“Do you live in the Valley?” and Calling Myself a Climber.

March 28th 2025. I’m at this point 31 years old. Two days from now is my birthday. Sam and I have spent the morning in the parking lot at Yosemite lodge, taking turns using the restroom in the cafeteria and buying breakfast burritos while the other clipped lightly worn cams and slings onto our harnesses.

We found climbing late in the game in a post Covid world. By my count we were 28 years old when I first stepped onto the mats at Mesa Rim in San Diego in October of 2021, now our “Third Place” – that place between work and home. Sam had forced me to call in sick for work on her day off – “You have to try this” – knowing me just as well as I know myself.

Now, almost four years later, in this dusty parking lot on a foggy March morning in the year 2025 we found ourselves excited and nervous about our first go at a “Real” trad line in the storied Yosemite Valley. “Real” dirtbags would probably laugh to hear that I call “Munginella” a “Real” trad line, but I’ve never been one to give much of a shit what others think. Sam and I are both hardworking professionals in demanding lines of work. To think these sorts of adventures should only belong to those familiar with the virtues of “van life” seemed silly to me. We do own a van, we don’t “live” in it per say, we sleep in a bed at home most nights, but I like to think Life happens where this van takes us. It’s an ’03 Ford Econoline with a broken sliding door and a pristine 5.4L V8 under the hood.

A year prior to this birthday trip, we had taken on a two week road trip, expending all my hard earned PTO for one remarkable journey across the American west – NV, UT, CO, WY, and culminating in our first visit to Yosemite Valley.

No stranger to the Eastern Sierra, having logged nearly 100 nights in the area, this still happened to be our first visit to The Valley. You ever mourn the fact you had never partaken in something before? For years I swore off Yosemite for the less crowded and less featured trails of the east side, typically seeking solitude. “I’ll see it when I do the JMT one day” I would use as an excuse, but this climbing thing found us and I had been slowly piecing together a trad rack, or at least what I thought a trad rack should look like, for over six months before this trip.

When we arrived at our campsite in May 2024 I immediately noticed the glances shot in our direction when our dirty, old, murdery looking van, which had seen 2,000 miles of snow and mud and adventure over the previous two weeks, squeaked into the, shockingly small to me, camp spot. They came from a woman in the spot directly neighboring ours. After an awkward moment of eye contact I gave a “Hello”, a smile, and a wave. She replied “Are you guys climbers?” as our dog Cricket inspected the woman from the safety of the van. And I replied with a relieved chuckle and a “Well sort of!”. It happened to be that the members of this campsite were part of the Southern California Mountaineers Association and that “Everyone is going home today” except for one gentleman named Chris, a guide on this trip.

When Chris returned from climbing “The Grack” later that afternoon the woman eagerly introduced us. I coyly admitted that I had what was almost a single rack of cams and nuts. Knowing what I know now, Chris probably looked at it and chuckled internally. Chris had a kind face, hardened and disguised by a young adult life of sleeping in the back of his camping contraption, “half truck half sheet metal”, he explained to me. “Welp, you guys want to learn some things then? Everyone is going home today and I’m here for two more nights”. I eagerly took him up on the offer, secondhandedly dragging Sam into the world of Trad climbing. He agreed that he would take us to the base of the Glacier Point Apron the following morning. 6am sharp. Some mysterious force, or a bad habit of spending money on shiny new toys, had me put together this trad rack – and I think this was why.

Chris spent six hours the following morning drilling us in a way that I can only assume comes from 40+ years of traditional climbing experience. “Slam it in there, don’t think about it too much. Good. that only took you 10 minutes, you only need to cut that down by oh…. 9 minutes”. He methodically had us building anchors without certain pieces available to us, without certain cracks available to us. The sun chased away the shadows and we all began to sweat, but we kept at it.

At the end of it all, as we started to pack away our gear, I think he could see the special relationship Sam and I have, we love this shit, we don’t fully understand it, but we fully understand each other, and we both fully understand that the other loves this shit. I credit Chris with framing our mindset and guiding our budding Trad climbing career down the right path. “I’m 60 years old, you guys are way stronger than me and can climb way harder than me, you can do this stuff”. He lifts his gaze, first towards Glacier Point and then towards the Valley behind us, and with a sweeping arm says “Treat trad climbing as way to get somewhere beautiful, to have an adventure, to have a great day”. I recognized that was years of wisdom talking. A sincere thanks for that, Chris. We shared a campfire and a lot of stories with Chris that night, a great time. I’ll be forever grateful for the experience.

Fast forward again to two days before my 32nd birthday. Now we are at the base of Munginella. A three pitch 5.6 with a heady roof as the crux of the route on the second pitch, as described by Mountain Project.

“Do you live in the Valley?” asks one of the two girls, early twenties, who guided us to the base of the climb when they saw Sam and I stumbling around looking for the start. “No, were from San Diego, just visiting for his birthday” Sam replies. I thought it was a funny question to ask, but maybe we looked the part. “You two can go ahead” Sam and I both insisted after learning the girls both in fact, lived in the Valley. “Maybe we can copy their beta” we both agreed. The idea of waiting even longer and letting the nervousness build bothered both of us, but so be it.

It quickly became apparent we shouldn’t be as nervous as we were first inclined to be. After an hour of waiting at the base of the climb I look up to see the two girls tossing their rope in a tree that I was pretty sure stopped 30 feet short of the top of the first pitch. “Uh oh”, I said as I tend to do when things look like they are going sideways, typically when I am cruxing out and about to take a whipper. Then Sam turned just in time to watch the whole fiasco unfold, the girl seconding the pitch flung herself to the base of the same tree and gave it a big bear hug. “oh my god.” Sam said in disbelief. “We should probably go help them” I said.

That’s when my bad ass wife started up the first pitch. Smooth sailing all the way to this girl bear hugging a tree. At this point she was a tangle of rope, tree, and emotions. Her partner was mid crux on the money pitch, shouting “Watch me!”. “I don’t know what that means!” she exclaimed, “It means watch her here, she might fall” Sam explained. Sam managed to unwind the rope and help calm the frantic belayer and see her off and up the second pitch before finding the actual belay and bringing me up.

“Good job babe” I said. “That looked like a mess”. “Yea, she was sort of freaking out, that was probably not safe”. In a way, the whole fiasco calmed me down. “We belong here” I told myself. No, we don’t live in the valley, but we know what we are doing. The whole situation gave us the confidence to tackle the next two pitches. Leading the second pitch, clipping an old piton, placing my own protection, building an anchor, and watching Sam soar up and disappear over the top of the final pitch – on our first “Real” Trad climb – will be something I always remember.