often thought about this subject while sitting amidst the boulders strewn about at Trail Camp and imagine what it must be like when a chunk peals off of one of the faces above.
A side note: One amazing thing about the above story is that Aron, in an attempt to free himself from the 800 lb boulder pinning his hand against the canyon wall manages to construct both a 3:1 mechanical advantage system and then a 6:1 system using webbing and rope in an attempt to lift the boulder, ALL with ONE HAND while he is completely pinned by this rock. Amazing! Unfortunately neither worked because he had only biners and there was too much friction. But if he'd had a pulley or two, the story might have turned out much different. Incredible resourcefullness. Good book. I highly recommend it.
