The Thrill of Ruling the Rock

VASQUEZ ROCKS — His name is Fred Koegler, but out here he’s known as the Lord of the Rock.

He’s the way you hope to look at 57--lean and strong. During the winter he’s a track and cross-country coach at Verdugo Hills High School in Tujunga. Summers he spends as a law enforcement ranger at Tuolumne Meadows in Yosemite National Park.

Sorry, you don’t get to be called Lord of the Rock working an office job.

For 17 years, Koegler has been showing the Boy Scouts of Troop 319 in La Crescenta how to climb rocks and rappel down cliffs. Before anyone goes up or down a rock, Koegler methodically checks the array of ropes, knots and anchors.

If he doesn’t like something, he orders it redone. There is no dissent, no questioning. The Lord of the Rock’s word is law.

This is some comfort to me as I stand atop a peak high above the hamlet of Agua Dulce on a blazing blue Saturday in May, ready to walk backward off a cliff. It’s 75 feet down, all air.

I had rappelled exactly twice--just about an hour before, on a sloping, 40-foot rock that you could easily scramble down if something snapped. Not this time. Your first step is backward over the lip of the peak, so you can’t see what’s to come.

But there’s no time to dawdle, because Robert Orozco is there to shoo the timid along. Robert is 15, and he is the guy you hook your safety line to before you begin the descent.

That makes him just about the most important person in the world right now.

If Koegler, standing watchful nearby, is the Lord of the Rock, then Orozco is the Prince. And something of a clown prince at that.

“So how does it feel,” he asks as I take that step, “to put your life in the hands of a 15-year-old kid?”

*

I can thank my son Kevin for all this. Almost five years ago, in first grade, he brought home a flier from school to join Cub Scouts. My wife suggested we wait a year or two, but he was persistent. She took him to a pack meeting in the school auditorium. It was chaos. There was yelling, screaming and running around--and that was just the adults. He loved it.

A year later we were holding den meetings at our house every other Sunday. The boys made birdhouses in the garage and raced balsa boats in rain gutters stretched out on the grass. They put potatoes in spoons and jousted in the driveway, each trying to force the other to drop the spud first. They learned to carve wood with pocketknives. I kept the Band-Aids handy.

Then, suddenly, he and his uniformed gang were all 11 and it was time to leave Cub Scouts behind. This spring, his Webelos den began visiting the several outstanding Boy Scout units in our area in the Scouting equivalent of rush week. Troop 319, and Vasquez Rocks, was the last stop.

*

Ross Kelsey, 319’s scoutmaster, looks out over the scene and smiles. More than 30 helmet-clad boys are rappelling down rocks and cliffs, both up here on the higher peaks and on smaller rocks near the campsite below. They lock a safety line to their harness, kick down the side of a rock wall, then scramble back up the mountain to get in line for another ride.

And while adults stand by to keep an eye on things, Scouts like Robert Orozco and Phillip Casalegno actually run the show. They’re the ones who are hooked to your safety line and guide you up or down a cliff. If the unthinkable should occur, it is these boys who will make the difference between life and death.

In the era of slip-and-fall lawsuits, it amazes me that all it took to go on this trip was a signed permission slip from a parent. Or that Kelsey is smiling as he watches one boy after another jump off a cliff.

“It’s a factor,” Kelsey concedes, when asked about liability concerns. “But when you’ve got people with the training and knowledge that we have, then you can do it.

“In the five years that I’ve been involved, we’ve never had anything worse than a scraped knee.” Pause. “Until today.” He looks toward Kevin, who mashed his thumb rappelling down the big cliff.

“And even that wasn’t bad,” Kelsey continues. “And, in the back of my mind, I know that the Boy Scouts of America is backing us. I guess that, and the quality of the people we have helping out here, is the only way I can sleep at night.”

Kelsey isn’t kidding about the help. Koegler’s own sons are now 23 and 27, and long gone from Troop 319. But twice a year, he comes back to pass on his skill and experience to a new generation.

“I just enjoy working with the boys,” says Koegler, who is also a volunteer with the Montrose Search and Rescue Team. “I like to teach these guys. It’s just a tradition to keep coming back.”

More than once this weekend, a kid will get scared and freeze on the rock. Then suddenly, the Lord of the Rock appears and helps talk him through it.

By dusk, boys who never climbed before will casually call out for a “beener”--a carabiner, those metal rings used to hook rope to harness.

“Some of these kids that come out here, they can’t do anything,” Koegler says. “They’re scared. But then, they stick with it and slowly they learn they can do it. Building their self-confidence--that’s largely what we do.”

Art Serote, 64, is another old hand at this. His son, Ryan, is now 24, but Serote keeps coming back. Need a carabiner? Serote will give you one of his to use. Forgot your camera? There’s Art, snapping pictures with his Nikon.

Then there are the boys themselves. The older ones, members of the troop’s venture crew, won’t get much climbing in themselves this weekend. They’re too busy belaying the younger ones down the rocks. It’s not nearly as much fun as rappelling, but it does offer them a degree of satisfaction.

Robert, with his impressive rack of carabiners and other climbing gear rattling from his sturdy frame, exudes nothing but confidence as he oversees the descent from the highest peak.

Like several boys today, he recalls standing on the lip of the cliff and balking. Although the actual drop is 75 feet, the distance seems much greater because the valley floor itself is still hundreds more feet below.

“My brother threw me off,” he recalls with a smile. “I was crying.”

At the time, Robert was the first Webelo Scout in four years to make the descent. Usually, just one or two will brave the rappel. This trip, five of our Webelos--Ben, Daniel, Garrett, Kean and Kevin--will go over the side.

A few of us big kids will, too, and we’ll learn why everyone keeps coming back each year.

Robert speaks of rock climbing in almost mystical terms.

“It’s the same thing every year; nothing changes,” he says. “It’s you and the rock. When you’re doing it, that’s all you are thinking about.

“It’s fluid. It’s just rock.”

So how does it feel to trust your life to a 15-year-old kid?

Pretty good, Robert, pretty good.