Handing Over The Sharpend

When Daniel Duane Was a Kid, His Father Taught Him How to Climb in Yosemite Two Decades Later, When His Teenage Daughter Wanted a Valley Education of Her Own, He Realized That the Old Beta No Longer Applied

THE FIRST TIME I TOOK MY DAUGHTER CLIMBING IN YOSEMITE, I THOUGHT I KNEW WHAT I WANTED TO TEACHER. My own dad taught me to climb in the valley 28 years earlier, and climbing was pretty much all I thought about between the ages of 19 and 24. I wasn’t bad, either—not remotely elite, but respectable. And sure, I quit for a couple of decades, got married and had two kids and put on 20 pounds, but those pounds were half muscle, and a guy doesn’t forget the skills he learned in his formative years. So when Hannah, my eldest, turned 12 in 2015, joined a local San Francisco climbing team, and pressured me to take her to Yosemite, I figured my 47-year-old body would slip back into my 24-year-old self like into a faded pair of Levi’s and start my kid down the road to Yosemite happiness.