The last two posts took a very analytical approach to walking on rocks. Most recently I described six of at least eight attributes of rock that captured my attention over the past summer of hiking in the Beartooth Mountains of South Central Montana. This post describes the last two identified attributes of rock in a consistent fashion and then takes an uncharacteristic and abrupt right (brain) turn, quickly making most of the analytical considerations in this and the last two posts superfluous, and speaks to rocks from the perspective of how they speak to me.
Stability
This attribute relates to how well rocks hold still. At first blush this sounds like nonsense! Of course rocks, generally considered members of the family of inanimate objects – some might say beings – hold still. It’s not like they’re going to get up and walk away... But it’s not quite that simple. When you step on them do they remain in place or do they shift with the application of your weight? Like ice bergs in oceans, rocks buried in the earth often reveal only a small percentage of their mass. Well “grounded” rocks are indeed “rock solid” and they afford you a certain measure of confidence when stepping onto them. In contrast, on a sharply inclined scree field - a veritable house of cards made of small to medium rocks – the weight of any footstep can cause a half dozen rocks to give way under you and begin a slide down the slope, the endpoint of which is uncertain.
Even on the level however a talus field can be strewn with boulders that have tipping points. They may have been at rest for ten thousand years but the proper, however inadvertent, application of a hundred pounds of weight in the right spot can cause them to shift under your foot like a San Francisco cobblestone in a 6.5 quake. The challenge is to see the boulder, assess its size, shape, and position relative to the rocks around it, and under it, and try to determine if it is “rock solid” or a potential teeter totter. When you commit your full weight to a rock and it suddenly changes its attitude, rocking back toward you, listing to the right, and spinning a quarter turn, you can go to ground very quickly.
I was trailing three buddies across a talus field on the edge of Hairpin Lake three years ago when a rock the size of a small desk that I had just weighted with my dainty frame tilted to the left about fifty degrees. The coefficient of friction was low enough that my foot slipped out from under me and my pack and I instantaneously went down, striking the side of my right knee on the way. Moving ahead and away from me my buddies heard a deep rumble as the rock shifted, a “clack!” as it came to rest against another rock, a “whump!” as I went to ground, followed by a streak of expletives they didn’t know I knew. I extricated my leg, which had become pinched between two boulders and a quick inspection revealed a small tear in my pants and a substantially larger abrasion along the outside of my knee. Fortunately, all the important parts still seemed to be connected and I could still stand on it with only a little residual discomfort. After I got fully to my feet we continued on, I going slower and more cautiously than before. My buddies later told me that when they turned around to see me on my side between the two boulders grabbing my knee and cussing a blue streak, they were sure I had broken my leg. Their first thoughts were about how they were going to carry me across the rest of the talus and the four miles across Hellroaring Plateau to our car. When I heard that they had been thinking about how to carry me, rather than where to bury me, I knew I had chosen the right hiking partners!
Route Finding
This term has multiple connotations in mountaineering but I doubt it has ever been used to describe an attribute of rocks. Generally, when you intend to go somewhere you have to find your way. Everyone is familiar with the idea of studying a road map to find the route from one town to another or a subway map to find the trains to take from one station, across town to another station. On a much smaller scale, when walking on rock, one has to be sure that the next step will lead to another, that takes you in the desired general direction of travel. So while you are picking your next step, one of the considerations is to determine if any given rock will offer you a good next step. If you aren’t paying attention to route finding, it is possible to be crossing water, leaping from one rock to the next, only to find out that the last rock you stepped on is out of reach of any other rock!
When navigating a talus slope like that pictured below you have to carefully choose every step. Sometimes you have to deviate right or left of your intended direction of travel just to find the next safe footstep. After you’ve taken six or seven “easy steps” that aren’t taking you in the direction you need to go, you have to reassess and potentially take more difficult steps that will get you back on track. In this kind of terrain one has to stop often to assess the easiest path toward and then over the next ridge and then the next, and the next. In the Beartooths, it seems like the next ridge should always be the last ridge, but it rarely is. Based upon their lie along your intended route you have to choose rocks every two or three feet that ultimately get you to the right notch in a ridge two or three hundred feet or yards ahead. The easy step is not always the most efficient step if it takes you too far out of your way. Two many bad choices in a row and you wind up backtracking
So when walking on rock, in considering where to place your foot for every next step, you have to consider each of these attributes for all the rocks within reach: elevation, size, shape, attitude, texture, spacing, stability, and route finding. That’s eight decisions for every step. On the previously mentioned twelve mile hike, during which you might take 30,000 steps, that means you could make at least 240,000 decisions.
Of course thus far we’ve just considered the many attributes of the rocks. You have your own personal set of attributes to consider as well in this moment by moment decision making process:
Muscle strength – lower legs, quadriceps, hamstrings, hips, back, abdomen
Joint strength – ligaments of the ankles, knees, and hips
Flexibility – of the legs and hips affects stride length
Balance – how good is your balance, can you place a trekking pole to help?
Pack weight – heavy packs can magnify weaknesses and impact balance
Possessing only the most rudimentary mathematics skills necessary to calculate whether Costco or the State Liquor Store has the best price per ounce on my favorite single malt scotch, it is not possible for me to calculate the sum of all of the possible permutations of all of the variables described here. I’m not even sure a mathematician could do it without having a discreet number of values for each variable, but I have confidence in saying that it is a really big number – in the millions at least. That means that while walking on rock, with every step, our brain surveys the landscape, assesses all the possibilities for all of the rocks within one steps reach, considers the millions of possibilities, makes a nearly instantaneous decision and then guides our bodies to step on the next best calculated risk of a rock. You’d think doing all of that processing would leave a person totally exhausted in no time. The curious thing is that it doesn’t.
When walking on non-rocky terrain we don’t need to make all of those instantaneous decisions and we don’t spool up that part of our brain at all. Other times, when traversing the high plateaus of the Beartooth Mountains for example, you can be forced to transition between twenty foot wide veins of rock and striations of sub-alpine tundra every fifty feet or less.
My own experience is that the first time I approach scree or talus I have to pause, look at the rocks and then carefully start to pick my way across. Each step takes a little analysis and contemplation. I have to concentrate on placing my feet in balance. There is an initial hesitation that slowly wanes. Each subsequent step becomes a little more confident. Within 20-30 steps my balance feels good, my comfort level is up and I start taking steps with confidence. Pretty soon I can stride from rock to rock, knife edge to point to flat to knife edge, all in balance without breaking stride and the transitions from tundra to rock and back become seamless. It’s as if with the first encounter in any given hike I have to learn how to walk on rock anew, but the learning comes quickly.
Then pretty soon it becomes a challenge to see how far and how fast I can go from rock to rock without breaking stride, without miss-stepping or getting off balance and having to slow down or completely pause to collect myself.
Walking fast on rock is like driving fast when you’re tired. The risk associated with going fast stimulates you. It keeps you awake. It demands your attention.
Then when you walk on rock mile after mile, after a while, after all of these attributes of rock are loaded not into your cerebral cortex but deeply into your subconscious, after your body warms up and your leg muscles start taking steps without apparent nervous intention, when all the physical, psychological, and earthly vectors of force that are always pulling you into opposing corners of your psyche seem to align in directional harmony, it’s possible to develop a rhythm, a resonance with something greater than just earth upon which you are walking that changes walking on rock from a burden or a challenge into a spiritual experience. It’s as if with each step your spirit and your body and that rock ever so briefly become one. You find that you are not just walking on rock but instead that you are walking among friends. You share the experience of each footstep together out of mutual consent and trust, and as you leave one rock for the next you bid it farewell and you silently offer it your gratitude for its support. As you greet the next rock you feel compelled to honor it, to tread lightly upon it, and to leave it as you found it for somehow, while being in the moment with a rock for that brief step, you get a small osmotic appreciation for all the time that rock has been just resting there, observing the events of our creation and our evolution, and it makes you humble. For what an insignificant event must your passing be compared to the historical events witnessed by a rock whose genesis was Precambrian and who has occupied the Church of Higher Elevations for millions of millennia?
Continue to follow if you are inquisitive - and have the time.
Regards,
Of course thus far we’ve just considered the many attributes of the rocks. You have your own personal set of attributes to consider as well in this moment by moment decision making process:
Muscle strength – lower legs, quadriceps, hamstrings, hips, back, abdomen
Joint strength – ligaments of the ankles, knees, and hips
Flexibility – of the legs and hips affects stride length
Balance – how good is your balance, can you place a trekking pole to help?
Pack weight – heavy packs can magnify weaknesses and impact balance
Possessing only the most rudimentary mathematics skills necessary to calculate whether Costco or the State Liquor Store has the best price per ounce on my favorite single malt scotch, it is not possible for me to calculate the sum of all of the possible permutations of all of the variables described here. I’m not even sure a mathematician could do it without having a discreet number of values for each variable, but I have confidence in saying that it is a really big number – in the millions at least. That means that while walking on rock, with every step, our brain surveys the landscape, assesses all the possibilities for all of the rocks within one steps reach, considers the millions of possibilities, makes a nearly instantaneous decision and then guides our bodies to step on the next best calculated risk of a rock. You’d think doing all of that processing would leave a person totally exhausted in no time. The curious thing is that it doesn’t.
When walking on non-rocky terrain we don’t need to make all of those instantaneous decisions and we don’t spool up that part of our brain at all. Other times, when traversing the high plateaus of the Beartooth Mountains for example, you can be forced to transition between twenty foot wide veins of rock and striations of sub-alpine tundra every fifty feet or less.
My own experience is that the first time I approach scree or talus I have to pause, look at the rocks and then carefully start to pick my way across. Each step takes a little analysis and contemplation. I have to concentrate on placing my feet in balance. There is an initial hesitation that slowly wanes. Each subsequent step becomes a little more confident. Within 20-30 steps my balance feels good, my comfort level is up and I start taking steps with confidence. Pretty soon I can stride from rock to rock, knife edge to point to flat to knife edge, all in balance without breaking stride and the transitions from tundra to rock and back become seamless. It’s as if with the first encounter in any given hike I have to learn how to walk on rock anew, but the learning comes quickly.Then pretty soon it becomes a challenge to see how far and how fast I can go from rock to rock without breaking stride, without miss-stepping or getting off balance and having to slow down or completely pause to collect myself.
Walking fast on rock is like driving fast when you’re tired. The risk associated with going fast stimulates you. It keeps you awake. It demands your attention.Then when you walk on rock mile after mile, after a while, after all of these attributes of rock are loaded not into your cerebral cortex but deeply into your subconscious, after your body warms up and your leg muscles start taking steps without apparent nervous intention, when all the physical, psychological, and earthly vectors of force that are always pulling you into opposing corners of your psyche seem to align in directional harmony, it’s possible to develop a rhythm, a resonance with something greater than just earth upon which you are walking that changes walking on rock from a burden or a challenge into a spiritual experience. It’s as if with each step your spirit and your body and that rock ever so briefly become one. You find that you are not just walking on rock but instead that you are walking among friends. You share the experience of each footstep together out of mutual consent and trust, and as you leave one rock for the next you bid it farewell and you silently offer it your gratitude for its support. As you greet the next rock you feel compelled to honor it, to tread lightly upon it, and to leave it as you found it for somehow, while being in the moment with a rock for that brief step, you get a small osmotic appreciation for all the time that rock has been just resting there, observing the events of our creation and our evolution, and it makes you humble. For what an insignificant event must your passing be compared to the historical events witnessed by a rock whose genesis was Precambrian and who has occupied the Church of Higher Elevations for millions of millennia?
Continue to follow if you are inquisitive - and have the time.
Regards,
JR
