School of Rocks

Five hundred feet up a granite cliff in Yosemite Valley, I stood on a tiny ledge next to my 12-year-old daughter and waited for a voice to call down from above. Hardware and carabiners connected my daughter and myself to the wall, so we didn’t have to worry about falling, but the view downward was still gut-wrenching. Two ropes, one tied to each of our climbing harnesses, ran up around a giant overhang, out of sight, in the direction we apparently had to go.

Just then, I heard what I was waiting for: Nate Kerr, a professional guide from the Yosemite Mountaineering School, yelling, “Okay you two. It’s your turn to climb!”

Fifteen years earlier, I could’ve led that climb by myself. My father got me into climbing as a teenager and it was the overwhelming focus of my young adulthood. I had my own little pick-up full of ropes and carabiners, and I spent most of every summer right there in Yosemite Valley. I lived in the climbers’ campground called Camp Four and, with my father and friends, ticked off all the classic routes, one after another—including overnight ascents of both Half Dome and El Capitan.

Life eventually intervened—marriage, kids, mortgage—and I let rock climbing slip away. But then my daughter got hooked on the sport at an indoor climbing gym, and begged me to take her to Yosemite like Grandpa once took me.

I did just that, and I led my kid up some easy routes. We had a beautiful time together but I was forced to face three hard truths. The  rst was that I’d gotten a whole lot weaker, heavier and more easily scared, especially in situations involving the health of my child. The second hard truth was that Yosemite Valley is the greatest rock climbing arena on earth not because the walls are accessible to newcomers and oldtimers but because they are not. Which brings me to the third truth: Because my daughter was young and strong and I was old and weak, I was not going to lead her up anything that she would find even remotely challenging—not without help.

The Yosemite Mountaineering School offered the perfect workaround. Professionals with the YMS have been teaching courses and guiding climbs in Yosemite for more than 50 years. Whatever level you’re at as a climber—and even if you’ve never climbed in your life—they’ve got somebody qualified to lead you on a great adventure. Every single morning during the warm months, YMS guides teach introductory classes at the area called Swan Slab. Every day, still other YMS guides meet people like my daughter and me and lead the way to one of the park’s big cliffs.

In our case, Nate Kerr took us walking toward Yosemite Falls, then up a steep and forested slope to a cliff called the Five Open Books. Kerr stopped at the base of a famous route called Commitment that any reasonably fit gym climber from anywhere in America could climb. He got us tied into harnesses and ropes, then led the way. I knew Commitment from the old days—I’d probably done it half a dozen times—but I could not have been more grateful to have Kerr doing the dangerous parts of the job, making the ropes and hardware systems run properly so I could focus on watching my awesome kid and trying not to fall.

By the time I stood on that tiny ledge with my daughter, and heard Kerr yell down for us to start upward again, toward that big overhang, I already considered the guiding fee to be the best few hundred bucks I’d ever spent. My daughter went first and got a little ways above me, moving with more grace than I’d had even at my best. Then I followed, chatting and laughing with my kid as we both jammed our feet and hands into cracks and worked our way around that overhang.

Not long after, on top of that big climb, I stood beside Kerr and hugged my daughter and felt an intense wave of happy relief— that we were safe, sure, but also that I’d found a way to show my kid the glory of the sport I loved without unnecessary risk or fear. Would I do it again? In a heartbeat.