Winter Big Wall Climbing (Colorado) "Misery,
and the Ridiculous Need" The Mountain Gazette
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February had come down hard onto the
Colorado High Country, muffling the land
with snow and silence, and forcing the
scent of sagebrush to drop from the air
and crawl back down into its roots. The
three of us were beginning to realize
the severity of all this as we stood
staring up at the North Chasm View Wall
of the Black Canyon. Our heads were cocked
back and our eyes straining to fit it
all in.
A thin glaze of snowfall was plastered across twelve hundred feet of rock that
was rising steeply above us. Great daggers of ice were hanging from its ledges
like frozen gargoyles that had toppled over and were clinging on by their toes.
The Gunnison River was at our backs, scraping itself deeper into the pre-Cambrian
bedrock with an overwhelming roar of winter run-off.
"What the hell are we doing down here?" It was Bill, and his words
were steady and sincere. "This is absolutely ridiculous." Abe and I
cracked into a fake laughter, trying like hell to hold back our real terror.
But it was too late for having second thoughts about trying to climb The Wall.
This was the bottom of the Black Canyon; a slice of earth where no road leads
to, and in this particular region, no trail wonders out of. The only place left
to go at that point was back up.
The night before, we had driven to within five miles of the canyon's North Rim.
We switched to skis and glided on through the night, reaching a ranger station
and a snow-entombed parking lot overlooking the canyon in the early hours of
the morning. We dug in there for the night.
At the first glimpse of dawn, we stuffed climbing gear into our backpacks and
began battling down through the gullies that funnel into the gut of the canyon.
Several rappels, some down-climbing and a wade through the snow drifts, and we
were standing below the North Chasm View Wall. And quite immediately, we felt
embarrassed for having come.
We were all college-aged and slightly stupid rock climbers with watermelons for
balls and tiny mustard seeds for brains. We had never bivouacked on a climbing
route before. We had never aid-climbed more than a couple of pitches at the local
crags. And until that moment, we had never truly suffered. This thing in front
of us — this big, ice-encrusted bastard — this was the most ferocious
thing we had ever sized ourselves up against.
I instinctively flashed to the late-night college party in which I had first
approached basecamp about the matter of climbing the North Chasm View Wall in
winter. Basecamp was an affectionate term we used for a small, dilapidated house
which took up space at 414 North Taylor Street in Gunnison, Colorado; 75 miles
east of the Black Canyon. People would gather there from time to time to drink
beer and to discuss all matters surrounding climbs and climbing.
There had been something brewing inside of me for months. Not the normal, mid-winter
twangs that always accompany a climber when he hasn't touched rock in far too
long. It was something more. Something unbearable. Something that wanted me to
pull people together and do something big. Bigger than usual, at least. Something
unique.
I knew that winter visits to the Black Canyon were rare. And that winter climbs
of the North Chasm View Wall were unheard of. But I also knew that most of my
buddies would never go for it. What kind of a jack-ass would suggest we head
down there at this time of year, they would ask, spitting out mouthfuls of beer?
Shit man. Crested Butte was getting smothered with snow. Chill out. Go skiing.
Forget the Black. Get your ass down there in June, when its warm enough to pull
off your T-shirt and squint up at the sun.
I had been down to the Black Canyon with Bill once before. And it was there that
I had witnessed the fact that he was partly insane. I should have figured he'd
have gone for my idea.
"Yeah, sounds good. The Black. Nice choice." He responded casually.
So we began to bounce ideas off each other.
We would need an extensive rack of climbing paraphernalia. Pitons, too. We'd
aid through the bad sections. Free climb when we could. We'd take a route up
the east side of the wall, up an old Ed Webster route. Yeah, that dude was nuts.
It'd be sweet.
Bill mentioned that a guy named Abe should come along. And he certified him with
a story. Last winter, Bill had watched Abe solo a pine tree with ice tools in
his hands and crampons duct-taped to his sneakers, nearly blacked out from bourbon.
I agreed to his corning on this alone.
Back at the bottom of the North Chasm View Wall, things hadn't changed much.
Daylight was slipping by fast. It was already 11. It had taken us all morning
just to get to the base of the route. Above us was the freaking Nordwand. Fitzroy
at least, as far as we were concerned. The wall was so huge and ugly I couldn't
imagine having to one day stand beneath something bigger. I asked if anyone wanted
to take the first lead. And immediately, two pairs of eyeballs darted my way. "Searing" is
the only word that comes close. They were warning me that the pain that was about
to ensue would inevitably be my fault. This had all been my plan, and therefore,
it was up to me to get this little expedition off the ground. I extended a hand
for the rack.
It was a clumsy and awkward experience to be rock climbing in February, in Colorado.
My numbed hands did their best to mold bits of ice and rock into decent handholds.
But it was complete chaos. I crawled upward, slicing my hands, stuffing camming
units into the frozen rock and yelling at them to stay in place. I hated the
thought of my pieces blowing out, ending this game before it had even begun.
A hundred and fifty feet up, I found a collection of tiny ledges and punched
a seat into the snow with my blood-and-white fists. I clipped into an ancient
piton and scooted up next to it, then screamed relief down to my partners. Below
me, the forms of Bill and Abe were humbled against the massive back drop of the
canyon. A series of ice curtains were stringing the distant cliff sides together
into a single shimmering lace. I figured a dozen Empire State Buildings could
be lost down here forever.
Bill followed me up the pitch with jumars. He arrived at the ledge in a huff,
throwing out comments about the absurdity of all this. I handed him the rack
in silence. I could see him comparing us to the soaring wall above; two little
specks of human being contrasted against an endless flank of stone.
Bill clawed his way up the first few feet of the next pitch and then swung over
into a frozen chimney slot, grunting and hissing, as if trying not to be swallowed
by it. Abe arrived at the ledge a bit later, having cleaned the gear I had used
to lead the previous pitch. He was panting out long gray ribbons of breath. Abe
and I sat there in silence, looking out over the abyss. We hadn't really had
a chance to get to know one another. But then again, I suppose that didn't matter
anymore. We had other things to focus on now.
Just then, a faint holler came crashing down around us. Something along the lines
of, "Send up the hammer, the pitons, and a clean pair of shorts." It
was Bill. He was threatening to enter into a world of no-nos we had only read
about in the magazines: pounding pins into an established free route. I shouted
up to Bill that it was 1:30 and we didn't have time for all this. Use the micro-nuts,
I offered. Buck up old boy, swallow your tongue, go for it big guy.
"Eat shit!" came his well-versed response. And an argument ensued 200
feet above the swirling gray mass of the Gunnison River.
The thing I really love about Bill is that the moment one mentions the need for
him to move fast, get things done, he pretends not to hear, pretends to get pissed
off. But thinking back on it now, I believe this is all Bill really needs to
simply gather up his wits, and press on.
An hour of silence followed and the rope was slowly loosing its coils to Bill's
upward battle. Eventually, a call came down from above that he was safe.
Abe produced his jumars, slid their steely teeth over the rope and trusted his
weight to whatever Bill had stuffed into the cracks above. The plan was for him
to dash up the haul line and begin the next pitch while I cleaned Bill's lead.
As Abe rose, I noticed that beyond him a stunning shade of afternoon sunshine
was moving across the sky in a slow motion dance. The colors seemed to twist
and churn, gracefully, almost erotically, as if luring in the night. I slurped
the last drops from my water bottle and glanced down at my watch. I was gutted
to see a few last seconds slipping off toward 3 o'clock. It had taken us all
day just to overcome the first two pitches. Darkness, at this time of year, was
due at 5. I was glad we had decided to bring the sleeping bags.
As Abe cleared the haul line, I weighted the lead rope. Dangling there, with
the rumble of an enraged river rushing beneath my boots and the silent sting
of February patrolling the air, I could feel myself connecting with something
I had never had the chance to connect with before. It was something deeper than
the body hanging from that cliff face. Above us was the unknown. Below, the long
forgotten. Our only hope of making it off this thing was to embrace the now,
and muscle through the icky parts. Youth as we knew it was about to take on a
different challenge altogether. Insert misery, and the ridiculous need to put
oneself intentionally into these situations and you have what all those people
try to blabber about when they discuss the Great Coming of Age.
An hour later, I pulled up to the boy's belay and noticed that Abe was only 3
feet up the next pitch, which to his credit, was a frozen slab littered with
shards of lichen. Bill was speaking to Abe in a low, hushed voice as if conversing
with the terminally ill. I sensed it was Abe's plastic mountaineering boots,
which he decided to wear on the climb, that had him going so slow.
The sound of metal tapping on metal began to cry out across the darkening canyon.
Abe had reached the threshold of ethics, said screw it, and was trying his best
to employ pitons in his glacial advancement up the canyon side. Thirty minutes,
and perhaps as many pitons later, Abe was still within touching distance. It
was me who suggested we might want to bring him back.
"Yeah, um, Abe buddy, it's just not happening." I was tapping him on
his enormous climbing boot, anticipating a rejection.
"What do you mean?" came a flattened response.
Bill negotiated a bit.
"Listen, Abe, it's getting dark and we need to start hauling balls." Bill
always had a diplomatic talent for words. "Maybe Thad should give it a try."
"What did you just say, Bill?" I asked. I wanted to grab his words
from the air and toss them to the wolves.
But Bill was right. If Abe folded, I was next in the sufferance order. And besides,
I had chosen to bring along lightweight rock climbing shoes, and therefore, was
an easy target for slick slabs. I wrapped a headlamp around my helmet, slipped
rock shoes over thin woolen socks and began smearing out into the evening. I
passed Abe and his pitons, then moved out toward an ice-filled crack which split
the great wall above us. There were several loose, overhanging blocks high above;
bits of canyon which had eroded to the point of teetering. But further up, the
canyon seemed to offer us something we hadn't seen for several hundred feet:
relief. A massive ledge perhaps? Or maybe just a burp in the vertical landscape.
Regardless, my job was to get us up to it, and to see if it held a space large
enough for three people to lay down and crawl into their sleeping bags.
I wedged gear deep into the safety of the canyon side, used steel hooks to sketch
up the rock. I did anything I could to lift myself higher. I never once allowed
myself to process the repulsive nature of it all: the lifeless canyon air, the
great yawn of earth below, the strain of being so high above my comrades, all
alone in the darkness.
A distinct numbness fell over me. I prayed for a ledge. A good ledge that would
provide rest, and some sanity. As the last shades of purple disappeared from
the canyon's western rim, I lifted myself over the canyon feature we had seen
from below. I paused there for a moment, reviewing the nature of the "ledge." The
first thing to come to mind was that we were all screwed. Bend over and kiss
your stinky asses goodbye, I thought about yelling down into the blackness. The
ledge was not even close to such a thing. A slabby, icy, grotesque excuse for
a "bulge," maybe. But a ledge, never. I laughed out loud to the deaf
canyon walls, screamed hot breath into the night. The image of the three of us
clinging to that thing through the long Colorado night was almost too much to
bear.
We needed to find a real ledge higher up. A place where we could actually fit.
We were tired, completely out of water, and the February air was beginning to
cling to my beard hairs.
"I'm gonna keep going!" I yodeled down into the darkness. But the only
response I got was silence.
"I'M GONNA KEEP GOING!" I repeated, louder this time, with more authority.
"What do you mean you're gonna keep going, there's only 10 feet of rope
left," Bill yelled in return. "What about that ledge?" interjected
Abe. Our echoes were becoming tangled into incoherence further down the canyon.
I glanced down at the slanting rock beneath me, examined its wicked angle, and
felt my legs slipping off toward sleep.
"No ledge. Must go up." I was trying to keep things simple.
A long pause was followed by a high-pitch conversation between Bill and Abe.
The stars woke up and began shining. And eventually, someone was tugging at the
rope. It was Abe, and he was wanting redemption.
I was asleep by the time his helmet came scrapping over the rounded lip of the
canyon. The noise pulled me into an abrupt consciousness, shattering a dream
which had held visions of Sunday afternoon couch-potato sessions with the NFL,
cheap beer and great banquets of food.
Abe attacked the rack of gear with a look of vengeance stirring in his eyes.
I created a spotlight for him with my headlamp, watching and encouraging, as
he
traversed out diagonally across the sloping flanks of the North Chasm View Wall.
Everything began to go as planned. Abe was passing gracefully though the difficult
sections of slippery rock. I was perky and prepared for his imminent disaster.
And Bill was 100 feet below, cleaning his way up the lead rope and whistling
classic rock tunes to pass the time. And then, quite unpredictably, I noticed
a concerned look visit Abe's face. I glanced down just in time to see a
single mountain boot come spitting off the rock. Soon after, another one followed.
Instinctively, Abe's hands turned into wolf claws as he began scrapping at the
glassy cliff side. His elbows began to flap wildly, trying to regain lost grip.
But his legs were already free.
With a blood-boiling shriek, Abe peeled off of the North Chasm View Wall and
began plummeting into the darkness. I watched all this take place like it were
in slow motion. Abe's hands were outstretched like a child coming to mommy. His
mouth was stretched open and saliva was leaping from it. His eyes were clamped
shut like two small sea clams.
Unfortunately for me, the length of rope I had extended from my harness and attached
to the anchor as a safety tether was far too long. This meant that once Abe's
weight was dumped onto the rope, I was instantly ripped from my stance and pulled
into the canyon depths after him. We fell through the air like discarded puppets.
After we had come to a halt, it was apparent that I had only fallen a handful
of feet below the anchor, and therefore, was able to grovel back up to my stance
on the bulge, readjust my guts, and carry on with my day. Abe, on the other hand,
faced further difficulties as his massive boots began to spin out on the icy
sheet of rock below. If Abe couldn't gain purchase on the rock, it would be nearly
impossible for him to climb back up the extensive portion of cliff he had just
fallen from.
In a noble effort, Abe decided to employ the highly unrecommended method of hand-overhand
rope ascension made famous by 1960s Batman cartoons.
Up until that moment, I never would have thought of this as a bad idea. But as
Abe began to pull himself back over the bulge, hoisting himself up on arm-strength
alone, I noticed that there was still some 20 feet of slack writhing between
us. His weight on the rope had made it impossible for me to slip it back into
the safety of my belay device. Just as I was about to point this out, Abe's hands
lost further interest in their grip. His boots darted from the rock. And he became
airborne once more. Down through the atmosphere he went, pulling me with him
on another ride into the nothingness. It was during this time that I heard a
voice.
"What the hell are you guys doing up there?" It was Bill.
He had been dangling off the unlit cliff side below for an hour now. And the
sound of people screaming and tossing themselves into the night had got him spooked.
Abe did, however, manage to recover marvelously from all this. And he eventually
returned to his responsibilities and performed a series of astonishing moves
across the bulge and around its far end. He was ecstatic about what he saw and
insisted that Bill and I come take a look.
By the time we had scooted across the bulge, around a steep rock arête
and over to Abe, he was silly with delight. We found him standing near a coffee-table-sized
portion of snow which had been stomped down into a "bed," a small protrusion
of ice chunks which was being referred to as the "kitchen," and an
open-air porch with a 600-foot-high balcony. I was stiffened with the fact that
he wanted us to spend the night on that thing, lying there like fools above the
certain-death drop. Yet the thought of continuing on was too absurd to mention.
Our mouths had taken on a ceramic consistency at this point, seeing that we had
run out of water many hours ago. So the act of melting snow into water was of
pinnacle importance. While Bill and Abe fussed with the sleeping bags, I assembled
the stove with caution — slowly and methodically — as if connecting
the bones of some ancient animal. I have never experienced such severe discomfort
as I did the moment it refused to light.
My teeth strained not to become like bits of eggshell you pull from the garbage
disposal as I chomped and twisted on the fuel valve. I had lost the required
maintenance tool in the Utah desert earlier that fall and had forgotten to replace
the 99-cent bastard. Interestingly enough, the valve loosened, was de-iced, and
managed to blossom up into a perfect blue flame.
"It's alive!" I bellowed into the ears of my companions.
"IT'S ALIVE!" My eyes gleamed as if I had just created life.
I offered the first pan of snowmelt to Bill who didn't hesitate to devour it.
His gulps could be heard echoing out across the canyon. But just as he was due
to pass it on, he spit out a mouthful in disgust.
"Man, that shit tastes like white gas." His words were steady and sincere.
Abe and I immediately took them as a joke.
But Bill being Bill, straight-faced and unamused, casually positioned himself
for a puke. Luckily, he merely let out a series of watery belches which, I swear,
shimmered like the oily rainbows one finds in a street puddle. I couldn't help
but revisit my earlier notion of absurdity, and how we alone had put ourselves
into this position.
Humans go to the bloody moon in the name of exploration, I comforted myself.
Young men find out who they are while fighting wars. But crap, aren't we supposed
to be the lone generation of freedom-baskers, and mellow dudes? We have no big
wars. And the moon has already been had. When the hell was this Coming of Age
crap going to rear its life-enhancing head? Isn't there something hidden in DNA
and fatty acids that was supposed to give us self-worth from putting intentional
threats against our own well-being? Well, let's get on with it. I dared not say
any of this out loud of course, for fear of being tossed into the depths of the
Gunnison River 600 feet below. But I can assure you, I was thinking every damned
word of it.
I dumped the tainted water out onto the snow, fired the stove as hot as it would
go and let the bare metal pot cook-off its gas aroma. We had a fresh pile of
snow waiting to be brewed, a fistful of powdered chick peas, three wet tortillas
and an undisclosed amount of feet left between us and the canyon rim. Things
weren't going to get much worse than this.
A nanosecond after allowing this thought, the stove bled its innards out onto
the snow and it died in my arms as I tried to revive it.
We sat there in our wintery living room and stared blankly into the night. Bill
made a disturbingly scary comment about the Angel of Death and the fact that
he could feel it swooping in to greet us. I logged away the fact that white gas
might be a useful household hallucinogen, and with that, decided the only relief
from this suffering was to crawl into our sleeping bags and hide. As the constellations
began shifting through their rotations, we piled our ropes up into a mattress
and expired there for the night.
A sliver of sunrise pulled me from a seemingly endless attempt at sleep. I rolled
over and let the frozen portions of flesh thaw out in the warm, farty currents
of my sleeping bag. It took a moment for me to admit that the night was over,
and that nothing had changed. I scanned for signs of life through my frozen eye
mucous. Before going to bed the night before, I had noticed that Bill was directly
next to me, and Abe a bit beyond. Currently, Abe was still where he should be,
and judging from the rhythmic inflating and deflating of his bag, it was obvious
that he was still alive. The interesting thing was that Bill was no longer between
us. I lifted the bottom edge of my sleeping bag to see if we had rolled over
on top of him during the night. But the only thing I saw down there was a web
of neon climbing ropes sheathed in ice.
I remembered that before going to bed Bill had decided to use an extraordinarily
long piece of rope to connect himself to our community anchor. I looked back
over my shoulder and saw that, yes, one end of Bill's safety cord was still secured
into it. But the interesting thing was that Bill's end was nowhere in sight.
I tracked the cord with my eyes, following it past Abe and out toward the brink
of the canyon. There, dangling from the dramatic edge, I found Bill. He seemed
comfortable, snoring calmly as I recall, with his legs dribbling out over the
emptiness. At first I wasn't sure what he was doing down there. And it took me
a moment to realize that he wasn't there by choice.
"Bill?" I summoned, trying to locate my voice.
"Um, Bill?" my volume louder now, a bit more audible.
There was movement in the bag. With some effort, Bill's head finally popped out.
His hair was nearly braided from a fitful sleep, his eyes were massively swollen,
and his lips were parted disagreeably.
"What?" he replied harshly.
I puckered my eyebrows up into a firm statement of disbelief. How on earth could
someone hold their composure given that location? I watched him scan the snow-ditch
he had furrowed during the night as his warm body slid. I then noticed him reviewing
a weightless feeling in his legs. He clawed back up to the anchor with a force
I have never before seen. His hollers must have woken Abe.
Breakfast was icicles a la cart. The morning chores went on in silence: ropes
de-iced and coiled, gear organized and fiddled with, the sleeping bags stowed.
Bill agreed to tackle the day's first pitch and was quickly lost amongst a vertical
maze of rock and ice. As the sun came tearing up over the opposite side of the
canyon it brought with it the threat of an early spring. The heat on our fingertips
was blissful, almost orgasmic, but its strength began to loosen all things frozen
above. The first chunk of ice to come down pelted Abe's helmet like gunfire.
Throughout the morning we were under a heavy attack of falling objects. Abe and
I tried our best to avoid the kamikaze icicles, and to hold onto our composure,
but it was complete emotional chaos.
Bill had troubles of his own when dead-ends began to appear from out of nowhere.
More than once he was forced to lower back down to the bunker Abe and I had constructed
with our backpacks, reconsider, and then crawl back out with another tactic in
mind. By the time Bill had made it up through a series of chimneys and slabs
above, we were all nearly drunk from fatigue. Our movements were slow. Our speech
was slurry. The last sip of water I had taken was at 3 p.m. the previous day.
But that wasn't really important now. Getting our mitts off this climb was. Another
bivouac with the unaccommodating stove and the chickpea dust might mean disaster.
Not the shucks-darn, we really fouled things up kind of disaster. But the phone
call in the middle of the night kind of disaster. The candle-lit vigil back at
414 North Taylor Street sort of disaster.
We began to get real serous about things. Abe and I took turns leading on. Chimney
after seemingly endless pitch of frozen chimneys. Free climbing spiked with bits
of aid. Traversing west, we avoided a massive overhang and found a grand ledge
littered with tiny vermin tracks. For the very first time, we saw that other
living organisms had made it onto the wall, and therefore, must know some way
of getting off.
We hiked along the ledge unroped, sifting through the snow for any clues to our
intended route. Bill was up ahead, thrashing through some willow thickets, when
he recognized a slab he had climbed on a previous trip to the Black Canyon. By
the time we caught up to him, Bill had a rope uncoiled and was demanding to take
the lead. Abe and I agreed cooperatively and watched as he scrambled up the slab
and disappeared out of sight. Neither of us wanted to accuse him of having reached
the top.
I remember the frantic relief in Bill's voice when he shouted back down that
he had not only found the canyon rim, but was actually standing on the thing.
Abe and I were beamed up the last bit of rock like floating particles. I pulled
over the final edge and collapsed onto the gloriously flat ground. The fallen
green branches of pinon pine filled my eyes with a long lost color. And the smell
of thawing soil and rabbit shit invigorated me with a sense of familiarity I
had lost in the frozen world below.
I looked up and saw Bill parked against a spruce tree, picking at the bark as
if it were the first time he had ever seen such an amazing thing. Together the
three of us sat there, somewhat silent and confused, not quite sure what to do
with ourselves. We had suffered through three days of collective misery, and
it was suddenly apparent that we had yet to become better people because of it.
We hadn't miraculously turned into "real" climbers. We had nothing
more to show for this experience than torn flesh on our hands and wooden blocks
for feet. And we still had five miles of skiing to negotiate before we could
embrace any sort of relief. I was unmoved, for a moment or two. The deepest sense
of gladness I have ever felt settled over me like a wet washcloth.
"That was absolutely ridiculous." It was Bill, and his words were steady
and sincere. Abe and I quickly glanced at each other, and then buckled down into
a severe laughter. We laughed like uncaged madmen. Our faces were red and our
mouths were coughing out moist breath. I turned toward the vast scar of earth
that is the Black Canyon. Twelve hundred feet below, the Gunnison River was a
silent gray thread of winter run-off. I looked to Bill, not quite sure if I could
control the shower of emotions that were about to come crashing down upon me.
His eyes were filled with tears. And it was then that I began to understand the
meaning of it all; the misery, and the ridiculous need. Climbing the North Chasm
View Wall was simply a first step. A standard that we had unintentionally set
for ourselves. Learning from it, building upon it, and finding a way to utilize
it all the adventures to come was going to be the greatest challenge of them
all. I suddenly flashed forward into the years to come ...
We would all move on from Gunnison, Colorado, the three of us. We would travel
great distances away, seeking further experiences, bigger climbs, higher walls:
Africa, Europe, South America, Antarctica, New Zealand. But never together, never
as one youth-tied team. I knew I would probably never see Abe again, but with
Bill, the North Chasm View Wall would always be used to secure some unsaid connection
between us. No matter how far away we found ourselves, it would be our link to
a common ground of understanding, and respect. I could almost imagine ourselves
one day, perhaps 30 years from now, clutching after-dinner aperitifs and repairing
into leather seats, re-living the days when three young lads had slipped down
to the Black Canyon, in winter, and did that thing we had done. I could almost
hear the giddy laughter it would evoke even then, and how Bill would most certainly
comment on how absurd the whole thing had been. And at that very moment, the
possibilities of a rampant, edgy lifestyle spent clinging to the exotic fringes
of the world became quite a beautiful thing. Heck, I could never again face the
boredom of not having to dabble with a few more of these ridiculous, if not unspeakable,
miseries brought on by the basic human need to risk everything we have, at least
once, over the duration of a lifetime.
