Becka's Epic Adventures: Climbers are Like Lichens

Almost a month ago I finished another excellent trip to Saint George with my friends. We spent the Valentine's Day weekend climbing and eating crepes; it was excellent. Then came the punishment week(s) I might have deserved for having so much fun with my friends. That's why the blog post about said fun is a little late. But really, I had an excellent time. St. George trips always make me nostalgic because it's where Karina and I really had a chance to climb and bond, and it's where I met the Emma-Brent half of our climbing group and it's also where I definitely figured out I was totally into Brent. Great stuff has happened for me in St. George, just look at this progression of photos.

The southwestern corner of Utah (where St. George is located) is a peculiar place. Here you can find sandstone, limestone, and basalt crags all within a few miles of town. And even though you often drive through a subdivision or two before getting to the crag, the views are always excellent. This trip we got the best of all the worlds, we climbed on a sandstone bluff with a view of the Virgin River Gorge (Zen Wall) and in a basalt canyon 3,000 feet above town (Pine Valley). Plus we got to see one of the best sunsets ever.

I've got 20 pictures of this sunset because it just kept getting better. The cherry on top was that I was hiking through the Zen Boulder Garden with my favorite friends.

The desert is often characterized as a harsh, almost barren environment. But really it's the best! The plants and animals capable of surviving in the desert are the hardest of the hardcore. The climbing guide we use has a list of objective hazards of desert climbing that include bugs, snakes, and cacti ("even the plants bite"). Unfortunately, there is no mention of lichens, not even when describing how excellent the rock is, but the desert is abundant in lichens and they're just fascinating. Since I didn't take many pictures (due to the intensity of the climbing), and the pictures I did take were primarily of lichens, I've decided to tell this tale as a story about how climbers are like lichens: symbiotic, interesting and awesome.

Objective desert hazard - biting plants.

A lichen is not a single organism, but an association between a fungus and an algae or cyanobacteria. These two organisms form a symbiosis, the individual components do better working together, and in most cases cannot survive without the other. The algae/cyanobacteria or "photobiont" component of the lichen performs photosynthesis, converting carbon dioxide and water into sugar that feeds both halves, while the fungal or "mycobiont" gathers water and minerals from the atmosphere that are used by both halves and anchors the entire lichen to a substrate.

Four species of lichen on basalt - what you see are the fungal parts, which encase the algae.

The belayer and the climber - the belayer feeds rope to the climber who "grows" up the wall. Without the climber the belayer would just be standing around with a rope; without the belayer the climber is at risk of death.

Lichens are estimated to cover 6-8% of the earth's surface and there are more than 15,000 identified species. Capable of surviving and thriving in extreme environments, like the desert, tundra, and piles of toxic waste, lichens are often the first organisms to colonize a disturbed region and are long-lived enough to be used to determine the age of old growth forests. Lichens are everywhere and they're awesome.

Pleopsidium chlorophanum - the lichen that makes all the awesome splashes of chartreuse on cliffs that can be seen from miles away. This species is exceptionally tolerant of cold, dry, windy conditions and is quite common in Antarctica.

Much like lichens, climbers can be found attached to most available rock surfaces, favoring substrates with afternoon shade and short dispersal distances from parking areas.

About 80% of the lichen species in the desert southwest are crustose lichens: lichens that are thin and so tightly anchored to the rock they look like they're painted on. Crustose lichens are actually capable of decomposing the rocks they are attached to, gradually turning stone into soil through both chemical and mechanical weathering.

Caloplaca trachyphylla - the common name for this species is the Desert Firedot Lichen.

Much like the fungal hyphae that anchor lichens to rocks where plants could never survive, strong climber fingers can hold to the rock where it looks like they would never stick. Brent on a slab route at Zen Wall.

Lichens obtain water and mineral nutrients from the atmosphere or runoff through absoprtion. Desert lichens are poikilohydric, this means they can tolerate severe desiccation by suspending most biological activity when there is no water, and then "resurrecting" when water is available. Lichens can absorb 3-35 times their weight in water when it is available and they dry out slowly. Obtaining most water and nutrients from the atmosphere makes lichens particularly sensitive to degraded air quality; the difference in pollution tolerance means that there are different lichens growing in polluted cities than in more pristine areas.

Xanthoria elegans - this lichen is particularly abundant around hunting perches and below rodent latrines because it is tolerant of nitrogenous compounds. I'm going to start keeping my eye out for this one, because I hate touching rat scat.

Some climbers live on a lichen-like starvation diet, but we don't. Pictured here is the lovely Karina holding what turned out to be delicious climbing quesadillas with Jalapeno Cheetos and bean dip. It doesn't get much better than that.

Lichen's ability to gather water and nutrients from the atmosphere isn't their only adaptation to marginal environments, they also produce compounds (more than 600 have already been cataloged) that discourage herbivores and microbes from eating them and plants from growing nearby. These compounds can also be used as pigments, antibiotics, perfumes, and as poisons for poison-tipped arrowheads.

Lecanora garovaglli - a common sandstone lichen. This genus of lichen is part of the group commonly called Viking dye-moss and was originally used to make litmus paper.

Climbers may not provide as many culturally valuable byproducts as lichens, but sometimes they make crags safer by removing dangerous rocks.

Lichens are so hard core, they can live in the vacuum of space! In 2005 the European Space Agency exposed two species of lichens to open space, where they were subject to huge fluctuations in temperature and bombarded with UV light and cosmic radiation for 14.6 days. When the samples were returned to earth, analysis showed that not only did the lichens survive, their ability to photosynthesize was unchanged. That's intense.

Xanthoparmelia coloradoensis - green parmelias like this are very abundant and responsible for greenish look most mountains have.

Climbers too tend to prefer what might be called marginal environments - dry places with enough exposed rock to spend a whole day climbing. Karina killin' it at Pine Valley.

So, there you have it. Lichens are awesome, and so are climbing friends. Like the fungus/algae symbiosis that forms a lichen, climbers are a symbiosis between a climber and belayer. Further, lichens and climbing friends prefer the same marginal environments where rock is plentiful and plants are rare. Finally, climbing friends thrive on climbing opportunities when they are available, but are able to go relatively long periods of time without outdoor climbing (like the winters) living off the memory of good times past. While climbers are not as extreme or ecologically valuable as lichens, they're still good to have in your life.