Who's The Big Guy Now? Huh?

Big Guy 5.11, Indian Creek UT from wade david on Vimeo.

This is a short video (thanks to Wade David) of my son climbing a tiny crack called Big Guy in Utah. He has had climbing in him from when he was born, most probably. My first evidence of this was when I found sneaker prints on the cathedral ceilings of his bedroom. He was about ten years old. Then, around that same time, I found a trough gouged into the window sill outside his bedroom at 2 1/2 stories high. When I confronted him about the damage to the sill, he said he'd been repelling. "Repelling what?! Mosquitoes?!" Rock climbing was new then, so this was new language to me. He explained that he repelled out the window every day when he went to school. The trough had been abraded by his rope, he said. Sure enough, I had to admit that I had not actually witnessed him leaving the house each morning, but only seen him getting onto the school bus. He told me that after eating his breakfast, he left the kitchen, then went back to his bedroom and jumped out of the window. I don't know what was more shocking, that he jumped out the window every day and I never noticed or that he was using a length of cotton clothes line which I had discarded as not sufficient to hold the clothes on the line! I don't get this. I raised the boy on a clam flat and, personally, I don't like to ascend higher than what a step ladder will afford. But he clearly was somehow born to it. Some kids are good at math or science or music; my son was always good at climbing. His great-grandmother was born in Munich, Germany and forever considered herself a Bavarian mountain girl. Perhaps it's all in the genes, after all.