Camp 4: Home of the Dirtbag
Words by Noémi Shuey. Photos by Noémi and Dave Shuey.
We stumbled from our van at 3am, sleeping bags and camp chairs in tow. A ranger was walking down the empty road, flashlight aimed right for us. We thought he was there to tell us off for leaving our van in a national park in the middle of the night, for sleeping on the side of a road rather than paying for a legitimate campsite, for skipping showers and living off of ramen noodles and canned chili, for quitting our jobs and traveling the countryside in search of adventure and climbing, and for letting down our society with a complete disregard for its rules and expectations. Turns out he was just killing time on the night shift, looking for a wedding ring someone had lost out a car window. A needle in a haystack. We wished him good luck and made our way to Camp 4.
The ritual of spending the night in a line of sleeping bags is a necessary, yet less-than-legal prerequisite to staying at Camp 4, the ever popular climbers’ camp in Yosemite National Park. You’re not allowed to camp out overnight to get a spot, but you’ll never get one if you don’t. (At one point in our stay, the rangers put up an A-frame sign stating that under no circumstances could you stay overnight to secure a campsite. I walked by at 9 o’clock one evening to see a group of four happy campers posted up next to the sign with chairs, sleeping bags, a table, and a couple bottles of wine, making a loud ruckus and having a grand ol’ time on their sleepover.) It seems that all 36 campsites are full of smelly, happy climbers year round. And if it’s prime-time fall or spring climbing season, you better get there in the wee-hours of the morning. And so we joined this early morning tradition, getting very little sleep and chatting with our fellow campers-to-be. The two English men behind us in line had had the sense to bring a Jet Boil and percolator. We drooled over their coffee while he explained that the percolator is “the only proper way to make a cup of coffee.” We won’t make this rookie mistake again.
You may be wondering why we would go through such trouble to get a campsite when we have a perfectly good camper van at our disposal. Why we would pay to stay in a site with several strangers, sleep on hard backpacking mats in a two person tent, and share one bathroom with over 200 people (more on this later) when our van features a comfortable full size mattress, privacy, protection from the elements, and free (albeit illegitimate) camping. Part of the reason is convenience and security—we no longer had to drive in and out of the park each night or worry about the police knocking on our door at all hours. Another reason is that Camp 4 is simply a unique and awesome experience. Where else do you get to socialize with so many likeminded people every day, meeting climbers from all over the world? Camp 4 is also an integral part of the history of rock climbing, and by staying in the campground you get to be a part of this story.
While we were in Yosemite I began reading Steve Roper’s book, Camp 4, and learning about the campground’s rich history. For those of you who don’t know, Camp 4 has been primarily a climbers’ campground since the 1940s, with such trailblazers as Royal Robbins, Yvon Chouinard, and Tom Frost advancing their climbing careers here. It was fascinating to learn about the history of the rocks I saw every day in the park, the routes I accomplished and dreamed of, and the campground I woke up to each morning. The book’s black and white photos portrayed scruffy climbers who didn't look all that different from the people around me. I could clearly imagine being entertained on rest days by Chuck Pratt juggling on his unicycle, or Chouinard reciting philosophical quotes. The most remarkable difference between then and now was that Roper could spend weeks at a time during off-seasons as the only inhabitant of the campground. But when Roper describes their consuming obsession with rock climbing, competitive natures, pride in their tattered clothes, and disdain for tourists, I could just as well be reading about the present day. After 70 years, not all that much has changed, except now we have to pay to stay here, there are more foreigners than Americans, and there are never less than 216 people who call the campground home on any given day.
This small multicultural city is truly a spectacle to behold. From our corner campsite, we could look out over the whole campground, taking in the many colors, shapes and sizes of tents across the 36 sites. I liked that most people used small backpacking tents, rather than the tent mansions or motorhomes that generally occupy America’s campgrounds. Climbers shuffle around sleepily in the mornings, making eggs and oatmeal, and poring over guidebooks to decide what adventures the day might hold. Others lounge in hammocks or practice their skills on slacklines, enjoying a well deserved rest day. Hollers of excitement and determination from the surrounding boulders will echo throughout the campground at any point in the day. Come darkness, the campfires ignite and the musical instruments come out to play. Walking through the campground, one hears a medley of guitars, flutes, harmonicas, mandolins, and singing in various languages, all harmonizing separately and yet somehow creating a cohesive soundtrack for Camp 4.
Travelers from all over the world come to Yosemite to experience this forested oasis. In our campsite alone we hosted Columbians, Canadians, French, English, Israeli, and even a handful of Americans. While campers may vary in nationalities, we all share a common language: climbing. People come and go every day, and yet somehow the population never seems to change. The campground is always full of shaggy haired climbers with bright puffy jackets and dirty pants, talking in any given language about climbing. And they are all equally happy-beyond-belief to be realizing a dream they’ve had for God knows how long.
The people who stay here are also generally really good climbers. When I told one of our neighbors that we had climbed that day at Swan Slabs, he said he had never heard of it. Even though he had been to Yosemite countless times, and it’s only a ten minute walk from Camp 4. Being an easier climbing area, it was not even a blip on his radar. Most people also climbed every day, rarely taking rest days, especially if they were only there for a short period of time. (I, on the other hand, got quite comfortable with the one day on, one day off schedule, with some hiking in between.) Some climbers were quite full of themselves, obviously shutting down and acting completely uninterested when they learned that you were doing only moderately difficult routes. However, most were incredibly nice and supportive, no matter what their skill level, and provided helpful tips and insiders’ information on the routes they had done many years ago.
In contrast to life in Camp 4, it’s hard not to view everyone else in the park as a tourist. Of course we’re all tourists, none of us live here (as much as we’d love to.) Yet it’s true that we experience the park differently, and have very different priorities. It’s also hard to ignore this segregation when the tour buses that drive past camp announce “And on your right, you’ll see…the climbers!” Climbers have become a spectacle in Yosemite, to be oooed and ahhed at by onlookers. Yet we are all here for the same reason: to enjoy the splendor and breathtaking beauty of this incredible national park, however different our approach may be.
One big difference between Camp 4 and the other Yosemite campgrounds: the bathrooms! Other campgrounds share one bathroom for a handful of sites, with several spread out across the campground. Camp 4 has one bathroom for all 36 sites. It gets cleaned and stocked once a day, and I don’t think the rangers try all that hard to clean it well. The climbers pay less for a camp site and are less picky, and therefore also less likely to complain. The floors are usually filthy and the sinks are littered with dead gnats. Us frugal climbers are also more inclined to skip the showers at Curry Village and save our $10 for beer and cookies, which results in people bathing in the sinks, and dirty water flung all over the floors. At any other campground, I don’t think people would put up with it. But somehow at Camp 4, it works well enough, and people get used to the situation and don’t complain (too much.)
Dave and I often wondered if being a ranger at Camp 4 was a privilege or a punishment, compared to the other campgrounds. At first I thought they must love their location, getting to interact with interesting and active people from all over the world. Then I heard one ranger’s sigh when she informed a Spanish climber that peak season had ended September 15, and he responded with alarm, “It’s September already?!” “These people have no idea what day it is,” she told me, sounding a bit tired and sad. I suppose it goes both ways: they have to deal with irresponsible dirtbags who don’t know what month it is, but they can also probably appreciate the climbers’ passion for Yosemite and love of the outdoors.
Personally, I greatly enjoyed meeting traveling wanderers with unstable living situations similar to my own. Most people don’t understand the drive to quit your job, sell your possessions, and spend what little money you have traveling around like a homeless person in a camper van. Yet at Camp 4, when you ask someone where they were from—a generally straightforward question—you often receive “Ummmm…” before a convoluted description of where they grew up, where they had traveled after that, what they are doing now, and where they think they might go. This is not an easy question for someone who’s agenda is up in the air and has been traveling for several months.
I also loved the simplicity of life in Camp 4, and Yosemite as a whole. In our 30 days at the campground, we moved our van only a handful of times. We rode bikes to get around town and to the grocery store, and took our small motorcycle to go climbing. We generally slept late in the morning, had a lazy breakfast and a couple cups of coffee, before setting out to a crag to climb until dark. Driving home at night on the motorcycle, we saw the flickering lights of headlamps sprinkled across El Capitan, like stars on a black sky. We cooked our meals using inexpensive ingredients from the grocery store. We took rest days lounging around camp and reading books, and chatted with other climbers about the routes we aspired to accomplish. When it rained, we sought shelter in the van and whiled away the hours playing Super Mario World. We watched the sun set on the Sentinel each night, and after dinner we curled up in our backpacking tent, and repeated it all the next day. It is a soothing, slow, mellow rhythm that envelops Camp 4, and everyone is on the same page.
In the five weeks we spent in Yosemite, Dave and I ticked off most of the easy to moderate routes in the park, and look forward to tackling the slightly more difficult routes next fall. We also did a fair amount of hiking, and even a fifty mile backpacking trip to Tuolumne Meadows. If we could stay in this campground indefinitely like Steve Roper and his pals did, we would probably never leave. We’d get jobs in the cafeteria and book store, making just enough money to get by and spend all of our free time on the rocks. We’d become bums and disappointments by most people’s standards, yet we’d be living like kings. But the times have changed, and we shall have to take our home elsewhere, for now. Perhaps we will make our maximum 30 days in Camp 4 an annual tradition.
