A Summit in Central Park; Boulder Gives Climbers a Taste of the Mountain

Climbers are drawn to steep, forbidding places: Mount Everest (29,028 feet) in the Himalayas. Aconcagua (22,834 feet) in the Andes. The Matterhorn (14,700 feet) in the Alps. The Harlem boulder (13 feet) in New York City.

O.K., the boulder is maybe 11 or 12 feet high, depending on how close you stand. But for those dozen feet, it looms like an enormous baked potato through the wooded northern fringe of Central Park, a rediscovered mecca for rock climbers who need travel no farther than the city's backyard to test their vertical skills.

They have come by subway, bus, car and sometimes in-line skates to ascend the boulder for the obvious reason: because it is there. But mostly on the I.R.T., toting their crash pads and chalk bags, because the approach march due south from the subway exit at 110th Street and Lenox Avenue takes just five minutes.

Crash pads, which look like camp mattresses and are spread to cushion a climber's fall, were invented for bouldering, an offshoot of climbing that has caught on in New York City. And ground chalk is used by rock climbers to dry sweaty fingers before trying hard moves, which seem to be the only kind found in bouldering.

''Bouldering for me is a great way to push the limits,'' said Ivan Greene, 28, a city climber who grew up in Washington Heights. ''It's just you and the rock and the hardest sequence of moves you could possibly do.''

He conceded that Central Park is not the first place that comes to mind for serious climbing. ''We're kind of inventing it as we go along,'' he said. ''It's not an established area.''

Central Park is far from challenging the popularity of the Shawangunks, a formidable garden of cliffs and boulders near New Paltz, N.Y., about 80 miles north of New York City, which attracts rock climbers from across the Northeast.

But James P. McCarthy, a New York City lawyer who pioneered classic climbs in the Shawangunks for 40 years, said that he and other local climbers were seeking out practice boulders in Central Park back in the 1960's. Now, Mr. McCarthy said, younger climbers are climbing boulders for their own sake, disdaining ropes, harnesses and other costly gadgets used in conventional climbing.

''Basically, of all the disciplines of climbing, bouldering is the purest because it involves the least equipment -- shoes, chalk and a crash pad these days,'' Mr. McCarthy said by telephone from Jackson Hole, Wyo., where he is retiring. ''They've taken it to an amazing level, and there's a certain subculture in climbing that devotes itself to these completely abstract problems.

''An urban setting doesn't bother them whatsoever,'' Mr. McCarthy continued. ''The only thing that counts is the physical rock and the potential for movement. It's an incredible exercise in stretching the potential of what one can do on rock. I'm just blown away by these kids.''

For a city that warns visitors to not even think about parking here, New York City is surprisingly tolerant of rock climbers. ''It is perfectly legal for people to climb in Central Park,'' said James Warner, a spokesman for the Parks Department, as long as they do not climb rock overhangs along the drives or hammer in things. ''We just don't want people digging into the rocks or disturbing the vegetation,'' he said.

Bouldering in Central Park has focused on what climbers call Rat Rock, an outcrop northeast of Columbus Circle near the softball fields. Jennifer Wald, a spokeswoman for the Central Park Conservancy, said Rat Rock is formally known as Umpire Rock. The conservancy also runs classes on its artificial climbing wall in the North Meadow Recreation Center in the park at about 97th Street.

Mr. Greene, who supervises the artificial climbing wall at the Chelsea Piers sports complex, said that bouldering and climbing walls have changed the nature of climbing, allowing New Yorkers to practice what used to be a sport confined to more remote areas.

''There's a huge scene growing every year,'' he said. ''People are interested in bouldering as a part of climbing.''

Preston Lear, a 28-year-old rock climber from Utah who moved to New York City last year to earn his master's degree in social work at New York University, said that climbing walls, which have proliferated in the last few years, are ''a great way to introduce people to what climbing movement is about.'' But Mr. Lear added, ''Plastic climbing in urban areas has engendered a desire to get on real rock.''

No one knows when the Harlem boulder was first climbed. But its popularity, which includes a Web site (www.pusher.com/features/real/ harlem/harlem.html), followed its rediscovery by Mr. Lear. He said that while skating along Central Park's northern drive one weekend last fall, ''I just all of a sudden saw this boulder through the trees with faint dustings of chalk on it, and I was blown away.'' The chalk marks meant someone had been climbing there.

The Harlem boulder, which some climbers call Worthless Boulder, proved better than Mr. Lear expected, but he was dismayed by the accumulated crack cocaine vials, heroin syringes, human feces and other filth. ''It was really junky and dirty,'' he said. ''I took it upon myself to clean up the area.''

Mr. Lear scooped away the litter, and then took to exploring the boulder. ''I could boulder for a couple of hours, or a half-hour, and be back to school in 20 minutes,'' he said. ''Part of the magic of Central Park is that one can have a reprieve from the chaos of the city.''

Mr. Greene recalled, ''Preston said, 'You've got to check this out,' and we were all skeptical.''

But he also pronounced the boulder awesome. ''It's just really well featured,'' Mr. Greene said. ''It's steep but with little finger holds and slopey edges.''

The Harlem boulder consists geologically of a coarse metamorphic schist that invites climbing, despite the paucity of obvious handholds and footholds. Its overhanging north face offers the illusion of high exposure. Potential routes defy gravity and require powerful arms and fingers tough enough to withstand sandpapering by the rough rock.

''I think it's the sport of sadists,'' joked Stephen Harris, 33, a climber who was acting as Mr. Greene's ''spotter,'' which meant calling encouragement from the ground and trying to catch Mr. Greene should he peel off.

While the boulder is not big by mountaineering standards, Mr. Harris said, ''it's certainly high enough to hurt yourself if you fall.''

For years, the American climbing standard rated the difficulty of rock climbs on a scale from 5.1 to 5.10. Routes up the Harlem boulder run off the old scale, to the equivalent of 5.10 to 5.14, bumping against limits being explored by the best rock climbers in the world. On a newer rating system for boulders, the Harlem boulder runs from V-0 to V-10, at the upper end of the scale.

''Even serious sport climbers don't have a chance at this stuff until they put their minds to it,'' Mr. McCarthy said. ''It's a very demanding discipline.''

Mentioning the Harlem boulder in the same breath as Mount Everest may not be so ludicrous. David Breashears, who is one of the country's top mountaineers and has climbed to the summit of Mount Everest four times, described bouldering as his rehearsal for the big mountains.

In his book, ''High Exposure: An Enduring Passion for Everest and Unforgiving Places,'' Mr. Breashears explained that ''bouldering allowed me to practice certain moves over and over again: a particular way of clustering my fingers on a small nub of rock, a certain stretch of my leg to utilize widely paced toeholds, the exact way I could squeeze -- or jam -- my fingers or fist into a crack in the rock to support my body weight while I worked toward the next set of holds.''

In a telephone interview from his home near Boston, Mr. Breashears said that bouldering ''gave me great confidence on much easier terrain up high, because I had good balance and good body strength.''

Mr. Greene, whose wiry frame packs enough muscles for two, demonstrated one gymnastic route on the Harlem boulder that involved placing a foot shoulder-high in mid-ascent. ''You're dancing a dance that the rock is creating,'' he said. ''You either climb back down or you commit yourself and suffer the consequences.''

Mr. Lear, who moved last month to Raleigh, N.C. (climbers are not a sedentary crowd), grew obsessed with achieving a traverse across the Harlem boulder. ''I went there every morning I could, when I was going to school,'' he said. Pedestrians stopped to ask what he was doing and to give advice.

Suspicious police officers stopped to inquire why Mr. Lear was hanging out at the boulder and what the white powder was in his chalk bag. One officer shouted through a loudspeaker for him to come down, saying that climbing was prohibited. Mr. Lear called the Parks Department and, assured that it was perfectly legal, went back to his boulder.

Mr. Lear named one of his routes Privileged, because, he said, ''It was such an amazing privilege to climb an amazing boulder in the most amazing city on earth.''