At this year’s International Climbing festival in Lander, a unique clinic was offered by pro climber and six-time paraclimbing National Champion and World Champion Justin Salas. Salas’ clinic “The Fundamentals of Visualization” concentrated on just that – mentally visualizing climbing routes rather than depending on sight.
On a windy day in July, Salas worked his way up a textured limestone cliff at Wild Iris, a world-class outdoor climbing destination twenty-four miles southwest of Lander.
Salas intentionally moved up the vertical cliff with grace, pulling on grooved pockets in the rock and delicately balancing on small edges.
“If you take two steps over on that same crack system and then go off of your eleven, matched hands be a pretty good move,” a voice from below yelled up.
From the ground, Ty Vineyard described the holds above Salas and suggested his next move. What’s a little unusual about this scene was that Salas’ eyes were covered by a blindfold.
“Up, up, up, with your right hand, right there, now up up up – maybe I’m seeing it wrong, try to your left?” Vineyard said.
The climber, Salas, was demonstrating how to climb without sight to the clinic attendants – the main focus of the day’s clinic.
“Whenever you're dealing with something like a visual impairment, you're trying your hardest to have stability, right? Because we feel around a lot, finding stable positions is really important,” Salas said.
Salas has had a lot of practice with these drills – at fourteen, Salas started to lose his vision and was diagnosed with optic neuropathy, a degenerative condition caused by damage to the optic nerve.
The climber said the reason behind his vision loss is still unknown.
“Eye tests, blood tests – everything is inconclusive,” Salas said.
His only current working hypothesis has to do with a hip surgery he had at the age of thirteen. An MRSA staph infection in his hip joint sent Salas to the hospital in critical condition, where he was treated with the antibiotic vancomycin. The drug has been known to cause different nerve neroses.
“There was one other reported case of optic neurosis, and of course once neurosis swells to a certain extent, it atrophies. So that's what they think happened to me, but it's all very anecdotal,” Salas said.
The Oklahoma-born climber didn’t start climbing until after he started to lose his vision, but Salas’ reduced vision hasn’t stopped him from ticking off accomplishments in the climbing world that most climbers can only dream about.
Salas has climbed and competed around the world, and became the first adaptive rock climber to achieve the grade of V11/8a after climbing for only three years. “Adaptive” broadly refers to athletes with a disability.
Salas said his blindness propelled his climbing progress in “major ways.”
“You're relying so much on your proprioception and you have to build a large amount of strength and endurance to be able to stay on route for that amount of time. And you're constantly memorizing, thinking about all these little nuances from a movement perspective and not staring at grips,” Salas said.
The climber, who’s now based in Salt Lake City, said he sees with “donut vision.”
“I just have peripheral [vision], no central. So I can get around and look like I'm not visually impaired, but if you can imagine, when you try and look at something, it disappears,” Salas said.
The clinic was open to all climbers, whether full-sighted, low vision, or blind, and Salas believes that everyone can benefit from the tools of visualization to help improve their efficiency on the wall.
Participants paired up, and one person with a blindfold climbed while the other practiced being a caller. The caller did their best to describe to the climber what the route looks like before they get on the rock, and where to place their hands and feet as they move up the wall.
“So you're kind of just laying out the roadmap of the easier terrain, and then you try and identify the crux,” Salas said while describing the process of calling.
For those less familiar with climbing lingo, the crux is the most challenging part of a climb. As might be expected, one of the cruxes of this activity was clear communication.
Salas said having an open dialogue between climber and caller is crucial.
“The hope here is that, you know, it's going to be hard if you don't receive the information. So ask questions, if you feel like there's a part of the route that you're not retaining, you know, ask again,” Salas said.
Salas shared that he visualizes a black 3-D space in his mind, then places a map made of neon squares onto it based on the information he’s receiving.
“So I imagine building this neon route and mental map in my mind of the route, and then I try and retain that. So by the time I'm going to get on the wall, I have a pretty good understanding of what I'm going to be doing,” Salas said.
Salas said the process of visualization is also a metaphor in getting to know what works for someone else – the more the caller understands the climber’s personal style and strengths, the more the climber can find a flow that feels good to them.
Salas encouraged participants to ask each other specific questions about their preferences on the wall.
“If you are able to, you know, ask each other ‘Do you like high feet more? Do you like staying stretched out? Are you really flexible? What are your strong suits and all these things?’ That stuff all helps a lot,” Salas said.
Salas said his connection with his competition caller has been fine-tuned over years of getting to know each other. But still, Salas said the process of climbing with a caller is a balancing act.
“If someone's relaying information to you, it's all great. But you also have to split your mind and flow in climbing, but also process the information they're giving you,” Salas said.
Salas is now thirty, and he said the sixteen years of living with vision loss has been a continual learning process.
“When you're dealing with a visual impairment, just like living life and being brave is the most important way to go about it. And then you just compensate as you learn,” Salas said.
Salas said the climbing community has been incredibly supportive throughout his journey.
“The climbing community is so welcoming and so inviting – I've never experienced that level of camaraderie in another sport or another community like I have in climbing, and it's just so humbling,” Salas said.
Eric Schwinghammer was one of the participants at Salas’ clinic. He has Ankylosing spondylitis and has spent the last five years battling inflammation in one of his eyes.
“Since they offer clinics, I thought I'd check out the roster and when I saw this one, it sparked my interest due to my vision impairment,” said Schwinghammer.
Schwinghammer lives in Bozeman and has been traveling around to different climbing festivals with his fiance, who tables at the events for her fitness coaching company.
He wasn’t sure what to expect from the clinic, since both climbing and climbing visually impaired are relatively new to him.
“I learned that vision can be an interesting thing to omit in the skill of climbing. I learned that it's hard, but it's possible to do this and it just takes communication and a will from the climber and the caller as well,” Schwinghammer said.
While many might think a sport like climbing depends on sight, it turns out that climbing higher is possible with some good communication and just a little help from a friend.
