|
I am thirty feet off the deck scaling a rough stone arête on the headquarters building of Banff National Park, in Alberta, Canada. Aron Ralston is somewhere below holding a camera with both hands, something that will change dramatically in the coming months, capturing my illicit climbing for a short film we are making as part of our involvement in the Banff Mountain Film Festival. No one knows we are here; the park’s offices are closed for the weekend and only the massive elk languidly grazing the manicured grass seem to take notice. Later after being escorted from the exterior of the Banff Spring’s hotel for climbing up and touching their Stone Beaver, which greets all who pass under it but not those who ascend up to it, Aron and I sat momentarily for a pint of beer at the St James Gate. We discussed climbing films, as briefly as possible, then moved onto deeper subjects like actual climbing and proposed a next-summer ascent of the Diamond, the gob smacking, vertical expanse of granite that is the east face of Long’s Peak.
Months later I remember sitting in the sun outside a coffee shop in Boulder, CO hearing a friend’s comment on some guy who just severed his arm in order to escape impending death in the depths of a cold, forsaken sandstone canyon. He read his name aloud; I grabbed the paper, saw Aron’s face and slumping back into my chair, knew the Diamond was out for this summer, perhaps even forever. Over five years would pass before Aron and I would finally tie in at the base of the North Chimney, which lies at the foot of the most badass alpine wall in the lower-48.
At 4:00am at the trailhead I took a picture of Aron stashing his keys on his pickup truck, mostly to share his secret hiding place with the world. We escaped the asphalt, and in the cold darkness we power hiked the 6-miles and three thousand vertical rise to the bivouac caves in relative silence, mostly due to our gasping, lung burning pace. We had to ensure an early entrance onto the technical terrain. In the Rockies, the clouds begin their inexorable build to full-blown thunder and lightening storms within the first hours of sunrise. By mid-afternoon, sometimes much earlier, the sky rips open sending a deluge of chilling rain cascading down the wall, filling the fissures, offering spine tingling thunder claps and hair raising bolts. For a climb of the Diamond speed is essential in order to reach the summit before the storm, before the lightening strike, and before you loose your will to continue up the hundreds of feet of high altitude crack climbing looming above.
Aron led us up the first 5.8 pitch of the Casual Route, after I brought us to Broadway ledge scampering up the lower angle and loose terrain in the North Chimney. I waited patiently, at first, as Aron reconnoitered the difficulties of his lead, wondering silently, at first, how much time we could afford and still not get pummeled by Ma Natty. He did not whip – a successful lead in my book. In my ever present HD/ADD addled state of “go go go” I foolishly miscalculated the time saving benefits of stringing the next three pitches together in one long, horrendous, rope drag festival of self-loathing. As I yelled to Aron to start simul-climbing I realized the error of being 70-meters away from him as he negotiated the trickiest part of the climb, the 5.7 run-out meandering traverse.
|
Out of earshot, I clipped into the anchor, sagged back onto an impossibly tensioned rope and began issuing a litany of imprecations aimed first at the stationary rope, then at the rock, then Aron and eventually and rightfully at myself. I relearned an obvious and dear lesson and paid a stiff penalty: fatigue, dejection and the thought that perhaps we should descend. An hour later Aron wasn’t having anything to do with any talk of rappelling. We had already climbed more than halfway up and were about to enter into the crux sequences, including a short section of overhanging 5.10 hand jamming. We decided to blast up the wall and taking the remainder of the leads, I quickly dispatched with the “sharp-end” of the business. I would set a belay, then settle in for a inch by inch assault, as Aron plied every muscle, every calorie of the 6-burritos he had consumed, and any trusted or novel technique utilizing his double hooked heft of metal. He was on the one-way road to the no-mans-land known alternately but not affectionately as “get ‘er done”, ‘by any means possible” and “summit or bust”. On the final 100-foot traverse onto Table Ledge I did my best to protect ‘Lefty’ from the potential of wild and painful pendulum falls, plugging all of the gear possible but still the danger lurked. If you are tired and unsure at the onset of a dicey traverse, any confidence and composure you’ve talked yourself into believing you possess instantly evaporates as soon as you unplug the piece of gear that was keeping you from taking a 15-foot sideways plunge into the gaping maw. Into that vacuum rushes fear, in fact an irrational arm pumping, eye widening, sphincter puckering dread. As Aron began to cross towards me, I offered a sincere and hopeful, “You got it dude” tempered with an even more sincere and hopeful, “Don’t fall.” He took a piece out, then put it back in, then climbed back to easier ground, stating that his prosthetic was bomber but that his hand was too tired to hold on. He wasn’t sure if he would whip off. I shook my head in the affirmative at his negative and snugged the cord, glancing at the obstacles his body would encounter as he ricocheted towards plum. I believed in his ability to use his feet properly, to grasp the holds with both flesh and bone and Kevlar and metal. I suggested to relax, to enjoy the exhilaration, and mostly to hold on for dear life – he did all three and eventually clambered onto the ledge, released a muted war cry, took the rack and rope and led us off the face and onto the safety of the shoulder a couple hundred feet below the 14,259 summit. We immediately coiled the ropes, hoisted the gear and sprinted towards lower, safer ground. Later at the bivouac caves I shared my food with the ravenous and delighted Diamond summiteer as we joked about the miscues on the wall and absurdity of the location we had just experienced. We took our time ambling down the trail, staggered by profound exhaustion. Thoughts come and go randomly as you plod along, the rhythm of footfall harmonizing with your cerebral cadence: the soreness of your knee and thigh with each thud of your foot; the simplistic beauty of a rivulet of water as it curls back on itself; a turned ankle; the relative merits of double bass pedal compared to a traditional single; a stinging punt of an errant stone; the unique character of a friendship fostered high above the ground, close to danger, and closer still to the most important point: to live your life as if it may be gone tomorrow, for it is a precious commodity, and one I believe best shared with the ones who matter most – the ones that are right there with you.
|
