Carrots and Peanut Butter: All Around the Watchtower

Bugaboos, British Columbia, August 2013

It started like any other excursion of Colorado climbers at large in the big, wet Canadian wilderness: a custom playlist; a car that slowly devolves from shrewd organization to an entropic litter of chip bags, wrappers, and crumpled cans; a long, sweaty approach with massive packs; and a supply of stoke much sunnier than the weather forecast. Despite all objective hazards, Rowan Hill and I stumbled over the Pidgeon-Howser col with our gratuitous loads in the midst of a thunderstorm and picked our way across the glaciers to the East Creek camp with a weeks' worth of food, a triple rack, and most of the gear we left Colorado with (minus a pair of gloves and some pack webbing, stolen by voracious rodents the night we bivvied in the forest). We felt seasoned from our previous climbing on Snowpatch spire, psyched after a weekend of cranking on (mostly) dry limestone in Canmore, and we’d arrived just in time for a two-day weather window to take our best shot at our primary objective: All Along the Watchtower, VI 5.11 C2.

I try to refrain from obsession. I call it dreaming, or inspiration, but my best friends know it's a front: I've wanted this line for years. In 2011 I cowered under a tent in Applebee camp with Noah Gostout and Erik Rieger as thunderclaps detonated overhead and the Howser Towers seemed some faraway Mount Olympus, only visited by herculean efforts of steely-eyed hardmen. In 2012 I climbed harder and further up the large walls of the American west, pushing outside the comfort zone with each climb until the dizzying void below and the difficult terrain still above at the fall of dusk began to become...acceptable? Normal? Like so many climbers have done, I was learning to relax into the objective hazards inherent in committing climbing and embrace the wild journey of expanding potential.

The Black Canyon of the Gunnison provided the perfect learning environment; the first time it seemed a miracle just to regain the canyon rim from the valley floor, but each successful “escape” led to a longer or harder line. Then I drove west last September to pay homage to the pioneers of our art and submit myself to a proper apprenticeship in Yosemite. My last week in the Valley I free climbed Astroman and ascended the Big Stone in one long, tiring day and suddenly the vertical world blossomed in possibility.

Success on the walls of Yosemite did not leave me satiated, but kindled my hunger for longer, bigger, harder, with the elusive goal of the Watchtower floating above all dreams and delusions, spurring me to dive deeper into the unknown. On December 1 Tucker and I woke before dawn on the rim of the Black Canyon in a completely vacant campsite, hiked through snow to the Cruise Gulley, and roped up beneath Jimmy Dunn’s tour-de-force Stoned Oven (V 5.11+). 16 hours later and minus our #5 Camalot I clawed through the “womb fight” and dragged myself over the canyon rim. We'd climbed in full darkness connecting crumbling, intermittent crack systems for over four hours, and at one dismal off-route hanging belay I'd committed to selling my rack and taking up running or biking or anything sane and safe as my main hobby. Still, in the cold night we stood alone at the top of a chasm of infinite darkness and knew what hardships lay below us and knew it was a good day.

The plans for an expedition to the Bugaboos hatched in the winter of 2013. I kept the guidebook on my desk, bookmarked to the photo of North Howser Tower. After ten-hour days crawling under floors and running wire in 12° houses it was tempting to collapse on the couch after work, but the image of the Watchtower floated in the periphery of my consciousness and I knew I would need increased stamina and new strength when the time came; I learned to nordic ski and puffed out laps by headlamp after work, then went bouldering at the gym. Once spring came Rowan and I worked our wilderness therapy gigs and spent our off-shifts bouldering and cranking on power-endurance testpieces at the local crags. The dream of the Watchtower hovered like an angel or a spectre in the shadows of each day; I carried rock-rings in the field, and fatigued from long days working with defiant youth, I resisted the temptation to nap and spent my precious break time running and doing finger-hang workouts, trusting that each modicum of strength I gained would come in clutch on gameday. On quiet afternoons in Durango I'd hike up alone to the Watch Crystal with a rope and mini-traxion and try to maximize the vertical I could get in 2 hours, never resting except for rappelling back down for another pitch.

Gameday. Our preparation was perfect; the day before we'd scoped the approach and kicked steps in the short snowfields so we wouldn't need to stop to don crampons. We woke at 2AM, huffed through the approach in an hour, nailed the rappels, and roped up beneath 2,500 feet of granite at first light. We were fit, ready, and psyched...and then it all began to unravel. We'd been heard vague rumors of “route-finding difficulties” on the first half of the route—I have always prided myself in the ability to choose the right path, in a forest or up a rock wall, but that day I met my match. The initial apron of the North Howser Tower looks from a distance to be a low-angle ramp that a confident party could simul-climb in 2 hours; it turns out to be a system of slick slabs connected by corners that hold intermittent seams, not splitter cracks.

Twice we climbed a full 60m in the wrong direction and rappelled back to our last point of “probably on-route,” a demoralizing experience. Rowan rose to the occasion and led up some frightening terrain through sparse protection, but each time we arrived at a position where neither of us was willing to proceed; the terrain above was difficult, unprotected slab. Even Hayden Kennedy reported dangerous off-route slab climbing; we should have taken a hint. We lost a precious hours of daylight attempting various options and returning to the same position. Eventually it was 3 PM and we were still staring at the same convoluted face, with the upper headwall, the headwall that had resided in my dreams for two years, floated in the upper distance like a castle in the air.

It was a hard call to make. Bailing off the face of the North Howser is a major proposition: reversing the entrance rappels is not an option, so returning to camp requires a complete circumnavigation of the Howser massif. 3PM, menacing clouds gathering despite the optimistic forecast, and still no path upward that wasn't a severe risk. Our eyes met. We made the call and began coiling the ropes. Back on the glacier, the sky opened up in a cold, hard rain, as if to confirm our decision, but it was little consolation. We were not sure of the distance or exact path of the route around the Howsers, but we'd both seen the photo, right? We knew it was a long way involving a steep gulley and a pass. Which gulley? Would we be able to see the pass? Would it be guarded by a vertical ‘shrund? The answers to these questions lay shrouded in the dark mist coalescing around the mountain. Standing in the rain exhausted at the base of one of the tallest walls in North America, I groped for any shred of hope that we could walk right back to camp, but it was just one of those situations where there is one reality, and the only path forward is to accept it. We shouldered soggy packs and hiked out into the wilderness.

It always amazes me what human legs can do if you keep putting one in front of the other. I don't remember all the details of our long, circuitous bail, but I do remember some things I learned, like how a Cliff bar goes a LONG way if it's all you've got, and how climbing 1500 ft of steep snow is easier than the same amount of scree, and how it's best to put your hood up while rappelling over a bergshrund, and how to laugh while squatting in “lightning drill” on an ice bridge between two crevasses. For the third time, we automatically crouched and set down our axes after an electric flash illuminated the cloud, and we couldn't help bursting out in grins at the absurdity of our situation.

“Dude, isn’t it…like…a little past the point if we’ve already seen the flash?”

“Yeah, I reckon so. But it’s good style, right?”

Stumbling across the Vowell glacier in a white-out, weaving our path through crevasses while thunder resonated in our chests and lightning pummeled the summit of the North Howser, we couldn't help but wonder at the twisted web of circumstances that put us here, squatting on the glacier with the ice flashing luminescent with each thunderclap, rather than huddling in some unknown alcove on the peak above. Is there really fortune and misforture, in an absolute sense? Or do we simply keep writing our story forward, with each decision in each moment?

The storm passed and we were rewarded with a sweeping view of our final miles of glacier glowing soft pink in the sun's last rays. Relieved, we could see a path through the twisted convolutions of ice and realized that the day’s technical difficulties were over; all that remained was the comforting rhythm of exhausted walking. Our wet clothing chilled in the cooling air but the incessant plodding kept us warm, and under cold bright stars we scrambled over the Pidgeon-Howser col and glissaded beneath the South Howser on burning thighs that shook like jelly. At last we stood outside our tent, soaked and steaming in the deepening night, and high-fived with big grins. We didn’t succeed in climbing the Watchtower, we were thwarted by frustration and dead-ends, but at least we showed up ready, and we got to explore miles of wild terrain and feel thunder rumble across the ice and stand in the wilderness with a good friend watching the vast expanse of the Selkirk Range fade into velvet twilight.