The aesthetics of line

the west face of Battleship Mountain

What is it that makes certain lines worth so much work? Whether in stone or in snow, certain lines seem so clean, so aesthetic, that some of us are called compulsively to struggle for them, as if the purity of the line is worth our sacrifice of toil and pain and danger. 

Skinning up the Battleship Mountain bowl in the late afternoon at the end of a long day of ski touring, forcing an exhausting pace to beat the shadows creeping across the bowl, I look back gasping for breath and see the straight, slender line of our skin track slicing cleanly through the pristine snow. My chest is heaving in the thin air and my thighs burn, but the simple line of our track evokes the perfect splitter cracks on Windgate sandstone that we struggled so hard to climb last week in the sunny desert. Now, deep in the snow-locked wilderness of the San Juan mountains, I feel a similar buoyancy lift my spirit and spur me to turn once again upward.

I slide one more foot forward to follow Tucker, who breaks trail into the immaculate white above with dogged tenacity. My legs and lungs scream for rest but the sun is fading quickly towards the western crags and every foot up gains another glorious foot down; I let my eyes focus and drift on the white glare above and let my discomfort dissolve in the silence, my only thoughts willing my legs forward. 

At the last gnarled tree in the bowl we stop and breathe. On one side lies a wind-etched cornice, its sinuous curve and the promised leap off it tempting our young brazen minds, but the landing is in a wind-loaded lee slope; too dangerous to ski today, it will remain another piece of wilderness we can only look at in admiration. 

Dangerous slopes now encroach from both sides, but a slender rib offers safe passage for another few hundred feet. We could ski from here; the shadows creep quickly toward us and we’ve already earned a 1500 ft run of completely untracked open slope, but this rib is enchanting. We grin, knowing the turns up there will be immaculate.

“Ten minutes more, man.  If we crank it out.”

We glance at the approaching shade, the sun-drenched rib above. No discussion is necessary.

Cutting switchbacks up the steep rib I can feel the exposure increasing and can see the sun out of the corner of my eye dropping into the teeth of the next ridge. I contract my stomach on each step to aid my weary thighs; each kick-turn is a feat of balance. I can’t help but wondering at the silliness of our endeavor; the altitude we gain with each arduous switchback will add a mere second to our descent. At what point is it no longer worth it? These questions don’t help the climbing, and I focus on the shimmering snow. As the earth falls away beneath us with each step and each breath, the sensation is that of ascending into a realm of pure light.

At the last inflection before the rib curves upward into the wind-scoured crest of the bowl we stop and breathe. Craggy peaks tower in every direction, wind-scourged plumes of snow catch fire in the dying sunlight. The shadows have engulfed the Battleship bowl and leave only a slim line of sunlit snow, directly below us.

High amongst this sea of mountains and gaping valleys, we perform the rituals of descent in contented silence: removing skins, tightening buckles, closing zippers, donning hats. After more than an hour of toil, we’ve earned this line. One more look around to take in the panorama of peaks etching the deepening sky, and we drop in. The world becomes silent; all we know is rhythm.