Doug Robinson

Smoke Blanchard on his Rock Course
Photo Credit: Jan Tiura

There’s a sweet spot in climbing, a range of moderate difficulty where you can move continuously and with real rhythm. I’ve reached it many times recent weeks on Tuolumne slab climbing; I think the soloists we all admire for their freedom hit it all the time only at such a high level we can’t quite identify with their skill.

I came back to Bishop this weekend like I was coming home. And in spite of bigger ambitions went out to an old favorite, Smoke’s Rock Course. It’s climbing all right, though the rope mostly stayed coiled except for a couple of spots in the Charcoal Chimney.  Full-on-pay-attention soloing. Even if most of the hardest moves are above ledges where a slip would cheese-grater you on the rough granite but no more. I did slip pretty good once where the rock was rotten on the surface and got abraded all the way down one shin (which was quite bloody) but otherwise not too bad and couldn’t distract me for more than a moment from moving on. From savoring the movement and the freedom of it.

It’s a great kind of full-body workout torquing from one move to the next with a few chimneys thrown in to emphasize the shimmying struggle of it, and there’s a nice throbbing glow all up my back and shoulders and into my head to remember it by. There were three of us — and

“The Faucet” on Smoke’s Rock Course

since we weren’t distracted by fiddling with gear and belays in a couple of hours we had done enough climbing to notice the 90-degree sun pounding on us and went down to the car for a beer. The rest of the afternoon was spent further out the Buttermilk Road exploring pristine boulders on the west side of Grouse Mountain, hiking sandy hillsides to pull down on stone that had never seen chalk or the inside of a guidebook.

Smoke Blanchard called his creation that runs over a dozen small summits in the bedrock between the main Buttermilk Boulders and town “Mild mountaineering”. He was a master at minimizing his achievements, though, and yours too if you were following him and chatting him up through the Rock Course.

We were all well-seasoned climbers. This is only reason we could keep it mild and un-roped and what kept us from glancing over our shoulders too often at the drop. I’ve spent enough time spotting and belaying and cajoling the less experienced – guiding really – to appreciate the difference.

Smoke Blanchard was Bishop’s first climber. It’s tempting to call him a “boulderer,” and really the shortest description of how this unique blend of scrambling and climbing works is to call it a bouldering course for mountaineering.  When I got to Bishop in the mid-sixties there were still only a handful of climbers here. And going out with Smoke to his Rock Course was an early highlight and an introduction to desert granite that’s lingered as a favorite. Making a living in this town is a perennial problem for the climbers who show up to dirtbag for awhile among the boulders, get hooked, and try to stay. A Buddhist road warrior who memorized poetry to recite to himself back and forth across the Mojave, Smoke solved that one the old-fashioned way by driving a propane truck up from SoCal.

Smoke’s utterly unique brand of climbing was the entering wedge to introducing the Buttermilk to a climbing world that now holds it among the premiere bouldering spots on our rocky planet. And in spite of many days this month that reached the sweet state of flow on Tuolumne slabs with a rope and belays and bolted quick-draws, it was a wonderful relief to leave behind all the gear. We climbed in approach shoes and carried only a modern version of Smoke’s “string,” a 60-foot chunk of pointedly-skinny rope made useful by the forgotten technique of wrapping it around your waist with a bowline for minimalist protection. With less to distract us we were free to just climb, and keep up the rhythmic movement until it began to transcend itself into that state of harmonious motion that we, in truth, struggle to define as it rises into a fine head space, though certainly one of the best words for it is flow.

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