Mike Henry practices climbing techniques in his driveway: Danny Fulgencio
Do you know the ‘mountain man’?
That’s the nickname bestowed upon neighbor Mike Henry, who spends his free time practicing rock-climbing moves on the homemade climbing wall in his driveway along Monticello.
“People drive or walk by all the time,” Henry says. “Sometimes they’ll slow down or stop to watch me climb.”
Climbing is great exercise, both physically and mentally, Henry says.
“I call it the vertical dance,” he says. “The movement of climbing is beautiful, the technique involved.
“There’s a lot of science to climbing, and you better be completely focused, because you have to process information very quickly. You have to be thinking at least three of four moves ahead, because you can’t get into a place you can’t get out of — it’s mental, physical chess.”
If you ask Henry how long he’s been climbing, he just shrugs and says, “too long.”
Henry started climbing back when climbing was “in its infancy” in the United States, he says, around 25 years ago. “At the time, there might’ve been, in this country, maybe 30 climbers. We all knew each other. We were in this kind of bohemian, really tight community.”
[quote align=”right” color=”#000000″]“I call it the vertical dance. The movement of climbing is beautiful, the technique involved.”[/quote]It was through that community that Henry met his wife, Karen Henry, many years ago. Karen used to climb competitively, especially back when she was Karen Rand.
“She has beautiful form,” Henry says. “She’s a very talented climber — strong. She’s slowed down now, but she still gets out there with me some.”
In 1991, the Henrys opened an indoor climbing wall in Carrollton, called Stoneworks, which was built out of grain silos and was the tallest indoor gym in the world at 112 feet, Henry says. It’s possible it’s still the tallest climbing wall, although it has changed ownership several times and is now called North Texas Outdoor Pursuit Center.
Henry is still good friends with most of the indoor-climbing-wall owners in the area.
“This makes me feel old, but I’ve known most of them since they started climbing,” he says. “A lot of them I helped teach to climb. Now they’re the owners.”
Henry now works as an exercise instructor at SMU, and climbing is a passport to the country. On any given weekend, you’ll find him scaling a cliff face somewhere in the United States From limestone to sandstone to granite — you name it, he’s climbed it.
“Good climbers can climb on any kind of rock,” Henry says.
