Boulder Scampering: A new Sport

Essentially a giant game of “the floor is hot lava” and you can only step on rocks, played over a big field or hillside or mountain ridge...It’s a sport not for the feint of heart. It was invented today actually, only just this morning after a pink and uneventful sunrise, or this official version, the mere act of scrambling around on giant rocky crumbling outcrops has been around for centuries. This one was essentially inspired by extended creek crossings and wanting to leave no trace in the fragile tiny ecosystem.

To be an official Boulder “scamp” is to subscribe to that one rule - an agreement to the reciprocity to not leave footprints on the vegetation. To hold oneself to it, to keep strong no matter how difficult the footstep or jump. Up here in the Sierra luckily the rocks and boulders are plentiful, but still require some challenging moves!

It certainly isn’t ”rock climbing” or “scrambling.” This version involves picking the funnest (and also safest!) route through a rocky maze as you solidly tumble down the mountainside with it. Winning isn’t about the most challenging route, or the most epic view, but Finding the biggest weirdest boulders you can put yourself on or wedge yourself into. Or hear how the reverb echoes in a hidden waterfall gurgling far beneath, don’t drop your phone in there...

Ideally you end up back down at a sapphire blue lake reflecting the white clouds forming above, taking a cold dip and enjoying hot tuna well before the afternoon thunderstorm could develop.

This particular arena is the north bowl of the unnamed mointain ridge coming off Mount Solomons, the peak above Muir Pass along the Pacific Crest and John Muir national scenic trail in the Sierra Nevada mointain range, overlooking the famous evolution canyon across at the jagged and spectacular Darwin Range. I am up here, making my chunky way down the erosion path pretending like I’m skiing the last good line of the summer. And also because I had the audacity to clamor out to the island peninsula rock pile to camp under the stars smack in middle of Wanda Lake (so I could say “evolution valley? I explored the shit outta that place!” Except I wound up exploring the shit out of one valley over instead)

A word to the wise about Boulder Scampering. The boulders, they are all loose, gravity and erosion process happening in real time. So anything you grab is on it’s way down, eventually. So don’t get complacent, Slow it down, make calculated decisions and check the steadyness of a chunk first to make sure it won’t flake off in your hands or rock you tumbling down the mountainside.

I can’t help but think about that story about Aaron Ralston, that guy in Utah who wedged himself under a massive sandstone Boulder and had to amputate himself free to escape impending slot canyon doom. My high school friend Evan would make fun of me for taking solo adventures and being just like that guy from the movie version portrayed by James Franco. I can’t help but think to myself, “don’t let it happen again, make sure you are safe and have a plan...sure woulda been a good time to have brought the ol’ PLB (thanks mom) down there at camp up the remote Boulder field...just be careful...”

The sounds of gravity and the sun working it’s heat magic are all round. Sudden snow burst collapse, a tiny cornice dropping onto a snow field below. Or a big one, the melting causing an unpredictable rock fall from the crest above, no longer supported by its frozen column.

The big ones might move real slow but they move, heavy crushers that will avalanche smaller debris out from under ya

Make sure what you’re grabbing is solid...”nothing is solid that’s the whole point! It’s all crumbling and tumbling into turmoil and I say ‘Whoah so this is what she means.” Down today or tomorrow or in 100 years but it will be gone!”

The other funny thing they don’t tell you about professional high alpine Boulder scrambling is that it is somehow also your duty to collect all the high elevation debris of deflated helium balloons gone to their sad graveyard in the sky. To all the birthdays, and graduations, and over the-hill-just-because-I-thought-of-you’s I celebrate you and gather your decomposed corpses on the hillside to bring to my nearest rubbish receptacle at my earliest convenience (time and place T.B.D.)

And as I finally set my feet back on the dusty trail in the afternoon, I breathed a relaxing sigh of relief - my off trail escapade has left me tired and sore and ready for a break on soft ground. But not too much of a break because here we go, outrunning those aforementioned thunderstorms back down to tree line! I start off again, in a rapid succession of footprints in the sand.

Mischief Managed ✔️