For the love of frozen waterfalls

Climbing frozen waterfalls is a ridiculous thing to do. They're cold, they break sometimes, there are always falling objects. You're covered in spikes. You're rarely comfortable. At some level you know that things could go really wrong.

But man, aren't they cool?

There is nothing like the fractal chaos of ice to remind me of how alien our presence can be in some landscapes. Here the climber is a bizarre visitor in an even more bizarre land.

Too often we try to make sense of our world. As a student of science, it seems this is all we do. Sometimes it's best to behold these wild things that don't make sense, and just accept them. For the wise, this is enough. For some of us, we need to feel it for ourselves.

[photo David Fay]

The Mammal in the Mirror

“Never pass up an opportunity to shut the hell up”

I don’t have to squint to read the bumper sticker; it’s right there in front of me and I know exactly what it says. I know, in fact, precisely what it means for me, and that by some cosmic logic I pulled off the highway to pee five minutes ago exactly so I would get back on behind this car and read these words that I’ve been thinking right in front of my eyes. The invitation is right there. Can I embrace it? I set the cruise control to 65 and watched the patchwork valley of hayfields and pump jacks drift by, letting my thoughts slowly subside to nothing.

 

Like all mammals, there is war going on inside my head: two instincts, old as life itself, pull in opposite directions. Self-preservation, the watchdog of the individual life, instructs me to be cautious and scrutinize all potential risk. It tells me to eat now while I can, and hoard food for later. But a herd of self-centered individuals would fester and decay, confined to its immediate surroundings and food supply, and never discover the ample bounty beyond the next ridge. This competing instinct—to explore, take risks, and act spontaneously on intuition—has landed many a creature in harm’s way, broken, lost, or worse, but the discoveries and exploits help the community survive. This conflict between comfort-seeking and risk-seeking behaviors has been documented in birds, mammals, and human toddlers. As Homo Sapiens grows to adulthood, the most advanced and subtle logic system in the known universe learns to choose between these urges. Sometimes.

Of course, I’m not a squirrel or an antelope or a hunter-gatherer in the wilderness; by day I do gymnastics with linear algebra at a computer and in the evenings I do silly things to satisfy physical urges, like ride a bicycle around in circles or lift iron disks off the floor or climb up rocks the hard way so I can walk down the other side. I generally do not worry about my survival. I have never been predated upon, never endured famine, never weathered a storm without some kind of shelter. I am, generally, safe.

I am, however modern, still a mammal. Despite my swollen frontal cortex and its powerful capacities to organize and reason, ancient instincts pull with an irresistible tug. I squander resources on fruitless explorations, I eat far too little walking far too long just to see the other side of a mountain range. Sometimes I climb steep rocks without a rope, or use one where it wouldn’t matter. I also eat and drink too much, hoard protein bars and noodle packets, sleep when I have work to do, and avoid danger like the plague.

I am a whirlwind of contrasts, a walking paradox. I pretend to control this animal with 27 years of reasoning. I forget that the animal is 2.7 billion years old. 1:100,000,000; how’s that for a ratio. I am a rider atop a surfboard, struggling to choose the direction I paddle, unaware in my limited reference frame of the deeper currents that move me.

I am a reasonably smart person. I got into graduate school to study a field with a name most people haven’t heard of. I can do magic tricks with pages of numbers, draw order out of chaos, water from the rock. Sometimes I’m even smart enough to recognize my own powerlessness. But not that often.

I started climbing rocks because it felt good. At some point I tried climbing rocks that seemed too hard and it felt amazing and empowering. I climbed rocks for recognition, which felt pleasing, and faded. I climbed them to prove something to myself, which led to exciting consequences and a few badly sprained ankles and mostly a waste of time. Sometimes I climbed them because I felt the sun streaming down from heaven and gravity evaporate on the wind, and I felt connected to everything. The intensity of this connection fades, but once attained, I never lose it.

These days, I’ve learned not to try to create the sublime moments. After seven years of dedication, I’m still pretty bad at forcing them. Sometimes I climb rocks to share an experience with friends, and that is deeply satisfying. Mostly, these days, I’m more aware of my own powerlessness paddling on the deep currents, and by climbing rocks I get a glimpse of my real self, like catching a glace of my reflection on the calm surface of a lake as the wind ripples recede for a moment. For many of us, these breaks in the wind are the closest we get to self-knowledge.

Most days I let the currents of instinct take me where they will. The stakes are low enough, why strive so hard to choose? Sometimes self-preservation wins and I quit thirty minutes into a workout and sit on the couch and watch a Game of Thrones episode and eat a pint of ice cream. And I feel satiated, in that moment. Sometimes the exploratory, risk-taking urges win and I leave the snacks alone and bike through the sunset into the dusk without a plan, or do extra sets on an interval workout, or break ground in the garden with a pick axe, or leave the computer alone and write a letter to my grandmother with a pen. Sometimes I choose which path to take. But not often.

How much power does my logical brain actually have over my emotional, instinctual self? Every time I climb, my reflection in the vertical mirror forces me to deal with this question. How many times do I find that instead of trying to climb up the rock, I’m actually trying not to fall? No wonder the climb seems so hard. No wonder I fall.

When I think about my best climbs, they’re always the times when I was just an animal moving up stone. I focused my attention on holds, movement, and solutions. Send or sail, doesn’t matter—it’s the pure headspace that makes it memorable. On the best pitches I’m letting my intrepid, exploratory self do what it knows what to do—the “me” upstairs is just along for the ride. To enjoy. Perhaps to share the story with another mind, later.

 

The road turns to gravel at the Rifle Mountain Fish Hatchery and I ease my car up a narrowing canyon of limestone cliffs. I park under the shade of a cottonwood grove and walk up towards the crag to meet dear friends. The first saunters up in purple tights like a court jester, embraces me in a warm hug. The second emerges out of the forest from a nap, also clad in silly clothes. We walk up beneath the steep walls, tie into a rope, and try hard for no purpose other than the trying itself.

At a rest stance I scan the cliff above for holds. I try to read the sequence, and all I can tell is that it appears impossible. My grip is fatiguing. While searching for footholds I notice the bolt below me, and the self-preservation urge tugs with force. “You could just rest on that bolt,” it seems to say. “It’s safe.” The voice is so enticing. Of course it’s safe. This is why we practice hardship—this is why we look in the mirror—to gain the strength to resist that voice. To earn the ability to choose. This is, I believe, what they call consciousness.

I am still weak, but I have trained. I look up from the bolt to the wall above. The unknown. Nothing is certain, not even how I will use the first hold. The siren song of comfort-seeking instinct drags me downward. Soon I will be too heavy to climb. I remember my training, and I remember the bumper sticker. This, clearly, is an opportunity be silent for once. I focus on the edge above and my mind quiets, and then I notice something else: I’m curious about that edge, and the next, and how I might manage to reach between them both. Like prodding the embers of last night’s fire to life, I feel the exploration instinct stir deep within. With my attention focused on the sliver of limestone above my face, I shut up and let the curious animal climb up and seek what it wants to find.

Time Dilation: Musings from a season in El Chaltén, Argentine Patagonia

I can't make the southern migration this year, so this goes out to all the monkey who have ventured south to chase big dreams in the world's worst weather...

Time Dilation

There’s a land at the end of the world that sleeps and wakes in its own time. It lies alone in the vastness of the ocean, the only land piercing otherwise unbroken sea. The wind whirls around the Antarctic vortex with the force of a spinning planet and slams into this land with cold indifference, a mere speedbump on its eternal journey around the pole. It is a land of fire and ice, stone and sky, where the stoic icecap feeds torrential rivers into broad sparkling lakes that spread out into the endless brown of the pampas, and it all quivers and breathes beneath the incessant wind.

There’s a town in this land at the end of the world where wanderers and athletes and dreamers collect every austral summer to sit at the base of the mountains and wait for their chance to venture upward. They come from every continent, represent every type of lifestyle and profession, and they arrive laden with bulging duffels and potent dreams. They bring the newest ropes and mountain boots and alloy crampons, they bring carbohydrate goo and freeze-dried meals and US dollars and empty memory sticks for their cameras and hope, hope, hope.

People bring their stories. Some leave whole narratives at home, some have no home except the pages they are continually scripting. They all come to this town at the land at the end of the world to write new chapters to their stories. They come to observe, to taste, to experience…but once they stay long enough they realize that regardless of the success or failure of their personal efforts, they have become characters in the story of this place.

Some came and suffered and returned to their homes. Some saw their dreams crushed and left in frustration, never to return. Some fell in love and set a new course for their lives so they could come back. Some bought houses there, some got famous, some left in leg casts, some left in worse. Some did not return, and their absence haunts us with more questions. Some removed the scars of ugly history and ignited worldwide debate, some forged new history, some pushed beyond their own limits, some suffered cold nights and watched the sun rise more beautiful than they’d ever seen before.

Just as the wind blasts incessantly over the icecap towards the plains only to spin around the planet and come back, people come and go from this land, but their stories keep returning.

Wind

One AM, stagger through the headwind across the lawn into the campground bathroom and the door slams shut behind you. Inside, there’s no escaping it, the old structure is alive with it, the old slats whistle and creak and the roof stutters beneath the gusts, and there’s a man in the stall, squatting on the shitter with a shirt wrapped around his head, smoking inside it. He looks up, the cigarette coal crackles and smoke seeps from the collar below his chin and out his mess of hair, his shoulders begin a shrug and give up the effort. “The wind,” he says, “the wind,” and his eyes stare past you though the wrinkled shirt, into the dark beyond the door that shudders on its hinges.

Morning, the windswept streets lie empty in bright sunlight and droplets of water fall in a light spatter on the cobbled sidewalks; they will fall all day despite the warm sun, borne by the wind from the white miasma of cloud hanging over the mountains. An elderly man takes his morning walk, in leather shoes and well-worn corduroys and a high-collared jacket. He steps with his cane past a sleeping dog, leaning at a hefty angle into the side-long wind, free hand clutching his beret to his head.

Try

Despite the pre-dawn chill we are stripped down to thermal tops while booting up stiff snow towards the col. The path turns to loose talus and our pace slows, and as the gulley tightens the wind increases and forces us to don our shell jackets; we carry on. The terrain steepens and we climb upwards with hands and feet, seeking dry grips amongst smears of slick verglass as the wind harries our bodies. At times the gusts rush down from the col with such force that it’s all we can do to hold our place, clutching the rock and closing our eyes against assailing spindrift.  Thus scrambling in bursts between gusts we gain the col, strap on crampons and start up the steep glacier as the eastern sky begins to lighten. Above the bergshrund the snow glows pink as the sun rises over the broad expanse of the pampas. We swing axes into the crisp neve and front-point upwards, light spreads across the world and in the protection of our chimney we enjoy the illusion, for thirty minutes, that the wind has stopped.

Gaucho

The gaucho draws his long facón blade from its sheath on his belt and carves even slices of steaming meat off the roasting flank. As we hold out a platter he stacks it with slabs of grilled sheep until satisfied with the harvest, then wipes the oily blade in a loaf of bread and sheathes it again, where it will wait until the next asado. He carries the laden tray easily against his paunch and sets it on the table with flourish, sizzling meat glistens in the firelight and the whole barn glows with the aroma of night and laughter: wine, smoke, and warm fat. The gaucho has lived here since 1983, before the government decided that a town should exist, and rough-handled instruments of his trade hang from the barn walls. These days the gringos come in larger numbers, lured by grocery stores and insipid internet and magazine photos, and he still pulls the facón from its sheath to carve meat around a fire.

Calm

How do you descend from a 500 meter spire, moving safely through vertical terrain and objective hazards? Inside, a voice called ego pleads without reason to be out of the danger zone, to be safe on flat ground. In a glance we see this silent plea in each other’s eyes; we don’t dare voice it. In this austere world of rock, wind, and vertical sky, where a single mistake can kill you, when the child inside you yearns for nothing but safety, how do you make it down? With patience. Without ego, without panic. Without fear? A little much to ask for this guy, for us mere mortals. At moments of doubt, staring down unfathomable distances of rough terrain, I feel a swell of terror rising in my chest. But the wave must not break. As alpinists, we make that commitment before we leave the ground. I acknowledge the wave, relax into its motion and let it pass. “If it weren’t for climbing we’d all be surfers,” the sage said. Maybe we still are.

So how do you descend from a 500 meter spire? Calmly, a compilation of small steps, executed with precision. One. Two. Ten Thousand.

Talk

We wait, we hope, we pack and re-pack and eventually un-pack, AGAIN. We cook. We forego cooking to eat what someone else cooked. We go on dessert binges around town, we eat ice cream at Domo Blanco the second time…that day. We stare at the meteogram. We talk. Mostly we talk shit. We make plans, we talk about going bouldering, yeah bouldering! We talk about it and finish our meals and talk and fill a water bottle and talk and run back to the hostel to grab the shoe/chalk bag/speaker system/beer that we forgot and we stand outside the Centro Alpino apartments talking with the residents as two members of our delegation try to track down four of the eight bouldering pads in El Chaltén and in the meantime I need to go find Joel and in the process give a kiss and hello to all the members of Teresa’s family in La Lucinda and might as well say high to Jason and Kevin who are sipping tea at their computers and talk to Neal and Carlos hanging out inside and eventually I get back and we’re still all hanging out talking shit outside Centro Alpino and finally one pad plus one pad plus the promise of two more in half an hour equals enough critical mass to start walking and we FINALLY start walking out of town to go bouldering, talking all the way.

Drifting

7 PM, wandering. I’m hungry but the sun still hangs high enough above the horizon that my body doesn’t see the day winding down. Another day in limbo. I could mend gear, I could read, I could eat empanadas, but the sun says the day is still happening, so I walk the streets of El Chaltén trying to not spend pesos, but with a wad of them in my pocket nonetheless. At La Lucinda, Ben and Joel are poring over a map between sips of tea. The creased paper covered in squiggles hints at the tortured coastline and desolate ranges that make up Patagonia: the topography of chaos. We discuss distances in days, the weight of packrafts and how to chop a bike frame into packable parts, and dream of the adventures that lie within those blotches of primary color. The tea is hot and outside a sign beats upon a wall in the wind.

Jenga

For two hours, every rock we’ve stepped on has moved; I look up-valley and the same interminable scree continues beyond the edge of sight. Contemplating the distance is so demoralizing that I pull my gaze back to my immediate vicinity: the next 20 feet, the next six feet, even the next two feet require thought. Each rock is its own puzzle, with its own angles and texture and its unique position of the infinite game of Jenga we’ve inadvertently stumbled into. Will the rock shift when I weight it? Can I bridge my foot over two rocks together? Will it drop the rock above it onto my ankle? Could I walk back with a bum ankle? With a fractured tibia? Each rock…each motherf*!#ing rock, for two hours, three hours…tiny rock crystals work their way into our socks and my heavily laden pack slowly abrades the skin off my hip bones. We’re playing a game with one rule: don’t topple the blocks. Five hours later we step off the lateral moraine onto the rubble-strewn Torre Glacier, where we can almost walk naturally without scrutinizing our next step. We stop to rest in silence and I fill my canteen from a trickle of cold, pure meltwater. Looking up-valley we can see the Mocho shrouded in snow and imagine base camp nestled at its base, with an empty tent-site sheltered by boulders. “Well, maybe people go the other way around the lake.” “Yeah. Maybe.”

Movement

At the col that morning we’d scoped the route, trying to keep our balance on straddled legs braced against assailing gusts of wind. The terrain looked casual but the conditions…we could see snow on ledges all over the face, and it was hard enough to stand down there. But we came all the way here to the tip of the end of the world, and I have a flight in 3 days, so I took the rack and begin climbing in gloves, hood zipped tight.

Now we’re getting what we came here for, movement in the mountains, under a blue sky and above a jagged world of rock and ice. Handholds lead to sequences, sequences surmount features, features begin connecting into the totality of the mountain and the details cease to matter. We move upwards, reading the braille cyphers of the mountain with our fingers and feet. The mountain presents mixed media: in a windy notch Dave dons rock shoes and weaves between jagged gendarmes; I lead out across a hanging snowfield and sheath my axe on a gravel perch beneath a stone wall dripping with meltwater. High above my gear, I clear snow from a granite gutter and jam a gloved fist in the icy sludge. My approach shoes smear on clean rock running with sparking rivulets of water. This is not terrain one should fall in, but the sunlight and the widening expanse of space buoy us upward; we move through each nuance in rhythm towards the next, more focusing on the flow of the song and letting each note pass in its own time. Alpinism is jazz, an improvisation of formal methods to flow with a constantly changing rhythm; it is the art of dynamic harmony.

Time pulses with the rhythm, stretching across fluid pitches and compressing into finite moments—weighting a tenuous off-finger lock, checking an Alien’s lobes in a flared crack—and expanding again. Like musicians, the more we feel the beat the less we remember ourselves, only immediate facts: I have twenty more meters of rope, I have three cams left, my left shoe is wet. I am hungry, I am cold, I am alive. I sip water from a crevice and stare across to the knife-edge ridge of Cerro Pollone, trying to comprehend the expanse of the icecap beyond.

At the crux things are getting real; the gloves come off and I jam bare skin in rough granite, fighting for purchase, trying to read the sequence above. Time contracts; the details matter again. A widening crack choked with intermittent snow guards overhanging terrain. A chockstone seems to be the key to the puzzle, but it is covered in ice.  In the mountains there is no room for hesitation, we must keep moving; I know what I have to do. I stem up the clean corner armed with the nut tool and press my feet hard against the walls while I hack ice off the chockstone, enough so I can pull on it securely. I stem a foot higher and I can clean snow out of the next jam, then step down to rest. Above, the way is now clear. Three breaths, and execute: the rhythm collapses into total focus. The crux is perfect, just enough features to let me through, nothing more.

Fatigue

The LCD display on my wrist slowly drifts into focus: 3:05. I collapse against a boulder and stare back across the moonlit glacier, waiting for Seth and Neale’s lamps to emerge over the swell of glacial ice. Since our brew stop at 6 PM it was eight rappels down the ramp, a tenuous traverse over soft snow across the bergschrund, and an hour of careful travel on the steep crevassed glacier until it leveled out and we could finally just walk. A long walk, below the hulking mass of Fitz Roy bathed in moonlight and not a calorie left between the three of us. Why did I pack food as if I was climbing some classic in the Black Canyon? Some things I’m still learning the hard way.

The headlamps arrive and we slouch in a windbreak at the col, exhausted. Someone mentions bivying here; of course we’re all thinking about it. But I’m already shivering in my belay parka; our bodies are out of fuel and we have to keep moving to stay warm. We grunt, shoulder packs again, and contemplate the dark opening of the gulley. Can’t relax yet: below lies a thousand-meter drop of rock, snow, and loose talus, and the gulley walls are sporadically covered in a veneer of slick verglass. It’s the last thing in the world I want to do right now, but our food waits at the other end. After a long silence, I step out with one foot, then another. Descending is simple arithmetic: the sum of tiny parts, so small each seems futile on its own, ends up adding up to something tangible. An hour later we stumble into camp as the sun rises above the land at the end of the world, our second sunrise that day. We crumble sausage and cheese into a freeze-dried meal and barely finish it before passing out in out gravel tent site, a long walk still awaiting us before foul weather comes in.

Canción y Vino (song and wine)

Wine and song flow all evening in the small café. The musicians play old gaucho ballads and their voices meld in the warm light as heads nod and feet tap to the galloping rhythms; soon tables and chairs are cleared to the walls and people are dancing, in circles and pairs. I join in as they clap to the chorus. I’m the last gringo in the café, but I have no desire to leave: tonight, this is the heart of El Chaltén. The rhythm swells and bodies twirl and the hand of an Argentine woman pulls me from the wall; we dance through the café, song after song. I don’t know the steps; I fake it with a questionable salsa form I learned in Ecuador years ago. I stumble as the rhythm changes and she floats through the transition, guiding me to the next beat with tinkling laughter. She is beautiful and doesn’t care and I don’t either. These people are all beautiful, they blossom with a blend of heritage and inspiration as they gracefully carve out a living at this margin of rich culture and savage wilderness. In this town at the end of the world, nothing tomorrow is so important that they cannot dance tonight. Another man takes the guitar and sings song after song and everyone knows all the words. The dancers consume the whole floor and Juan and Teresa take turns dancing and opening bottles at the bar.

The night grows late and eventually only a small core of us remain. More instruments emerge and I am invited to play; I squat atop the cajón and feed rhythms to the guitarist, who keeps singing folk songs. People gather around the microphone and sing at the top of their lungs with their eyes closed, mouths gaping in joyful smiles. Someone opens another bottle, someone finds a tambourine, and the music seems to flow forever. Eventually I will stagger back to my hostel watching the sun rise above the pampas, I will pass out for a few hours and gather my bags to travel back across the planet, back to a world of clocks and schedules and my hemorrhaging bank account. But right now the people are singing, the skin of the cajón sits potent beneath my fingertips, and in this town at the end of the world, there is no time but right now.

Much thanks to Seth Adams, Neil Kauffman, Dave Brown, Mike Finkowski, the Troutman, Ben Erdman, la familia at La Lucinda, and others for sharing photos, stories, and the journey. This piece is published alongside fine writing and photos in the Climbing Zine, a grass-roots publication sprouting from the Colorado western slope. Check out climbingzine.com for more goods from amateur writers doing their thing.

Remembering how to believe.

My life is now unmistakably entwined in the rhythms of grad school; work ebbs and flows, and when it flows it’s high tide. The work is engaging, so much so that boredom never really happens anymore…but of course the flip-side of that coin is the lack of quiet spaces. In the fast pace of academic life, if you want stillness you need to create it; it doesn’t just happen. It takes willpower. This is the trade-off, of course, between physical jobs and mental jobs: boredom vs space. As a grad student studying mountain hydrology with geophysics, I think a lot about math and earth systems and I learn to see the world distilled through equations. Structures and patterns emerge out of chaotic complexity before my calculating mind. There is always something more to do, and I am never, ever bored.

In contrast, a couple winters back I was an apprentice electrician. I rose before dawn and drove home at sunset and learned simple tactile skills. I was often bored. And I thought about life a lot, or just generally pondered, or went long hours not even thinking at all. I read good books during my lunch break and thought about them all afternoon, and I knew the stories so intimately I felt their rhythms in my own life. I worked hard, and I loved books, and every weekend was mine to explore red deserts and snowy mountains.

In this new chapter of incessant busyness and cerebral pursuits, getting out to climb in the wild, un-digital world has become more important than ever. I spend so much time inside the world governed by mathematical precision, depending on logical constructs…it can be hard to depend on more organic, un-measurable quantities, like stamina and intuition and touch. It’s strange for me to realize; accustomed to being so rigorously analytical, it can be hard to simply…believe.

Belief is the soul of climbing and adventure. A calculated ascent is only worth the paper it was planned on. An inspired ascent, no matter the outcome…that is what takes us beyond the pitiful constraints of our self and allows us to connect to the larger reality. I’m finding now that the only way to balance the analytical rigor of school is to subvert (or transcend?) my churning analytical brain and get out in situations that appear, to the analysis, to be…simply fucked. This is the moment that you try, in planning, to avoid: a headlamp dies, you don’t have the right size piece, you run out of water, the ice isn’t thick enough…This is where belief starts: the facts predict failure, but the silly monkey decides to succeed anyway, because deep down he knows something: within his oversized brain and primate skeleton resides an overwhelming well-spring of potent, tenacious possibility that we call will-power.

On Saturday I battled up an ice-free granite corner with ice tools and crampons. Did it make any sense? Does smearing on featureless granite with crampons work? Is falling wearing crampons a good idea? None of these! Calculating mind would have promptly bailed…but after a day of hard effort in that spacious arena, I’d succeeded in leaving the analyst behind, and found space for belief again. I believed I could climb the corner, so I did. And for five minutes, the world was sweet, blissful silence. And THAT is freedom.  

Mental shifts in the dark canyon: how perspectives change when we Tague our Time

(contributed by Rowan Hill, partner in silly things and purveyor of fine cheeses)

Most of our thoughts are not based strictly in reality. I work in wilderness therapy with young adults whose minds are constantly sabotaging them. Through this experience I have become more adept at noticing when my own thoughts start to lift off from the grounded 2+2=4 level, to the wild and fantastical realms where climbing a little harder equates to being more loving and more valuable as a person. I was relatively grounded when I set the long term goal that I would some day climb Tague Yer Time in the Black Canyon of the Gunnison. “Some day” meaning in a few years when I was regularly sending 5.12 on gear and had a few more grade V climbs under my belt. It was from that grounded mindscape that things started to twist and evolve into the un-grounded state of expanding possibility, and suddenly Drew Thayer and I had concrete plans to climb the route this year...in two months...I still had never actually sent a 5.12 pitch on gear, and the route had 5 of them, and 5 more that checked in at 5.11...and the gear is really thin, which I also don’t have a ton of experience with. But as I said, this is a mindset not based in reality, a place that creates greatness and kills people who say things like, “dude, dude, check this out” before doing something excessively stupid.

With Drew in Rhode Island and myself in Durango we planned in bits and spurts and began to work out the logistics. We would climb the line in two days, spending the night on the comfy “two boulder bivy.” When the day came my stomach churned with anticipation. We had a lot going for us, we felt strong, we knew that we can climb efficiently when necessary and we were familiar with that section of wall, having climbed both The Flakes and Astrodog together in good style.

We rappelled to the bottom of the canyon, leaving our haul bag with sleeping bags, plenty of water, and even some cinnamon buns waiting for us on the bivy. I took the first lead up a pitch of fun .11 face climbing past 3 bolts and some small gear to the base of a beautiful tips corner. Drew came up to me and jumped right into the meat of it, falling at the crux of the pitch several times and popping two nuts before finding just the right placement to hold him on his next attempt. He battled his way to the top of the pitch and I followed, falling and resting my way up the corner. It was hard, but we were doing it, and the climbing was soooo good. Another short .11 pitch for me and another .12 pitch for Drew, but this time something happened that neither of us had ever done before; we went for the redpoint.

Drew fell at the crux and asked to be lowered. He pulled the rope and tried again...and fell again, and then asked me if I wanted to try. This concept was so new it felt like cheating. We’re allowed to take our time and work the moves? I thought multipitch climbing was all about just getting to the top. I know that Tommy Caldwell works pitches half way up El Cap, but I honestly don’t compare myself to him, ever. I tied into the sharp end and headed up for the tricky looking sequence that had shaken Drew off. I clipped his highest piece and went for it, delicately smearing and palming my way through the thin corner until the crack opened up. The rest of the pitch was fun and secure climbing and soon I was at the anchor. Holy shit, I just sent my first pitch of 5.12 trad on the middle of South Chasm View wall, what a trip. I brought Drew up and using the key palm move he climbed the pitch smoothly without falling. The rest of the climbing up to the bivy was fun and varied. We sat on the big ledge in our underwear and marveled at our success thus far.

The next morning we awoke on the ledge and saw that our friends who were joining us for breakfast were only two rappels away from us. Nick Chambers and Tucker Hancock were going to climb The Flakes that day. We bustled about to get the stove going for some cinnamon buns, which we had already decided will become a staple on future climbing trips. This time it didn’t work out very well, we ended up melting the plastic on the Jetboil stove and were left with warmed dough. Tucker and Nick still appreciated the gesture and moved on with their rappels, leaving us alone again with another full day of hard climbing ahead of us. The first pitch off the ledge was another unlikely looking corner, similar to the two hard pitches the day before. Drew lead it, getting through it with rests in between several tough sections and then braving some runout and very thin face climbing to get to the anchor. We decided that this was the hardest pitch so far. At this point we started regretting that we had forgotten the topo in the car and looked up unsure which of a few potential systems held the most promise. I lead up some face and found a bolt, and kept going, encouraged that this must be the right way, only to come to a corner that didn’t protect and looked hard. I turned around and tried going the other way from the bolt, and sure enough, this system was good and took me to an established anchor, just in time to bring Drew up before it started to rain.

We decided it would be best to continue, so Drew pulled the ladders out of his bag and began to aid the next pitch in rain, hail and thunder. Some small portable speakers helped to keep our spirits high. By the time Drew had finished the pitch it had stopped raining and the rock was relatively dry. I tried to follow it free, but ended up pulling on some gear to get through a damp lichen-encrusted crux. Drew was excited to lead free again now that it had stopped raining, so I gave him the next pitch, which involved some crack switches, nut-tool gardening, and classic runout mank that he braved beautifully up to the base of the crux.

The crux of the whole route is an overhanging seam with a few small fingerlocks and I couldn’t even get off the ledge initially. I decided to aid the short crack and work it on toprope. Thus I embarked on my first bit of aid climbing. I loved it, as a means to an end, which was working what amounted to a boulder problem 1500 feet over the Gunnison River. I worked the moves on toprope and figured out a sequence that seemed possible. Drew got on too and refined the sequence a bit. We switched back and I climbed the pitch without falling on toprope and then so did Drew. We marveled at how things were working out.  We had just had a proper session, with music and everything, working out some awesome moves in the middle of the most intimidating playground in the state.

Suddenly this place infamous for forcing people to find out what they are made of felt friendly; we had found a climb that was just plain fun…but it wasn’t quite over yet. It started to rain again and the sun left us. Grabbing onto loose, wet blocks in the dark, using hands that threatened to go on strike, I remembered that it was still the Black after all. Tired and scared I clawed myself to the rim and onto horizontal terrain. Drew cruised up to me, unfazed by the wet night; the ever-intrepid rascal of adventure gave me a big hug and I realized how grateful I was for our friendship. By now it was 10 pm and we were ravenous. This time, with a cast iron skillet in the car, we could make the rest of our cinnamon buns in the fashion they deserved. We both agreed they were the best cinnamon buns we had ever tasted, and that Tague Yer Time was one of the best, and definitely the hardest, climbs we had ever done...Maybe we can come back and free it at some point in the distant future…

-Rowan Hill a.k.a "the Rogue" is one of my best buddies and steadfast climbing partners. He's always been strong as a Swiss hay-baler, but was more of a pebble wrestler when we met. When I convinced him to climb The Flakes (V 5.10+ X) with me as his first grade V climb ever and we topped out 2000 ft of arduous cracks before dark, I knew he had grit too. I try to keep him around because he always shows me better beta, he usually has quality aged cheese on his person, and he gives the best hugs in the four corners region. For a hairy swissman.

Turns out you need the "frying pan attachment". Result: hole in glove, melted stove, warm dough.

It's nice when friends drop in for breakfast halfway up a 2000 ft wall

Nick and Tucker preparing to drop back into the chasm

Cinnamon rolls done right

Dreaming, Waking, and Remembering what Matters

The Dream

In May 2012 I leaned against the rail of the overlook on the North Chasm View Wall on a balmy afternoon, staring into the dizzying expanse of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison. The view from the overlook is dramatic enough to inspire vertigo in the stoutest of hearts; overhanging rock drops away from sight and the wall comes back into view some thousand feet below, then continues near-vertically to the jumbled chaos of boulders and scree bisected by the raging Gunnison River.

I had just climbed The Cruise with two new friends, and we had found the classic route pretty cruiser, topping out casually in the early afternoon. Staring into the wild gulf of air carved by the river over eons, I felt a mixture of pride and humility tinged with the dark shades of fear. Pride because we’d rallied a grade four route up a steep wall in good time and generally enjoyed ourselves; humility because I knew The Cruise didn’t even ascend the tallest part of the North Chasm View Wall; and fear of unknown possibilities: there were routes directly beneath us of an entirely different character, routes that I knew would require much more than I could give. I couldn’t know it then, but I would venture closer to the edge of that unknown horizon, and seven months later the airy steeps of Stoned Oven would force me to take a harder look at myself than I’d bargained for.

We looked across to the attractive South Chasm View Wall and I could make out the salient features of Astrodog, which I’d climbed the year before. (Who climbs Astrodog as their first Black Canyon route? Coming out of college, we were so full of hubris.) To our surprise, we watched a climber move right from the two-boulder bivy—away from the obvious crack systems of Astrodog—and begin ascending a seemingly blank face. Where was that guy even going? We tried to see his line, but couldn’t make out any features. Someone had binoculars and we passed them around, trying to spot a crack system, but from that distance all we could see was a man moving upward into a shield of blank, smooth granite. I imagined we were witnessing some ridiculous aid ascent, a steely-eyed fiend hooking his way up intermittent nubbins.

Some research revealed the existence of a route up that clean face, a hard FREE route in fact called Tague Yer Time, which involves sustained 5.12 climbing up thin seams. I poured over the description on Mountain Project and remembered the chilling awe I felt watching that climber across the canyon. It was a ludicrous quantum leap beyond my abilities, but a seed had been planted; when I day-dreamed about the canyon, the name of the route drifted around the edges of my thoughts like quivering pine needles at the periphery of vision. I heard the whisper but focused on the world in front of me: life and love and trying to redpoint 5.12 on bolts.

Awakening

Upon returning to the Colorado western slope this spring, I was beyond excited to join my good friend and fellow adventurer Rowan Hill in driving over Red Mountain pass through gorgeous mountains toward the Black Canyon of the Gunnison. During the midst of a New England March, while I was worn down by differential equations, incessant rain, and no way to scratch my itch for climbing rock, Rowan sent me a few topos of routes in the Black; among them was Tague Yer Time. Of course I knew about the route and had drooled over the description on Mountain Project, but I had calmly set that book on the upper shelf of “in a few years.” After all, the Donahue-Ogden masterpiece sports 5 pitches with 5.12 climbing, two of them sustained tips-crack dihedrals. I hadn’t yet redpointed the .11+ routes I’d attempted in the canyon, so solid 5.12? Out of the question.

I’m a collector of maps and guidebooks. I think there’s something to be said for holding a topo in your hands. If you want to summit a peak, buy the map and hang it on your wall; if your goal is a climb, pin photos above your bed and pin the topo in the kitchen. There is magic unleashed when we give our dreams more substance by pushing them into the tangible world as intentions.

That topo, which represented the idea of climbing a route as hard as Tague yer Time, spearheaded a new motivation to train. I did my coursework efficiently so I could hit the climbing gym three times every week; I started climbing routes twice without rest to build endurance; I worked four-by-fours on the tweaky boulder problems until my fingertips stung. In bad weather I would enter the Lysol-spandex-top-40 aura of the university gym and submit myself to punishing workouts with weights and a ludicrous device called the elliptical trainer, with no other rationale than believing the ability to keep pushing while my lungs burned and my body wanted to collapse would be a good card to have in my back pocket. An inspiring British climber Dave Macleod says you have to be willing to train the capacity to try hard.  He climbs E11, so I figure his advice is worth something.

Awake

We trained hard, we made our preparations, and on a warm morning in May I tossed ropes from the Astro-Slog rappel anchor and began rapping into the canyon with a haul-bag dangling from my waist, something I never really envisioned doing. We were amped to spend two days giving our best effort on a beautiful route in the wild canyon, and even more psyched to be joined by our buddies Nick and Tucker, who planned to drop in for breakfast the next morning on their way down to climb The Flakes. After a day of hard, fun climbing we settled into our spacious ledge bivy and watched the Chasm View Wall turn golden in the sunset. We woke to a glorious morning, stretched on our mid-cliff perch, and served up coffee and cinnamon rolls (a bit soggy, unfortunately, due to technical stove failure) just in time for Tucker and Nick to drop in for a bite. As he’d promised, Tucker reached inside his pack and pulled out a ripe juicy grapefruit. Luxury in the middle of Colorado’s scariest canyon! We were stoked beyond belief, and our energy carried me straight into a punishing encounter with the crux corner pitch, which involved much desperate groping and multiple whips on RPs.

I could reminisce about how rad it was, how awesome it was to spend such a focused time in sync with a good friend, how it was to transcend my personal limits in such an inspiring arena. And although we didn’t send the crux pitches, it was transcendent for us. We each lead hard pitches at our limit, and for the first time ever I lowered off, pulled the rope, and tied in for a redpoint burn in the middle of a wall.  On the sustained crux corner, stemming at my limit long enough to precisely place a tiny micro-nut and then launching into another 5.12 boulder problem forced me to dig deep into my mental and physical reserves and represented the culmination of 5 years of dedication to the art of climbing. But all that was just fun and games, what really mattered was late that night, staring down into the darkness of the canyon searching for lights, then waking the next morning at dawn to frost on my pillow and thinking immediately of those guys. We threw our sleeping kit into the car and raced off to the rim, ready to rap down and fix lines, ready to do anything to find our friends. The boys hadn’t made it up that evening, and The Flakes is a long, serious route, and it was a cold night.

Pulling my sore body over the canyon rim has been a cathartic experience on every climb I’ve completed in the Black, but despite all the terror and doubt I’ve felt on my own journeys, the relief was far greater as we ran through the bushes and saw our friends topping out just after dawn. Their faces were flat and their eyes set in the thousand-yard stare, the sign of true and utter exhaustion. Slowed by the afternoon rain, they’d done what they had to do, moving slowly and safely through many of the route’s difficulties in total darkness. It wasn’t pretty, but sometimes success isn’t. And in the Black, success is often simply grabbing the soil on the rim and belly flopping on sweet flat ground.

It’s so good to remember what really matters: the people we share the journey with. Send or dangle, crush or epic, style only matters to a limited extent. We can set external standards to measure our exploits by, but what is it that actually endures in our hearts? Soon all memory of the climb will wax to a rosy hue with the inexhaustible march of time; it is the people we share our stories with who will always matter the most.

Breakfast on the Two Boulder Bivy

Dude! Cinnamon Rolls!

Thunder rolls, rain falls down, time to pull out the ladders and push the rope higher the old-fashioned way.

So tired we had to wake him up for second breakfast. There's no place like Kate's Place in Ridgeway to begin your recovery after an all-nighter on the wall. 

"I'm starting to feel a little more human," he said after we devoured our eggs and hash in reverent silence.