I just wrote a piece for an instructional ice manual on epic-ing less and climbing more. It took me back to this early lesson I was taught.
dead
ian
welsted
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| Sunset over Mount Alberta |
I
thought I was dead. Not in some metaphorical, hypothetical sense, but
literally. Or
rather, I felt dead. Before my mind could process a thought,
I realized that I was seeing stars against a black backdrop
— that the mid-morning light had been extinguished, as
had any desire or care as to my destiny. Standingin
a chossy limestone coffin, I reckoned that being hit by rockfall
a second time was to be my last memory. It took a few
seconds for my mind to refocus, at which point I understood that
I was indeed alive, but that my toes were tingling. I’ve
been paralyzed, was
the next thing that came to me. Like a
hypothermic animal caught in a leghold trap, my subconscious decided
to accept its fate and simply not care. To
give up like this two thirds of the way up one of the biggest
faces in the Rockies is not a good survival strategy. Or
is it? Maybe not caring was the key to my fortunate outcome.
In
reality, though, my continued existence as a living human
is due to the effort of my best climbing buddy, Chris Brazeau.
Like a knight in shining armour, here he came from above,
rapping our single fifty metre line
to arrive at my presumed death
stance with less than his
usual smile. How was it that Chris
could chuckle about what had
just happened to him while fixing
that rap? “I thought I was going
for the big one,” was his comment
as he described the ten foot fall
he had taken while jugging to
free our stuck rope. A calm mind,
that was the differentiating factor.
It was not the first time I realized
that there was a difference between Chris and me: he enjoyed
the thrill of danger while I all too often did not. But
let me leave the lessons learned till later and describe
how we had gotten into our predicament and how Chris
got us out of it. As Dave Cheesemond wrote, “It would be
an impressive and expensive descent ….” (Pushing
the Limits, p.
209).
 |
| Looking out after the first day |
Really,
it all centers around a keen climbing and personal friendship.
Chris and I began climbing at around the same
time. When a couple of years later Chris moved to Squamish
to slum it at “the River”, it sounded like such a riot
that I couldn’t resist. But while I kept working and maintaining
some kind of material quality of life, Chris would
do such things as work 17 days in a year so that he could
climb as much as possible. Over subsequent summers, I
got rope-gunned up the three hardest “multi-pitch routes of
quality” in Kevin McLane’s guidebook, always feeling sheepish
when leaving the ground with either the unspoken or
even the explicit understanding that the crux pitches would
not be mine. After all, I only lead 5.10. On our first trip
to the Rockies, we figured we would train for the hardest route
in the book “’cause it’s only 5.10.” Luckily, we were kept
from our intended goal by a snowstorm. So, in the summer
of 2004, when we decided to slay dragons and attempt
the unrepeated Blanchard-Cheesemond route [North
Pillar] on North Twin, I was not in the least surprised when
Chris offered to lead what he figured from the route
description was the crux of the route. That we didn’t “flounder
in the first rock band” was not of my doing.
Our
preparation was complete after seeing North Twin on
the way to doing Alberta’s Northeast Ridge. Perhaps we didn’t
have a full “training diet of big limestone rock routes”,
as Dougherty suggests, but Chris had on-sighted Astro
Yam without
the aid of the #4 Camalot (I’d forgotten it in
the car) at the beginning of the season. With my impatient, now-or-never
attitude and Chris’s skills, how could we fail?
That we didn’t wonder after avoiding the North Face of Alberta
due to its reputation for rockfall in the summer is a bit
of a mystery, but obsessions are obsessions.
We’d been e-mailing
about strategy, getting psyched. The fact that the Eiger
had been climbed in four hours, combined with my recognition
that I couldn’t lead .10d with a pack, somehow made
me agree to the suggestion that we go for it in a day. “Light
is right,” they say these days, so we took a tarp, two puffies,
one rope and a five-millimetre shoelace pull line “cause
we’re not going to use it, anyway.” Never mind that we’d
tried the Salathé
in
a day the previous fall and it had taken
us two and a half; hitch
yourself to a madman and see what happens,
I
figured. So
it was that we headed over Woolley Shoulder — and promptly
headed away from our objective and to the shelter of
the Lloyd McKay hut. Chris had spent the day before humping
loads for pay in to the Elizabeth Parker hut, where his
girlfriend, Kitt Redhead, was cooking. Similarly, I’d jogged
into Berg Lake to retrieve a pair of sandals from the base
of the Emperor Ridge as an excuse to visit my girlfriend, who was finishing the Great Divide trail that day.
Being slightly shagged both, we figured the one-day push
would require all of our energy, so we might as well start
well rested. The extra day gave us the chance to enjoy the
beautiful meadows below the north face of Stutfield, eye up
a 3000-foot waterfall for future winter reference, and be psyched
for the 3 a.m. start.
Yup,
he’s a madman, I
was thinking. We’d just trundled some
rock at our first belay, promptly chopping our rope to fifty
metres. And here he was, run out maybe eighty, maybe a
hundred feet, already a good way up the face, since we’d soloed
the easy choss. I couldn’t watch, only looking up to take
a photo, because here we were on the pitch that had drawn
my attention after seeing the photo from the first ascent
in the American
Alpine Journal.
It had looked so stellar that
I promptly sent a copy c/o Poste Restante,
Chamonix, trying to lure Brazeau
back to Canada. Our belay had taken
a #2 and a #3 Camalot, so all Chris had
left for the wide crack was one #2 from
the anchor. It didn’t want to swallow the
#4, which only got put in at the overhang
at the top of the pitch. So on that
pitch there were two pieces a long way
apart. Later, friends and those “in the
know” (e.g. Don Serl) suggested that the
epic to follow was due to our being on
the face when it was too hot. Well, wet limestone
a hundred feet run out is one thing;
maybe sopping wet it’s another. From
my vantage no real problems were
encountered for a while, although Chris
was twice hit by rockfall. Interesting how,
until it happens to you, such objective
hazards can be dismissed. My inexperience showed when,
crossing the “sinister gully”, I stopped to build an anchor
and Chris called up to just hip belay, after the second missile
from above hit him on the lip. Pitched-out climbing on
the left side of the gully led through some enjoyably solid cracks
to an overhanging wide crack (.10d) mentioned in the route
description. My conscience got the better of me at this point
and prevented me from pulling my usual gambit in such
situations. Many times before, I have simply stopped my
lead blocks before such cruxes, handing over the sharp end
to my rope-gun friend. Somehow I talked myself out of it.
As I climbed up to the overhang, I had to manoeuvre around
a loose block my own size perilously hanging out from
the wall.
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| Solid cracks with loose blocks |
Later I would read Steve House’s description of
a loose killer block on their ascent, and of his climbing past
it with equanimity. I, on the other hand, was terrified. What
the hell am I doing up here; if I fall we’ll both die, was my overwhelming
thought. Never mind that I’d read the Buddhist
text No
Death, No Fear in
preparation. In hindsight, I
realize that it is the “mind of the observer” that separates those
who send these biggest of routes from those, like me, who
are haunted by their failures months or years later. Wanting
to build an anchor just above the block, I
called down my intention to Chris. An encouraging response
came from below, and I resorted to aid. At that point
our upward progress slowed considerably, like a climax
before the foregone conclusion. Finally, the rope-stretcher pitch
ended and I was rewarded with the opportunity to
try a classic Rockies technique that I had only read about
before: for want of a solid anchor, Chris jugged the line
off my harness.
Being
two working-class non-locals with little Rockies experience,
we figured that 8 p.m. was a good quitting time for
the day. When the next party gets to this point, they will be
amazed that two thinking people could
choose a bivy away from the face, unprotected
from falling rock, for the night.
Perhaps as amazed as we were when
we found a Knifeblade in the left-hand
wall at the base of the final headwall
— the only sign of human passage in
the 3000 feet of the route which we
completed. Later, I came to believe that
the pin was put in only as an anchor for
a bivy up against the rock, safe from rockfall,
unlike our sandy ledge fifty feet out.
Luckily, the mountain gods didn’t hurl
anything down on us in the night, although
they did treat us to some amazing scenery.
The
next morning, entertaining me in
one of our usual debates over route finding,
Chris obliged my fancy for a first
pitch straight up from the pin. You see,
I always claim that I complement Chris
equally in our partnership with a greater “mountain sense”
even though I’ve spent much less time in the mountains. "Oh,
the number of times he would have started up the
wrong crack if I hadn’t put him right,” is my line of reasoning. I
now know in my heart that we would have been safer
on the steeper ground to the right which Chris favored.
Rereading the route description has made me realize my
conceited error. Mostly, however, it is the continued reality
of recovering from breaking my arm while seconding only
three pitches after “winning” our debate that makes me aware
of my mistake.
 |
| Jiugging with a broken arm |
Thus
it was that we began our epic 30 hours after leaving the
ground. Reinhold Messner wrote in Big
Walls that
hebelieves
that climbers at the peak of their game avoid such eventualities,
while others — let me say “imposters” — fall victim to the same forces. Does the “mind of the imposter” act
as an attractor, a black hole that draws in negative energy?
I think it does, for I will never forget looking up and seeing
those missiles curving in towards me from perhaps six
or eight pitches up. “I can only think how different the outcome
would have been if the rock had been a foot the other
way,” I wrote in the hut book on the way out. But which
way? Left, and we would have continued with the climb
and, hopefully, completed the second ascent. Right, and
the rock would have hit my helmet. And what if we had gotten
an earlier start that morning and finished one more pitch
by the time the sun was hitting the upper slopes of the mountain?
For we were within one pitch of the overhanging portion
of the upper headwall, where we would have been protected
from above. All rather conjectural when one is an El
Cap height off the ground with a broken arm. An
unenviable choice stared us coldly in the face. Our first
decision was to make an effort upward, for the easier terrain above was definitely much closer than the ground. As I
jugged the next pitch, I could not balance properly and raked
the rope across a loose block while swinging after removing
a piece. Like a sitting duck, I hung on as the block floated
past me. After two hours, I reached Chris and we reassessed
our decision. A list of factors: two hours to jug one
pitch; Chris would have to lead every pitch; if he got hurt,
I wouldn’t be able to help; overhanging jugging to come;
pain… Down we went.
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| Sometimes you have to lie back and take it all in. |
The
editor of the CAJ
said,
“I’d like to know how you got
down.” What can I say other than that Chris engineered a
retreat with all the care and experience that he could muster.
The first few raps to our bivy spot went well. Next we had
to go off the ledge where the previous day I had found no
solid anchor. Using a V-thread and a few slung loose blocks,
we made it down to my “death stance”. Let it be known
that “light is not right” if you ever have to retreat and use
a five-mil accessory cord to pull a knot over a loose edge. At
least take Spectra or static or something, which we two dirt
bags figured we couldn’t afford. No kind of pulling would
get the knot to move. To remedy the situation, up went
Chris for his free fall when the knot slipped back against
the anchor. And down he came to rescue me from my
fatal fear with one 50-metre rap line to rap let’s say 750 metres.
Thirty raps sounds about right.
Rapping,
I am told, is statistically more dangerous than
climbing. That we made it attests to Chris’s great ability and
his love for life. Only once did I wonder — no, make that
twice. The first was when we seemed to be rushing to make
it to the lower ledge system on the face before dark. We had
crossed to climber’s right of the sinister gully on a loose ledge
system. Some of North Twin’s vertical cracks are impeccable,
but the low-angled ledges are definitely choss. Out
of these little bits and pieces of shattered rock, Chris had
made an anchor of two pins, in part to conserve our dwindling
rack. As he rapped off, he said something about “direction
of pull”, but I missed it; upon weighting the anchor,
I found myself leaning back on one very dubious Knifeblade.
To my undying shame, I yelled at Chris for his (read
my) recklessness as I rapped over the edge. By
that time I had become completely dependent on Chris
for my rescue. When he asked me for my input on our final
rap in the dark that night, I did not understand what he
was asking. He had rapped to the ends of our rope and could
find no good anchor. As I was coming down second, he
asked me to build an anchor, tie off, pull the rope, and then
continue down to him. It was such a shock to be asked to
take responsibility for myself, and I was enjoying being babied
so greatly, that I simply refused. After I rapped to Chris
and the ends of the rope, we spent our second night on the
face on a non-existent ledge. Throughout the night, we would
wake to air-tearing, screeching volleys from above and flatten
ourselves as much as humanly possible. Sheltered only
by our tarp, I found myself scared by this sound like no other.
A breakfast of chocolate-covered coffee beans greeted us
in the morning — the last of our food.
The
second time I wondered about Chris was when we had
reached the safety of the northeast ridge by the middle of
the third day. There was finally no mountain looming over
us, ready to let loose a barrage of limestone. My idea was to
wait it out for the wardens to fly in and rescue us, as friends
would phone to report us missing in three or four days.
What was Chris thinking? He was worried that Kitt would
have to hitchhike back from her work, since he had borrowed
her truck to drive to our trailhead. A thousand feet
up, with a rinky-dink leftover rack, and he was worried about
someone else. It was all I could do to refrain from saying,
“F--- Kitt, my arm hurts and we’re still not down.” A
better friend you couldn’t ask for.
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| Luxury away from the face |
On
the third night, we lounged in luxury on a large ledge
system to the north end of the mountain. After we had considered
all kinds of traverses off that would have been possible
for able-bodied climbers, I finally convinced Chris that
I was unable to function at a level that would allow for downclimbing.
Some wild hanging belays in a waterfall below
a hanging glacier brought back the fear factor, but they
also brought us to our ledge. The impending darkness led
us to delay our ground-coming until the next day. Chris claims
that he was never so jealous as when he heard me snoring
that chilly night away after I finally unfolded my emergency
silver bivy bag now that we only had one night to go. When
we finally reached non-technical ground the next
day, I think that Chris was more relieved than me, for he
no longer had the responsibility of caring for an invalid. This
thought occurred to me as I let out a great “whoop” of unbridled
joy when I knew our epic was behind us. Having not
shown any outward signs of stress during our descent of two
and a half days, Chris suddenly called out, “Ian, how do I
get down?” All that remained between Chris and a scree slope
was a ten-foot-high chimney that even I had downclimbed. Now
that he knew we were down and safe, Chris could
finally show some weakness and ask me for help. How he
handled the stress, I don’t know. Probably the same way he
deals with the soloing and the wet, 100-foot run-outs — with
the calm mind of the pure climber. After all, as he put it,
“Death was on the mind a lot.”
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| Thanks to Dr. Mark Heard of Banff, it is fully functional and only aches occasionally. |
My
many thanks to Chris, Kitt (for not asking for her rack back and for
insisting
that I go to the hospital when I was in delusional denial) and
Dr.
Mark Heard (for fixing me up).
The
Canadian Alpine Journal 2005
