Bringing people together
to climb for good causes
Story by Loyd McIntosh
Photos by Mackenzie Free
It’s early in the morning of Saturday, March 2, and a diverse group of people are straggling into the grounds of Horse Pens 40. The air is crisp and cool, evidence that while spring is just around the corner, it hasn’t quite arrived.
Despite the temperature hovering in in the mid-40s, many of those assembled are walking around the grounds in T-shirts and shorts, specialty athletic shoes, and large, polyurethane mats strapped to their backs.
This group of outdoors enthusiasts is on site to compete in the 2022 Chandler Mountain Challenge. An annual bouldering competition at Horse Pens 40, the Chandler Mountain Challenge has become one of the most anticipated events among the rock-climbing community. The event is organized by Climbers For Christ, a Christian organization launched in 1989 in Yosemite Valley with a mission to equip, encourage and empower climbers to share the love of Christ with the climbing community.
“The mission that we have in Climbers For Christ is really just to show Jesus to the climbing and outdoor community through service and through conversation,” says Joshua Reyes, a member of the volunteer leadership team covering the southeastern United States.
Originally from New Mexico, Reyes now lives in Jacksonville, Ala., and is a technical advisor for AECOM/URS Corporation and a former nuclear submarine mechanic with the U.S. Navy. He explains that Climbers For Christ most often plays a support role at other climbing and outdoor events, giving the volunteer opportunities to share the Gospel.
“We have teams that go out and serve breakfast, cooking pancakes and stuff like that. With a bunch of hungry climbers, you go through a lot of food pretty quick, and they’re really appreciative of that,” says Reyes. “We like to connect by just serving like that and helping people out wherever they need bodies and people to do the heavy lifting, but we also like to establish those relationships and meet people and talk with them because we’re all about showing them who Jesus is – the truth of who He is.”
The Chandler Mountain Challenge brings climbers of all skill levels to St. Clair County each March, but the event also helps raise funds for a nonprofit or ministry doing important social work throughout the nation.
This year, the Chandler Mountain Challenge supported Orphan Voice, a ministry based in Lexington, Ky., with a mission to serve orphans, children with special needs, abused children and poor single mothers. Founded by Tony and Cindy Brewer, the organization has facilitated the adoption of more than 1,000 Asian orphans to parents in the U.S. and established several anti-trafficking ministries working to rescue children, mostly from Vietnam, who were forced into sexual or labor slavery.
Supporting causes like Orphan Voice’s mission through registration fees is just another feature that makes the Chandler Mountain Challenge an event so many in the bouldering world look forward to, whether they are people of faith or not.
Chris Wendell is an automobile customizer and active boulderer from Philadelphia. With his long hair, bushy beard and laissez-faire attitude, Wendell was straight and to the point when asked if Christian faith was an important factor in taking part in the Chandler Mountain Challenge. “Not really, no, but I can get behind a lot of the causes they support.”
Climbers For Christ works to encounter and minister to fellow climbers, whatever their spiritual opinions or experiences may be. “A friend of mine mentioned to me that the climbers she speaks with out west are more likely to be unchurched and kind of curious about what we’re doing, whereas folks back east, a lot of them have had really negative experiences with the church,” says Kristen McKenzie, a volunteer board member with Climbers For Christ. “We’re hoping to show them, maybe a different kind of Christianity than they grew up with, and just maybe if they see some Christians walking around not being hypocrites, they might reconsider Jesus.”
Wendell is exactly the type of person Climbers For Christ is focused upon reaching, fellow climbers who aren’t active in any religion but who have open minds and, perhaps more importantly, open hearts. “The best thing about (The Chandler Mountain Challenge) is we get everybody to climb just doing what we love and that turns into money that’s donated by someone else, and we take that money, and we donate it to a nonprofit to be picked for the year.
It’s just a great, easy cause for people to rally around,” says Reyes. “I was going to climb here anyway, but 20 bucks gets me a shirt and dinner and then I’m raising money for some kids somewhere? Count me in.”
Why Horse Pens 40?
It may come as a surprise to many people from St. Clair County but the boulders at Horse Pens 40 are well respected among the climbing community. The site is part of what is known as the bouldering “triple crown,” – a bouldering series that also includes Hounds Ears in Boone, N.C., and Stone Fort in Chattanooga, Tenn. – and is also compared favorably to a bouldering site 40 miles south of Paris, France, known as Fontainebleau.
At first glance, it’s difficult to see why. For starters, the boulders at Horse Pens 40 aren’t majestically high. In fact, most of them struggle to reach 30 feet. However, bouldering is a sport that, unlike rock and mountain climbing, utilizes no equipment. Instead boulderers rely only on special climbing shoes and chalk to help the climber grip the rock face and climb to the top. One of the most concentrated areas of boulders in the world, Horse Pens 40 is ideally situated to be one of the best bouldering sites on earth.
“It’s really unique in the formations. It has a lot of these rounded formations and when you get to the top of the ball that’s called doing the “top out” and those big, rounded hulls are called slopers, and you have really nothing good to grab onto to hoist yourself over the edge. It’s like your agave to squeeze,” Reyes says. “I tell people it’s like grabbing the size of a refrigerator and squeezing and holding yourself up.”
Additionally, Reyes says the Southern sandstone that make up the boulders at Horse Pens is world-renowned for its friction, especially in the winter time. “That’s the most popular season, because it’s like Velcro,” he says. “You slap these big, rounded hulls that you can’t normally grab, and your hand just magically sticks. It’s amazing.
“People come here from all over the country and actually internationally,” Reyes adds. “Over the years, I’ve met people from Sweden, Spain, Italy, France and, of course, Canada and Mexico. I mean people from everywhere come here just to climb at Horse Pens 40. So as a transplant local that helps me never take it for granted, I can come here anytime that I want. When I see people that have flown here from Europe. I’m like, ‘OK, I have to remember this place is really special.’”
Every sport has its own language, a vernacular that to the outsider makes not a lick of sense at first glance, but as you study the lingo, you start to get a glimpse of what the sport is all about.
To the sport’s passionate, true believers, that vernacular is more than just a way of communication, it becomes an art form of its own. Bouldering is no different. For the Chandler Mountain Challenge, organizers taped cards on the boulders throughout Horse Pens 40 with advice on solving specific challenges.
Out of context, you could easily see the text on these cards printed in a college literary journal. For instance: “Stand alert. Move to crimp, then jump to right-facing block. Be careful as block creaks a bit … continue up to easy mantle.” Or this one: “Sit start, then move to good chickenheads. Move to good right sidepull, then jugs.”
The jargon on these cards assists the competitors in solving what the bouldering community refers to as “problems.” Before charging ahead and scaling the side of a huge rock, a climber has to consider his/her options; how to attack the problem to ensure success.
It’s no wonder, trial and error is a large part of the process. “You’re trying these problems that are really hard, so you’re often going to fall off,” says McKenzie. “Bouldering involves a lot of failure.”
And, this particular challenge involves a lot of successes. Whether it’s for the world-class challenge, the scenic beauty or the opportunity to support a worthy cause, it brings people of all walks of life to St. Clair County for a day of bouldering and fellowship that helps bridge gaps.
“The climbing community is pretty close-knit and tied together, but quite diverse – race, gender and religious beliefs, political beliefs – it’s just across the spectrum,” says Reyes. “But it’s so neat because even with that diversity of thought and lifestyle, we all have that common thread of climbing. When we show up here, all that goes out the window.”
