A procession of elk saddles.
There are so many alternative names for bouldering pads, all fantastic. Sketch pad, crash pad, elk saddle, backcountry massage mattress, volcano cork, marmot holster, rock toboggan, tree band aid. Surely, you’ve rejoindered some wheezing tourist with your own variation after being asked:
“Say, now, what’s that there on yer back?”
“It’s a parachute! See ya on the way down!”
“Now, I don’t mean to be stupid, but ain’t those pretty big packs?”
“That’s not stupid, and these aren’t packs. We’re in an all-male university massage club and we prefer to practice in the mountains, up there in those boulders. Well, behind those boulders. On these pads. See ya later!”
“Ya’ll camping out over night?”
“Oh, ho ho. No, not at all. You see, there’s been a gang of bears sharpening their claws on trees up and down the gully and we’re headed up to place these band aids over the trees’ wounds. Be careful for that crew. Make a lot of noise; you don’t want any nasty surprises, do you? They seem really intent on sharpening those claws, and that can mean only one thing… Cheers!”
Tree band aids as restaurant accoutrement.
Crash pads are – or, at least used to be – an uncommon sight in South Korea. Climbers on the peninsula used to spend a lot more time in the gym or at the crags, but with the last decade’s FA explosion, bouldering areas have sprung up from Seoul to Busan, Sokch’o to Mopk’o. Those big black squares bobbing from shabbily dressed foreigners elicit at the very least a couple comments on every hike in or out.
Wallach
I’m not brave enough to pepper hikers with the aforementioned nonsense, but the same can’t be said for my friend Wallach. One Sunday afternoon just outside of Seoul, while I was still on the peninsula, a group of expatriate climbers had met up at the Riverbeds (RBs) in Bukhansan National Park to crush the snot out of some problems. Wallach, a tall, strong, funny Californian on his first tour of South Korean teaching, met us amongst the boulders, many of which cut the river’s current. We crushed snot, chatted, took pictures, chilled out on the stone steps of the local monastery, drank cooling coffee and ate fresh kimbap.
Climbing at the upper RBs.
On the walk out of the RBs we met up with some super freak expats, a couple “southern girls from Tennessee,” as they later admitted. Obviously aching for us to turn around, they chattered at squeaky, twangy decibels. Our crash pads, as always, took center stage.
Number One: That’s for rock climbing, for bouldering, so when they fall they don’t land on the ground. They put it below their rock climb and that’s where they land.
Number Two: That’s crazy. That’s all that helps them land?
Number One: That’s all they use because they’re bouldering and they don’t have any ropes. They just climb without ropes…I’m not like 100 percent sure or anything, but I think that’s all they use.
Number Two: Wow…
Number One: But, I’m not sure. If that is all they use, though, that is totally crazy.
Just two steps behind us, their voices rising higher and higher, yearning for a glance, an acknowledgment, a chat. An engagement.
“You guys got it,” I said, looking over my Asian Mad Rock. “They’re climbing pads.”
“That’s crazy,” Number One said.
“So I’ve heard,” I answered, tapping a finger to my ear.
Crash pad as scooter safety gear, Koh Tao, Thailand. Photo by Kyler Deutmeyer.
Wallach, taking the bait whilst clandestinely tip-toeing in for a chance to rattle these girls’ brains, slowed his pace so we could all share the conversation together, shoulder to shoulder. Number One, the gal with all that innate knowledge of our sport, had wrapped herself in hippie accoutrement before leaving her apartment that morning; flowing cotton and discordant colors and knitted mittens. Her face had that doughy sort of geography that never quite settles but rather ticks and stumbles through expressions as though it wasn’t quite sure of what was happening in the brain’s command center. A rogue face, prancing about of its own accord. These things are usually attached to loopy sorts of folks. Number One obviously suffered from some sort of mental dissonance. She spoke in a shuffling cadence, all southern inflection and stretched vowels. Her face ticking away and her voice lazing about in some verbal expanse of cotton candy grass and strawberry-scented wind, she leapt across great chasms from one catch of random dialogue to the next.
“I have best friends in San Francisco who live on an Eco Farm,” Number One said. “They’re really rich, but they want me to stop by their Eco Farm. Oh my god, they are so rich. You know what an Eco Farm is?”
“Oh yes,” said Wallach. “In San Francisco, right?” Wallach is from San Francisco.
“Yeaaaaaah. They are so rich. I’m really excited to go live on their Eco Farm.”
“Oh, yes,” and Wallach glanced at me with great urgency. “Dave, did you bring your knife?”
“My 14” Bowie knife with the serrated edge and compass and the fishing line in the handle?” I asked, casually, rattling off nonsense I’d half remembered from John Rambo and late night infomercials in Iowa.
“Yes. That one.”
“No, damn it. I left it at home today. Sorry.”
The girls uneasily glanced at one another. “Why do you guys need a knife?” asked Number Two, a gal much more sensibly dressed in jeans and sweatshirt, green bandana over blonde pig tails.
Wallach glared at her as though she’d just looked at herself in a mirror and asked, Who is that? “Oh, you always need a knife in Bukhansan. We were attacked by a bear a couple weeks ago.” I’m here to tell you that the Korean War incinerated, blew up, or hunted out all indigenous Korean animals, save squirrels and pigeons. Plenty of those left.
Number Two tilted her head a bit, narrowed her eyes, smiled, and said, “No, you weren’t.”
“Oh yes we were!” I demanded.
Number Two titled her head a bit more, narrowed her eyes to slits, ratcheted tight her smile a couple more screw turns, and said, “Really?”
“Damn right,” said Wallach. “That’s why we need the knife every time we go climbing. I don’t want to be caught in that situation again.”
Number One stared through saucer eyes. I’ll wager she was wondering if bears roamed that Eco Farm in the Bay Area. I have no doubt that those perceptive bears in San Fran would have steered well clear of this one, as if snorting at a poison berry, a deadly mushroom, a naked person wrapped only in a straight-jacket and sprinting across an asylum lawn screaming “Skittles!”
“Come on,” Number Two said, elbowing my pad.
“Do you really think I’m joking?” Wallach asked.
“Really…wow.”
“No,” Dave said, looking back up trail, quite seriously. “I’m joking. There aren’t any bears in Bukhansan.”
“Jesus,” I said.
“We saw a bear skull on the trail, I think,” offered Number One, helpfully.
We nodded silently and continued walking down the trail, the ghostly Bukhansan bears foraging our thoughts. Number One and Number Two left on an early bus. We leaned on our crash pads, waiting for our own bus back to Seoul’s suburbs. Elbows on foam, I ruminated over my pad, a light-bulb delicately flickering to life in my brain. Wait a minute, I thought. This isn’t a tree band aid, a rock toboggan, or an elk saddle.
A crash pad would come in awful handy here.
If nothing else – if nothing more – this is a bear shield.
Genius.