Land & Sea: Rock climbing rapture on the cliffs of Newfoundland

Is it any wonder Newfoundland is sometimes lovingly referred to as "The Rock?"

There are so many dramatic and sheer coastlines that plunge into the North Atlantic.

The rugged scenery is a dream for photographers, but there are some in this province who believe our spectacular rock isn't just something to be admired.

For them, our jagged cliffs and banks of boulders are meant to be gripped and scaled.

Their passion overrides their fear in pursuit of the challenge of rock climbing.

On a hot summer evening, a group of men and women are gathered around a rock face in Logy Bay.

They're looking up at Daniel Alocoque as he carefully places his hands and feet in such a way to slowly, strategically, move himself up the wall with a height of some 4.5 metres.

In the rock climbing world, this is called bouldering.

"Originally, bouldering in the 60s was like practice for alpinists or mountaineers when they encountered sections of difficult rock. They wanted to go around and practice so that they'd get stronger fingers or practice complex movement," explains Alocoque. 

There are no ropes and no harnesses for this kind of rock climbing.

Having some guts certainly comes in handy because a fall from even a few feet wouldn't tickle. 

So, climbers lay out crash mats and spot each other while on the wall.  

Their muscles bulge as they engage every part of their bodies to keep themselves in place.

Like Spider-Man, some of them can do whatever a spider can. 

"It's like short bursts of super high-energy climbing, " says Alocoque.

This super high-energy climbing was named an Olympic sport in 2020 and bouldering is drawing lots of interest in Newfoundland and Labrador.

In this sport, climbers work on projects or boulder problems to get to the top. 

Alocoque says completing a project or solving a problem with hands and feet could take days, months or even years. 

"You get beginners, and you get the very experienced climbers and they're both climbing different problems with the same intensity," he said.

When Alocoque isn't hauling himself up rock faces fairly closer to the ground, he uses ropes and carabiners to dangle off high cliffs, like those found in the community of Flat Rock just outside St. John's. 

"Sometimes I feel like I'm in the clouds or in another world. I just lose all sense of anything really. It's just me and the wall. It's beautiful," says Alocoque.

Like any sport, the moves take practice and there's figuring out the gear and the knots and all the safety protocols.

And not many gyms can compete with the scenery on this part of Newfoundland's coast. 

Alocoque insists the payoffs aren't just physical.  

"Climbing is one of the best ways you can learn to grow as a person. You're challenged in many ways mentally. Of all the experienced climbers I know, they all have this sort of confidence in them that, well, nothing's quite as scary as really pushing yourself on rock outdoors," he said. "So it puts everything else in perspective in a way."

After graduating with a masters in engineering degree, Alocoque wanted to push himself on rocks outside the province.

In 2016, he and two of his best climbing buddies, Nick Brown and David Bruneau, set out on a climbing quest.  

"We decided to fly to B.C., buy a camper van and live in the camper van for a year, climbing pretty much every day with climbing being our main goal," Alocoque said. "We traveled from B.C., through the states, down to Mexico and then back up on the other side. And it changed my life. It was an extreme adventure."

The crew spent months in Yosemite National Park in California and set their sights on a granite monolith — El Capitan. It's a 900-metre climb to the top. 

"It took us seven days and we slept on the wall. When you climb the first 1,000 feet or so, you're not used to the height yet. So you look down, you can just immediately be a little scared, but then when you get up 2,000 feet, you're tall enough that you can't really see things very well," Alocoque said. "So it all kind of seems like the background of a desktop or something."

Alocoque and his friends were the first Newfoundland team to make it to the summit of El Capitan. 

"It was pretty cool. It was great that it all came together," he said.

And, Alocoque says, there was the spirit of someone else with them on that journey. A friend who had lost her life climbing in Flatrock the year before.

Jessica McErlean was 21 years old. 

"Whatever she was doing in life, all she wanted to do was climb. And the joy that she brought to climbing, it was just so contagious," Alocoque said. "She had a short life and climbing was a big part of it."

McErlean's death was a huge shock for the climbing community. 

Above the climbing cliff in Flatrock, there's a bench dedicated in her honour where people leave rocks in her memory. 

Alocoque says the loss of the young climber was too painful and scary for many to continue with the sport.

Some people walked away from climbing and didn't look back. Others doubled down. 

"I was one of the ones that doubled down. And I feel like that was one of the things that drove me to do more climbing in my own life because life is short and I wanted to do the things that I truly cared about," said Alocoque. 

"The three of us that all went on the trip, we were all friends with Jesse and we all knew after she died that climbing was important. It felt more important because of her life."

Daniel Alocoque appears in a Land & Sea show called Rock Climbing Rapture. 

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