2015 - CC Alpine Journal

THE COLORADO COLLEGE
ALPINE JOURNAL
2015 Edition
CCAJ 1
THE COLORADO COLLEGE
ALPINE JOURNAL
2015 Edition
The Mission of the Colorado College Alpine Journal is to
unite, inform, and inspire both our climbing community and others by
showcasing the climbers and climbs of Colorado College–past and present–
through writing, photos, and artwork via this free publication.
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[Cover] Brett Baekey leading Nemesis (WI6), on the Stanley Headwall in the Canadian Rockies. JD Merritt.
[Back Cover] The Titan, in the Fisher Towers. Joe Forrester..
[This Page] David Fay on an early ascent of Amba, 5.12 PG13 , at the Tiger Cliff, so named for its black and
gold streaks by a group of CC alumni. Justin Talbot.
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CCAJ | 2015 Edition
Contents
Editor’s Note..........................................................9
Climbs, Expeditions, and the Climbing Life:
Colorado...............................................................12
Emma Longcope (’15) Type II Fun Found
Nina Riggio (’17)
Do it for the Homies
David Fay (’13)
The Tiger Cliff
The Desert.............................................................20
Gabriel Patterson (’13)
The Protagonist
Hannah Trim (’14)
Mama Climber
David Fay (’13) The Desert Beckons
Joe Forrester (’06)
The Netherworld
Farther West.........................................................34
Andrew DesLauriers (’16)
Window
Drew Thayer (’11) Golden Hour
Matt Zia (’14)
The Life Traverse
Nick Merritt (’19)
The Grand
Rachel Spitzer (’03)
Lone Peak
Yo-So-Mighty........................................................50
Kishen Mangat (’96)
Saddling up the Pig
Nick Koch (`13)
Yosemite
Chris Dickson (’13)
Adventure Awaits
Joe Purtell (’18)
Early Season Alpine
Erin Burk (`17)
Rock On, Problems Off
Cold North...........................................................66
David Fay (’13)
Chasing a Dream
Drew Thayer (’11)
Explorations
Brett Baekey (’16) Deprivation
JD Merritt (’15)
The French Route
The World.............................................................90
Nina Riggio (’17)Language Skills
Jackson Schrott (’19)
Ski Descent
Final Thoughts......................................................98
Nielsen Davis (’15)
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An unknown climber leads Johnny Cat
(5.11+) at sunset. Matt Zia.
CCAJ 5
thanks to the friends of the
ccaj for their generous support:
The American Alpine Club
City Rock
Colorado College Outdoor Education
Individual Donors
The Life of the Mind Grant
Mountain Chalet
Pikes Peak Alpine School
The Ritt Kellogg Memorial Fund
Mount Huntinton in Twilight, from the summit of Begguya. JD Merritt .
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CCAJ 7
Staff
Senior Editor & Design
JD Merritt (Winter ’15)
Assistant Editors
Brett Baekey (’16),
Joe Purtell (’18),
Carson Fritz (’19),
Nick Merritt (’19),
Jackson Schrott (’19).
Web Design
David Fay (’15)
Board of Directors
Joe Forrester (’06),
Dave Hoven (’06),
Erik Rieger (’12),
Nielsen Davis (’15)
Additional Thanks To
Grace Brofman (’13)
& Debbie Fowler
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EDITOR’S NOTE
In the pages of this journal you’ll find more than stories. Across many ages and disciplines it shows through that we are all a part of the same tribe: the passionate, the
obsessed, and without doubt, the radical.
Some stories will celebrate spontaneous adventure and the love of exploration.
Others will detail grit and determination, following a long and winding path to the
conclusion of a lifetime goal. In each case we can be thankful for the opportunity to
push ourselves and find new limits in nature’s wildest corners. We must be thankful
for the camaraderie we build out there. If I can pull a common thread from these
pages, it will be that the places we go are sacred and the friends we go with are precious.
This will be my only year as editor. I’ll draw on the principles of environmental stewardship. I hope to leave the journal as I found it: a wonderful way for our
climbing community to come together on paper, and the best college climbing publication around. When you’re out there in the hills take care of the people and places
you love. They’ll matter forever, even after this journal disintegrates and the glory of
the send fades.
Be safe out there.
-Jonathan “JD” Merritt (’15)
CCAJ 9
CLIMBS, EXPEDITIONS, AND
THE CLIMBING LIFE
2015
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CCAJ 11
Colorado
Do It For The Homies:
Blessings from Jauernigg
Nina Riggio (’17)
“Do it for the Homies”, a phrase said as one pours one’s
choice of alcohol on the ground for those homies that have
passed. Logan Jauernigg was the first to teach me of this ritual
back in Feburary. I watched as he and Bjorn poured out my
whiskey back in the east Vail chutes, very confused and sort of
angry about why they were wasting my whiskey. Five minutes
earlier we had been lucky enough to get out of a mediumish
slab slide. Ever since this close moment with death I’ve paid
tribute to the homies after every epic adventure.
No one knew it would happen this soon, but Logan passed
away May 15, 2015 a couple of days after his 20th birthday in a kayaking accident. All of our friends handled it in
different ways, some with anger, some by loving, and some by
Living Like Logan. This was the phrase of the summer, it was
screamed, it was written, it was typed, it was hashtagged, it
was a way of life we all aimed for, and we even had matching
bracelets to remind us.
Do it for the Homies, this was one of my last memories of
Logan I had as I drove away to Utah for my 21st birthday in
April. He handed me my birthday present, with that unmistakable Logan smile, it was a handful of fresh Wyoming
fireworks. He said he would try and make it to Utah but got
caught up in kayaking again.
The first weekend in July eight of Logan’s friends including
me and Luke Rasmussen went to try and put up two first
ascents in the Holy Cross Wilderness area. Logan had tried to
put up this first ascent exactly a year ago, and we were there
to finish it.
Mind you, I can count on two hands the number of times I
have trad climbed and most of the time it was just to get on
top of something easy in the Garden to stare at people and
take sun naps. But here I was pairing up with Luke Rasmussen (’14), one of my closest friends, to put up this first ascent.
I was scared shitless; this was no Montezuma’s Tower. Luke,
Logan, and I all met when I was eleven years old, so it had to
be us. I was goanna get over it. To make things more interest-
[Left] The Black Canyon of the Gunnison. [Above] Luke Rasmussen scoping out the new line in early July. Nina Rig-
12 CCAJ
gio. [Previous Spread] The Cirque of the Unclimbables. John Collis.
CCAJ 13
ing, Luke had ankle surgery back in October (after a climbing accident) and was still at about 50% range of motion.
He gets sick when he hikes and throws up a lot. We were a
climbing match made in heaven.
The morning of the so-called “steepest hike in all of Eagle
county” into the Holy Cross Wilderness Area, I decided to
take a 7 mile run with my friend Sage, who was also coming
to Holy Cross. We ran through Gilman canyon in attempt
to run off our nerves, which we thoroughly regretted at 2PM
when we started hiking. I carried a rack, and Luke carried
the rope.Our journey began with Bjorn Bauer, Erik Warmenhoven, Sage Ebel, Luke Rassmussen, Michelle Schlund(Logan’s mom), Annika Heid, Meredith Steinke, and me; all of
Logan’s closest friends, minus his kayaking friends. The hike
was only three miles but about 3,000 vertical feet into the
Holy Cross Wilderness area. It was a beautiful hike until we
got close to the top and Luke started feeling sick while thunderstorms rolled into the sky. We sat in my tent and drank
nasty maple whiskey and waited for Michelle and Sage a little
past tree-line. We were off to a great start for a couple days of
climbing at 13,000 feet.
Once we found our actual campsite, Luke started throwing
up a lot. I made dinner with Sage and we began talking about
what we would do if he became too weak not only to climb
but also to hike back down. I gave him my tent so he could
throw up in peace. We were all very worried.
The next morning came and Bjorn and Erik started climbing ‘Bravo Juliet’ at 5 am. Bravo Juliet was the name Logan
and Bjorn had given the route a year ago. This was the route
we were all planning on doing—the same route Logan had
to bail off of a year ago. Annika, Sage, Luke, and I started
around 7am to avoid rock fall. Luke was feeling not only up
to climbing after a full night of throwing up, but was also
brewing ambitions for a first ascent. “We should do our own
Nina, it’ll be fine,” said Rasmussen as we approached a huge
hunk of granite that resembled a Japanese penguin toy from
afar. Luke was far more experienced in trad climbing than
I probably ever will be; he’s guided for two seasons and has
been my go-to for all climbing related questions for the past
two years.
Do it for the Homies, this is all I kept saying to myself as we approached the base of the wall, hoping that what
we saw from afar, close to the Japanese penguins mouth, was
a climbable crack system—we still had no idea. At this point,
[This Page] Luke Rasmussen climbs into the crux roof. Nina Riggio. [Next Page] On the Summit.
14 CCAJ
I had only built anchors three times outside of the cc gym
on an actual rock climb. I was freaking out. I started the first
pitch, knowing it would be the easiest. With some of Logan’s
ashes in my pocket, I was off. I kept reminding myself: do it
for the homies.
The first pitch involved a lot of rolling around in grass and
pulling on flowers. Gear was sparse until I finally got to a
nice hunk of rock 60 feet up and started trying to build an
anchor atop another grass hunk. Luke got up and said it was
a beauty. Psych was high and we definitely felt like a couple
of badasses, or maybe dumbasses. Luke took the next two
pitches. As I approached the base of the third pitch and laid
eyes on a looming roof above I thought to myself, ‘fuck, we
are stupid’. By looking through my camera lens, we discovered that the Japanese penguin was in fact passable via the
crack system we had initially spied from the ground. Luke
was super psyched and ready to charge for the summit, but
I was suspicious about what looked like a huge loose roof at
the top of this finger crack system.
Do it for the homies. Logan would have done it, I know
he would’ve. I pulled myself together and watched as Luke
took on this unknown and untouched crack leading to what
now definitively appeared to be a heinously loose roof. He
sat under the roof trying to figure out the moves for about
15 minutes before getting a long heel hook and mantled on
the now confirmed loose roof. He scurried up and over quite
quickly. It was my turn now, I wanted to poop my pants and
throw up and cry a little bit all at the same time. I was still
very psyched though, surprisingly. I approached the roof, got
a pretty good undercling and tried out my options for about
5 minutes before finally dynoing around the roof and mantling over a loose block. I got the largest burst of adrenaline I
have felt in a long time, and apparently so did Luke because
he didn’t place another piece until the anchor about 60 feet
up. We kept randomly laughing. We were so happy; we were
actually going to finish a route on this huge Japanese penguin. I took the next pitch leading to what we were guessing
would be the top. Slab—my favorite; actually grassy slab, my
second favorite type of climbing. As I started to top out into
what looked like 4th class climbing I started to hear voices. It
was Bjorn, Erik, Sage and Annika. The girls were just topping
out on Bravo Juliet on the other side. It was perfect. Do it
for the Homies…I said it to myself one last time as I poured
some beer out, on top of our first ascent. Bjorn backpacked
up a 6 pack and we all celebrated with naked summit pics
and beers. We did it for the homies, we did it for Logan, and
we named our route
“Blessings from Juarernigg.”
Summary: First Ascent, Holy Cross Wilderness,
Type-Two Fun Found in RMNP
Emma Longcope (’15)
“Down by the baaaay, where the watermelons grooow…”
I sang into the dark in an attempt to keep my spirits up. My
shaky voice was whisked away by the wind, and I shifted in
my harness, trying to stay warm. “Betsie?” I called, pointing my headlamp beam down until I lost sight of the rappel
ropes.
I was grateful Betsie Hopper (’15) had volunteered for the
tough job of locating the rap bolts (the route off the Petit
Grepon descends the East of the pinnacle rather than the
South, which we had climbed up), but as I hung there, I felt
very small and very aware of the hundreds of feet of darkness
beneath me.
“Bet-sieee?” I couldn’t tell if the whistling that followed was
a reply or more wind. Then, louder, finally, I made out her
voice: “I found the giant ledge!”
“Hell yeah!” I cheered, fumbling for my ATC with cold
hands.
We had also begun our day in total darkness. The night before, we drove into Rocky Mountain National Park expecting
CCAJ 15
a campsite, but found they had all just closed for the season.
We slept at the trailhead, Betsie in the backseats and myself
nearby, and I awoke frequently, positive each bump in the
night was the ranger returning to tow the car.
The car stayed put, and we hiked the five miles to the Petit in
a daze, scrambled up a scree slope, and reached the base just
as the sun was drenching the tip of the spire. The climbing
was wonderful and varied: 9 pitches of cracks of all sizes with
some scantily-protected face climbing thrown in. It was afternoon by the time we reached the summit, a spectacular little
perch with views of Sky Pond and the surrounding cirque.
We soaked it in, then turned reluctantly to the back side of
the pinnacle to descend.
It was pulling the ropes after the second double-rope
rappel when things got tricky. The red rope came swishing
back down, but the blue rope stayed put, stuck maybe 40 feet
above us. We tugged on it and called to it, but it was resolute.
Betsie tied in on the red rope and began following thin but
friendly cracks up a corner, finally reaching the rope and freeing it from a pesky flake. She used spare webbing to fashion
an anchor and rappelled through that back to me. Phew! By
this time, though, the autumn sun had disappeared.
We continued. We were safe and prepared with extra
bars and even a beer in my pack, but it was still an effort to
calm my jumping heartbeat, unclip my anchor, and rappel
into the darkness to meet Betsie on the big ledge. From there,
it was just one more double-rope rappel to the welcome
ground, and this time the ropes obeyed us.
Maybe we were so relieved to be back on solid earth
that we didn’t pay attention to our route, because between
Sky Pond and Loch Vale, the well-travelled path seemed to
disappear. It took us a good hour of stumbling around to
relocate it, and a couple more to hike out. The time passed
quickly. I recalled biking from Loomis dorm to Garden of
the Gods with Betsie four years back and being nervous on
my first trad lead, Cowboy Boot Crack. Now, I was nervous
up high, and the fun had crossed into the type-two category,
but the adventure was accompanied by the same spirit and
joy and was well worth having cold hands for.
We reached the car again sometime after midnight
Sunday night, chugged gas station coffee, and made it to
the Springs for a couple hours of sleep before I headed back
to Woodland Park for work too-early on Monday morning,
exhausted and grateful.
South Face of the Petit Grepon, 5.8+
Colorado, USA
The Tiger Cliff:
An Elusive Wall
Pioneered in the Heart of the Rockies
David Fay (’13)
There is a saying around Leadville that if it weren’t for
just one thing each climbing area would be world class. For
example if the routes at Granite were longer than 15 ft, it
would be mega-classic. Or if the Cecilville Slab was 10° past
vertical, instead of 10° less than vertical it would be spectacular. Well this past summer a small band of tigers may just have
defeated the paradigm.
With the knowledge and assistance of local developers Justin Talbot and Rob Dillion, Chris Barlow (’05),
Becca Shild (’06), Matt Zia (’14) and I set off for what was
soon to be dubbed The Tiger Cliff. We rendezvoused at the
High Mountain Institute enveloped in clouds, unsure of our
decision to continue. After hiking past Timberline Lake in
search of the rumored wall, blue skies assured us we had made
the right call. Basking in sunlight Chris and Becca found a
moderate route to the rim so they could drop in on the king
ling—the longest and most improbable line linking incipient
cracks between black and tan streaks.
Meanwhile I began picking my way up the obvious
left-leaning crack splitting the face. Bulletproof rock, bomber
gear and wonderful movement brought me to sloping ledge
below a clean, blank dihedral. After moving into this dihedral
and retreating, I opted to follow the positive features out left.
I took my time, enjoying each move and each moment as I
climbed upwards through the roof to the top. Matt followed
this pitch helping to establish The Gold Card Indirect, ground
up.
After touching back down I found out that Chris
had put in three bolts just to the right of The Gold Card.
Becca and Chris had rehearsed the moves on this route and
were moving on to try the moves on the king line (later to
be dubbed Amba after the great African tigers). Loving rock
climbing the way I do, I was jonesing and couldn’t sit still.
I wanted to be the first person to lead something else. After
pressuring Chris, he let me get on the mixed line he had
bolted. I flowed through the lower sections only to fall on
the last hard move. I offered Chris a belay—out of generosity
and so that I could be on the first ascent team. He tied in and
climbed through the lower crux moving on to place some
tricky gear in overhanging terrain. After resting at the jugs,
Chris committed to the redpoint crux, moving smoothly up
[Above] Betsie following the exposed final pitches. Emma Longcope [Below] Approaching the Grepon.
16 CCAJ
CCAJ 17
RESCUE
LODGING
to the anchor.
On the hike out, our small band of tigers began
brainstorming CC related route names. ‘8th Block’ would
have to be real easy. ‘Block Break’ would describe a precarious
rock on the route. ‘8th Block Break’ would be pure fun, lifestyle edition. Chris came up with a good one—and the name
of his route—‘Respect Your Elders’.
Combining stunning scenery, a range of difficulties
and consistent quality, Tiger Cliff stands against the Leadville
paradigm as a premier Colorado climbing area.
Summary:
The Gold Card Indirect 5.11-. FA David Fay
The Gold Card Direct 5.12-. FA David Fay
Amba 5.12. FA Chris Barlow
LODGING
Respect Your Elders 5.12-. FA Chris Barlow
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David Fay on The Gold Card. Matt Zia.
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a AAC member Garrett Grove
PASSION
18 CCAJ
LEARN MORE AND JOIN AT AMERICANALPINECLUB.ORG
CCAJ 19
The Desert
The Protagonist
Gabriel D. Patterson (’13)
“IT’S ABOUT 9 O’CLOCK, Friday morning the... What’s
today’s date?!” I questioned my friends. “April 19th, year of
our Lord, 2013.” Daniel responds. Peter chimed in, “Psych is
high! Psych is high!” Indeed, it was.
Matt McNerney (’13), Peter Duker (’13), Daniel Hovancsek
(’13), Zac Chapman (’13), and I were all close friends from
undergrad at Colorado College. With the exception of Daniel, the four of us began rock climbing our freshman year of
college. The sport solidified our relationships. Rock climbing
is unique in that, although often considered an individual
activity much like tennis or golf, it requires you to put all of
your trust in the people you climb with. In trad climbing,
your own protection and the security from your belay keep
you safe.
That particular trip to Castle Valley, Utah (just
northeast of Moab) was to climb a legendary sandstone tower named Ancient Art. This climb is special for two reasons:
it was the last big climb we would do together before we all
graduated and let life lead us in our respective ways, and it
was redemption for Peter’s near-death accident in October
2012.
Peter and Zac were climbing the Kor-Ingalls route up Castleton Tower when it happened. A tower we could see across
the valley from Ancient Art. Long story short, he took a fall
and fell face first on a ledge below. Peter almost died that day
but thanks to good omens and state-of-the-art surgery, today
he looks better and more attractive than ever and is back on
the rocks with the rest of us. The magnitude of the event
was humbling in that it reminded us that the natural world
does not bend to our will. Rather, nature demands that we
contend with it as well as confront our own fragility.
After climbing the first few pitches, as noon slowly approached and the sun was highest in the sky, Matt and I
gathered at the final belay ledge of the climb. At nearly 500
feet up, we sat on a small platform, looking across a thin
bridge of sandstone separating us from the pillar we would
soon stand atop. Once we climbed out across the bridge and
on to the final pillar, we would be completely exposed with
several hundred feet of thin air between us and the ground
below. I led the previous pitch and it was Matt’s turn to
venture into the unknown. I was enthusiastic and ready to
go after just climbing, but I could tell Matt was a bit apprehensive. I looked at him and said in a playful manner,
“Ok Matt, you’re up. Are you ready?!” He hesitated with his
20 CCAJ
[Left] The Priest, in Castle Valley. John Collis
[Right] Climbing Pedra Do Orubu, Rio de Janiero,
Brazil. Fanny Myon
CCAJ 21
response. “I don’t know, dude,” he said. “Well if you don’t
climb it that means that I get to climb again”, I responded.
Such motives are typical in a team who moves as one, united
in their objective to reach the summit. Matt’s rebuttal was
quick; not a chance he would pass up his turn in the rotation
because of a little fear. And with that extra motivation he
geared up and sent the pitch.
My climbing friends have commented on how poised, calm,
and collected I am when I climb. I am able to hone in,
silencing distractions and fear. Breathing calmly, I scooted
across the thin bridge using my hands and butt with my
legs dangling on either side, much like sitting on a log or
a seesaw. I reached the bottom of the pillar where I began
to place some of my first pieces of gear for both Matt’s and
my protection. As I began climbing up the pillar to the top,
my heart thumped a little harder, a little faster. I vividly
remember feeling a pulse in my neck, which was a reassuring
physiological response to the magnitude of the event. With
increased exposure and several hundred feet of sheer drop, I
slowly gained my footing atop the pillar’s pizza box size platform. As I rose from a squatting position with my arms out
to help balance, I slowly stood erect and let out a loud scream
of joy and relief. “Woooooooooooooooo! Hell yeah!” I cried
out. There is no greater feeling and view than what one experiences standing atop the highest point of a natural structure.
It is visually peaceful and awe provoking. I took a deep breath
and silently reflected upon the gift of life and what it means
to live it to the fullest.
I was inspired to write this article after reading The Adven-
22 CCAJ
ture Gap by African American author and mountaineer, James
Edward Mills. My life-long affinity for the natural sciences
and our environment began in my mother’s garden. I spent
hours dissecting flowers and digging holes in search of insects.
It further developed into building intricate forts from downed
tree limbs and leaf litter off the forest floor with my brothers.
This early fascination with science and the environment continued throughout high school and into my undergraduate
years. Today, this passion for nature and the outdoor lifestyle
structures how I align my priorities and consider life. Being
in nature effects how we reflect on the past, while influencing
how we perceive the present and the future (Mills, p. 24). In
sharing my personal anecdotes in the Alpine Journal I want to
show that people of color – Black people in particular – do in
fact have a place in the outdoors. I believe it is my responsibility to share my experiences with the community at Colorado
College, and to offer encouragement to those around me
“who aspire to a life of adventure” (Mills, p. 25). I love the
sport of climbing for the physical challenge, the relief and
clarity of mind it gives me, and for the feeling of accomplishment I get when I stand atop a high peak. For me, climbing is
the epitome of freedom.
In The Adventure Gap: Changing the Face of the Outdoors,
James Edward Mills writes, “it’s obvious that we can be
influenced by those we see in the media and what we see
them doing on screen and in print.” However, as a minority
I have been shaped by what I haven’t seen: Black Americans
in Mother Nature. Mills describes that minority populations
are less likely to seek adventure and solace in our nation’s
wilderness spaces, largely due to lack of opportunity caused
by socio-economic and geographic factors. By virtue of being
raised in rural New Mexico, and not a major metropolitan
area, I was afforded the chance to gain a strong appreciation
for the outdoors and the wonders of nature from a young
age.
James Edward Mills’ rhetoric resonates with my beliefs. “We
experience genuine freedom when we make a conscious
choice to set aside the comforts of warmth, family, and
financial security just to climb to a high place and enjoy a
view of a distant horizon” (Mills, pg. 26). Whenever I do, I
do it for those who have passed before me. I do it for my best
friend Jensen Brown, who died in a tragic car accident when
we were 16, and who unknowingly gave me a second chance
to live life to the fullest. I do it for my family and for my
friends. I do it for amazing climbers like Cole Kennedy (’13)
who our climbing community of Colorado College lost and
who will always be remembered as a person who passed away
in sincere pursuit of happiness climbing in the mountains of
Peru.
Mills writes, “Though we live in a nation whose
founding principle is freedom, far too many of us deprive
ourselves of the opportunity to get beyond our daily urban
routine to gaze upon the grandeur of the natural world. And
too many of us depriving ourselves of nature are people of
color” (Mills, pg. 33). In an effort to pay forward the strong
appreciation for the outdoors and the wonders of nature my
parents and grandparents instilled in me, I hope to extend
an invitation to readers to experience the same freedom, and
to embrace a passion to push beyond the false limitations
that so often hinder achievement of great feats in the natural
world. To truly fulfill our dreams and the dreams of future
generations of Black people, we must bridge the Adventure
Gap and change the way people of color think about the
natural world. I hope that my story and perspective will
inspire individuals of our community at Colorado College to
debunk what society thinks is capable of Black women and
Black men and to get outside, and go on an adventure.
Our cultural history has taught us to expect that the
narratives and historical accounts of adventures in Mother
Nature are dominated by the stories and exploits of white
men. The ability for people of color to identify themselves in
these stories and establish a genuine connection with them
is unrealistic. Given the demographics of Colorado College,
it is no surprise that climbing, as with many other outdoor
sports, is primarily accessible to those with disposable income. As young Black men, my brothers Aaron (’12), Ryan
(’12), and I experienced it is not common to find an equal
representation of people of color on these outdoor trips.
My hope is that by sharing my experiences I will provide a
new story that people of color, particularly Black people, can
begin to reference in a way that they couldn’t in the past. My
goal is to help change the face of the outdoors by encouraging
diversity in outdoor recreation and to destroy the notion that
nature is a place where minorities are unwelcome.
-Gabriel D. Patterson
UC Davis, Agricultural and Environmental Chemistry (’19)
Reference: Mills, J.E. The Adventure Gap. Mountaineers
Books. Seattle, WA. 2014
[Left] Gabriel Patterson skiing on a hut trip in
Colorado. Mel Yemma. [Right] Gabriel Patterson at the
Summit of Ancient Art. Matt McNerny.
CCAJ 23
Mama Climber
Hannah Trim (’14)
It was day six of our Women’s Rock Rendezvous, a weeklong ‘professional development’ event in Indian Creek that
helps make my job one of the best in the world. I had already
gotten a couple of pitches in, helping to put up ropes for other instructors who were new to crack climbing, and I thought
I’d settle in for some belay duty.
“Hey Izzy, I can give you a catch on that if you
want,” I offered as she was tying in to climb the route
‘Wounded Knee’ just left of ‘Spaghetti Western’ at Pistol
Whipped Wall.
“No lady, your mom’s about to lead down around
the corner, you should probably go watch!”
My mom has been giving me lead belays since I
started leading at the Vertical Endeavors gym in Warrenville,
Illinois, something like eight or nine years ago. She is the
number one reason why I rock climb. She took my sister and
I to the gym for a Park District day, and set in motion something unstoppable (though I highly doubt she knew what she
was starting!).
Cindy Trim is not your usual mom. She doesn’t sit
on the benches in a gym and look on nervously while you
top rope. She’s not like my grandma, who can’t even talk
about heights without feeling nauseous. She signed us up for
a weekend anchor-building clinic at Devil’s Lake, Wisconsin
my second year climbing. After the class, we bought a 60-meter rope, some webbing, a set of hexes and stoppers, and a
couple carabiners. Standing at the top of the crag a couple of
weeks later, she asked me,
24 CCAJ
“Do you remember how to
build an anchor?”
“Yeah,”
“Great! I don’t think I really
remember it all,”
I was fourteen, I think.
Earlier this summer, she
came out to visit me in Colorado. We had just about
a week before I needed
to go back into the field
for another mountaineering course with Outward
Bound. And her number
one goal was climbing—
more than just single pitch.
I picked her up from the
airport and after a mandatory stop at Trader Joe’s,
we drove up to Estes Park,
where we stayed with a good friend, Steve Komito. He told
us a few of his climbing tales while we ate a delicious, simple
dinner on his porch and stared across the valley at Lumpy
Ridge. When I told my mom that’s where we were going to
climb the next day, I think she was a little nervous.
The next day, we climbed an obscure and mellow
route near the Twin Owls, a route that Steve described as
“low 5th class.” Although the first twenty feet of the route
were probably more like modern 5.7ish, wide, flaring crack
climbing, the rest of the climb was reasonably mellower and
low-angle, and topped out on a lovely little summit. Climbing through the initial crux, I did my best to channel my
inner calm, and try to make the moves look as easily as my
body would allow. I knew this section would be a little bit of
a challenge for my mom, (offwidth isn’t exactly a Devil’s Lake
staple) and I didn’t want her to feel pressured or discouraged
right off the bat when we still had a whole week of climbing
to do.
She paused at that section, and fell once or twice, but
pretty quickly breezed by it. The psych was on! And unlike
what happens on many dirtbag climbing endeavors, we actually ate a real AND delicious lunch at the top of the climb.
Carrots and almond butter fueled us for our little descent.
Before my mom arrived in Colorado, I spent hours
wracking my brain, trying to plan the best possible climbing
trip for her. I wanted to make it fun, and challenging enough
to feel rewarding but not so challenging that it defeated her
efforts. I realized that ten years into climbing, I was having a
hard time remembering exactly what it felt like to be learning
how to place gear, make anchors, lead on different types of
rock, and undergo long descents. We learned how to climb at
Devil’s Lake, and the Red River Gorge in Kentucky, which
are both considerably tamer than some of the Colorado rock
I’ve gotten used to. And let’s face it; climbing at CC has a bit
of an ethic of mandatory sandbagging. I’ve certainly learned
a lot from needing to sort my way through dicey situations,
but I didn’t really want that for my mom. I get to climb almost constantly out here. She only had a week and I wanted
to make it count.
The next few days, we climbed in stellar Colorado
Cowboy style. We ticked off the White Whale (5.7) at Lumpy,
Wind Ridge (5.7) in Eldorado Canyon, took a rest day and
did the high ropes course at the Outward Bound Basecamp,
and climbed The Nose on Monitor Rock (5.7) near Independence Pass. Cindy hardly even flinched on the ropes course,
and led three of the five pitches on The Nose. She totally approved of the home that I’ve built in the back of my Tacoma,
and fully embraced the night we slept parked on a Boulder
neighborhood street. On our last day, we climbed Huron
Peak, and she summited her very first fourteener.
I think it was sometime during our drive back to
Denver that I mentioned that I was helping to plan the
Women’s Rock Rendezvous for work. I casually threw in a
line about how I bet she could come join us if she wanted—
or something like that—just to see how she’d react. I didn’t
expect her to respond seriously. I felt a little unsure of the
invitation myself. She’d obviously crushed it on our week
of escapades. She did her first three trad leads for goodness
sakes!
But Indian Creek can be another ball game entirely.
I’ve seen it take weeks for some climbers to get the hang of
climbing splitters. And moreover, the Creek is my saving
grace. It’s the place I am most in love with, and I spend as
much time there as possible, destroying myself and willingly going back for more. What if she didn’t like it? If I took
her there and she hated the climbing, would she be able to
understand why it’s so important to me? Would she ‘get it’?
She totally jumped on the idea. If she took Thursday
and Friday off of work, she could fly from Chicago to Grand
Junction and meet us at the Creek Pasture Group Site by dinner, and then reverse the trip on Sunday. She’d get two days
of climbing in and if I left my truck for her at the airport, it’d
be a ton cheaper than a rental car.
Our entire group of 25 was beyond excited to meet
my mom.
When she showed up, you could feel the stoke
radiating off of her. She instantly made friends with six of
the ladies in our group who were cooking dinner, and started
chatting them up, asking about how the climbing was going.
She totally got the royal treatment; she got the truck to herself while I slept in a tent, and quickly received some of our
famous face paint and bedazzlement.
We climbed at the Power Wall her first day. I struggled to make sure I was helping her enough without seeming
overbearing. I guess I had harped a little bit on how hard the
climbing is out there and that grades don’t really matter at all.
She knew the term ‘hand size-dependent,’ which totally made
me proud. I taught her how to make tape gloves, and kind of
just sat back after that. I answered some questions about what
types of jams work for which crack sizes, but more often than
not, I’d realize I hadn’t seen her for a bit, and look up to find
her grunting her way up a climb. She climbed three or four
pitches to the top that day, and exclaimed that,
“This doesn’t feel as hard as I thought it would!”
So when I realized I hadn’t seen her in a little while
when we were at Pistol Whipped the next day, it didn’t feel
unusual at all. I assumed she was chatting someone up, or
giving a belay, or working on a climb. I grabbed a water bottle
and ran off to find her though, as soon as I heard she was going to lead. I tried to be as quiet as possible, sort of half-wondering if she felt nervous to have me watch her first attempt.
When I got there, she was going back and forth about it. Our
friend Erika was pushing her to try the lead, and she was very
much on the fence.
“Hannah, what do you think I should do?”
“Lead it. You got it!” was my instant response.
You might not find a more supportive group than a
crew of female Outward Bound instructors. Five of us sat at
the base of the climb, and watched as my mom totally threw
down on all 25 feet of “Short and Stupid” (5.8) her first Creek
splitter lead. She wiggled her hands into the crack, stuffed the
toes of her Mythos in below her, and scooted her way from
CCAJ 25
one stance to the next. It wasn’t an onsight, sure, and she
didn’t climb it clean, but that made me even more impressed.
She took on her gear a couple times and even fell twice,
something that I’ve seen countless climbers lose their cool
over.
I think we often get sucked into a pattern of believing that we need to be as über mega hardcore as possible to
be good climbers. We constantly attach our self worth to our
climbing achievements, and tend to search maniacally for
that ‘next big thing.’ But standing at the base of perhaps the
shortest climb in the Creek, (one that most people don’t even
do) sharing such a momentous experience, I felt extremely
lucky. Who cares if the next people over are trying to redpoint 5.12? I bet they don’t ever get to ask their mom for a
catch on their project. Or give her one, for that matter.
We hear people say things all the time like “my
knees aren’t what they used to be,” and “if I were younger,
maybe I’d give that a try.” Sure, our bodies age. But my mom
showed us that to her, being 54 just means she has 54 years
of experience practicing being comfortable outside of her
comfort zone and trying intimidating things. We can all take
a page out of her book.
The next day, we got up early, and I drove her back
to Grand Junction so that she could get on a plane back to
Chicago and get ready for work the next day. That evening, I
got a text from her. It was a picture of her and my dad in the
front seat of their car at the airport. She made it all the way
back to Chicago with all of her bedazzles still on!
The Desert Beckons
David Fay (’13)
Dirt, sweat and blood. Three elements that run unimpeded in the desert. Blood from battling up off-widths and
squeezes reminds me that I still have much to learn. Sweat
from the steep approaches and unrelenting sun which I track
as it moves across the sky. And dirt. That red dirt is everywhere. The wind carries it, and despite tarps and cars and picnic tables, it coats everything. This doesn’t let me forget that I
have been to the desert.
But I take my time getting out there. Dwelling in
the anticipation of adventure. Holding onto that tranquility
before the storm. Because once I arrive in Indian Creek I
know that I won’t be able to hold myself back. I won’t leave
until the dirt, sweat and blood overcome me and I must
leave.
I am jealous of Hannah Trim (’14) and Matt Zia
(’14) who can spend a month in the Creek. Not only because
they have the time to do it, but also because they have the
patience to climb in moderation. That way they don’t burn
out. They dig in. They make Indian Creek their home and
26 CCAJ
Hannah Trim traversing high on Jupiter Cracks,
(5.11), In Indian Creek. David Fay.
CCAJ 27
[Above] David Fay in the maw on Liquid Sky (5.12- R). JD Merritt.
[Right] Chris Dickson leading Coyne Crack Simulator at the Pistol Whipped wall in Indian Creek. Matt Zia.
pace themselves as each day comes and goes.
I woke up Thursday morning five miles outside of
The Creek and hours after the sun had hit my sleeping bag.
I moved leisurely, eating richly and arriving at the message
board just after noon. I had not planned very well. But I was
ready to climb. Only I stood in dire need of a climbing partner. As happen-chance may have it, JD Merritt (’15), Parker
Schiffer (’15), William Rushton (’15), Isabel Febvre (’17),
and Axel Bjerke (’15) bumbled into the parking lot just as I
made this realization. JD’s SUV was packed to the brim with
climbing gear, camping equipment and boxed wine nearly
falling out of the car as they opened the doors. This marked
the beginning of CC’s annual Block Break pilgrimage to the
Creek and an opportunity for me to re-live my college days as
I wrangled up some climbing partners.
And boy was it great to be surrounded by stoked
climbers. William led an off-fist crack in the dark by headlamp. Ibby climbed her first cracks. Everyone got to talk
smack around the campfire. And JD and I made a run at Liquid Sky. After sending the 11+ off width, I contested that my
butt was physically too large for the narrow squeeze. My scars
28 CCAJ
and a core shot in the rope prove that I had tried. But we still
wanted to summit. Linking the final two pitches of Lightning
Bolt cracks to meet Matt, Hannah and Chris Dickson atop
the North Six Shooter was nothing short of hero climbing.
Amazing position, fluid movements and great company made
this day spectacular.
After reliving the glory of a block break in the desert
it was time to part ways. As everyone piled into JD’s car to
head back to the springs, I stepped into my car. Once again
alone, traveling onwards. Leaving the Creek, I pulled over at
Wilson’s Arch. The ridge line had caught my eye years ago. I
began climbing. The first move was the hardest, but secure.
From there fun and exposed scrambling brought me to the
top of the arch. I enjoyed the fleeting solitude juxtaposed
to a residential development and a highway. I knew nobody
around here would follow me up the arch. I sat down. Once
again holding onto that fleeting sense of adventure as the rest
of the world spun madly on.
Summary: The Desert. Various Activity.
CCAJ 29
The Netherworld
Joe Forrester (’06)
The Netherworld is a unique amphitheater of Cutler sandstone situated just east of the Fisher Towers, before the
Mystery towers start. Over the past three years, my climbing
partner Jeremy Aslaksen and I had been traveling out to the
area. We were privileged to have put up two new grade V
Cutler aid routes, both unrepeated. But both of these routes,
Durin’s Bane and Hell Hound, were really just the warm-up
for the real deal in the Netherworld Amphitheatre. The ridge
arising from the Hydra, what we would come to call the
Hydratiform Ridge, was the prize. The Hydra ridge rose like
a demonic backbone, providing the logical end to the amphitheater. The Hydra, originally climbed in 1994 by Duane
Raliegh and Tony Wilson, represented a test-piece for those
interested in Cutler climbing trickery. But the ridge leading
from the top of the Hydra to the Moenkopi caprock took it
to a whole new level, with another 800-900 feet of gargoyle
ridgeline to explore.
Looking to the ridge we felt our skills were finally at
a point where we could commit to the challenge. It took us
almost a full weekend to shuttle our gear from our base camp
at the foot of the Titan around to the Hydra. We found a
protected shelf of sandstone, where we stashed our gear. Now,
both Jeremy and I work full time jobs, and I was repeatedly
deployed to Liberia to assist in the Ebola response. But we
still made time for our quest. Each weekend we left beaten
and bruised, but we persisted. With the periods of absence
lasting a month or more, our desire to come back and complete the ridge grew.
The first pitch of the climb starts out with a horn
rope lasso, and took an independent line along the prow of
the ridge to meet up with Duane’s 1994 route. From here,
more beaking led into an atrocious offwidth, followed by a
series of old rivets. By this point in our exploration of the
Netherworld, these sort of tactics had become common place.
But on the last pitch of the Hydra, we came to an impasse.
After a short beak seam, the ridge became blank. It became
increasingly apparent that the only way to surpass this section
would be to throw the ice axe. So tethering our ice axe with
7mm cord, Jeremy whipped the ice axe around his head and
let it go, both of us desperately hoping it would catch a small
platform of Cutler before the ice axe came rocketing back
toward our belay. While dangerous, we felt that this would
be the only way to get to the top. The minutes and attempts
spread out, with each toss accompanied by an increasingly
desperate shout.
I looked up at Jeremy as the attempts entered the
realm of futile, and said “the real bummer would be if it
caught and we couldn’t tell on what.” Sure enough, two tries
later, in the abyss, 20 feet above us, the ice axe caught. We
didn’t know on what, or how long it would hold, but here was
our chance. Jeremy attached his ascenders to the 7mm cord,
and started jugging. As he continued upward, the axe held,
miraculously, and he completed the pitch. It had been hooked
over a small indent of Cutler, just enough to allow us to pass.
The Hydra had let down her hair.
[Below] Joe Forrester completes Charon’s Ridge, pitch 5 of 12 on Hydratiform. Hilary Bagshaw. [Right] Finishing
pitch 5, and looking up at the remainder of what became the Fisher towers’ longest route. Jeremy Aslaksen.
30 CCAJ
CCAJ 31
The rest of the climb was spectacular. Crossing the
fin of the Hydra required some truly unnerving acrobatics including running and jumping from one hoodoo to the next.
Now on untrodden ground, we were unsure if they would
support our body weight. After several pitches of traversing,
we arrived at the final headwall. And while the final headwall
required more bolting than we would have liked, the position
was absolutely spectacular. Those who have climbed the last
several pitches of the Finger of Fate and felt the world drop
away to the canyons below will truly appreciate the upper
ridge. As the ravens sailed in the dry breeze, we topped out
to the upper plateau as thunderclouds rolled into the Valley.
Stuck on the Netherworld rim, we had no choice but to
begin rappelling in the hail, rain and thunder. One gift of
climbing is that being in these special locations provides perspective on life. That descent was no exception. With lighting
flashing and thunder booming in the canyons, we made the
long rappels back down the face, now flowing with mud.
Covered in grime and fear-sweat, and completely exhausted,
we collapsed. Over 10 months, we had finally completed the
Hydratiform Ridge.
The Netherworld is special in that there are few
climbers, or people in general, who choose to be in that
remote area. You are away from the crowds of the Fisher Towers, and feel much more isolated, more like climbing should
feel; what I imagine climbing felt like back in the Golden Age
of the Desert. The rock is loose, and more similar to that in
the Mystery Towers, but it isn’t that bad if you spend some
time building up skills. No gym, or granite playground can
prepare you for the Netherworld. The routes take time; I suspect that our routes that we put up in the Netherworld may
get repeated at some point, but who knows. But I do hope
that whoever next goes to explore the Netherworld gets to feel
that same sense of adventure that we did.
Summary:
Hydratiform Ridge, The Netherworld, V/VI 5.8 A3 First
Ascent.
[Below] Special techniques: Joe Forrester prepares the axe for a toss. Jeremy Aslaksen
[Right] Jeremy Aslaksen following. Joe Forrester.
32 CCAJ
CCAJ 33
Farther West
34 CCAJ
CCAJ 35
Window
Andrew DesLauriers (’16)
began to appear through the clouds. A jolt of excitement
ran through the team. The stoke grew as the clouds cleared,
and within twenty minutes of summiting we could see all
the surrounding peaks. We finally got our window.
We ripped off our climbing skins and skied cautiously towards the entrance to the couloir. Worried about
potential cornice buildup, Fischer went on belay to ap-
proach the lip. After signaling back to us that he had found a
passable ramp, Will and I broke down the anchors and joined
him.
Sliding into the steep passage through the cliffs, the slope
quickly dropped away to the valley floor several hundred
meters below. The first few jump turns were calculated and
deliberate. I didn’t have time to think about falling. If we
weren’t half a day from the nearest road, the 15 centimeters of
fresh snow would be a welcome reward for days spent waiting out storms back at camp. Instead, the new deposits only
increased the tension. Each turn sent a wave of loose flakes
cascading down the fall line. Safety was our first concern, and
any moving snow could have easily taken out a skier below.
Completely absorbed in the motion of my skis on the slope,
I couldn’t see more than ten meters in any direction.
Suddenly, I heard a yell from in front of me. Looking up, I
caught a glimpse of Will sliding through the fog. Ski travel
had become tedious. We were following a prominent cliffband—the only visible landmark—that took us over a number of short, icy knobs as we climbed towards the saddle. Will
had kicked out of his binding while setting a switchback in
the bulletproof morning snow. Sliding for only a few meters,
he quickly self-arrested and signaled that he was okay. He got
up, clicked back into his skis, and we pushed onward.
Will, Fischer and I had been camping at Goose Lake
for almost a week without a significant break in the clouds.
Sometimes we would see a one or two-hour window of good
visibility around mid-day, but early morning whiteouts often
deterred us from committing to bigger terrain. After getting
used to the snowpack and weather patterns in the area, we
decided to make the approach to larger objectives regardless
of morning weather conditions. If we were at the top of the
line and the clouds cleared, all we would need was a few hours
of good visibility to ski and make it safely back to camp. This,
we hoped, would be one of those days.
It was almost impossible to distinguish snow from
sky. We didn’t even recognize the saddle until we were just a
few meters below it. Reaching the summit of an unnamed
peak, we took a break near the entrance to the couloir we had
been dreaming about for months leading up to the trip. Before we could finish our energy bars, the outline of Fox Peak
[Above] Fisher Hazen navigates in a full whiteout.
[Spread] Will Cohn savors the steep jump turns in exposed terrain. Andrew DesLauriers
[Previous Spread] Nielsen Davis.
36 CCAJ
CCAJ 37
38 CCAJ
Fischer Hazen scoping out the lower section of the couloir. Andrew DesLauriers
CCAJ 39
I finished the top section and ducked into a safe zone as my
sluff made its way to the valley floor.
We descended the couloir in 50-meter sections. Watching
my teammates was far more anxiety provoking than skiing
the couloir myself. If one of them lost their grip, there would
have been nothing I could do as they ping-ponged off the
rocks to the bottom of the basin. Fortunately, the previous
hour of sun had warmed the snow up enough to allow for
solid edge hold in the steeper sections of the couloir. We were
able to ski quickly and confidently through the choke and
onto the apron.
Soaking in stoke at the bottom of the couloir, we didn’t allow
ourselves too much time to celebrate. The sun continued to
beat down on the snowpack, and we knew we had to act fast
to avoid wet slides. We boot-packed up the other side of the
basin towards the entrance to a second, smaller couloir on the
other side. After some rock scrambling, we found the notch
we were looking for and skied perfect corn snow back into
Goose Lake basin.
Within twenty minutes of our second descent, the clouds
moved in again and we finished the skin back to camp in a
whiteout, with quarter-sized snowflakes falling from the sky.
We couldn’t have been sure the weather would hold for as
long as it did. Skiing the first couloir committed us to several
hours of climbing and skiing to get back into Goose Lake
basin. Had the visibility deteriorated sooner, our backup route
could have added five or six hours to the day. Fortunately,
we were able to make it safely back to camp with an hour of
daylight left to spare.
As we dried off our gear and began to cook dinner, an unshakeable sense of satisfaction overcame us. We had taken a
calculated risk, and it paid off. Peering through the vestibule,
a break in the clouds gave us one last glimpse at the snowy
ridgelines before the white abyss consumed us once more.
Thanks to the Ritt Kellogg Memorial Fund for making this
trip possible.
Summary:
Beartooth Range, MT. Ski-mountaineering, various activity.
[Left] Fischer Hazen organizing gear before the second descent. The first couloir skiied is on the right side of
the face in the background. Andrew DesLauriers [Above] JD Merritt below Wolf ’s Head. Drew Thayer.
Golden Hour in the Wind River Range
Drew Thayer (’11)
Sometimes, the balm of the day is Happy Hour, when we
can leave the stress and bustle of work and bike over to a
40 CCAJ
friendly watering hole to enjoy a cold tasty brew. This is the
time to relax and banter with friends and enjoy a slower pace.
I enjoy the libations of Happy Hour sometimes, but
the real balm to my soul is the Golden Hour, that magic time
just before dusk when the sun does something ridiculous and
paints the whole world in rich velvet rays. It’s as if the sun
CCAJ 41
realizes that it’s about to leave and throws a final burst of its
purest light over the world, a parting gift.
The Golden Hour is a special time. It’s the time of
my best efforts, but not my hardest...it’s a brief relaxation of
the day when gravity and fatigue lose their potency. These
are the times when I float down the trail on renewed legs and
climb with renewed vigor, buoyed upward by a new lightness
before the close of the day. In winter, when I see that golden
hue out the office window before I leave, I see the chocolate
walls of Indian Creek in my mind’s eye and recall days upon
days of floating up splitters in the light of the fading day,
scaling the improbable cliffs with no more effort than breathing.
As JD and I hiked over Jackass Pass into the Cirque
of the Towers this weekend, I couldn’t help continuing to
look behind at the splendid silhouette of Lost Temple Spire
jutting into the horizon behind us, bathed in the light of
sunset. “Man, wouldn’t it be sweet to be up there right now”,
I kept saying. He said something about the annoyances of
rappelling in the dark and I had to agree, but maybe it’s
worth the cost... We enjoyed a fun mellow day scrambling to summits
in the Cirque and enjoying spacious views of the range, then
returned to camp for a meal in the early evening. We’d been
talking about the Lost Temple Spire too much to let it lie in
the unknown future anymore. Satisfied with some Ramen
noodles and spicy peanut sauce, we broke camp, packed our
bags and hiked south over the pass with the Spire floating
before us like a sentinel in the sunset. Golden Hour. “Man,
I’d like to be up there at this time tomorrow.”
Usually I hit the Golden Hour at the end of daylong climbs, massive efforts that drain me to the core, and
the rich thick sunlight comes as a blessing at the end of the
day when I need a final boost of energy. The spire in our view
is only six pitches tall, totally feasible to climb and descend in
half a day. To be up there near sunset we’d have to start late…
We were a little haggard from poor rest before the
trip so we luxuriated in ten hours of beauty sleep at Big
Sandy Lake and enjoyed a casual morning of stretching and
drinking coffee in the meadow. Buzzing mosquitos were annoying, but hey, you forget all the annoyances easily. We set
off for our destination with a super-alpine start of 9:30 AM
and enjoyed the lovely walk to Black Joe lake (wrong way…
oops), crossed the shoulder of Haystack to correct our error,
and took an exhilarating dip in the cold clear waters of Deep
Lake underneath the majestic prow of Lost Temple Spire.
After a long scramble up from the lake we enjoyed
great climbing on the Wind River granite as we inched our
way up the Spire via Separation Anxiety. A sparse description
in the guidebook kept things exciting, as a 5.6 pitch held a
surprise no-fall-zone 5.9 mantle and a “5.0 traverse” involved
inching out on sloping blocks over the sheer north face that
drops off a thousand feet to the glacier below. The proud
skyline of the tower was accordingly strenuous, with a burly
“5.9” fist crack followed by the route’s signature pitch, a 65
meter hand crack. As in a 65 meter pitch with 63 meters of
hand jams. With four red and three gold camalots on my
harness, I gazed up at the immaculate splitter that cut the
white granite above us beyond view, and felt my hands tingle
with anticipation. The pitch was pure joy, perfect jams with a
gulf of air beneath, so little gear it wasn’t even worth thinking about it. At the rope’s end I was huffing and puffing and
couldn’t help the huge grin on my face.
We climbed back onto the sunlit west face as the
day grew old and the light grew thick with the molten sun.
We forgot the fatigue of the day and the bustling wind and
worked our way through the final problems to the top of the
Spire in a golden world of sky and stone. On the summit, the
Wind River Range extended before us in unending waves of
peaks and valleys, ridges and cliffs and dizzying vertical walls,
each one holding the promise of unwritten trials and discoveries. At these times, in the dying sunlight, the future spreads
as far as the mellowing horizon, in all directions, tantalizingly
close.
We’d earned our time in the Golden Hour, and had
to pay up too. Rapping the south ridge on-sight in the dark
involved some uncertain rope-stretching rappels, some manky
anchors, and an entertaining half-hour while I crouched in
an alcove tied to a small block while JD finagled an anchor
somewhere above me. The mountain’s geometry forced us
down narrow ledges away from our packs and we had to descend a long way down and scramble the whole way back up,
our feet swollen in climbing shoes. It’s easy to get dejected on
a long slog back to camp, but the beauty of the place kept our
spirits high. We satiated our raging thirst with the cold waters
of Deep Lake and ambled down the slabs of the valley, glittering in moonlight. We only got four hours of sleep before
waking to the buzz of mosquitos and a threatening sky but
jammed some coffee and oats down the hatch and made the
trek back to the car, tired and sore but happy with the memory of the Golden Hour still fresh on our minds and worn into
the creases of our hands.
Summary: Lost Temple Spire, Separation Anxiety, IV 5.11a
Wind River Range, Wyoming.
JD Merritt following the final pitch of Lost Temple Spire in the golden hour. Drew Thayer
42 CCAJ
CCAJ 43
The Life Traverse
Matt Zia (’14)
Blasted by the wind, I jump out of the car at a rest stop
on I-80, my first touchdown in Wyoming after a summer
trudging around the Colorado mountains working for Outward Bound, carrying a pack far too heavy and hiking with
students far too slowly. So this is what freedom tastes like;
stale diesel fumes from the truckers blasting by at 80mph;
the rank stench from rest stop urinals too long since their
last cleaning; the gritty dust of the Wyoming desert etched
into the creases on my face; eyes sore from squinting into the
setting sun for too many miles across the plain.
Such is the seasonal work lifestyle.
Change is in the air though. Torn between two
worlds, I have recently taken a full-time job in Telluride,
temporarily at least leaving behind the nomadic lifestyle of
bouncing between work and a month in Indian Creek. Last
year I skied 100 days and climbed just as many. The transition is going to be rough, even living in such a place as Telluride. At 23, it seems as though I am poking my nose into the
increasingly challenging world of typical adult life, constantly
navigating a maze of decisions; full-time job and stability, or
seasonal work and flexibility? Caught in the gravitational pull
between polar opposites, I sit in limbo, inertia zero, waiting
for a nudge one way or another.
With only six days off between my last Outward
Bound course and the start of my job, I point the wheels
north and rally towards Jackson and Chris Dickson (’13)
waiting in the Tetons.
After a day of prepping, researching, and hiding in
the Jackson Library while Chris tries to resurrect his ailing computer, we join my friend Jed for dinner and pick
his brain for last-minute beta on the granddaddy of all the
climbing in the Tetons; we’re going for The Grand Traverse.
For me, it will be a harsh introduction to climbing in the
range; I’ve never even touched the rock in the Tetons, let
alone climbed all of them in a single push, not to mention
I’ve spent the majority of the summer just walking around
with a heavy pack and not climbing.
Eight cams, eight nuts, and eight runners. That’s
Jed’s recommended rack. One 60m, 8.7mm rope. A sleeping
bag and pad each. No tent, minimal rain gear, light puffies.
Two days of food. It still weighs too much, but we have
to suck it up and go. The alarm goes off at 4 am. Perhaps
not the most alpine of alpine starts, but we’ve got a splitter
weather window and are willing to push the time a bit more.
We’re hiking out of the parking lot at exactly 6am, fueled by
excessive amounts of coffee and a few bites of oatmeal. Above
us, the skies are smudged with smoke from the conflagration
of wildfires devouring the parched Pacific Northwest.
The endless switchbacks up the East Face of Teewinot
crush our souls until we reach tree line and put our helmets
on for the loose gullies leading up to the summit. With parties above and below us we take our time picking around the
loose blocks and gravel strewn across the mountain. In two
weeks a pair of climbers will fall to their deaths after getting
off-route on this face, but today we stick the route-finding
and scramble to the summit at 9am. Before us the ridge
stretches into eternity; a maze of gendarmes and slabs littered
with patches of ice.
We solo around corners and over knife-edge blocks,
pull the rope out for a trio of rappels, and use our axes for the
first and only time slipping our way up the East Face of Mt.
Owen as we participate in every climber’s favorite activity,
kicking steps in névé wearing approach shoes. Exhausted by
nearly 8 hours on the go, I take a quick nap on the summit,
intentionally facing away from the intimidating North Ridge
of the Grand Teton. Beyond Mt. Owen, the soloing and
rappelling continues before we find ourselves racking up in
Gunsight Notch, shivering and swinging our arms in the cold
west wind.
The base of the North Ridge brings us to a crossroads. It’s 5pm and nearly 1200 feet of technical climbing,
plus the complex descent down the Owen-Spaulding route on
the opposite side of the Grand, loom ahead of us. Continuing
means doing it mostly in the dark. The easy choice means
bivying where we are, climbing the North Ridge in the morning, and, in all likelihood, bailing after hiking down the O-S.
“Fuck it. Let’s go,” I say and Chris leads off into his
block, bringing us to the bottom of the Italian Cracks in one
long simul-climbing pitch. I take the rack and blast up the
series of beautiful granite cracks. Just as I run out of gear and
rope I find myself on a ledge and bring Chris up. He leads off
again through a series of juggy overhangs and I find him comfortably at the top of the North Ridge blinking in the sudden
sunshine of the West Face. Two more pitches of simul-climbing and we top out the Grand Teton at 7:30pm and scramble
down to the O-S rappels just in time to see the last of our
light disappear behind the thick blanket of smoke. As if on
cue, my headlamp splutters and dies, along with the rest of
my mental capacity for decision-making. Blind and bonking,
I stumble down to the Lower Saddle, an apostle following the
small orb of light from Chris’s headlamp five feet ahead of me
Matt Zia chills on the summit of Mount Owen, peak 2 out of 10 on the Grand Traverse. Chris Dickson.
44 CCAJ
CCAJ 45
and we collapse into our sleeping bags right next to another
team.
Early morning light spills over the high desert of
Wyoming, seeping through the layer of smoke still blurring
the edge of the sky. Below us, Jackson ebbs in and out of
view. Neither of us feel completely wrecked and we discuss
our options over a shared cup of coffee. We are caught again,
in the pull of two decisions. Bailing from the Lower Saddle
would merely put us in the company of many strong climbers
before us. We decide to finish what we started, and hike out
of the Lower Saddle bivy at nearly 9am.
The Middle and South Teton flow by. Legs invigorated by a night of sleep carry us quickly across the talus field
between the two, interrupted momentarily by a confused
and psyched Chilean photographer with a backpack full of
camera gear and a mouth full of questions. We pull the rope
out only twice, once for the 5.7 pitch up the Ice Cream Cone
and once rappelling off of Cloudveil Dome.
The West Ridge of Nez Perce is a convoluted mess
of gendarmes, slabs, and scree-filled gullies that takes the last
of our route-finding ability to navigate. At 3pm we straddle
the narrow summit block of Nez Perce, bodies exhausted and
souls filled to bursting. During the descent we cross paths
with two guided Exum parties who started the day before
us on the traverse. Our water bottles long empty, we guzzle
from the ice cold torrent of Garnet Creek pouring off the
snowfield. We shoulder our packs for the last time and totter
46 CCAJ
our way down the Garnet Canyon trail back to the car and
lukewarm beers.
Katie Ives once wrote, “within this wild and uncertain life, beauty is the only certainty we can know.” As I step
back into the world of schedules, deadlines, and grading tests,
I wonder what wildness and uncertainty will come. An object
in motion will stay in motion until acted on by an outside
force. All it takes is a nudge and driven by the desire to teach,
my inertia is now rolling towards the professional life. And
I wonder, where will the uncertainty take me? Let the wild
rumpus start.
Summary:
The Grand Traverse, 5.8, V, 12,000 feet, 13.5 miles, 10 peaks
The Grand
Nick Merritt (’19)
It was August 12th. In three days, I would start as a freshman
at Colorado College.
I had spent the second half of the summer in my
hometown Lander Wyoming, sport climbing, working, and
playing Frisbee. It had been a good time, but there was something that I had not managed to do in the month and a half I
was home, or in all the years I’d lived in Wyoming. Anybody
who has driven through Grand Teton National Park has undoubtable been captivated by the Grand. It’s a big mountain
with no real foothills and looms over one of the
most beautiful valleys anywhere. I drove through
the park on my way to a lot of places growing up,
and the seeing the Tetons was always a highlight of
any journey.
I thought of climbing the Grand, but I
lacked the necessary skills to do it alone, and had
been unable to find a partner, but at the end of the
summer my brother JD, (’16), showed up for a
week or two of downtime before he was to return
to CC for his last semester.
In two days I would start NSO, and I had
yet to do any packing. JD and I had just gotten
home from a fun day of sport climbing at one of
Lander’s crags. It was about 6 pm and we were
talking. We had talked about the Grand in the
past days, but our weather had looked uncompliant. When we got back to our parent’s house, the
forecast had improved dramatically. “We could do
it, if we drove up tonight”, JD said. “Yeah, that
could be awesome.” We rummaged around our
parent’s kitchen, filching every bar and tasty snack
food in sight. We threw everything that we needed
in the back of my brother’s car, said a quick
[Left] Sunrise near the Lower saddle. JD Merritt. [Above] Nick nears the summit of the Grand. JD Merritt.
goodbye to my parents, and at around 8pm, rolled out of the
driveway towards the Tetons.
The car ride was a blur of abrasive electronic music,
occasional meaningful conversation, and excessive references
to obscure surreal comedy. At around 11 PM we rolled into
the Jenny Lake parking lot. We put down sleeping pads right
next to the car and went to sleep.
Due to consistent afternoon thunderstorms, the safest
way to climb the Grand is to be on the summit by 9 am. Our
plan had been to wake up at 3 am and begin hiking. After
about an hour and a half of sleep, the first party rolled in for
their alpine start. After they had left the lot, we quickly dozed
off again, but about fifteen minutes later, another party rolled
in. This would continue for until about 2 am, when JD and
I decided we might as well start hiking too. We got up and
packed our packs, consisting of a small puffy, a shell, food,
water, headlamp, a half rope, and a small rack. My brother
brought along some music for the more tedious parts of the
journey. Within fifteen minutes of getting up we were walking
in the dark. My brain didn’t have enough time to really wake
up, and settled straight from the dreamy sluggishness into the
steady beating rhythm of an uphill grind. This state of mind
made the 4 hours of hiking through the forest and scree
in the dark flow unnaturally fast. During this hike, it was
difficult to see or focus on the scenery, but as light began to
sneak its way over the horizon, shapes began to resolve out of
the darkness. I quickly became aware that I was in one of the
most beautiful places I had ever seen. On three sides, silhouettes of enormous granite spires towered over us, and to our
rear, the pale pre-dawn light had begun to expose the thin fog
on the floor of the TNP valley. With every passing minute,
the dark shapes began to gain texture and color. It felt like
the mountains had materialized around us and shattered our
little world of hiking. We hiked through the intensifying
beauty, and made it to the lower saddle around 7 AM. After
another hour or so of scrambling with a few pitches of easy
rock climbing, we were at the summit. We sat for a while in
perfect weather, looking at the jagged spine of the Tetons.
Every clichéd description about sitting on the top of a big
mountain applied. It felt like we could see everything, from
an angle and in a light that I had never seen before.
After a good half hour of relaxing on the summit, we
started our decent. I was surprised by the fact that this turned
out to be by far the more difficult half of the endeavor. The
CCAJ 47
first few hours drifted by without much discomfort, but as
the steady tromping went on, my joints, ill prepared from a
summer of sport climbing, began to feel the wear of the 7000
feet of vert. that they had to cover each way. Making jokes
and trading the headphones fueled our slog that brought us
to the car around 4 pm. The world now draped in angled
shadows of later afternoon, I looked up at the summit of the
Grand unable to believe, though my legs felt pretty sure, that
we had been up there not too many hours ago. We got back
in the car, got a huge meal, and made the 3-hour drive back
to Lander in total exhausted satisfaction.
That night I slept hard, and the next day I packed up
everything I thought I would need for college. At 6 AM the
morning of the 15th, I left my parents driveway and drove to
the springs. Upon arrival, I followed the plethora of signs that
eventually led me to the Worner desk gold card line. Standing there, I had no idea what the next months were about
to bring; that they would be some of the best, most growth
inducing months of my life; that by the time I would be
writing this, in so many ways I would feel years older than my
August 2015 self. At that moment, I only felt only satisfaction
and the impending overwhelming stimulation of NSO that
every CC student gets to experience. Looking back, I feel like
our decision to squeeze in one last adventure before the end of
summer helped to set a precedent for my time at CC. We saw
that we had the time, the energy, and the means to do something, and we opted for making great memories and accepting
some stress and effort. I learned that if you have to time to go
for it, then do it, because after the soreness in your body is
gone and your mind has had some sleep, you won’t regret it.
Lone Peak
Rachel Spitzer (’03)
The alarm went off at five o’clock in the morning and
I groggily crawled out of bed to begin the day. Today was
going to be big. After the fog cleared from my brain, I started
to get excited about what was to come.
An hour later, my friend Emily showed up at my
door, and we began the half hour drive to the trailhead to
Lone Peak. I live in Salt Lake City — a sprawling metropolis of close to 200,000 people, but in just a short drive there
are amazing mountains, trails and climbs that beckon to be
explored.
We left the car at 6:30 and began the grueling hike
up to the base of Lone Peak Cirque. I had hiked up here earlier in the summer, but had brought gear to spend the night
at the base. Not wanting to carry heavy packs, we opted to
try to do the climb in a day. We put our heads down, rocked
out to Taylor Swift, and marched up the steep trail, leisurely
making our way through the open meadows and boulder
fields.
Several hours later, we were racking up at the base of
our climb, Center Thumb, a 400-foot 5.9+ climb that links
cracks systems and face features up to the top of the South
summit. Now some may think its crazy to hike 4,000-plus
feet for 400 feet of actual rock climbing. It is. But I was
ramping up my training in anticipation of some big upcoming trips and I was trying to get creative, while also staying
local. The climbing really is that good at the cirque. It is
totally worth it.
The first pitch began by climbing through some
5.7 face moves. We actually found this pitch to be the most
challenging given its tricky gear and committing moves. The
remaining pitches went quickly and were quite enjoyable
with superb granite cracks and large chicken heads for handholds and footholds. Temperatures were rather cool and
the wind was brisk, giving it a real alpine feel despite only
being a short drive from my house. On pitch four, I lead
up through the crux 5.9 hand crack, enjoying the exposure
and steep, yet secure movement. Another pitch led us to the
summit at about 11,000 feet and we took in the view of the
small but impressive Wasatch Range, the Great Salt Lake,
and the sprawling city below us.
We looked at the watch and realized we needed to
rally if we were going to make it back in time for tacos at
Lone Star. After a couple rappels and down climbing, we
were back on the trail. With aching feet, we arrived back at
the car and booked it back in time for some much-deserved
tacos and chips.
Tired and satisfied after a long-days work with a
good friend, I happily crawled into bed as soon as I got
home. The alarm was again set for an early morning but this
time it was to go to work. Life is busy when you work full
time and attempt to climb full time, but those moments in
the mountains with my best friends always make it worth it!
MOUNTAINEERING SCHOOL & GUIDE SERVICE
PikesPeakAlpineSchool.com
48 CCAJ
719.368.9524
CCAJ 49
Yo-so-mighty:
West Coast Granite
50 CCAJ
CCAJ 51
Saddling up the Pig
with Nik Bertulis (‘98)
Kishen Mangat (’96)
Lounging in an off-campus living room talking about
skateboards and co-eds, the conversation turned serious.
“Have you ever climbed a big wall?” I asked Nik. This was the
spring of 1996. A month later we were off to Washington to
climb the Liberty Crack (Grade V, 5.10 A2), the only true big
wall in the North Cascades.
I was inspired to learn that Nik’s father, Alex Bertulis
along with Fred Beckey, had put up the first ascent of Liberty Crack thirty years earlier in 1966. Nik, Andrew Wexler
(CC ’98) and I were working on a short film: “Whimsical
Dreams”, a Venture Grant backed project that intended to
chronicle CC’s historical significance in the climbing world.
This route and Nik’s family history would be incorporated
into our story line. Through trial and error we succeeded on
Liberty Bell. This adventure kicked off a successful big wall
partnership that lasted throughout the late nineties.
In the intervening years, work and family had gotten
in the way and it had been more than fifteen years since Nik
and I had tied in together. After a few logistical miscues, we
finally got back to business this past fall in Yosmite on El
Capitan’s Salathe Wall. Saddling up the pig with Nik was like
putting on that sturdy and familiar pair of leather boots.
One thing you learn after years of wall climbing is to
work smarter, not harder. I arrived in the Valley on a Sunday
in late September 2015 and hired two youngsters to ferry our
haul bag to Heart Ledges. In parallel, Chris Dickson (’13)
helped me fix lines by rope gunning the first few pitches of
the Free Blast.
(Nik Bertulis): Kishen’s brilliant managerial skills really
shined here. So nice to cruise the free blast with a methodically
packed haulbag awaiting at our bivy.
Nik arrived late that evening and the next day we
cruised the first ten pitches to Mammoth Terrace. We rappelled down to our haul bag at Heart Ledges, where the afternoon sun was unforgiving. We worked to find shade behind
the pig and lazed in the heat. Once the sun abated, Nik fixed
the two pitches up to the infamous Hollow Flake. We ate a
huge meal, sipped whiskey and soaked up our surroundings.
(Nik Bertulis): Here is Tom Evans (www.elcapreport.
com) blogpost for this day -“ Yo.. It has been way too hot for this
time of year, here in Yosemite. So, many teams have delayed
their climbs until the hot spell passes. There have been quite a
few bails due to the weather and the great cliff is mostly empty
now.”
[Previous Spread] Tuolumne Meadows, Matt Cornell looking down at the Eichorn Pinnacle during a fire.
Chris Dickson. [Above] The Summit of the Captian. [Top Right] Kishen on a spacious ledge. Nik Bertulis.
[Right] Kishen Jugging [Next Page] Kihsen meets Tommy Caldwell somewhere in the vertical desert on El Cap.
Nik Bertulis.
52 CCAJ
By 7am the next day I was battling my way up the
Hollow Flake, a 140-foot off-width with an 80 foot runout.
As I worked my way up into the crux section, I felt the
weight of the rack and fear battling my determination. Feeble
arm bars gave way and I began drifting down. As my body
wedged into the wide crack, my skin rubbed up against the
edges. I can only describe the sensation as that of a skier
self-arresting on steep snow. I had been able to stop myself
after twenty feet of falling, coming to rest just above my
number six cam. I checked myself out and yelled over to Nik
“no blood!” Perhaps even more determined, I clipped off the
rack and switched my body position to “right side in”. After
a twenty minute battle, I topped out on Hollow Flake Ledge
and let out a primal yelp.
(Nik Bertulis): Kishen is perhaps the only climber I
know that could take such a dignified whipper, he literally fell
20 ft and arrested himself by chocking his entire body into the
offwidth just above his last protection, a #6 cam. So glad I did
not have to lead that pitch.
The relief of passing the Hollow Flake quickly abated. I peered down to Heart Ledges and noticed a cavalry of
fast moving climbers breezing up towards us. As a party of
five, I worried that they would pass us and occupy the prime
bivy spot above at El Cap Spire.
Belaying from just below the Ear pitch, I made out a
familiar face and asked, “Tommy? Is that you?” With all the
recent press attention for his free Dawn Wall ascent, seeing
Tommy Caldwell on a hot El Cap day felt like a mirage.
Tommy and Kate Rutherford (CC ’03) were climbing with
a few rangers and photographers as part of the Facelift, an
CCAJ 53
annual Yosemite cleanup program.
(Nik Bertulis:) The beta on “The Ear” pitch is to place
your last piece as far out in the 30 foot horizontal chimney as
possible to avoid drag, unfortunately as I climbed passed my piece
the rope walked the 4.5” cam deep into the crack and we had to
abandon it. We mentioned it to Tommy and he pulled out a pole
and past it to Kate. Somehow she and Eric Bissell managed to
liberate the cam for us.
After sharing belay ledges and camaraderie with
Tommy, Kate and their affable crew, Nik and I spent the
night on the brilliant El Cap Spire, with their group just
below in the Alcove.
(Nik Bertulis:) I led the pitch onto the spire and
whipped a pure air 15 footer trying to mantle onto the spire.
Bivying at El Cap Spire was epic. Seeing pictures of Steve Roper
and Allen Steck bivying here in 1965 is what put Salathe on my
bucket list. We savored every inch of it.
The next morning we again traded belay ledges with
Kate and Eric Bissell, who were trying all the hard free stuff
juxtaposed against our traditional aid climbing style.
Above the Sous Le Toit pitch, some excellent 5.10 free climbing gave way to difficult C2 aid, where several placements
were beyond my technical realm, forcing me out of my aiders. As I pulled on pin scars with feet pasted on warm granite
in the hot sun, I felt like I was floating upward.
(Nik Bertulis): Here’s another blog from Tom Evans for
this day, “Warm temperatures are still keeping the masses off El
Cap.” Never have I known thirst so intimately as on this day.
As temperatures hovered in the 90’s, Kishen, watching me chug
water we had just hauled up 2000 vertical feet of granite, subtly
and wisely reminding me the importance of maintaining some
54 CCAJ
water reserves. Unquenchable thirst
was a constant companion.
Nik took the lead for the
infamous roof pitch, which traverses 35 feet right, then 25 feet up and
20 feet out. He did a wonderful job
back cleaning, leaving just one pin
clipped on the traverse, which was
close enough for me to reach from
the belay.
(Nik Bertulis): Above the
roof, as the sun set, one of my offset
cams pulled, and I enjoyed a bit of
evening airtime. After some ginger
maneuvering, I topped out the pitch
into the jet black of the night. Nik took a couple whippers
but persevered. It is, after all, a
Bertulis tradition to whip on A2!
As the rope became tight, I heard
Nik scream, “you’re fixed!” I rigged
my GriGri and unclipped the lone pin. I was 2300 feet off
the deck and dusk was passing. I jumped from the belay and
went airborne, swinging out 60 feet. I was overwhelmed with
adrenaline and couldn’t contain my jubilant howls. As the
swinging slowed, I placed my jumars and
began ascending the rope into the Salathe roof feeling tremendously alive.
Above the roof was the Salathe Headwall, a 250 foot overhanging blank face with only a plumb finger crack. I took the
first lead and worked offset and mid-range cams, leapfrogging
and high stepping to the upper roof band. It was 10:30 pm
and Nik took the final lead of the evening. The headwall
turned steep and meager with a sequence of micro-stoppers.
(Nik Bertulis): We were swapping leads, and Kishen
kept getting the really long pitches. This is around when the
suffer-fest began as my hips started bleeding from the unpadded
harness (handed down from my father’s climbing days) started
gouging into me during the hour and a half hanging belay (I
should have bought that wall harness). Having been up since
4:30 am, mental fatigue was also creeping onto the scene.
We reached Long Ledge at half past midnight for
our third night on the wall. We quickly made supper before
a deep but brief slumber. Our narrow perch was body width.
At one point I commented, “This has to be the smallest bivy
ledge I have ever slept on!” But Nik reminded me of the time
on Half Dome when we lost the topo and got off route and
ended up sleeping on a two foot wide flake.
The next morning we ventured upward with three
pitches remaining. Immediately off Long Ledge, tricky aid
climbing led to a smooth face with a few rounded knobs.
There were no aid placements and free climbing would be
required. As I proceeded up the face, I battled mental and
physical fatigue. The moves were of the 5.10 variety and
after taking a couple whippers, I ceded the lead to Nik, who
clipped off the rack and sent the 25 foot runout face. We were
elated to pass this last obstacle.
(Nik Bertulis:) At the summit, it felt good to fill the valley with screams of joy. Kishen brought his small flask of whiskey
that has escorted him up countless walls. I always thought that
drinking when dehydrated was a bad idea, but that day it made
all the sense in the world.
From the Summit we still had the East Ledges descent. I had dropped one of my approach shoes off the free
blast and was contemplating the descent with my foot painfully stuffed into a climbing shoe. Big wall climbing involves
problem solving and Nik has an intuitive style as a climber,
which is evident in his effective tinkering and unconventional approaches. To solve my shoe problem, Nik removed
the foam from his knee pad, used a climber’s knife to cut the
outline of my right foot into the foam and constructed a shoe
from climbing tape fortified with duct tape.
(Nik Bertulis:) Watching Kishen video-call his wife and
three children, with his one duct tape shoe, was pretty touching. It
had me wondering if I will ever be a father.
Mind you the East Ledges descent is highly involved
with slab walking, down scrambling, scree, rappels, haul bag
lowering and gullies, none of which were any match for Nik’s
inventive shoe creation. A debilitating descent in my climbing
shoes had been averted and a twenty year wall partnership was
reborn.
(Nik Bertulis:) A quick dip in the Merced River left
us hurrying to catch a pizza and beer at the village. We drank
jubilantly.
-Kishen Mangat CC (’96)
-Commentary by Nik Bertulis (’98)
Summary: El Capitan, Salathe Wall. 5.9 C2, 35 pitches.
Yosemite
Nick Koch (`13)
The longest half mile you’ll ever walk begins on the
south side of Yosemite Valley. It goes past huge boulders that
ground you with a sense of place once your headlamp passes
over them. You’ve fallen off their flanks innumerable times.
Next, you begin the longest switchbacks you’ve ever done on
broken asphalt. The dense leaves signal your place in an oak
forest, but you can hardly see further than the few trees by the
sides of the trail. Suddenly you notice just how much you’re
sweating.
After you can hardly take the sweat and the monotonous even grade anymore you come upon the stream that
signals you to leave the Four Mile Trail. Drawn upwards
through the thick underbrush, boulders, and plain loose dirt,
you rise through the heat and mosquitos into a sage brush
clearing with a bivy spot. Here, the Sentinel looms, invisible
but undeniably present. You slap mosquitos while tossing and
turning beneath an unzipped bag and call it sleep
At five-thirty AM my alarm went off, and I threw the
shirt off of my face that had kept the bloodsuckers at bay. I
sat in a hot daze, trying to get my dehydrated brain to fire
enough neurons to drink water and then boil more for tea.
“F***, I didn’t sleep at all. This is the hottest I’ve ever
seen it at night in Yosemite. S***** f*****” bellows Mark.
Mark unzipped his bivy sack, the only layer he
had slept in, and began to pack up his bag. I rolled out of
mine, and immediately confronted fifty mosquitos in need
of breakfast. I ate my PB&J sandwiches and took my tea
while walking in tight circles. We racked up, marveling at
the tininess of the mosquitos, and just how many there were.
Fortunately, this did not set the tone for the rest of the day.
After walking to the base of the Steck Salathe at
around 7:00, Mark takes off up the first pitch, lie backing
and using face holds to get through the only real offwidth
of the whole climb. While belaying him, I hear the familiar
clink of carabiners approaching the trail. A man emerges
from the oaks.
“Hi there” He drawls. “Tough carrying both a rope
and a rack.”
He establishes that he is Andrew from Georgia, and
he’ll be rope soloing in and out of our personal space all
day. He says the last two times he did this climb it took him
eighteen hours and that he hasn’t been climbing much recently, but he’s gunning for eight hours this time. He passed
the night in his truck at the base of four mile trail. He didn’t
sleep much either. He is afraid we’re moving slowly and wants
to pass us. He’s wearing only socks on his feet and believes
that they’re the best approach shoes. Despite my lackluster
protest, he starts climbing. I climb repeatedly over his gear,
and pull his rope away from the crack to get it out of my feet.
As I get to the anchor, Andrew repels to clean his gear. Mark
turns to me and repeats one thing that will come to be the
weird call sign of the trip.
“S***** f****** f*****” Mark’s not really a bad dude,
once you get to know him.
I run up the next pitch as fast as I can and bring
Mark up to beneath the Wilson Overhang. Mark stems his
way through it while repeatedly calling it soft, and is at the
next belay in minutes. The climbing fun and engaging, with
thoughtful stemming. A fair degree of pump was building
up in my side-butt and calves as I tried to figure out the beta.
CCAJ 55
Mark is six inches taller than I am, and so every time I got
to a rest, I would see a cam just out of my reach. I get to the
belay and check the time. Three pitches down, one and a half
hours in. On lead now, I pull over a bulge and emerge into a
massive inset wall between two corners, embarking on another mega-pitch linkup. Multiple climbable cracks shoot
upwards and I find myself paralyzed by choice a few times,
trying to figure out which ones will get me to the belay ledge
with enough gear. The climbing is fun, though, and I run it
out over moderate terrain, fully enjoying the experience. I pull
onto a ledge, and realize that I am at the end of the rope. I
build a belay, shuck my shoes and snap a couple of photos as
Mark climbs up to the belay.
“Did you have to choose the dirtiest path of most
resistance? Also, Andrew kept trying to pass, but refused to
listen to me when I told him that you were linking pitches.
He says he’s moving approximately 20% faster than we are”
Below us, I can already hear Andrew at the beginning
of the pitch. Mark zooms upward over easy terrain to the top
of the tower that marks about 1/2 the height, and 1/3 of the
effort of the route. When I reach him, I quickly untie, take
more rad photos, and squeeze through the narrow passage
at the top of the tower to the ledge on the other side. A big
grin creeps onto my face as I realize just how much damn fun
this climb is. Once through, I thread the anchors and take a
few seconds to marvel at the secret space on the other side of
the tower: a sloping ledge, and a vertical garden that are all
probably invisible from the valley floor and shielded from the
harshest winds and sun. We rap, deal with some rope nonsense, and I start up the 5.9+ fists pitch. As I grunt my way
through the awkward crux at the top, I can’t help but hear
Andrew ask Mark with his pleasant Georgia drawl if he knows
about any variations to this pitch so he can keep on going
around us. I swear under my breath and climb faster. Mark takes the face climbing pitch and styles his
way up it. It’s thin and techy, with thoughtful gear and wellspaced bolts. I follow it with Andrew climbing about fifteen
feet below me, conversing with Mark the whole time about
climbing in North Carolina. They make tentative plans to
meet up when Mark goes to visit his family. After arriving at
the belay I take a quick drink of water and munch some trail
mix. Re-racking and eating done, I stare up into the abyss.
The next two pitches are considered the physical crux of the
climb, a chimney listed at 10b and the famous 9+ squeeze
known as “The Narrows.” Mark counsels to climb it left side
in, so I start up and quickly realize that this is the wrong side,
down climb and begin again. It’s a pretty awesome chimney!
Good feet in some sections, but some rough tapers and small
roofs that make me feel like I’m inside a garbage compactor. I
make it to a climbable flake, and scurry quickly to the anchor
below the Narrows.
56 CCAJ
I don’t even think about it. The prospect of following
the heinous squeeze above me while trailing a pack seems
like the kind of suffering that would make saints and martyrs
blush. The Narrows begins with a normal chimney for five
feet, then you hit a flat ceiling. On one side of this ceiling,
the chimney continues, albeit in a much, much tighter width.
The effect of this is that the climber gets her or his torso into
the squeeze, but their legs remain outside of it, smearing on
the opposite wall. It almost looks like someone sitting on
the ground in a hallway with legs fully extended, back and
feet braced on the walls. Now place a giant box on their lap,
remove the floor, and have them climb the gap between the
box and the back wall.
The crux is getting your legs into the squeeze. I reach
out and get a left fist jam in the back of the chimney and a
right chicken-wing above my head. I kick my right foot off of
the wall and it hangs for a moment, uncertain. I feel my body
begin to slip downward and from then on it’s war. I try to
bring my right knee higher and higher as my left foot barely
toes the other wall. I get one inch of my right knee into the
crack. I breathe for a second, get another inch, and cut my
left foot. I have no idea how I got the left knee in, but I distinctly recall that the moment I felt secure enough to pause
and deliberately hyperventilate for a few seconds to catch
my breath. I turn my head and see a small slice of Yosemite
filtering in from the mouth of the chimney. Above me, the
walls undulate like calm water. I shimmy upwards, choosing
look into the dark interior when the chimney tightens down
too much to turn my head.
Eventually I reemerge, feeling weightless in a slightly less physical world. I place a cam off a ledge and will my
body upwards, feeling exhaustion gathering in my limbs and
chest. Belaying from a ledge, I put my feet up, remove my
shoes again, and wait for Mark.
Time moves weirdly on a climb. Sometimes hours melt, and
seconds stretch into little eternities. Sometimes, especially
during dawn and dusk, you move wholly outside of time,
snapping back into it only once the sun comes up, or you
make it back to your car. This is not one of those times.
Mark had a long, arduous fight trailing the pack and size five
Camalot up that pitch, and marked it with scraping noises
that slowly grew in volume. As he got closer I could hear him
talking with Andrew, their collective bitch session about trailing equipment in their crotches comforting them on their
way up the squeeze. Eventually both popped out and scrambled up to my belay. Andrew rappelled to clean his gear, and
then re-climb the pitch. Fuck.
Mark climbed the 5.7 chimney, and I linked the next
two pitches after and ended up fighting my way through
another section of fists and looser rock, putting in another
full-rope-length mega-pitch. We were gunning for “the tree,”
CCAJ 57
Half Dome had melted into woods, and the woods became
the JMT, so we turned left to contour to the base of the wall,
where we would return to the base of the Regular North West
Face to bivy for the night. Pausing for break in the loose dirt,
manzanita, and talus we noticed a light from across the valley.
Three sustained flashes punctuated by a long pause, too regular by any human hand and too bright for any headlamp.
We checked our phones for both cell service and
YOSAR contact info and found neither. The signal appeared
to us as far away as a star, or a distant light deep in a cold
sea. SOS. By the time we reached camp it had ceased. I never
figured out what happened.Summary:
The Sentinel, Steck-Salathe 5.10- IV
Half Dome, Regular Northwest Face, 5.10 C1 V
The Story of My Summer
Chris Dickson (`13)
a sweet-smelling pine that marks the end of the real climbing.
In the afternoon light I took in the valley again. I’m no veteran, but I’ve done enough Valley climbing that I’ve seen this
view pretty often and what I really love is not seeing El Cap
again, or the Cathedral Spires hiding in the shadows of their
larger cousins, but the context and reframing of these images.
It’s seeing just the top of Half Dome and Taft Point peaking
through a couple of thick, yellow-green Manzanita bushes,
seeing the mouth of the valley framed by the unique little
towers at the top of the Sentinel. One more 5.6 pitch later
and I take a quick naked summit selfie, and begin the descent
towards water, backpacks, and the car.
After reaching the base, I let out a small howl while staring
ahead at the end of the “longest half mile’s” broken asphalt.
Then, just as we reach the car, I turn around, stare the Sentinel in the face and let the thing have it, busting out a piece of
wolf song with all the air in my lungs, holding the final note
until there’s nothing left.
-Without food for hours, without water for longer,
we walked through the woods at night. The clean granite of
The rhythm is hypnotic. Weight left foot, raise right
jumar, weight right foot, raise left jumar. It almost makes me
forget my surroundings. But, suddenly, our shitty BD ascender slips and I’m very quickly reminded that I’m spinning
in space, 2,700’ off the ground, with nothing but air between
my toes and the talus. “Holy shit! I’m jugging the Changing
Corners pitch on El Cap. How the hell did I get here!?!”
Well, it’s a long story, one that begins four-months earlier at
our very own Colorado College.
Every weekend warrior dreams about it: quitting
their nine-to-five job and hitting the road. And, for me, planning the ultimate climbing road trip had completely taken
over my hour-long lunch breaks at work. After graduating in
2013, I had been working in the Outdoor Education department at CC, helping coordinate the Ritt Kellogg Memorial
Fund and oversee the Climbing Gym. While I sat at my
desk writing policies for the outdoor climbing program, my
friends posted photos from their latest climbing adventures
— alpine walls in Canada, long climbs in the Black, hard
cracks in the Creek, and Yosemite big walls. It seemed like
everybody was crushing, except for me. But then, it was June,
and my two-year contract with CC was coming to a close.
At last, it was my turn. I had carefully crafted a four-month
climbing trip, built out the back of my car for full-time
living, and jettisoned most of my personal belongings. After
six years of living in Colorado Springs, it was finally time to
[Above] Nick Koch on the Sentinel. [Right] Looking up at the Pillar of Dana. Chris Dickson.
58 CCAJ
CCAJ 59
pull onto I-25 for the last time and put CC squarely in the
rearview mirror. Adventure awaited.
“Hey Matt, you awake?” It was 7:15 pm, the sun was
setting, and Matt Zia (’14) and I were both snoozing on the
summit of the Grand Teton. For most climbers, being in that
place at that time would mean that you had massively screwed
something up. But for us, it meant that we had already been
moving for 12-hours over 4th and 5th class ridgelines and just
had to make it to the Lower Saddle before we could pass out.
We were halfway through the Grand Traverse a link-up of the
10 major summits in the Tetons. My road trip had stalled in
Jackson due to partners who got jobs and horrendous conditions in the Bugaboos, so I slowly began ticking off each
of the Tetons. With each trip into the range, playing in the
peaks felt more and more comfortable and soon I was totally
obsessed with the idea of linking all of the summits in a single
push. Although, I will admit that Matt ended up solidifying
the idea when he texted me, “wanna do the Grand Traverse?!”
At first, I couldn’t tell if he was joking or serious. After all,
Matt had been working for Outward Bound all summer, hiking through the Colorado backcountry at the speed of teenagers carrying sixty pounds packs for the first time in their lives.
Not exactly “fast and light.” If he was up for it, however, then
I had my partner. It was on.
“Yup, and there it goes…” Matt sighed as his headlamp died for the third time. Of course, nothing ever goes
completely without incident and we descended the Owen-Spalding in darkness, making it to the Lower Saddle
around 9pm. Luckily, the next morning dawned with bluebird skies and, somehow, our legs weren’t that sore. We rallied
and finished the traverse by summiting Nez Perce around 3
pm. At 6 pm, Matt and I kicked off our shoes, cracked two
luke-warm beers, high-fived and flopped down onto the dirt
behind my car. It had been a little less than 36 hours since we
had left the previous morning, and we had just accomplished
one of my dream objectives for the summer. At 6:30 pm, we
were driving out of the park, eyes to the Western skyline, still
in shock (Was it a dream? Did that really just happen?). And,
at 7:05 pm, we were sitting in Pinky G’s Bar and Grill, drinking ice cold IPA’s and stuffing our faces with buffalo chicken
pizza. Life sure is GRAND.
“You’re listening to ‘This American Life’ from WBEZ
Chicago. Please, stay with us”. It was our 3rd episode in a row
and Ira Glass’ voice was starting to sound ironic, considering
our surroundings. Hannah Trim (`14) and I were waiting out
the rain, bivied in a cold and rocky cave, a third of the way
up Mt. Pelion in the Tantalus Range, northwest of Squamish,
BC. We had originally received a “Live Your Dream” grant
from the American Alpine Club to attempt the Picket Traverse in the North Cascades, but with our trailhead burning
and the park closed due to wildfires, we were forced to find an
60 CCAJ
awamus Chief and links some of it’s most beautiful features.
You know a route is going to be classic when its individual pitches have names like ‘The Split Pillar,’ ‘The Sword of
Damocles,’ and ‘Perry’s Layback.’ The Grand Wall sure was.
After getting shut down repeatedly, it felt great to finally do a
big climb with Hannah. We both got our fair share of classic
pitches as we swapped leads on that beautiful late summer
day. Topping out with plenty of daylight left, we strolled
across Bellygood Ledge and off the side of the Chief, watching the sun’s rays shimmer off the placid waters of Howe
Sound. It had been a fun (albeit rainy) trip to BC, but Hannah and I finally felt like we had bagged an objective worthy
of the Live Your Dream Grant we had received. The next
morning, we got a different kind of alpine start and drove
across the border at 4AM so that Hannah could catch her 7
am flight out of Seattle. It was another successful adventure
and we had made it, just barely, by the skin of our teeth.
Driving through northern California, I reached out
to Nick Koch (`13), a seasoned vagabond climber, to see if he
wanted to climb or, at the very least, connect me with some
partners in Yosemite. Per usual, Nick came through in the
clutch and about an hour later I pulled into the Mobil gas
station east of Tioga Pass and met Matt Connelly: a wildeyed climbing addict who is living the dirtbag dream in the
Valley. Within minutes we had devised a plan for the following day and it was a doozy. It would be my first day EVER
climbing in California and we were planning to link up two
classic routes in the Tuolumne high country: the Third Pillar
of Dana and the Southeast Buttress of Cathedral Peak. The
day started off with finding two cams on the Third Pillar
(BOOTY!) and then, for the second time that summer, we
raced by Mark Smiley on the approach trail and soloed up
Cathedral’s sweeping flanks right as the sun turned our alpine
surroundings into a glowing orange moonscape. Sitting on
the summit, we both literally laughed out loud trying to
imagine what it would have been like for John Muir, who
first summited the peak in 1869. We both agreed that we
were undoubtedly grateful for our sticky rubber, especially
while down-climbing off the summit block. As we trotted
down the trail, back to our car in the Meadows, Matt asked
me what I was hoping to climb while in Yosemite.
“You know what, man, I’d love to do an easy wall. Maybe the
South Face of Washington Column? Yah, that’d be rad”.
He shot back, “Yah? How ‘bout the Nose?” “Yah, man! Give it everything you’ve got! Go go
go!” I chanted, as Matt sprinted back across the wall for the
third time. Perched on top of the Boot Flake, I watched as he
lunged sideways, fingertips latching onto an edge at the exact
apex of his swing. A huge roar erupted from the Meadows
and Matt and I howled like stone monkeys into the hot dry
winds that swept across El Cap. The King Swing was now
behind us, and we were on track to make it
to Camp 6 well before dinnertime. At only
21 years old, this was already Matt’s second
time up the Nose and his youthful exuberance reminded me just how fun rock
climbing can (and should) be. He still had
that “go for it” attitude in climbing, like he
knew he could overcome whatever obstacle
stepped in his way. Even though I was only
four years older, I could already feel a sense
of cautious pragmatism creeping into my
bones from past epics and previous failures. For instance, before Matt rolled into
the Meadows, I hiked to the base of El Cap
to scope the route and assess the crowds.
To put it simply, I was completely devastated by what I saw: two sets of fixed ropes
already dangled from Sickle Ledge and
two more were being fixed by Spanish and
Japanese teams as I stood there watching.
What a clusterfuck. I was sure that we were
hosed. We’d get stuck behind crowds, fail
to make it to El Cap Tower on the first day
and then have to rap, dejectedly, back to
the valley floor. Luckily, when I told Matt
the news, he just took it in stride, “Well,
fuck it. Let’s just start climbing now.” It
was 8 pm.
At 3 am, I start leading the Stoveleg Cracks, swimming up glorious handjams in the tiny sphere of light illuminated
by my headlamp. Climbing the lower third
of El Cap in the middle of the night and
in complete darkness is a unique experience. You have no perspective on your
[Above] Erik Rieger enjoys the fruits of hauling on Zodiac. John Collis.
surroundings and, as such, can really
only focus on what’s in front of you: the
rock, the pitch, your hands, your feet.
hit me: with only 4 pitches left, the climb would be over
It wasn’t until around 5 am, when the ambient light of the
soon and, to be honest, I really didn’t want it to end. Wall
sun began creeping into the valley, that I realized it, “Dude,
climbing takes hold of you slowly and subtly. At first, it’s a
we’re on freakin’ El Cap!!!” In a strategic and (admittedly)
brutal endeavor and you curse every romantic vision you
rather sneaky move, we had cruised the first nine pitches of
ever had while reading stories from the big wall pioneers
The Nose in the night and had passed all of the international
(let’s face it, hauling sucks and aid climbing is tedious). But
parties while they lay sleeping at the base of the route. We
then, the pig gets lighter, you find your flow on lead, and
were stoked, but also exhausted, and decided to take a siesta
the exposure becomes more and more dramatic. Before you
on Dolt Tower before climbing the last four pitches to El Cap
know it, you’re hooked, and the whole experience becomes
Tower. That night, I got to sleep on the wall for the first time
an amazing dream you just don’t want to wake up from. After
in my life and after being awake and on the move for more
leading Harding’s bolt latter and dragging our haulbag across
than 36 hours, the long and narrow ledge of El Cap Tower
the summit slabs, Matt and I took shelter in the shade of a
felt like a feather-topped king-sized mattress.
gnarled old juniper. While I was riding high and feeling like I
But, then, on our third day on the wall, it suddenly
CCAJ 61
had just completed one of the most incredible experiences of
my life, Matt sat quietly with a thousand-mile stare. The spell
was broken and I could tell that, for Matt, the prospect of
returning to life on terra firma was a truly depressing notion.
He was already dreaming of the next climb, a harder wall, a
longer escape from the mundane existence of everyday life.
Now, as I write this, sitting indoors in Telluride, I
too hear the call and feel its pull. Four months on the road
seemed to pass in an instant and the stationary life of working
9 to 5 and paying the rent on time again weighs on my psyche. But, the rock is there, as is the road, and, secretly I know
that, when I’m ready, adventure awaits.
Early Season Alpine
Joe Purtell (’18)
My feet left the talus field at 9 am, beginning a 14-hour
journey up and down a slightly snowier Hulk than expected.
We’ll be off before dark, right?
Chris and I departed from San Francisco 28 hours
earlier, planning on bagging the Incredible Hulk of the Eastern Sierras in the three-day window opened by his return to
the city and closed by my brother’s high school graduation.
Leaving Tiburon at 6 am, we managed to make Sacramento
in an hour, a feat more impressive than our climbing objective.
In celebration, we stopped for a bit of bouldering in
Lover’s Leap, where I desperately tried to acquire basic finger-crack techniques on a short bolder problem. With boosted
confidence, we returned to the car and finished the remainder
of the 7-hour drive with only minor missteps.
Our quick stop in Bridgeport to download internet
topos was marred by the rain which we knew was saturating
the Hulk. Undeterred, we began the approach hike. As we
ascended the steep valley leading to the Hulk, the rain felt
like less of a curse. The gentle green aspens took on a ghostly
luminescence in the low-hanging clouds, and the stern pines
were dwarfed by primordial granite teeth. It was good to be
back in the mountains.
Given the wet conditions, and the unfortunate fact
that I could count my 5.10 trad leads on one hand, we opted
for Red Dihedral (5.10) over Positive Vibrations (5.11). Also,
we forgot to get the topo for the latter. We decided to start
mid-morning to let the route dry and give my first true alpine
day a Californian flavor.
The Incredible Hulk is a truly impressive piece of
rock. Steep and massive, I’ll admit I was a bit nervous. The
first three pitches were wet, as expected. It had rained overnight as well as the better part of the previous day and the
namesake dihedral served as a funnel, concentrating water-flow on the lower pitches. The rain endowed the rock with
62 CCAJ
a chilling wetness, but more problematically, it may have
compromised the strength of some of the face holds. The
result was the disintegration of what we thought was a solid
foothold.
Chris went from his comfortable resting position to
a whipping 25 feet without either of us quite realizing what
was happening. No big deal. He saddled up, got back on, and
after placing another cam, casually sent the crux move. We
finally gained dryer ground.
The next several pitches went sm oothly, meandering
up the vertical ocean stretched before us. Around pitch seven,
we felt a storm system moving in, although we knew we
would not be able to assess the situation until we summited
the first ridge. Retreat was, at this point, impractical at best.
In the interest of time, I gave my leads to my more competent partner.
We eerily wandered on the next pitch, which deposited us at the base of what we thought was a 5.8 crack. Someone must have made a mistake. Two pitches later, we reached
the traverse ridge. To our delight, the rain clouds had parted
around the Hulk, passing a few miles to the north.
After rappelling across a short snowfield, we began
the final two pitches to the summit. Chris, expressing unconscious rock guide aspirations, led the 5.8 choss chimney in
his approach shoes while I led the summit pitch through the
famous birthing canal.
Signing the summit log, we discovered we may
have been the first party to summit that season. The descent
showed the earliness of the season, and we slogged down
through snow in wet shoes.
The descent gully, 3rd class talus on a good day, was
snowed in. Taking what seemed to be our only option, we
ended up descending some no-fall snowfield at sundown. We
continued well into the night, eventually finding ourselves in
a river of slush that gradually developed into more agreeable
terrain.
We stumbled into camp at 11 pm, and proceeded to
enjoy what may have been the best mac and cheese ever to
grace mortal mouths. Eyes closed in my sleeping bag, all I
could see was granite.
Summary: Incredible Hulk, Red Dihedral (5.10)
[Right] Approaching the Hulk on a marginal weather
day. Joe Purtell.
CCAJ 63
Rock On, Problems Off
Erin Burk (’17)
After a failed attempt to find the Squamish skate park, Josh
Edwards (’16) and I decided to get coffee instead. The sun
was out, the temperature was perfect, and even though we
were a little frustrated that the sign pointing to the supposed
“skate park” was clearly lying, the day was still promising.
Our plan was to waste some time in the morning while we
waited for the South Gulley of The Chief to go into the
shade so we could climb the ultra-classic Rock On (5 pitches,
5.10a), then link up with Squamish Buttress (6 pitches, 5.10c)
in order to top out on the Chief ’s First Peak.
We had been in Squamish, BC for five days and were
finally getting reacquainted with placing gear and locking
jams in granite cracks. So far the weather had been holding
out, so we had already been able to check off some other
classic climbs and proud objectives in the area such as an
on-sight of Exasperator (5.10c) for me and a near-on-sight of
Century Box (5.12a) for Josh. However, most of the climbing
we had done so far had been either single pitch cragging or
shorter multipitches, so we were looking forward to a longer
climb. Now, the only thing standing in the way was the
angle of the sun.
That morning while we sipped coffee, Josh saw that
he had a message from a friend of his living in the small village of Pokhara in Nepal. As it turns out, the little village had
just experienced another earthquake—likely an aftershock of
the huge 7.8 magnitude earthquake that hit the country this
past April, leaving cities and the economy in shambles.
Josh had been there for the first earthquake in April. While
travelling there, Josh had happened upon an organization
that brought food and supplies to small villages surrounding
Pokhara, overlooked by larger organizations.
While there, Josh had grown especially attached to
one little boy named Supal who, as he described, had a big
personality. He had told me stories about how Supal would
wake up the volunteers every day by dancing around and
making a scene. That day, when Josh received the message, he
found out that the most recent even had killed five families in
the village—including the one of the Supal.
I didn’t know what to say to Josh or how to make
him feel better; we both knew that we were powerless in the
situation. All I could think to do was ask if he still wanted to
go climbing—his answer was yes.
So after our coffee was done, we hopped in the car,
and drove to the base of the Chief. The approach was about
a twenty-minute hike up South Gulley. I led the first pitch,
a funky and blocky 5.8 left-facing corner, and Josh took the
second, which was more of the same. The third pitch was especially weird—the corner crack widens and the angle starts
64 CCAJ
to back, but right when I thought I would fall out of the fist
jam, a horizontal finger crack appeared on the forward-facing
wall and I was able to place a good small nut. After I pulled
over the short section, I was standing on a good-sized ledge,
but needed to walk forward across a left-facing, low-angle slab
to get to the bolted anchor at the bottom of the next pitch.
Josh got to lead the money pitch of Rock On—a 40-meter
5.10a left-facing corner with every style of movement. It
starts off as a thin finger crack on a bulge, then turns into a
dead-vertical finger jam cruise, then the last section features
a series of small, blocky roofs that call for a couple of airy
moves. While he cruised the pitch no problem, I found the
hand jams a little shaky at the airy section toward the top. As
the last “pitch” was about 20 meters of 5.easy scrambling with
one or two 5.7 moves, we decided to unrope and scramble to
the top.
From the top of Rock On, we kept walking uphill
through the forest (only in Squamish have I seen a fullfledged forest in the middle of a huge cliff). We hiked about
ten minutes before we found the base of the next climb on
our list, Squamish Buttress. When we got there, a party of
two women had just started up. This route, though technically six pitches, is mostly just easy scrambling up a system
of over-grown ledges to reach the glorious headwall. Josh and
I had already decided that we were going to simul-climb the
first five pitches because we didn’t have a lot of time until sunset. We gave the party ahead of us a little space, then passed
them at the top of their first pitch, giving them some of our
water as thanks. We reached the last pitch, a 5.10c finger
crack stem box, in seemingly no time at all. This route climbs
a white streak on the leftmost side of a vertical slab that overlooks all of Squamish, the Howe Sound, and the Mamquam
River Valley. Since Josh got the money pitch on the last route,
he thoughtfully handed the torch over to me and I took the
lead. This pitch starts out climbing a 5.9 hand crack followed by a small step-over into the main corner. I stemmed,
smeared, and finger-locked my way to the top, placing a few
horrible nuts that luckily didn’t see a fall. When I got to the
ledge above, I was stoked on the fact that I had on-sighted
another good finger-crack! I hadn’t ever pushed myself too
hard on trad gear before, but I was starting to understand
that I shouldn’t hold myself back just because a route is sport
or trad—it’s all just climbing. Anyway, I set up the belay and
Josh cruised up without a problem, making fun of the gear I
had placed on the way.
We then scrambled up through a series of ledges to
the summit of The Chief just in time to watch the sun fall behind the Coastal BC Mountains, that infamous orange glow
dispersed throughout the clouds and over the Sound. Despite
the fact that the most popular tourist trail in Squamish leads
right to where we were sitting, we somehow had the summit
all to ourselves. As we watched the sun creep behind the hills,
we didn’t talk much.
On the descent trail back to camp, Johs began to share
with me some of the things he had been thinking about. It was
clear that the news he had received early that day had caused
him to feel, more than anything, confused. He was asking me
questions that I couldn’t answer: Why did this have to happen
to these people? What did they do to deserve this tragedy?
Why is it that I am here, in Canada, completely helpless to the
situation? Even though I had no direct connection with these
people of Pokhara, I had felt the same confusion when Josh
first told me the news.
However, after having spent the whole afternoon on
the wall, we both felt better about the situation. We talked
about how the event caused the both of us to question the
power of coincidence—how so many of life’s happenings are
merely a matter of being in a certain place at a certain time.
We certainly hadn’t solved any problems by climbing all day,
but we had given ourselves some much-needed separation
from the eerie ambiance of the morning. Now, we felt more
able to place the situation into the context of our lives.
The meditative nature of climbing is what I love most about
the sport. You can leave the ground in any state of mind—
frustrated, sad, overbearingly excited, confused—and return
to solid ground feeling more balanced, more at peace. The
focus required to find your next hold, place your next piece of
gear, or build a safe anchor can liberate your mind from external worries so that when you return to your thoughts, you feel
more resolved. .
Josh Edwards on the Chief. Erin Burke.
CCAJ 65
Cold North
66 CCAJ Howse Peak in the Canadian Rockies.
CCAJ 67
Explorations in the Waddington Range
Drew Thayer (’11)
“Alpinism is unmitigated contact with the natural world”
– Rolando Garibotti
You never know where a CC connection will
take you. Winter of 2013: I’d just returned from a season in
Argentine Patagonia and moved to Providence, Rhode Island,
where I felt like a stranger in a strange land. The climbing culture—once I eventually found it—was more about fixed-gear
bicycles and hard bouldering than alpine starts and windy
summits. While cranking laps in the local, dusty climbing
gym I noticed a bearded guy in a worn Colorado Mountain
School hoody who was focused, training alone, and generally
looked like he might have aspirations beyond the plastic. I
followed him out to the parking lot and chatted him up, and
within minutes we realized we were both CC graduates and
shared quite a few acquaintances in climbing circles. Craig
Muderlak (’02) is his name. With a phone number and a plan
to explore New Hampshire ice in two weeks, I left the gym
with a new sense of optimism.
Fast forward two and half years: I slide the zipper of
my parka a bit closer to my nose and hug my legs together;
I try to calculate how long I can sit here in this temperature
before getting too cold to move. There’s no point in looking
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around, for an hour there’s been nothing to see but swirling white air on white snow. Somewhere to our left the ice
curves away towards a near-vertical drop to the Tiedemann
glacier a mile below; somewhere to our right is a crevasse we
can’t see. The wind whips across the steep glacier, so we set
our packs against it and hunker behind them. Finally Craig
suggests jokingly that we pull out the tent and get inside; we
chuckle for about three seconds, I’m rifling through my pack
and soon we’re ensconced in a protective shell, green fabric
flapping around us, giggling at the absurdity of it all.
The hardest thing about climbing in the Coast
Range, we found, is the constant uncertainty. Moisture
pours in from the Pacific regardless of the forecast. Our first
attempt up Waddington ended when we woke to 6 inches
of fresh snow during a “weather window.” In base camp, the
incessant roar of icefalls and avalanches echo through the cavernous enclosure of the Tiedemann Glacier. Waddington and
the Tiedemann chain, our objectives, lay obscured in clouds,
then rain, then rime. We made pancakes, invented a 5-dice
version of the betting game Farkle—“Fark-Wadd-le”—and
woke at 3am to check the sky. No stars, more rain—how do
you decide when to go up? When we finally did, the receding
snowline presented mazes of crevasses and treacherous, thin
ice bridges on the “trade route”.
The Coast Range is a unique blend of contrasts;
low in elevation but high in stature, this range rears up to
block the constant barrage of moist air charging across the
vast ocean. Clouds rise so fast towards the stratosphere that
rain in the fjords turns to powder snow mere miles away.
Constant precipitation drapes the range in a leaden blanket.
These icefields and glaciers, succumbing to the irresistible tug
of gravity, grind the peaks into sharp spires and otherworldly
turrets. It’s big-mountain terrain straight out of dense forest,
where moose and bear meander through impenetrable thickets. One hour I’m stripped to a T-shirt on the glacier despite
the sunburn, sweat dripping out of my helmet, the next hour
we’re huddled around the Jetboil wearing all the clothing we
have, slowly melting water. Our gloves and jackets freeze and
become rigid as they soak up rain in the dropping temps. We
sweat under sunny skies, probing the glacier for crevasses,
while eerie lenticular clouds build on the Tiedemann range,
swallowing each minaret in whirling orbs that seem to absorb
the light around them.
Evening arrives and we’re climbing into a festering
whiteout on Waddington’s south-east ridge. Suddenly, the
sky clears and the wind howls. The summit pillar is revealed
before us; 900 feet of rimed-up stone trapped beneath a
spinning cloud that emanates from inside with the glow of
the dying sun. We consider our exposed position and retreat
to a sheltered bench, probe out a tent site, and begin hours of
melting snow.
The second day of our push, hunkered on the southeast ridge, the clouds suddenly dissipate and the white bulk
of the ridge extends upward—ice crystals glittering in the
bright sun. This is the moment we’ve been waiting for. We
strip layers and hustle up the firm snow, burying one anchor
each rope-length until we run out of objects. We settle into
the rhythm of deep breaths and front points, the terrain
above growing imperceptibly smaller. A summit push in
clearing weather—bright snow and thinning air—is one of
the most intoxicating experiences. By the time we reached
the summit pillar, however, the wind is back and visibility
drops to 60 meters, then 40. I tie into both ropes and begin
tapping up rotten ice, gingerly negotiating shattered metamorphic rock that offers little protection. By the time I’m 30
meters out, the rock is coated in rime and I can barely see or
hear Craig. The climbing is slow and technical and falling is
not an option. Soon we’re forced to acknowledge that there’s
no way to ascend the whole pillar before nightfall and the
potential for stronger winds. This isn’t RMNP or Hyalite;
we’re not going to casually saunter down to a car and rally for
burritos. The seriousness of our exposure, scratching up the
highest point in the Coast Range in deteriorating weather,
becomes very real. I down-climb the sketchy terrain and we
re-group, murmur the obligatory platitudes of a bailing party,
CCAJ 69
and begin our descent.
Success is in the eye of the beholder. Craig and I
flew into the Waddington Range with grand aspirations to
follow in the footsteps of storied alpinists and add our own
chapter. We didn’t get a long enough window to traverse the
range, and spent much of our material, physical, and mental
resources negotiating terrain that we under-estimated. The
warming climate has decimated the range’s lower snowfields
with exposed crevasses and turned many trade routes into
hazardous undertakings. The ubiquitous icefall, the looming
potential for ‘hangfire’ above, and the inescapable anxiety
that a rumble in the night was coming for us—the uncertainty—wore our nerves thin and challenged the fiber of our
mental stamina, far beyond the physical. But the expansive
views, the snow-clad peaks stretching to every horizon, the
spindrifts whipping off ancient icecaps and catching fire in
the fading sunlight…these experiences make all the sacrifice
worth it.
Summary: Mount Waddington, attempt.
Chasing a Dream
David Fay (’13)
After my plans to visit the Cirque of the Unclimbables fell apart in the summer of 2013 and then 2014, I finally made it up north in 2015 with John Collis (’13). I went
into the trip expecting to become an excellent backcountry
cook, and hoping to become more well read. The reason for
this is that, although I set 21 days aside for the expedition, I
knew at the most 12 of them would be agreeable for climbing. Everyone I had talked to had gone up there and waited
for the weather to change, and then waited for the walls to
dry. At some point in the waiting, they just went home.
But we were ready. We had books and a boomerang.
And we only got a couple rainy days to use them.
On our second day in the Cirque, we climbed the
Lotus Flower Tower in a single 18-hour push from camp to
camp. The dream to climb this route began with Cole Kennedy (’13) and Leland Krych (’13) back in 2012. After Cole
passed away in 2014, my will to see this dream through grew
stronger. On the day of the climb many of my hopes and
uncertainties of ever climbing in the Cirque were reflected
in the weather. On the upper headwall the weather changed
every 15 minutes. At one moment we could be within a
silent snowstorm, a frightening fog, a clear sky or a dangerous drizzle. John and I both led a pitch in the rain with wet
rock and followed those same pitches dry. When we finally
reached the summit, we took our time to appreciate both our
lost friend and the ephemeral beauty.
70 CCAJ
CCAJ 71
72 CCAJ
CCAJ 73
Next we set our sights on Mt Proboscis. With 4 days
of food, climbing gear and bivy gear we headed over to the
southeast face. With only one set of aluminum crampons
and one ice tool between both of us, crossing ‘What Notch’
was challenging. It turned out the couloir wasn’t steep snow.
It was steep ice. We broke it down into 4 long pitches with
the follower jamming the crack between the rock and ice. We
bivied at the base of Mt. Proboscis and got a leisurely start
the next day.
At the time the hardest traditional climb I’d ever
done was rated 5.12b and it took me a few tries. I knew
that if I were going to succeed on ‘Women at Work’ 5.12
R Grade VI, it would take everything I had. This route had
been established a few years before hand by Madeline Sorkin
(‘04), Emily Stifler (‘02) and Lorna Illingworth. It was given
the R rating because of the potential for a long (but clean)
fall from the crux. By accepting the possibility of this fall, I
felt prepared to climb boldly into challenging terrain. As I
rested on a jug below the crux, already run out, I took a few
deep breathes scouting the next holds. With relaxed precision
I committed to the moves, leaning back on a thin hold to step
over the roof. We reached the bivy ledge as the sun set and
settled in as the northern lights danced overhead. With another leisurely start we continued to the top. With the realization
of a dream that I have held for so long I am left wondering
what new dream will fill the void. What’s next?
Summary:
Lotus Flower Tower 5.10c Grade V
Women at Work 5.12 R Grade VI (onsight)
[Previous Page] Mount Harrison Smith and FairyMeadows. David Fay
[This Page] John Collis on a headwall pitch on Lotus Flower Tower. David Fay.
[Right]David on Lotus Flower. John Collis.
[Below] John Collis below Proboscis the Cirque of the Unclimbables. David Fay.
[Right] Mount Proboscis. John Collis.
74 CCAJ
CCAJ 75
Deprivation
Brett Baekey (’16)
Kick, Kick, Swing.
Just don’t look at it. It’ll be like it’s not even there.
Besides, I’m not even the superstitious type, right? Right. So
why am I so transfixed? Okay, just say a prayer. Wait, what
the hell am I talking about, I don’t pray either. Calm down.
That’s it. No not like that, definitely not like that. Look up,
crane your worried head towards the sky, being sure to ignore
the fact that most of the sky is currently blocked from view.
Look at the route. Why did it even come up here anyway?
This is in absolutely no way, shape, or form the proper place
for a bird. How did it eat, sleep, shit (okay maybe that one’s
not too much trouble, although when you factor in the eating
issue…), procreate, enjoy, sing happy songs? It shouldn’t be
here. This isn’t a place for the living. But I am here.
The carcass of the finch or wren or whatever it once
was lay quietly in the snow just a few hundred feet below the
bergschrund.
Oh how the stories always seem to go, running in
their flaccid chronology from Beginning to Middle to End.
Somehow this felt different, right from the middle on out. A
chaos was fashioned by our frazzled heads into some kind of
workable order; a plan born of a dream. The memories come
fuzzy at first, even after just a few days as I sit here in the
Spartan-like bunk in Talkeetna, lucidity more of an after-effect than an actual feature of the events. The buttress was
huge. No, enormous. No, it was gargantuan, behemoth, grandiose while at the same time entirely understated. I couldn’t
wrap my head around it, not at first, or second, or third.
Possibly fourth. We spent our time in camp staring, and when
we weren’t staring we were imagining. Hunter dominated.
We had received a healthy dose of type 1, grade A fun
on the southwest ridge of Mount Francis. Starting a climb in
the dead of night (11:40 to be more or less precise) was a novelty and immediately enjoyable. The broken ridgeline went
down in the first round, KO’ed so to speak. We surprised
ourselves with how quickly we moved through the cruxes,
76 CCAJ
all of them easier than advertised. Above the rock, a snowy
arête led us to the false summit where we were forced to turn
a cornice to gain the slopes leading to the true terminus of
the mountain. This final bit of snow was rendered especially
exciting for me after my crampons had taken a tumble down
the mountain, somehow freeing themselves from the elastic
confines of the bungee cord on the outside of my pack. Note:
when your pack is not full, DO NOT, under any circumstances, lash your crampons to the outside of it. They will fall
off. At the top we spun ourselves around in dizzying circles
trying to take it all in. Denali, Foraker, and of course, Mount
Hunter lay all around us in full 360. “The big three,” we had
muttered. I chuckled inwardly at the ineffectualness of our
chosen descriptor for said three.
We had climbed Radio Control Tower first, several
days before, in lovely weather. The idea behind doing this,
we were to gather upon reaching the crest of that rather tiny
knob, was to give the scale of the place a chance to sink in.
We watched through binoculars as the “Bibler Come Again”
exit at the top of the headwall was positively pummeled with
spindrift.
The North Couloir on the Mini Moonflower had
taught me the importance of proper nutrition. For our first
“real” climb in the range we awoke at 2:00am and downed
200mg of caffeine, first thing. I am a caffeine “noob”. I do
not drink coffee, at least not enough to speak of, and when
I do drink tea it is usually devoid of the stuff. After our first
simul-block I felt empty headed and jittery, my stomach doing little pirouettes inside the hollow cavity of my gut as if to
say, “Look what you did to us, you shithead.” Several pitches
higher, the cramps started in. My limbs took on the appearance of worms left to dry in the sun, shriveled and useless,
while my face twisted itself into an unrecognizable grimace.
It was, in a word, unpleasant. These (the cramps) lasted the
duration of the climb and the rappels. It must have been an
amusing sight as I hunched over, completely unannounced,
in surprising pain. I thank JD for not pointing and laughing.
This hard-learned lesson was one I would need to retain, and I
reminded myself of it incessantly.
DEPRIVATION:
Pronunciation:
Etymology: < medieval Latin dēprīvātiōn-em, noun of action
from dēprīvāre to deprive v.
1. a. The action of depriving or fact of being deprived; the
taking away of anything enjoyed; dispossession, loss.
Enter dead, inspiring, frightening bird. Ambition was here,
quite possibly too much. I wondered about our own fortitude.
We had made (relatively) easy work of climbs that would not
too long ago have been a very serious undertaking.
CCAJ 77
It’s always difficult to say whether or not one is truly
ready for a challenge that they know could very well be out of
reach, just beyond the grasping. We approached in the fading
light, trading words that seemed empty compared to what
we felt inside. I told JD, “The person who lives in certainty
never really lives,” and I tried to make those words my reality,
embracing the expansive unknown that lay in wait. I felt
both light and improbably burdened. We moved slowly on
approach, sweating as little as possible to conserve precious
water reserves. I remembered my Mini Moonflower schooling. No cramps, no cramps, please, oh please, no cramps.
I pictured the height of the climb and then attempted to
imagine how many of me that would equate to, height wise.
Utterly useless. Better to just turn my brain off. Easier said
than done. The surface of the glacier had stiffened with the
setting sun, now crunching underfoot, and I hoped the crux
would exhibit a similar response. I thought back to my childhood, the story of the little engine that could. I will be that
engine, at least until I can’t. More crunching, or slipping, our
skis making a zipping sound as we glided toward the hulking
mass of granite, plastered (hopefully well enough) in snow
and ice. To our left were our newly made friends, themselves
off to attempt a north buttress route. We wished them luck
in the form of ridiculous cheering and vigorous arm flailing,
ski poles held aloft, and began our climb.
“You’ve got this man. You eat pitches like this for
breakfast. You are the mixed master.” JD looked over to me
appearing unconvinced.
Roughly 1,000 feet down we had crossed the
bergschrund leaving our deceased friend behind. (Neither
of us mentioned the bird to the other until afterwards.) JD
had offered to lead on the first simul-block, taking us over
60 degree alpine ice with the occasional mixed move thrown
in. A bit of near vertical powder kept things exciting and in
short time I reached his belay. He handed the rack over and I
started up the next pitch, intent on continuing to simul. “It
doesn’t look so bad from here, kinda scary but I think we can
both climb.” In the next ten feet I had drastically altered my
position, both literally and otherwise. I yelled down to JD
that, in fact, we would most definitely want to pitch this bit
out. The rotten ice seemed barely attached to the wall, threatening to rip completely off with any serious swings or kicks. I
muttered sweet nothings to myself and tiptoed up the runnel,
placing mental pro in the mank. At the belay I unclenched
my brain and swallowed heaps of air. JD followed quickly
and after another easy pitch of actual ice we were at the crux.
Ping, ping, PING! “Good pro!” he yelled. I could
feel the relief, albeit short-lived, that hit him. 30 feet of
run-out, strenuous mixed ground saw JD kicking away bits
of snice that guarded a seam in the back of a kinda/sorta
compacted granite corner. I tucked myself further behind a
cleft of rock and cowered, watching big chunks sail past. He
stopped after each move to shake out, never letting the lactic
acid build up, fighting away pump like a cornered animal.
Two and a half hours had passed when I heard the call of
“off belay”. It was now 5:30am. I sprinted from my sheltered
stance, desperate to make up some time. Sprinted, that is, until I hit the brick wall of the crux, screeching to a halt at the
start of the seam. It was maddeningly discontinuous, providing small openings with improbable stretches of blankness in
between. I thought that maybe this section had been aided on
the first ascent, Twight or Backes standing high in aiders and
slamming in angles with half a body length separating them. I
ripped out several useless pieces of protection and fought the
pump myself, trying to climb quickly while still maintaining
some semblance of control and poise. Several crystals exploded as I attempted to put some weight into my front points
and I screamed. The two and a half hour lead now made quite
a bit of sense. Pulling into the ice above, I gasped, having assumed that the difficulties would subside. While the climbing
was physically easier here it was at least twice as dangerous.
A bulge of overhanging mush guarded me from the belay. I
sunk my tools to the hilt and lurched. I could hear my pulse
ringing in my ears. Above me reared another 50 meters of the
stuff. It was my lead.
“This is Lisa with the 8:00pm forecast. For 14k and
below: a weak front will approach from the southwest bringing with it increasing winds and up to six inches of snow…”
We had sat there in the tent listening, post dinner, concern
over conditions replacing the sated feeling in our guts. But
it was for naught. Each and every such forecast would be
followed the next morning by bright sunshine and calm skies,
making a fool of the weatherman and of us as we sat there
in base camp twiddling our thumbs. We would learn not to
place much faith in the forecast.
I left my mind as we left the first ice band and I
became only legs and arms, swinging and kicking with the
rhythm of the air. We churned skyward. Now roughly 1500
feet up, the first signs of fatigue had begun to set in. My
breathing was deep but steady, not yet ragged and frayed
around the edges as I was sure it would be later on. It was
spectacular. This second rock band was a nice reprieve from
the difficult climbing we had just dispatched, a chance to
regain ourselves. We simuled once again, flowing over ice
with interspersed mixed ground, the terrain virgin as of that
point in the season. JD led and placed gear as sparingly as
[Previous] The North Buttress of Begguya with it’s hulking nordwand. Above, another 2,000 feet of corniced ridges
and avelanche slopes gives way to the summit. [This Page] The Prow is visible at lower right.
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CCAJ 79
seemed prudent in an effort to make the block as long as
possible. When he finally called to me that I was on belay we
had climbed several hundred feet up the ramp. I followed to
him and took what remained of our rack (very little) while
he switched me over. Our transitions had become seamless
and neither of us felt the need to say anything. The slab
of ice seemed unending and I breathed a sigh of relief as I
crested the final bulge and a thin neve arête came into view.
I scampered to it, leaving a screw at it base. The screams of
my calves subsided to a dull roar. Another 100 feet up and
I had reached a cluster of rocks for the belay. Around the
corner lay the second ice band; a chance to sit on the bench
and suck down some much need nutrition. After a short
while we had settled there. The stove hissed its approval of
our quick progress and we gulped down water. New strength
surged in us and we were further buoyed by a hot meal. JD
pulled out the radio and made a call to our friends, who had
long since turned around and gone back to base camp. We
were given the forecast as we rested. “It looks like things will
hold until sometime Saturday. It’s hard to say when, it could
be sometime in the night or you could have good weather
until tomorrow morning.” We looked at each other and then
gazed towards the sky. Thin clouds streamed overhead while
a substantial bank built itself in the far off distance. We had
time. “I think we are going to try for the top of the Bibler
exit and then start rapping,” JD replied. The radio crackled to
life once more.
“Sounds like a prudent decision.”
I had left the ice screws. This bit of wasted time
stung my pride and after bringing JD over to obtain them I
felt obliged to make up the minutes. I searched for pro and
found none; I searched some more. Finally, a hidden crack
presented itself: a solid cam. I roared towards the final slabby
chunk of the pitch. The ground was easy and I was on fire,
or rather my ass was, the flame underneath it lit by both my
previous mistake and our high position on the face. Now
above the short crux of the third rock band, the sun gleamed
off of the leftward angling snow ramp that would bring us to
our finish. It was hot. It was too hot. The snow here was the
consistency of mashed potatoes. Although it would be easy to
climb in terms of technical difficulty, we both worried about
the structural integrity of our medium. I needed to get us
through this fast, I quickly realized. The thought of wet slides
crossed my mind. I acknowledged it and then buried it. Worry would do us no good, now was a time for decisive action.
“I’m gonna try to take us all the way to the third ice band!” I
yelled to my partner. I looked at the gear left dangling on my
harness. It’ll be a stretch.
“34 hours,” I had told him. “Although none of it
was planned. I wonder if that makes it better or worse?” We
discussed our previous longest pushes without sleep over a
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meal; less of a pissing contest and more a means of ascertaining just how long we could go this time. I thought back to
those 34 hours. They had been soul-crushing, pushing me to
my absolute physical and mental limit, and we hadn’t even
been doing any technical climbing for at least half of it. I stole
a furtive glance at the Buttress and wondered.
We turned the corner and stepped into a different
world. The snow that had been deep, slushy wallowing on the
third ramp was here a chalky powder improbably clinging to
brittle ice. We slowed significantly, quite possibly the result
of pushing just a bit too hard on the aforementioned ramp.
What had earlier been mere wisps of water vapor began to
coalesce into full blown clouds. Precipitation was still only
a possibility, if an ever growing one. To the west, base camp
barely registered, a series of insignificant blips in an expanse of
white. The irony of our “remoteness” on this unceasing mountain face was not lost on me. Kick, kick, swing, kick, kick,
swing, kick, kick, swing, swing, swing, swing, swing, swing
(well fuck that) swing, kick, kick, etc. We crawled as the
minutes raced. Upon reaching the belay it was decided that I
would take the Bibler Come Again exit, hold the thrutching
please. The offwidth crux loomed above and beyond my line
of sight. I detested offwidths, these being the sorts of pitches
that made my reptile brain squirm nearly as intensely as my
body always seemed to while climbing the damn things. I
began. Thin ice runnels snaked their way through nearly entombed granite blocks. In the back of my mind an awareness
of our somewhat outrageous position as well as the building
weather bank sounded quietly but continuously, like tinnitus
that (I hoped) had not actually come to afflict me. The crux
reared its head and we dueled. Lance and sword-less, I settled
for terrifically mediocre offwidth technique and oh-shit
strength. I had been informed that the crack adjacent to the
offending one would provide excellent hand jams. I had been
informed wrongly. My breath quickened as I realized that was
supposed to be a hand crack was, in fact, a thin hand crack. I
could only fit one knuckle into the maddening gash even with
my thinnest pair of gloves. The offwidth assumed an air of
friendliness, the ice tucked into it all but audibly inviting me
to “climb here”. We topped the Bibler exit at 9:00pm, 21 and
½ hours after leaving the bergschrund. It had started to snow
on top of the semi-constant spindrift. We made our decision.
A play by play account of the descent is, I’m sorry to say,
out of the question; far too much bonking and all that. That
being said:
Wind whipped snow down at us with zeal and we
hurried our pace. We devised a system that we would end up
repeating 24 times:
Designate someone (in this case JD) to spearhead the retreat. Person 1 (i.e. JD) rappels first, setting an ice screw anchor
and a v-thread on arrival.
Person 2 (it should be obvious) goes on to rappel, removes
the ice screw anchor from the soon-to-be-former engagement, and descends to Person 1.
Person 1 and 2 set to work on threading ropes, removing
knots, pulling ropes, watching ropes fall, pulling ropes again
but this time in a different direction, retying knots.
*Repeat as necessary until both participants are haggard and horizontal, the second of these hopefully by their
own choosing.*
**Addendum: See Freedom of the Hills for the procedure employed when the ropes occasionally got stuck.**
At the top of “the vision” we found ourselves the
victims of unceasing and deafening spindrift. This victimization would become a theme of sorts. The creative parts of our
brains were turned off and we became rappelling machines. A
lack of food and water made this transition quasi-mandatory.
We stopped after completing “the shaft” to take care of a few
necessities. Snow was melted and bowels were moved. We felt
much better. We moved into a dream world, each moment
only loosely connected with the one before and after it. I
felt like a zombie. Often I would be jolted awake by the call
of “off rappel!” only to descend further and once again fall
asleep on the anchor. With only two rappels to the bergschrund we found ourselves faced with a decision. JD rappelled
straight down from the belay into a massive, blank rock scar.
The word fuck rang through the hills. I put him on belay and
he climbed back up to the anchor. I could no longer see any
light in his eyes; my friend was a shell. We traded roles and
I traversed across a ridge. Fixed tat! I rapped to it with what
may have been hope growing in my heart. I could now see
the bergschrund roughly one rope length below. JD joined
me and I descended again. We were 20 feet short. I con-
templated hucking myself across the five foot gap and then
thought some more. Probably not wise, especially given your
current skin-and-bones condition. JD managed to find some
more tat to our left and he fed the ropes down to me. I fell
directly into the maw, the ropes the only thing keeping me
from being completely devoured. I clawed my way out and
collapsed. Our skis, which we had left a day and a half ago,
lay 500 feet down glacier. I managed to keel over with exhaustion five or six times in that distance. We reached our skis and
shared half-hearted back slapping and congratulatory whooping. We were simply too tired to care much about anything
other than sleep.
In the following days we regained our strength. My
mind was still somewhere on the north buttress; day dreaming
became my operative mode. We had climbed to the top of the
wall, or at least the top of the technical difficulties. Our climb
was, in essence, an attempt, a true ascent finding its terminus
at the summit. This realization has not taken anything away
from that day of climbing. As I boarded the ski-plane back
to Talkeetna I stole one last glance at the buttress. It gleamed
brightly in the morning sun.
-We’d like to thank the Kellogg family and the Ritt Kellogg
Memorial fund for making this trip possible. Summary:
Radio Control Tower
Mini-Moonflower, Left Couloir to N. Couloir, 85˚ice, 600m.
-possible new vatiation.
Mount Frances, SW ridge, 5.8, 1250m.
Begguya, North Buttress, Deprivation. AK 6, 95˚(AI6 R), M6, 2000m. -to the top of the Bibler Come Again exit in 21
hours.
CCAJ 81
The French Route
JD Merritt (’15)
“At around 11p.m. on a day in late May we skied out
of camp toward the beautiful and intimidating face. At the
top of “ski hill,” J.D. mentioned, “I’m not nervous because
I think we can’t do it, but because I think we can.” I agreed.
We stashed our ski boots and planks at the base, then went
into business mode.” -Kurt Ross.
The nerves came in a wave, numbing me out. This
isn’t an accident. Nature has prepared an effective stress response over millions of years of trial and error. I was choosing
to be here. I knew there was pain in my future. In the moment, when you’re up there in the flow of climbing, feelings
are easy to subdue. But on flat snow, I looked up at 6,400
feet of vertical pain and uncertainty, imagining the infinite
permutations of brutal futures and their bloody, beaten, and
[Above] Kurt leads a pitch of overhung, rotten ice in the north couloir. JD Merritt.
[Left] JD leads in the final headwall, 4000 feet above the bergschrund. Kurt Ross
82 CCAJ
frozen outcomes. I felt tears form, and then
flow as I knew for the first time what it really
means to be safe, on flat ground. This was
my point of decision, and the last time that
fear would take hold.
A week previously, Brett Baekey and
I climbed Deprivation in 21 hrs. The crux
comes early, and we ‘put it out there’ to make
it go in difficult conditions. I lead at a crawl’s
pace, taking great care, through thin seams
and a section of gravity defying, unprotectable overhanging eggshell ice and Névé. I felt
that I had exhausted one of my nine lives.
The rest of the route flew by: we
simul-climbed like never before, carrying
the running belay through vertical ice and
devious mixed cruxes. Climbing in this way
is the ultimate expression of trust, and an unforgiving test of skill. We went to the “end of
the technical difficulties”. We wanted to give
it hell and slog to the top, but were locked
in storm and pummeled by spindrift. The
decision to bail was easy.
24 rappels, core-shots, stuck ropes,
and alternating confusion, despair, and bodily dysfunction saw us back to the ground.
Clicking into our skis, we were too exhausted to actually make turns. We repeatedly
slid, slumped, and crashed our way down
three miles of glacier. We arrived back at
camp having avoided sleep for 50 hours.
We were hollowed out but thankful to have
all our digits intact, pink, and warm. Brett
developed a sickness and ran out of time in
the range. He flew out to start guiding in
Colorado. This was an ‘attempt’, but despite
that painful fact, it was so far the greatest
achievement in both of our lives.
I wanted another go at Hunter, but
via a harder route. I had no direction, and no plans for the
summer. I felt no strong sense of future. I could stay in the
range as long as my food would last. It was important to
me to go to the summit. There are many ideas about what a
“true-ascent” is, and I don’t really care to make any declarations on style; it’s personal. I stayed in the range and joined
“Team Crevasseholes”, a young crew of Montana and Colorado climbers, equal parts bold and brash, in their well stocked
base camp. We drank coffee and talked the talk all day as I
recovered. Despite the big words, there was only one of these
guys I would put it out there with.
Kurt Ross, at 24, had already attempted the North
Buttress twice. A Colorado Springs native, 6’4” and a fit
200lbs, he could be seen wearing glasses at all times. His voice
sometimes has a squeaky quality to it, especially when calling
“off belay”. He would lead serious pitches with care, but still
set pace like an animal everywhere else. We met at a dry-tooling comp the previous winter, and the next day climbed
traditional mixed routes on Pikes Peak. Our goals and stances
about tactics and style were similar. He wanted another go at
the North buttress, and we agreed instantly that it would be
via the French Route.
Mark Westman calls it, “the proudest and most
intimidating line on the wall.” It’s incredibly sustained, and
CCAJ 83
84 CCAJ
CCAJ 85
the crux climbing comes at the end, keeping things uncertain throughout. Take Deprivation, replace all the snow
ramps with steep, bullet-hard ice slabs, add a 7 pitch vertical headwall at the top, and replace the afternoon sun with
the perpetual darkness of a true-north aspect, and you have
the French Route. Colin Haley describes the route: “First
climbed in 1984 by two French alpinists, I personally think
it is the classiest line on the North Buttress, first climbing
the obvious couloir and then tackling the upper headwall
that all the other routes avoid.” It didn’t see a second ascent
until 2007. All my alpine climbing thus far had weaseled up
weaknesses: This was a true line of strength. It was a leap of
enormous hubris and naiveté, but we believed we could hold
our own up there, and do it fast.
We met some Slovenians in base camp, Luka Lindic
and Ales Cesen. They looked young, maybe younger than us.
Despite their youth, they have honed and tested their skills
on the new-school steeps and applied them with success in
the greater ranges. They wore faint smiles that clashed with
the intensity of their stares. They gave us perfect beta in
perfect English, describing crux after crux on steep ice, and
blind, improbable route-finding around impasses. They were
fresh off an attempt of the French Route, turned around by
bad weather, and their memories were sharp.
We set out around 10pm at the beginning of the first
reliable high-pressure, in a window of uncertain length. We
climbed in single push style. It works well in Alaska, where
the days are long and weather is chaotic. While it seems desperate to deprive yourself of rest and security, it increases the
chances of success and minimizes exposure to get up and off a
route quickly. It may be the safest way, and the mind altering
experience it provides is unique.
In our packs were no sleeping bags. We sharing one
bivy sack to stick our feet in, and had a cut down piece of
foam pad big enough for like 2.5 ass-cheeks. We strove to
climb in “night naked” style, to use Voytek Kurtyka’s words.
Our day-packs might have weighed nothing. I brought
enough food to stay well fueled for about 24 hours, and
marginally so for another 12, we knew the climb would take
much longer than this. It wasn’t enough to feel good, but
could be enough to make it. We brought enough fuel to melt
4 days of water. On approach we could see that the crux ice
on Deprivation was already gone, just 8 days after Brett and I
tiptoed over it.
It was important to lead in blocks and made quick
transitions for warmth and efficiency. We led and followed
every pitch clean, “sending” not because we were trying to,
but because we couldn’t waste time fucking around.
Surreal and beautiful beyond description, we
climbed through formations built by the full northern aspect
and arctic weather. Kurt led around and through overhanging
86 CCAJ
tentacles of ice in the upper North Couloir. One of my harness’ gear loops broke while leading a hard mixed pitch, and I
managed to snatch the gear off it before it could fall into the
abyss. Finishing the first third of the route quickly, we arrive
at an impossible blade of snow, sticking straight out of an ice
wall. It was protected from falling debris, but as exposed to
the void as a diving board made of seafoam. We looked up at
an endless and complex wave of blue bullet ice capped by zigzagging granite roof bands. We stomped out a place to sit and
brew, studying a problem that looked impossible from below.
Our light kit wasn’t warm enough to sleep at night:
we were playing for all the marbles. At any given moment we
needed to be either moving or bailing, and doing it quickly
and deliberately. As a friend so gently put: “don’t fuck up an’
die”. This kind of system is a finely tuned machine with many
moving parts. The failure of any one of these parts can lead to
disaster without prompt action. This is ultimate vulnerability
and fragility -- but also the pure freedom I have craved for as
long as I can remember.
I led a three pitch block, starting us up the headwall.
There was no sign that it would actually go, but retreating
from here was something beyond consideration. Because of all
the traversing we had done over and around roofbands, retreat
down from this point would be impossible. Instead we would
have to traverse hard right and descent the Bibler Klewin, as
a previous attempt at the second ascent did. The headwall is
beautiful beyond description, and it was the reason we were
there, so up we went. 7 pitches of sustained, steep, frozen
blocks of laser cut granite made up the barrier at the end of
the wall. It looked completely impossible from below, but
somehow we kept finding stances and lines and making slow
progress.
It was night, again, and I was leading with a wet
headlamp, corroding and dying. Thin, ancient ice covered
bullet hard rock. The terrain dulled our picks and points into
useless steel nubs. Kurt took over, thrutching up an overhanging off-width. The smell of sparks blew through the nostril
burning freeze. I fell asleep at the belay, awoken by Kurt
struggling against my short-roping. I took over again for the
last pitch of the headwall. I was out of caffeine, but the fear
of the upcoming lead woke me up again like a sharp slap. A
short but fiercely technical pitch, the crux of the entire route,
guarded the top of the buttress. We had come so far, but
whether or not this pitch would go was our biggest unknown.
I grew more awake with each move. I found a French angle
piton welded and frozen into a vertical seam. This was the
first sign in thousands of feet that we were on route. I clipped
it for pro, and stemmed in the perfect 90 degree open book.
I felt steel rest on single friable crystals jutting imperceptibly out of the wall--millimeters of contact, proprioception
keeping the angle of my joints locked. My calves cramped
but I remained steady. I took deep breaths, opened my mind
to feel only the acute balance keeping me from pinballing
backward over ice and rock, down past the belay, and taking
a catastrophic whip on our 7.5mm ropes. At the 34 hour
sleep-deprivation mark I found myself in a state of deep
calm, even joy. Simple purpose took me through. I pulled
the last tenuous moves, built a belay with two ice screws, and
knew we put down the last of the hard stuff. I was thankful
that the crux lead had been a test of my mind and balance,
instead of my wasted and acidified muscles. The Slovenians Luka and Ales stormed the route a
week before us. At the top of the wall they were locked in
storm and denied their summit push. They worked to dig
snow and ice out from below a boulder to create a bivy. Based
on their description, we were able to find it and we were
thankful for the work they did. We slumped over on our
packs at 12,600.
“I ogled J.D.’s extra pair of socks while he changed
out of his wet ones. Endless pots of water and some
man-spooning made us sharp again. We didn’t sleep for more
than a power nap in length, but the short break was trans-formative.” -Kurt.
This would be our only real rest. At this point I ate
the last of my food and felt a renewed strength. We felt a
unified will to summit.
We went up, and the sun set in violent chemical
hues. We climbed over a corniced ridge employing a “Fairbanks belay”(this is actually an absence of belay; with both
climbers giving full attention, if one person falls of one side of
an unprotected ridge, the other climber jumps off the other
side and hopes for the best.)
As the terrain opened up and we climbed into thinner air, the weather grew worse. It seemed to be over for us. We stayed hunched down for a few minutes on flat, windblown terrain with sastrugi carved out of crust at 14,200 feet.
Suddenly we could see less than a rope length; we seemed
to be inside a cloud. We though it was over. As soon as it
cleared we made a dash for the summit, reaching it in time for
[Previous Spread] Kurt negotiates the double-corniced ridgeline above the North Buttress. JD Merritt.
[This Page] JD Merritt on another sideways lead in the ice bands below the headwall. Kurt Ross.
CCAJ 87
a perfect sunrise, looking over building clouds illuminated
with fiery hues, and taking in an improbable view of Sultanta, Denali, and Huntington. We were faced with a difficult
decision. Our high pressure window was imminently closing:
in the last hour the clouds had gone from light and feathery
to building and columnar in all directions. We were deeply
satisfied to top out, but had to immediately decide between
the supposed “simplicity” of a west ridge descent or the certainty of reversing our way down the upper Northeast ridge
and rappeling back down the Moonflower. We had never
been on the west ridge, and getting royally lost in our state of
exhaustion was all but mathematically certain if the visibility
locked down again.
We put it out there all the way up, so we gambled
one more time: on a few more hours of visibility. Just enough
to find the Ramen Couloir and get down. We descended
quickly, with the weather closing in again as we left the upper
mountain. We rappelled and down climbed into the western
basin. Kurt hadn’t felt his toes or fingers in a while. I was in
the depths of a full-bonk nutritionally and well deprived of
sleep. I could smell the sick tones of decaying muscle in my
breath. We quickly descended 8000 feet, finding warmer air.
From the Southwest basin, we trudged our way up,
edging onto an exposed ramp to avoid an impassable icefall.
Despite the fact that we made it safely up and over the mountain, back down there is where it got “the most real”.
We found raps that would get us around the icefall.
The first was off a stopper knot left years ago. I stepped over
a blind edge, leaning back on our thin ropes, and inescapably
sunk into a waterfall. The rope shuddered through my icy
device. I stopped to pull the ropes out of a snare around a
chockstone--all inside a vertical torrent. Icy water shot around
a detached skeleton of an ice pillar. I kept my head down
to keep breathing. It had to be done, we needed our ropes
to continue, but now things became difficult. It was beginning to freeze at nightfall and snow was coming down. I was
soaked to the bone.
After I freed the ropes, I went off rappel and
down-soloed through choss to a ledge and stripped naked,
putting on the two articles of clothing that had been safe in
my pack. I wore my down jacket on bare skin. There
were no spare calories, in my pack or in my body,
to shiver with. Without immediately stripping and
wearing a down jacket on my bare skin, I would have
become uselessly hypothermic and our choices would
have been difficult. Kurt followed me down to the
glacier, and we tied in for a broken maze. We trudged
down to the main Kahiltna and around the sprawling
massif. My only sustenance came from headphones.
“The seven-mile zombie-slog that followed was an
exceptionally weird experience. After over three days on
the move, my grey matter was melting. Tribal drums
and piano music played in the silence. I could see
dozens of faces and figures in the features of the rock
face next to us. Whenever I squinted toward the foot of
a ridge in the distance, it would turn into a helicopter.
We broke through the snow into crevasses numerous
times.” -Kurt.
We staggered back into camp during the first
hours of Monday, June 1st, after a 75 hour push. We
tallied 4 hours of sleep, plus maybe another hour accumulated from nodding off at belays, on rappel, or even
on lead. When I think now about what it was like, it’s
hard to breathe.
From May 29th to 31st, Kurt Ross and I
made the likely fifth ascent of the French Route, aka.
Grison-Tedeschi, to the summit of Begguya, or Mount
Hunter. We believe the last full-ascent was by Colin
Haley and the late Bjørn-Eivind Årtun, in 2009.
I am a different person now. Any part of me
that wasn’t capable died as I fulfilled this dream. With
time and distance, I have learned that I need this state
of commitment, the sensitivity to intuition, and intensity of experience to really live. I’ll seek it out again.
-I’d like to thank the Kellogg family and the Ritt Kellogg Memorial fund for making this trip possible.
Summary:
Begguya, North Buttress, French Route.
AK 6, 90˚ ice, M6, 2000m (6400’). -To The Summit, round trip in 75 hours.
[Above] Sunrise at the summit.
[Left] Overview photo of the The North Buttress
of Begguya. Deprivation in Red, and The French
Route in Blue. Cruxes circled. Nap spot marked.
88 CCAJ
CCAJ 89
The World
90 CCAJ
CCAJ 91
Language S-Kills at 19,000 feet
Nina Riggio (’17)
“Verga!! Puta! El viento es blanco!!” These were the exclamations I awoke to early on the slopes of Cayambe, a 5,790
meter Ecuadorian Volcano. “What the hell am I doing,” I
thought to myself as I tried to decipher what the four strange
men in my tent were saying in Spanish. On a whim, I had
rented mountaineering gear at a half-gear-shop-half-bar in
Quito after making impromptu plans to attempt Cayambe not long before. I had met the four Spanish men at the
climbing gym in Quito where they invited me to come along
for the journey. I agreed without pause despite my ongoing
battle with a nasty case of la gripe.
At the time, I had only held ice axes once in my life,
and that was while drunk at a CC party trying to dry-tool a
woody and drink from a keg at the same time. My spanish
was ok; I could understand, but speaking was harder—especially at midnight with little to no sleep at our 16,000ft
basecamp. I had recently spent a month at about 12,000 feet
on the Colorado Trail and I thought this would help--no
such luck. I should mention that I was not the only noob on
the mountain: there was another fellow named Mark from
Australia who spoke absolutely no Spanish and whose gear
included, Aussie hiking boots, an Aussie bucket hat with a
kangaroo on it, an Aussie Hawaiian shirt, and, most importantly, gardening gloves to protect his hands from the harsh
wind and snow on the volcano. Although part of me feared
for Mark’s life, he also made me feel better about my own
noobness, so I was happy to have him aboard. I also must
mention that I was super sick at this time. I woke up and
I couldn’t breathe out of my nose at all, and I was sneezing
every couple minutes.
We began the approach at 1am after a great breakfast
of stale bread, bagged jelly, and chochos (Ecuador’s traditional Lupini beans). The trail was nowhere to be found and
within the first hour two people’s headlights were out. I took
the lead until we had to put on crampons, which both Mark
and I F’ed up. This was going to be a great day. “Cuidado de
las grietas!!” “The what!?!” Suddenly I looked down into an
endless pit of ice-doom from hell that was about 3 feet wide
and looked like thousands of feet deep. I had heard of crevasses and seen pictures from above, but never looked into
the mouth of one of these bad boys. “Tension! Porfa! Cuidado!” These three words were yelled in the darkness for what
seemed like hours by different climbing groups and our own.
We began the climb, taking it slow because of all the people
in front of us. We weren’t even a quarter of the way up the
first steep climb when Mark turns to me and asks how much
longer. I was like, “dude never ask that question…ever.” 10
minutes later he turns to me and says he feels like he’s going
92 CCAJ
to blackout. I checked my watch, we were at about 17,000
feet. I asked if he had been drinking water. He replied, “why
would I need to be drinking water?” I knew this dude was
dead mountain meat after that comment, garden gloves waving around and everything. After 30 minutes of Ecuadorean
backhanded slang comments about Mark under his breath,
my friend Alexis took him down to the base camp. I was now
on my own with two strange men at 18,000 feet, super sick.
After they descended, my heart started hurting and my lungs
started burning when I breathed, but figured it was just
something my body was going through being at this altitude
for the first time or a result of breathing only through my
mouth due to my stuffed nose. I didn’t say anything until an
hour later. We started to free solo some crazy ridge line that
I was sure was not on route. They asked me if I rock climb,
so I said “yes, I dabble.” They said it was just like that, except
with super chunky mountaineering boots, gloves, and a single
ice axe—where my skills were limited to the experience on
the woody, drunk at CC. Twenty minutes later they admitted
we were off route, so we scaled back to the snow and took a
pee break in hopes that the sun might break through. It was
6:30 AM and the wind and snow was so bad that it stuck to
our jackets; it felt like a suit of armor and each step felt like
a million years of progress. My heart was hurting badly now
and every break we took made it harder for me to get back
up—I could’ve slept in that blizzard like a baby. It was a weird
sensation; I felt I didn’t have control over my body wanting to sleep. I felt like a zombie, and my heart was going to
explode. I checked my heart and respiratory rates during the
next break and they were fine, it was just the pain. Santi, the
rope leader, just kept saying “ultimo!” every 20 minutes about
every freaking climb up, and at this point I was so done. I was
scared about my heart, so I told him I would wait there with
Mao, the other guy, while he summited if he wanted. We were
literally 10 minutes from the top, but I knew that every step
and every minute counts at altitude. The weather was also so
shitty you couldn’t see anything, and it wasn’t worth it for me.
From all the mountains I’ve climbed in Colorado, I’ve learned
it’s totally about the journey, so I was fine with my decision to
not summit.
We all turned around together into the blizzard. Santi
asked where my sunglasses were and I told him they broke
in my bag sometime on the way up here. He just said “Verga, Puta;” once again, he thought for sure I was going to get
snow blindness. The rest of the way down he yelled constantly
at Mao, who was now leading, “Vamos Mao!! La Nina no
tiene gafas!!” Every 2 minutes maybe, “Vamos Mao!” I was in
the middle of the rope and they were puling me in opposite
directions thinking that the trail went opposite ways. The trail
was gone, so so gone. I wanted to cry. I had an excruciating
headache now, my heart and lungs still felt like death, we were
[Previous Page] The Glacier on Cayambe. Nina Riggio [This Page] The blizzard arrives. Nina Riggio.
lost, and nobody knew where I was or who I was with. Moreover, I was beginning to feel like I was caught between two
nincompoops in some Tom and Jerry cartoon except instead
of TNT, we were dealing with crevasses.
After hiking the Colorado Trail last month I got very
good at tracking people and knowing a lot about a person by
their footprints. I kept seeing footprints in the snow because
I didn’t have glasses on. I would tell Santi and Mao, but
neither would listen to me—I don’t know if this was a great
example of the machissmo culture there, but it was super
frustrating. We ended up just walking straight down the volcano, not knowing where we were going to end up. Neither
of them had water or food. We ended up on a completely
wrong side of the volcano back at 16,000 feet from about
19,000 in 2 hours. Eventually, we arrived at a stream. I knew
that if I followed the stream it would lead me to the ‘Laguna,’
which was below our basecamp. We de-cramponed and they
finally untied me from the rope. I told them I was going to
follow the stream and that it would lead us to the Laguna.
Mao kept saying he could see people in the distance, but I
insisted, “no Mao, you really can’t—no one is there.” They
said they were going to ‘ask the people’ where we were, so I
left. Once they untied me I was gone. I was too tired of the
yelling and arguing. After about 15 minutes of following the
stream alone, I found our tent along with Alexis and Mark—
they had gotten lost also. I laid down for about 10 minutes
before we had to pack up camp and start our trek down to
meet the camioneta at the refugio in about an hour and a half.
Mao and Santi showed up after about an hour of “looking for
the people”. We made our way down and I felt like a drunk
hiker with no control over my limbs. I fell countless times because of all the ash and slippery rocks. To make matters worse,
I had made the intelligent decision to ditch those fucking
mountaineering boots—Birkenstocks all the way! I fell asleep
in the camioneta for two hours and woke up feeling just fine
at 9,000 feet. This was just another classic day on a volcano in
Ecuador, getting lost. I loved and hated every second of that
dumb mountain, and I wanted to do it again.
Summary: Cayambe (18,996’), Ecuador. Attempt.
CCAJ 93
Skiing Mont Blanc
Jackson Schrott (’19)
When Chris and I arrived in Chamonix for the third time,
it was mid May, and we were hopeful that a recent streak of
warm days and freezing nights had left snow and ice conditions stable on the Mont Blanc Massif. Due to bad weather
and poor conditions, our first two visits, first in March and
then in April of the same year, had both ended in melancholy retreats from the high mountains to more amiable rock
climbing weather in Eastern Europe and Spain respectively.
This time, with Chris’ return date nearing, a foreboding sense
of urgency set in as we monitored Haute-Savoie weather
forecasts for the window we needed. Our first morning back in Chamonix, we immediately got the break we were looking for. The week’s forecast
was all clear and, as were our suspicions, the snow was adequately stable. All cylinders were go; Chris and I got climbing
and skiing immediately and were able to knock out some
awesome ascent-descent combos including a mixed route up
the North “Triangle” Buttress of Mont Blanc du Tucal and a
ski descent down its beautiful North Face. Skiing knee deep
powder in late May was exceptionally gratifying after all the
previous frustrations. Soon we came to the centerpiece of our
tick-list: Mont Blanc
On the morning of the 23rd, Chris and I boarded
the Agui du Midi Teleferique, which would take us to the
Plan de l’Agui, where our approach began. The tour from
Plan de l’Agui to our plush bivy (Grand Mulets hut) totaled
about three hours, most of which was spent skirting the 1,000
meter North buttress of Le Agui du Midi and navigating
through Mont Blanc’s chaotic northern glacier. Apart from
a giant, worrisome field of fresh avalanche debris under the
Midi, the first two and a half hours of the approach went
seamlessly, and, after negotiating the last of the seracs and
crevasses, we started skinning switchbacks up a long snow
pitch leading to the Mulets hut. As we headed up the slope,
a soupy mass of clouds enveloped the mountainside, limiting
our visibility to more or less 7 meters. Unfazed, we trudged
through the soup, blindly aimed up hill. After fifteen minutes,
Chris had fallen several switchbacks behind me and was now
out of sight through the fog. As I approached the leftmost
limit of what felt like my 100th switchback, I heard a sound
like rushing water in front of me and watched in horror as a
sizable wet slide, too large for me to see the far side of, passed
just three feet ahead of my ski tips. I looked up frantically
to listen for any potential movement directly above me, and
then turned and screamed downhill into the whiteout “AVALANCHE!” I waited for a response from Chris, but heard
nothing. Suddenly the rumbling came to a halt, and I yelled
again. This time Chris barked back “I’m good! Fuck, that was
fat!” My head dropped in relief, and with a little more yelling,
we decided to high-tail it up to the hut where hot wine and
chicken curry were a welcome luxury.
The next morning, at 1:30am we clipped into our toe
pieces and started the 2,000 meter climb towards the summit
of Mont Blanc. Our route climbed the right shoulder of the
Bossons glacier under the serac ridden slopes of the Dome
[Below] Starting down the North Face of Mont Blanc. Jackson Schrott.
[Right] Mont Blanc Du Tacul, from the Aguille du Midi. Chris Riemann.
94 CCAJ
CCAJ 95
[Above] The Bossons Glacier on Mont Blanc. Jackson Schrott.
du Gouter before cresting the North Buttress at just over
14,000 feet and taking the Bosses ridge to the summit. With
the seracs looming above, we were glad to have cold weather,
and good traveling snow. We skinned switchbacks silently
for hours in the dark until we were within 100 meters of the
crest of the North Buttress. There, the sun rose in magnificent style, casting a pink-orange glow over the whole north
face of Mont Blanc. Chris and I gawked. Atop the Buttress,
we stopped briefly in a small emergency shelter to warm feet,
and eat some food. Chris lent his parka to a Spaniard who
was shivering uncontrollably—an act of kindness that was
not to be forgotten.
The next two hours up the exposed Bosses ridge were
as exhausting as they were rewarding. It was truly sensational
to be perched precariously on the side of such a colossal mass
of earth. The final pitch of steep knife-ridge had us digging
deep into our lungs for more oxygen, but when the summit
dome finally arrived, we forgot all of our aches. There, the
efforts of our entire trip came into perspective. After years of
inspiration, uncertainty, and anticipation, we had finally become the masters of our ambitions and conquered something
96 CCAJ
beautiful. We stood, beholding the fruits of our labor, and
letting the impact of our year together sink in. Chris’s simple,
affectionate words said it all as he started to cry, “It took so
much work to get here.” I told him I loved him and give him
a bear hug as we started to woot at the top of our lungs over
all of Europe.
Lucky for us the fun had only just begun. We ripped
skins, and were soon dropping into the massive north face for
the longest ski run of our lives. The sun-protected north face
provided knee deep powder and epic, forty-degree exposure.
I couldn’t loose the shit-eating grin on my face as I watched
Chris rip through the snow in front of me. Back at the hut
for a pit-stop, the Spaniard who had borrowed Chris’s coat
bought us a bottle of wine and gave repeated thanks for our
generosity. With the bottle in my pack, we descended back to
the Plan de l’Agui before letting the teleferique carry us back
down into Chamonix. Later, when we drank the wine back at
our van, no toast was needed; we just sat and reveled.
Summary: Mont Blanc (15,777’), North Face, Ski Descent.
CCAJ 97
[6 frames] The Sequence:
Double Percolated.
[Right] Alpine start face.
Final Thoughts
My alarm goes off. It’s dark. I tell myself it’s a
great time to shut off my brain and go put the
coffee pot on. In these hours, every movement
counts. I packed my bag the night before. The
toaster bell rings. I’m staring at the wall. I load it
with some peanut butter and head for the door.
15 minutes later I pull into the parking spot in
front of the gym. I have three hours before I
start work––a perfect amount of time for some
hotlaps.
keeping everything in line and inspiring the
CCAJ team and the rest with their post-grad
journeys. Lastly, a huge thanks goes to our sponsors and donors. The CCAJ simply wouldn’t be
possible without them.
The experience of climbing changes much
throughout the course of one’s career with different interests and styles. In these movements,
however, it seems there is something that remains continual. Throughout all of these stories
This year marks the ninth edition of the Colora- there is a connective thread––from those who
do College Alpine Journal. That’s a whole lot of have just begun climbing and are submitting
stories, photos, and experiences. Thanks to evfor the first time to the seasoned veterans who
eryone who has contributed––you’re the reason
submit almost every time. Now that I am no
for such an incredible publication year after year. longer a student, and have entered the real world
Keep up the good work.
(meaning no block breaks and official status as a
weekend warrior), I am even more thankful for
Thanks to this year’s journal staff, JD Merritt,
the inspiration that comes from this journal and
Brett Baekey, Joe Purtell, Nick Merritt, Jack
the myriad ways in which the psych manifests.
Schrott, and Carson Fritz. It is no easy feat, and I’ll close with a parting thought––that adventure
these guys did an incredible job creating the
exists anywhere that you meet it. Be safe this
professional quality publication that you are
year.
holding in your hands (voluntarily in their free
time no less). Also thanks the board of directors; -Nielsen Davis (’15)
Joe Forrester, Dave Hoven, and Erik Rieger for
98 CCAJ
Dear journal patrons,
Colorado College students, alumni, and friends,
We hope that you have enjoyed the 2014 Colorado College Alpine Journal. In these pages you have read
about some of the past year’s adventures of Colorado
College climbers old and new, both in Colorado and
around the world. Our goal is to capture the experience
of being a CC climber, and record that experience for
others to enjoy, reminisce about, and draw inspiration
from.
The members of the editorial staff have put countless hours into making this an exceptional publication.
In order to produce the CC Alpine Journal each year,
we rely solely on grants, revenue from advertising space,
and donations. We hope you enjoy receiving the CC Alpine Journal every year and want to see it continue. Your
support will help make this possible. To help offset the
costs of publishing and shipping, we are providing ways
for our readers to help support the journal financially.
You can make a charitable donation to the Colorado
College, designated for the CC Alpine Journal, to help
support the production and distribution of this unique
publication. Contributions can be made by any of these
three convenient methods:
1) Visit http://www.coloradocollege.edu/giving/ and follow the instructions. Make sure to specify that you
would like the donations to go to the Colorado College
Alpine Journal.
2) You can call toll free (800) 782-6306 – Hit menu option 3 – and you can charge your gift with a Visa, Mastercard, American Express, or Discover card.
3) Finally, you can mail a check to the Colorado College, and write “Colorado College Alpine Journal” in the memo line. Here is the address:
Development Office
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P.O. Box 1117
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All donations go directly to the production and distribution of the journal. The alumni and student editors receive no financial compensation for any of their work. We
would sincerely appreciate any financial support that you
could provide. Please help us continue the publication of
the Colorado College Alpine Journal.
If you have any questions, comments, or concerns
about the journal, please feel free to send an email to
ccalpinejournal@hotmail.com or find us on Facebook by
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Sincerely,
The Colorado College Alpine Journal Staff
CCAJ 99
THE COLORADO COLLEGE
ALPINE JOURNAL
2015 Edition
100 CCAJ