Giana Mitchell, all 5’1″ and 123 pounds of her, looks up at the massive indoor climbing wall rising above her. It stretches up 50 feet, the tallest west of the Mississippi until recently. The first time she approached it – a couple years ago, with the beginnings of the La Jolla Country Day rock climbing team – she must have felt a tinge of fear. Climbing was a new thing for her, although she had played a lot of sports before – soccer, volleyball, even Ultimate Frisbee. Her balance wasn’t that good for someone attempting to scale a wall and have “your body suspended in space,” as the 17-year-old junior puts it, referring to the ropes and clip that will hold her. But the challenge of the wall appealed to her, and three years later, she is still at it. Her father, Todd Mitchell, a teacher at Country Day middle school and coach of the team, declares the school is the only one in the nation “that has an official rock climbing team.” “Over time, I’ve really changed,” the younger Mitchell says related to her balance making her ascents. The Torrey team doesn’t do any weightlifting – Giana’s increased body strength is all a result of her climbing. “I’m shorter,” she says in an understatement (pun intended). “But height is not an issue. For every climber, it’s different. I’m not going to just power my way up the wall. I’d say my strength is intricate detailed moves – balancing.” The community feeling among rock enthusiasts was evident on a visit to their venue, where the Torreys practice multiple times a week. Todd has been climbing for 15 years, keyed by a trip to Joshua Tree. The staff at the Mesa Rim facility are friendly, welcoming and relaxed.
There’s kind of a ’60s feel to some of it, with a few free spirits sporting long locks. They don’t hesitate to try to recruit a visitor/observer for an ascent. Giana herself grins and says, “I’m the biggest recruiter for the whole team. I talk to everyone about it at school.” Qualities that are addressed in climbing include trust, patience and problem-solving abilities. Mitchell, starting up the wall, must immediately put trust in her belayer, the person who stays on the ground and pulls up the slack in the rope. “They can lock the belay device (an oval-shaped clip that’s key to securing the rope) so if you fall you’ll just swing away from the wall a little bit,” says Mitchell, speaking from experience. “You develop a trust in your belayer. You do your safety check (before the climb). From this, you know you’re not going to fall.” Patience is required because the climb is going to take time, and it’s not going to be accomplished by a spectacular exhibition of athleticism or hurry-up. The rest of the team and other climbers are arrayed below the wall and spread out throughout the facility, calmly watching, waiting as climbers move above them. This is the counterpoint to the rush-rush of much of the rest of our Internet-fueled culture, sped up by instantaneous communication via text and email. Torrey team members spend three hours a day of practice at their craft. Intriguing is the aspect of planning out the ascent, the part Mitchell excels at. This is where she has to problem solve, to figure out which hand- and footholds she will use to try to go up. The climb is also called the “problem,” the “route” or the “project.” You can plan out your whole climb, invest quite a bit of time trying the route you have planned, and reach a point where you can go no further. At that point, you have to scrap the entire route and start over. “Sometimes I go a route I realize I can’t keep going on,” she says. “I’m too tired, or I’ve been working at it too long. I have to come down and look at it with the belayer.” That would seem to be a real cause for frustration. But it’s part of the sport. “It’s like a puzzle,” she says. “I have to think. I have to read the route. ‘And when I get here (she thinks), I’ll have to put my hand here or make a major move… .’” How the rock climbing team started, according to Todd Mitchell, is that the students wanted to get credits for physical education. Jeff Hutzler, the athletic director at the school, told the senior Mitchell to come up with uniforms and an identity for the team instead of just having them be an independent PE activity. This gave the climbers official status. They climb all three sports seasons of the schoolyear, fall, winter and spring. Giana Mitchell says climbers are very supportive. “In the rock climbing community, a stranger will suggest another way (up the wall), but in a really friendly way. They might say to me, ‘You’re shorter than me, but what worked for me… .’” Looking ahead to college, Mitchell prefers to stay closer to home. “I want to stay on the West Coast,” she says. “I want to go to a liberal arts college.” She isn’t sure where she would like to attend, but, “I’m really into arts. I like photography.” She has worked since she was a freshman as layout editor of the school newspaper, The Palette. The paper printed her first two years; now it publishes electronically only. “There’s a misconception about The Palette,” she says. “Students see it as being about the arts. But it also includes sports, news, lifestyle, opinion.” For Mitchell, rock climbing serves as a release from stress. “I don’t feel like I’m working out,” she says. “Especially junior year in high school, I have stress with all the things I have to do. It’s definitely a stress release. “In rock climbing, you have to focus on one thing at a time. You can’t climb up the wall if you don’t focus on the climb.”