The Stone Monkeys

This week has been the annual migration of the Stone Monkeys, from Yosemite to Moab. Since it has been dumping snow in Yosemite, the time was right for the monkeys to arrive.

Ivo Ninov, the Bulgarian ex-pat, has to be one of the most legendary characters of the modern climbing world. He has been living in Yosemite and Santa Cruz for the past several years, and seems to climb more and have more adventures and more friends than anyone I’ve ever met.

I don’t know if this quality is uniquely Bulgarian or uniquely Ninovian, but it is truly impressive. Ivo is always enthusiastic, always motivated, and always ready for anything.

When I first met Ivo, I was a little perplexed by his manner of referring to himself as “we,” or in the third person plural, as “the monkeys.” For example: “We spent eight days on El Cap and now we’re driving to Santa Cruz. The monkeys are gonna rage!” Since I’m a pretty literal person, and since his accent is pretty heavy (Ivo learned English in Camp 4), for a few years I figured it might be a translation problem. Eventually I realized that Ivo always talks about everything in terms of “we” and “us”, because he always does everything with his friends. For him, the group is everything. Ivo is a true community member, in the best sense of the words. And eventually I came to understand the Yosemite stone monkeys.

Basically, the stone monkeys are a group of hardcore, dedicated climbers (and now BASE jumpers) who spend most of their time in Yosemite, and most of that time on El Cap. Because Ivo himself pretty much IS the stone monkeys, and because Ivo never does anything by himself, any group of climbers that includes Ivo is automatically the stone monkeys…… The stone monkeys climb all the time, except for when they are working, slacklining, jumping or hanging out (which is an important thing the monkeys do), and they always do everything to the nth degree. They do the hardest aid routes on El Cap. They are usually involved in some way in the big Valley free projects, film projects, or unusual El Cap climbing projects (like paraplegic ascents). They are always involved in some way in all low-profile Valley operations. If you are in Yosemite and you need some help for anything, it can be found through the stone monkeys. Above all, the monkeys are always gonna rage.

Ivo and a crew of monkeys showed up here in Moab last week, just in time for our on-again, off-again snow cycle. The stone monkeys seem to really enjoy hanging out at the sunny backyard climbing wall, which is kind of the Moab equivalent of the Yosemite cafeteria, or El Cap meadow. Well, with some obvious differences. They spend lots of time there drinking coffee, smoking, and hanging out with the dogs, with occasional flurries of slacklining on the yard lines, and much appearing, disappearing and reappearing of random guys in and out of the backyard. This usually takes the entire morning, at least, and often carries on into early afternoon. The monkeys know how to hang out!

The Moab girl monkeys on the other hand, come over all at once at previously arranged times, which we organize via much text messaging and cell phone communication. They train on the climbing wall, catch up on the latest romantic situations, and then go off to do errands or onto cardiovascular activities such as biking, running or skiing. Little to no hanging out is done by the girl monkeys, because we are very busy.

The monkeys spent the coldest, windiest days at Dean’s current hard crack project, and got him fired up enough to send it, which was pretty exciting for everyone, especially with the scrubby impaler-tree which is inconveniently located below the highball topout of the super long, super steep boulder problem.

Ivo and I checked out the Echo jump the next morning, knowing it was probably too windy, but hopeful that it might calm down by the time we had climbed up to the top of the cliff.

A few spit tests confirmed that yes, it was too windy, and yes, the wind was blowing straight into the cliff. When the wind is blowing straight into the cliff, you really should not do short cliff jumps. Like most Europeans, Ivo considers tobacco to be a crucial piece of mountain gear. So just to make extra sure, he did a final tobacco test. When the little tobacco tuft blew straight up over our heads and did a dramatic wall strike into the ledge behind us, we knew without a doubt it was time to bail….

The next day we made another excursion, this time to the Tombstone, with Dean and a few of our favorite dogs.

It was the first time I’d done a BASE jump with Ivo, and it was one of his first sub-terminal cliff jumps ever.

I was so impressed that Ivo made an absolutely perfect jump, revealing his old paragliding experience when he made a spot-on, stand up landing right beside me in the lower meadow landing area.

Sadly,this morning was the final day of the monkeys’ visit. We woke to dumping snow, but needed to make one more jump with Ivo before they headed off to California. We had a little alpine adventure reaching the exit point, and were amazed as always at the dogs’ abilities to climb straight up snow covered slabs with no problem whatsoever.

I don’t know why we are always so worried about them slipping–they have built-in crampons and four wheel drive! But still, we have to look after them like children, because we love them.

I’m sure the dogs are actually much more worried about us, especially with our disturbing tendencies to climb straight up cliffs or else jump off of them for no apparent reason.

It was another awesome jump. It’s amazing to me how time is so distorted and elongated in BASE jumping. Every second is so ponderable and relevant, especially in these subterminal Moab jumps. I find it interesting too that every jump is its own special adventure and experience, extremely unique and memorable, despite its compressed quality in “real time”.

I didn’t realize how much I was missing, in my last five years as one of the stubborn, non-jumping monkeys (I guess I have to admit, I’m kind of a stone monkey). What a powerful experience it’s been in the last couple of months, to make jumps with the stone monkeys-turned-jumpers——to experience this different world with them, in our same favorite places. I think of the days we’ve all spent on big walls together, climbing together, or sometimes above, below or beside each other on the wall and calling over to each other. It’s almost unbelievable to think that now we can fly through the air together–the same wild people finding more wild things to do on these beautiful rock walls.

We hated to see Ivo and the other monkeys drive off this afternoon, but we know they’ll be back soon. Especially if it keeps snowing in the valley