MEDUSA FACE JUSTIN GUARINO

80

KIM FU
VENTURES BEYOND
BOB GAINES
CAPTURES PROGRESS
KRYSTLE WRIGHT
LIGHTS THE WAY
DOMINIC NGO
SEEKS SUBLIME MADNESS
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Social Media Pakistan 0345-6738217
 Hilaree Nelson
1972 - 2022

Hilaree Nelson held a spirit as big as the places

she led us to. She embodied possibility. Her adventures
made us feel at home in the vastness of the world.

For us, Hilaree transcended the idea of an athlete,

a sport or a community. She helped lead our family at
The North Face, by being a teammate and team captain who
changed our perspective of the outdoors by showing us exactly
what it can mean. Her light will forever be an offering, and her
optimism in the face of adversity, will forever be our guide.

Our hearts are with Hilaree’s children, her family

and her climbing and life partner Jim Morrison.

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a AAC member William Woodward

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 United We Climb.
The AAC is the largest community of climbers in the country, and our
members take pride in advocating for the public lands and conservation
policies that protect wild landscapes and the wild people who love them.
Join us in this mission–and simultaneously ensure you have the emergency
rescue and medical expense coverage you need to dream big.

Ready to up your commitment to the AAC’s advocacy work, and looking

for 100% peace of mind in the backcountry? Consider upgrading your
membership today. Learn more about the Club and join or renew at
americanalpineclub.org.

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THE ORTLES FAMILY

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A L P I N E -T E C H A M M E R PIUMA 3.0 HELMET

MOUNTAINS ARE NOT A LIMIT, NOR A BARRIER: THEY ARE THE PERFECT PLACE TO
UNDERSTAND WHO YOU ARE. ON ICE OR ON ROCK, IN YOUR BACK YARD OR ON THE
OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD: DARE TO CHASE YOUR DREAM.

PRESENTING THE ORTLES FAMILY.

O R T L E S G O R E -T E X ® P R O
ORTLES COULOIR BOOT
STRETCH JACKET

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Social Media Pakistan 0345-6738217
 ALPINIST I WINTER 2022-23 I GRAVITY IS NO JOKE

FEATURE C ONTENTS
50 Odyssey on Mt. Neacola 62 Outer Realms
In 1995, Kennan Harvey and Topher Donahue charged up the Mountain landscapes have long inspired the imaginations of
Medusa Face on Mt. Neacola (ca. 9,350') between Alaskan storms. climbers and storytellers alike. Whether on distant, high summits
“For 24 hours we sorted through some of the most difficult and or neighborhood crags, climbing can seem like a portal to another
diverse climbing either of us had ever done or ever will do,” Donahue world. For this feature collection, we invited writers Kim Fu, Endria
wrote in a 2014 blog post. “Tricky aid, hard free climbing, steep ice Isa Richardson, Heather Dawe, Jerry Auld and Editor-in-Chief Derek
and bizarre route-finding kept us focused like racecar drivers for hours Franz to contribute stories of speculative climbing fiction pertaining
on end.” They were caught in another storm and had to descend to mountain worlds, both within and beyond our own. With
within view of the summit ridge. In 2019, Nick Aiello-Popeo, Ryan illustrations by Jeremy Collins.
Driscoll and Justin Guarino paid Medusa a visit. They also suffered
weeks of storms and a wet, cold night on the face before turning 80 In Search of Sublime Madness
around. The hook was set, however, and they returned again in 2021, Dominic Ngo spent five seasons flying with an aerial survey company
only to be buried by an avalanche in base camp on the first night. One in British Columbia, where he gained a new perspective on the way
week later they were back, determined as ever. Guarino tells the story. he saw the world around him.

[Cover] Craig Pope leads on Winter Dance (WI6+ R M8), belayed by Matt Tuttle, in Mountains in May 1995, Topher Donahue “decided it was time to sacrifice the sun
Hyalite Canyon, Montana. Alex Lowe and Jim Earl first climbed the route in 1998, hat,” he told Alpinist. “Didn’t work. Kept snowing. But the skiing was great!” he
but almost a decade passed before Whit Magro and Kris Erickson made the first free added. On that expedition, Donahue and Kennan Harvey climbed up the north face
ascent. Austin Schmitz l [This Page] After twenty-five days of snow in the Neacola (Medusa Face) and came within 800 feet of the summit of Mt. Neacola. Kennan Harvey

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DEPARTMENT
CONTENTS
15 Sharp End
Derek Franz shares his journey from
Alpinist reader to editor-in-chief.

19 Letters
Our readers write.

22 On Belay
As Dakota Walz climbs the first new route in
over two decades on the Painted Wall in the
Black Canyon of the Gunnison, he reflects on the
unraveling threads of a relationship back home.

28 Namesake
Len Necefer traces the story of Gwazhał, the
Gwich’in name for Alaska’s Brooks Range.

32 Tool Users
Bob Gaines describes the evolution of progress capture
devices and their impact on big-wall free climbing.

35 The Climbing Life

Katie O’Reilly contemplates the meaning of “last-
chance tourism” on a scorching hot climb of Mt.
Rainier. Sarah-Jane Dobner reaches for the buzzer.
Theresa Silveyra and Mariko Ching share stories from
the first mountaineering leadership course led by
women and nonbinary people of color, for women of
color. David Gladish asks, “What if we almost died?”

91 Full Value
As he struggles to cope with the death of a friend,
Jason Nark becomes absorbed in the story of
the search for Matthew Greene, a climber who
disappeared in the Sierra Nevada in 2013.

100 Local Hero

Claude Gardien pays tribute to Simone Badier,
an extraordinary French physicist whose climbs
of challenging alpine routes in the 1960s and
’70s have sometimes been overlooked.

102 Off Belay

Krystle Wright finds inspiration in boredom.

Alpinist.com
Encyclopedic climbing news from around the world:
alpinist.com/newswire
Videos, interviews, reviews, podcasts and exclusive online stories:
alpinist.com/feature
Climbers test gear hard in the field:
alpinist.com/mountain
High Camp, Alpinist’s premium electronic newsletter:
alpinist.com/signup

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 [Photo] Cait McNulty nears the diagonal
finish of Exasperator (5.10c), Squamish,
British Columbia. Irene Yee

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WINTER 2022-23 / ISSUE 80 CONTRIBUTORS
Editor-in-Chief: Derek Franz ([email protected])
Art Director: Mike Lorenz ([email protected])
Designer: Robin Earle ([email protected]) KIM FU is the author of four books,
Deputy Editor: Paula LaRochelle ([email protected]) including the story collection Lesser
Assistant Research Editor: Anders Ax Known Monsters of the 21st Century
Contributing Writer: Mailee Hung and the novel The Lost Girls of Camp
Editors Emeriti: Christian Beckwith, Michael Kennedy, Katie Ives
Special Correspondents: Bob A. Schelfhout Aubertijn, Forevermore, a finalist for the Washington
Steve Grossman, Janice Sacherer State Book Awards. She lives in Seattle.
Fact-checking: Emma Athena, Holly Chen, Sam Kellogg, Lucy Higgins Her characters keep looking for trouble
Additional Editing: Matt Samet, Natalie Berry in the mountains and the woods.
Copy Editor: Laura Case Larson
Additional Photo Captions: Shawnté Salabert
Regional Correspondents: Chris McNamara, Yosemite; Renny Jackson, Tetons; Don JUSTIN GUARINO has sought out
Serl, Coast Range; Raphael Slawinski, Canadian Rockies; Rolando Garibotti, Argentine
Patagonia; Damien Gildea, Antarctica; Ian Parnell, United Kingdom; Rémi Thivel,
challenging ascents across the globe,
Pyrenees; Claude Gardien, France; Menno Boermans, Switzerland; Vlado Linek, including an attempt on the northwest
Slovakia; Eberhard Jurgalski, Himalaya; Anna Piunova, CIS; Tamotsu Nakamura, Japan. pillar of Baihali Jot in the Himachal
With additional thanks to: Katie Sauter and the Henry S. Hall, Jr. American Alpine Club Pradesh. In 2021, he and Ryan Driscoll
Library, Jordan Mure, Sam Stuckey, Lane Mathis, Jase Menez, Vic Zeilman, Dawa Yangzum
Sherpa, Charlotte Coté, Tami Hohn, Patrick Kinney, Will Gordon, James Pierson, Kerry and Nick Aiello-Popeo made the first
Meehan, Evan Marsh, Don Nguyen, Kris Walker, Kari J. Winter, Jeff Achey, Michael ascent of the north face of Mt. Neacola in
Levy, Julie Gonzales and the US Geological Survey, Jo Antonson and the Alaska Historical
Alaska. He resides in New Hampshire.

Photographers, from top to bottom: L. D’Alessandro, Justin Guarino collection, Piper Kenney, Kevin McMullen, Lane Mathis
Society, Peter “Maverick” Agoston, Dave Ayers, Dean Rosnau, Tiffany Minto, Viola Krouse,
Robert Greene, Mike Suitor and the Porcupine Caribou Management Board (PCMB), Sam
Alexander and the Alaska Native Language Center, Steve Gruhn, Gerad Smith, Joe Matesi,
Kennan Harvey, Tommy Caldwell, Steve Grossman, Chris Van Leuven, Benjamin Eaton, DOMINIC NGO lives in Vancouver’s
Tristan Sipe, Maud Vanpoulle, Tom Schaefer and the Black Canyon of the Gunnison NPS unceded territories of the Musqueam,
climbing rangers, Lindsay Griffin, Topher Donahue, Doug Larson, Michael Tessler, Doug
Brewer, Nick Aiello-Popeo, Ryan Driscoll, Roger Wallis, Damien Gildea, and David Smart.
Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. He
Alpinist enjoys adventure climbing in Quebec’s
Height of Land Publications Saguenay fjordlands and up the dusty
P.O. Box 190, 60 Main Street, Suite 101, Jeffersonville, VT 05464 splitters of the Colorado Plateau. He
Telephone: 802-644-6606; toll-free (US only): 888-424-5857
Website: www.alpinist.com hopes to continue sharing in the stories
Editor & Publisher: Adam Howard ([email protected]) where stoke and sustainability meet.
Publisher: Justin Reyher ([email protected])
Associate Publisher: Paul Davis ([email protected])
Events and Partnerships: John Costello ([email protected]) KATIE O’REILLY grew up in the Midwest
Business Manager: Michele Peoples ([email protected]) and saw her first mountain at age twenty.
Subscriptions Manager: Holly Howard ([email protected]) When not out exploring with her baby
Accounting: Karen Huard ([email protected]) girl, husband and two large mutts, she’s
Propeller Head: Duane Howard
at work on a book about procreating
Printed in the USA.
All rights reserved. Copyright © 2022 Height of Land and parenting in the Anthropocene. She
Publications, Ltd. Reproduction without permission is edits at Sierra magazine, and her writing
prohibited. Photographs copyrighted by photographer.
appears in various national publications.
Subscriptions: www.alpinist.com, [email protected]
802-644-6606; toll-free (US only): 888-424-5857
Newsstand Sales: Howard White & Assoc. ([email protected]) DAKOTA WALZ is the author of Everything
Newsstand Distribution: Comag Marketing Group I Loved More, a collection of stories about
Shop Sales: Height of Land Publications, 888-424-5857 train hopping and heartbreak. Currently
POSTMASTER, send address changes to:
Alpinist, P.O. Box 190 Jeffersonville, VT 05464
he’s tramping around the world opening
Canada Post: Publications Mail Agreement #40612608. Canada returns routes, exploring new caves and jamming
to be sent to: The Mail Group PO Box 25542 London, ON N6C6B2 midwestern emo. When back in Colorado,
Alpinist Issue 80, Winter 2022–2023 he spends his time in the mountains with
Alpinist (ISSN: 1540-725X) is published quarterly by Height of Land Publications, his cattle dog, Moo, and works as an EMT.
Ltd., P.O. Box 190, Jeffersonville, VT 05464; (802) 644-6606.
US subscription rates are: $59.95/4 issues, $109.95/8 issues. Canadian rates: $69.95/4
issues, $129.95/8 issues. All other countries: $79.95/4 issues, $149.95/8 issues. Statement of Ownership, Management, and Circulation: 1. Publication title: Alpinist Magazine, 2. Publication number: 1540-725x, 3. Filing
Periodical postage paid at Jeffersonville, VT, and at an additional mailing office. date: 10/31/2022, 4. Issue frequency: Quarterly, 5. Number of issues published annually: 4, 6. Annual subscription price: $39.95, Contact
Person: Karen Huard, Telephone: 802-644-6606, 7. Complete Mailing Address of Known Office of Publication: Alpinist Magazine, 60 Main St.,
Suite 101, Jeffersonville, Vermont 05464, 8. Complete Mailing Address of Headquarters or General Business Office of Publisher: PO Box 190,
Jeffersonville, Vermont 05464, 9. Full Names and Complete Mailing Addresses of Publisher, Editor, and Managing Editor: Publisher: Justin
Reyher, PO Box 190, Jeffersonville, Vermont 05464, Editor: Derek Franz, PO Box 190, Jeffersonville, Vermont 05464, Managing Editor: Paula
We support the following organizations: Wright, PO Box 190 Jeffersonville, Vermont 05464. 10.Owner: Height of Land Publications, LTD., PO Box 190, Jeffersonville, Vermont 05464,
Adam Howard, PO Box 190, Jeffersonville, Vermont 05464: Justin Reyher, PO Box 190, Jeffersonville, Vermont 05464: Katherine Perkins, PO Box
190, Jeffersonville, Vermont 05464: Jon Howard, PO Box 190, Jeffersonville, Vermont 05464, 11. Known Bondholders, Mortgagees, and Other
Security Holders Owning 1 percent or More of Total Amount of Bonds, Mortgages, of Other Securities: None, 12. Tax status has not changed in
last twelve months, 13. Publication Title: Alpinist Magazine, 14. Issue Date for Circulation Data Below: Issue #78 Summer, 15. Extent and Nature
of Circulation/Average number of copies of each issue during preceding 12 months/No. of single issues published nearest to filing date: a. Total
number of copies (net press run):10,634/10,110, b1. Mailed outside-county paid subscriptions stated on Form 3541: 4,341/4,174, b2. Mailed in-
county paid subscriptions stated on PS Form 3541: 0/0, b3. Paid distribution outside the mails including sales through dealers and carriers, street
dealers, counter sales, and other paid distribution outside USPS: 2,396/2,244 b4. Paid Distribution by other classes of mail through the USPS:
266/232, c. Total Paid Distribution: 7,003/6,650, d1. Free or nominal rate outside-county copies included on PS Form 3541: 324/311, d2. Free
or nominal rate in-county copies included on PS Form 3541: 0/0, d3. Free or nominal rate copies mailed at other classes mailed through USPS:

Scan to Subscribe. 165/164, d4. Free or nominal rate distribution outside the mail 100/100, e. Total free or nominal rate distribution: 589/575, f. Total distribution:
7,592/7,225, g. Copies not distributed 3,043/2,885, h. Total: 10,634/10,110. i. Percent paid: 92.25%/92.04%, 16. Electronic copy circulation. a.
Paid electronic copies: 205/232. b. Total paid print copies (line 15c) + paid electronic copies (line 16a): 7,003/6,650. c. Total print distribution (line
15f) + paid electronic copies (line 16a): 7,797/7,457. d. Percent paid (both print & electronic copies) (16b divided by 16c x 100): 89.82% / 89.18%.
As a reader-supported magazine, we need I certify that 50% of all my distributed copies (electronic and print) are paid above nominal price. 17. Publication of Statement of Ownership;
Publication required: Will be printed in the Winter 2022 #80 issue of this publication. 18. Signature and Title of Editor, Publisher, Business
your help to continue capturing the art of Manager or Owner: Adam Howard, CEO, Date: 10/31/22. I certify that all information furnished in this form is true and complete. I understand
that anyone who furnishes false or misleading information on this form or who omits material of information requested on the form may be
ascent in its most vivid manifestations. subject to criminal sanctions (including fines and imprisonment) and/or civil sanctions (including civil penalties).

Join us.
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Paul Mcsorley
Coast Mountain Range in
Wuikinuxv, Kitasoo, Nuxalk Territory
British Columbia, Canada

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Social Media Pakistan 0345-6738217
 THE SHARP END
A CLIMBING LIFE | DEREK FRANZ

It must’ve been before Christmas in 2002, climbers build upon the passages of those had a lifelong fear of heights, but her mother
because my family had yet to leave for a New who came before. Storytelling bridges the was a climber before severe arthritis crippled
Year’s trip to the Bavarian Alps. I was home gap between reality and fantasy. Meanwhile, her at a young age. Grandma Penny saw the
on winter break during sophomore year of as Michael Kennedy wrote in Alpinist 26, bug in me when I was crawling around the
college, working at the gear store, when a “Climbing...merges imagination and action campground in diapers, investigating all
buddy introduced me to the latest title on the with the raw power of the natural world, the rocks within reach. “He’s going to be a
magazine rack by the front register, Alpinist offering us a canvas for boundless creativity.” climber,” she warned Mom.
1. On the cover, Alex MacIntyre and Voytek I’ve been staring at the canvas for as long as My first climb is also one of my earliest
Kurtyka appear on the east ridge of Chang- I can remember. memories. In the middle of the Pearl Street
abang, the Shining Mountain, descending I was born in Longmont, Colorado, a Mall in Boulder, Colorado, several stones rise
along the line of light and shadow. This new small city on the plains overlooking the Front up from what used to be giant sandbox of pea
publishing experiment spoke to me. It was Range, where Longs Peak (Neníisótoyóú’u) gravel (the gravel has since been replaced with
raw. Real. By lifers for lifers, with minimal and Mt. Meeker dominate the western hori- rubber turf ). The highest and pointiest one
ads. There were photos and stories of places zon like crests on a huge, breaking wave above stands about four feet tall, lists slightly on
I’d been to and wanted to visit, and epics I the flat prairie. I can still picture the view of one side and is polished so that all the edges
did/didn’t want to have—I recognized Utah’s countless sunsets from my bedroom window. are rounded and slick as glass. To a toddler,
Canyonlands and Fisher Towers, Yosemite and The purple mountains against the orange- it might as well have been Midnight Light-
the Needles of South Dakota, and was trans- and-pink sky stirred fantasies of adventures ning, the famous highball boulder problem in
ported to the otherworldly environments of to come. How could I not grow up with curi- Yosemite. Whenever I passed it while walking
the Garhwal Himalaya and the Alaska Range. osity about the land that had loomed over my the mall, I threw myself at the smooth, steep
At the time, I was a journalism major at dreams since I was a newborn sleeping in a face, careful not to use another nearby stone
the University of Colorado at Boulder. When crib aglow with that evening light? as a cheat. Intrinsically, the route and style of
Photo: Derek Franz on Ecclesiastes (IV 5.9) on Mitchell Peak, Wind River Range, Wyoming, in 2019. Derek Franz collection

I told one of my advisors that I wanted to My parents were not climbers. Mom has ascent mattered.
work for a glossy magazine like Alpinist, he
scoffed, “That’s like saying you’re going to
play in the NFL.” What he couldn’t appre-
ciate is that there are a few things I will do
until I die or become incapacitated: climb,
study climbing and write about climbing.
The obsession I’ve had with trying to capture
the experiences of my adventures, and those
of others, feels akin to what Marko Prezelj
articulated in Alpinist 21: “The essence of a
climb burns out in the moment of experience.
The core of an alpinist’s pursuit will always
lie in ashes.” Pursuing life as a dreamer, I am
most often rewarded with ashes. Nonethe-
less, I chase the fire that burns just beyond
the horizon. Like all climbers, I would rather
embark on a difficult route than take the easy
path around the back.

All the best things begin as fantasies, and

imagination is informed by reality. By shar-
ing stories of what we have lived and seen, by
learning from each other, we build a vision
for the future. Like following a topo map,

15

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 What I’ve learned from writing about my adventures is that there is a
transcendent beauty to be found beneath the immediate suffering.

While Mom and Dad were not climbers, history surrounding K2 and why that moun- editor-in-chief of Alpinist, in the same gear
they were avid skiers, backpackers, fly fish- tain was at least as deserving as Everest for store, Summit Canyon Mountaineering,
ers and cyclists. They raised me to know the status as an ultimate peak. where I’d picked up Issue 1 years before.
mountains. I remember being towed in a bike Eventually, I learned how to build “MK,” as I now know him, recognized me
trailer through hailstorms when I was about toprope anchors and started dragging Dad from my newspaper column and introduced
three; the feeling of frozen fingers and white- around to random outcrops. We didn’t himself. “Send me some stories sometime,” he
nipped cheeks as I linked my first turns on follow any guidebooks. Exploration, find- said. It was a compliment that he had even
the ski slope; plucking wild raspberries next ing the rocks, was part of the challenge. On noticed my column. It helped me believe that
to frothing streams that teemed with trout. one family trip to Rocky Mountain National what I was doing was worthwhile. Several
Later, I wrote trip reports for various English Park, I bushwhacked in the woods above the months later, Katie Ives started working with
assignments, trying to discern the deeper sto- campground until I found a cliff that was me to develop my first story for the magazine,
ries that underlay my adventures. both tall and steep enough to have appeal, which was eventually published in Alpinist
By 1990 we had moved to a house on the and short enough that my fifty-meter rope 36. The story needed a lot of work, but she
outskirts of Lyons, a little town in the foothills could reach the ground when doubled over believed in the idea and in me, patiently
about thirty minutes from Rocky Mountain for the toprope. I returned to camp and imparting new lessons with each round of
National Park. I desperately wanted to learn recruited Dad and our friends to trade edits. I’ve never forgotten how those moments
to climb, but to be eligible for basic lessons belays. The first cam I ever owned got stuck of honest encouragement from both MK and
at the Boulder Rock Club, children had to building that anchor. I wrenched so hard Katie helped change my life.
be at least eleven years old and big enough to to get it out that I broke a spring. When I Now it is with great humility that I find
fit the smallest harness. You can guess what I was fifteen, I tried to climb the Diamond of myself as only the fourth editor-in-chief to
received for my eleventh birthday. Longs Peak with Dad. It was a stormy day; helm the magazine since it was launched
After those first climbing lessons, I was I was too confident. I slipped and took my twenty years ago. Much has changed in climb-
able to glean more information and experience first lead fall, a thirty-footer, and we were ing and media since those early days, but here
thanks to some family friends and a cousin, ultimately lucky to get off the wall alive. I’m I am, and my love for climbing and storytell-
Ryan, who is five years older. Kim and Carlton still writing about it. ing remains.
were a couple living near us who sometimes What I’ve learned from writing about This is a dream that began almost as soon
brought me along with them to the climb- my adventures is that there is a transcendent as I was born. It was certainly there at age
ing gyms. They also lent me stacks of books beauty to be found beneath the immedi- fifteen when I hiked up a dark trail in the
with glossy photos of the Shawangunks and ate suffering. Through writing, I’m able to wee hours to attempt the Diamond with Dad
Yosemite. A photo of Ray Jardine upside down revisit those moments when everything felt that drizzly morning. Our frosty breaths rose
and sideways on the roof crack of Separate so difficult and miserable, when discomfort through the beams of our headlamps, and
Reality in Yosemite made my heart race the and dread tinted the view, and as I articulate our boots clomped through rivulets of rain-
first time I saw it, because I knew it was what I saw and felt, I often come to real- water. The dream was more of a nightmare
something I would have to experience for ize that I was closest to what I love most all that day, but it remained a year later when
myself despite the trepidation I felt. (I’ve now along. Details emerge, like squeaking bats in we returned on a clearer day for a successful
climbed the route a few times.) the moonlight. ascent. The most spectacular shooting star lit
Soon I began receiving mountain-related Words can transport us to other worlds the sky in a dazzling arc above the 1,600-foot
stuff for every birthday and Christmas, and new perceptions. As a musician feels a wall that we were about to climb. The bright
including subscriptions to Climbing and note land on listeners simultaneously, like contrail hung in the twilight, and the pink
Rock & Ice along with more books—from rings on water where a drop has fallen, a hues of the granite blushed against the back-
K2, Triumph and Tragedy and Touching the writer can feel something similar when drop of night. I knew immediately that, like a
Void to How to Rock Climb! and Mountain- people respond to an article that connected flash photo, the moment had been imprinted
eering: The Freedom of the Hills. Whenever I with them. upon me forever. All those years watching
told people that I wanted to be a climber, the After graduating with my journal- sunsets from the window, and finally, there
common response was “Oh, so you want to ism degree in 2005, I began working as a I was. Here I am.
climb Everest?” For eighth-grade English, I copy editor and writing a column for the Many more dreams still burn brightly on
wrote a paper about K2, because most media Glenwood Springs newspaper. In the late the horizon! Dear readers, let us carry the fire
seemed oblivious to the significance of the 2000s, I bumped into Kennedy, then the together. z

16

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 M U T A N T

E V O L V E D

M U TA N T 3 8

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 When
nothing else
matters
Jugal Spire, first ascent
Jugal Himal, Nepal
Tim Miller,

mountain-equipment.com
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 LETTERS
The Highest Unclimbed
Mountain in North America?
In ALPINIST 75, Natalia Martinez mentioned a
2015 trip to climb the highest unclimbed peak
in North America, which she identified as Mt.
Malaspina (3776m). It was likely the highest
unclimbed officially named mountain in North
America at the time, as Martinez and her partner,
Camilo Rada, correctly reported elsewhere.
In fact, in 1997, I attempted an ascent of what
was at the time and remains, to the best of my
knowledge, the highest unclimbed mountain in
North America, generally known as West Slag-
gard II (4210m) in the St. Elias Range. These
mountains, which span the Alaska-Yukon border,
include many of the highest peaks in North Amer-
ica. The region is totally encased in snow and ice.
A typical climbing day requires an alpine start,
often departing camp on skis when temperatures
are below freezing. Skis are stashed as the slope [Photo] On the left, the mountain generally known as West Slaggard II (4210m), likely the highest
steepens, and an ice axe and crampons are then required for unclimbed peak in North America. West Slaggard I (4290m) appears in the center. Roger Wallis
the technical climb to the summit. It is prudent to return to
camp by early afternoon to avoid avalanches. A ski descent
back to camp is, almost always, fun and quick.
In the Dark, Darkness
In 1992, Roger Wallis published an article in the Cana-
~ for Katie Ives
dian Alpine Journal documenting the seventy-three peaks over
3600 meters in the St. Elias Range. The definition he used for
In the Notch, silent windswept snowpack & dreaming
a peak was more than one kilometer apart and having cols on
trees, under an ash-grey sky, crows bank left, ride currents,
all ridges deeper than 200 meters. Because he provided each
mountain’s height and climbed or unclimbed status, other
change directions at a whim; alighting on thin frosted
mountaineers were able to choose their own first ascents.
branches, these bird-voyeurs pause, consider the solo figure
My personal experiences in this amazing mountaineer-
ing destination involved nine expeditions between 1990
steadily moving up the icy chandeliered columns. Methodically,
and 2015. Each of our camps was set in a spectacular loca-
the ice climber’s tools cut & find their purchase, frontpoints
tion with many options for unclimbed peaks and ski tours.
In 1997 our group sought out what were likely the highest
kick-in & hold. Her movements are mind-walking in vertical
unclimbed peaks in North America. We established our base
play; in the dark, darkness surrounds her sphere of headlamp
camp at 3535 meters on a plateau above the southeast arm
of the Anderson Glacier, not far from the summit of Mt.
& she’s at home in quiet stillness. Descending, alone, she tracks
Slaggard (4742m) and the Alaska-Yukon border. During our
snowshoe hare, invents stories of their warm dens, follows
seventeen-day-long trip we accomplished the first recorded
ascents of three isolated peaks (with the following unofficial
the shallow puffs of her own breath back to the cold car. Yet, always,
names that have generally been in use since Wallis’s 1992 CAJ
before frozen fingers, before the twisted rappel, there’s the light,
article): South Slaggard (4370m), West Slaggard I (4290m)
and Southeast Slaggard (4207m).
the light at twilight, colors of sunset calling her back to herself & summit
During this expedition we also scouted a route toward
after summit, page after page, unturned stone, unwritten book.
West Slaggard II, but had to retreat. To the best of my knowl-
edge, this peak remains the highest unclimbed mountain in
—Sarah Audsley, Smugglers’ Notch, Vermont
North America.
—Paul Geddes, West Vancouver, Canada

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 It might go well for a while. But it won’t stay that way. Eventually, we slip.
A piece blows. A hold breaks. Chaos comes.

That’s why TROLLS are always sparking.

Designing, innovating, building something new.

TROLLS are masters of that chaos.

For them it’s fuel.

Learn from the TROLLS.

Harness the chaos.

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 O N B E L AY
Tying—and Untying—the Knot “Hey, Dakota,” she says, “I’m surprised you is streaked in all directions with wild brush-
answered.” strokes of pegmatite whites and gneiss greys
Dead on arrival—a call where someone’s It’s been eighty-five days since Jase asked that fly across the wall, like a Jackson Pollock
life is so past the point of saving that we don’t for a divorce, and I’m resting at a hostel painting. The setting summer sun splashed
even try CPR. One bright morning during my outside El Potrero Chico. I’ll be heading back pink streaks across the chasm and onto the
second year as an EMT in Colorado, I parked into the desert to finish bolting a route on craggy canvas. Jase’s dark eyes flashed. Her
my ambulance on the street and watched a the nearby limestone monolith of La Popa short black hair waved in the breeze. She got
middle-aged woman run toward us down her tonight. down on one knee and, with Colorado’s grand
driveway, arms flailing wildly, white night- “Oh, yeah, hey,” I say. “What’s up?” work of art as her backdrop, asked for my
gown waving behind her. She didn’t speak, She’s at the courthouse in Denver, she hand in marriage. “Absolutely,” I said, and we
rather she screamed and stammered incoher- says. She just put in the paperwork for our shared a kiss so long that, for a moment, we
ently. Hers was a terrible, repetitive thrashing, divorce. became a part of the painting ourselves—you
the gyrations of an animal that can’t under- “Hey, congratulations!” An awkward could have hung it on a wall with a plaque
stand what’s happening but senses danger. pause. “How do you feel about it?” that read, “A Lover’s Pact.”
A primal part of her already knew why her “I’m all right. I just wanted to let you Four and half years would pass before I
husband’s chest no longer rose and fell. know to keep an eye out for some forms in the laid hands on the Painted Wall. This time,
We found him facedown on the living mail. I sent them to your old address because however, the knot was coming undone.
room carpet, enclosed in an aura of dark, wet I didn’t know where else they could go....”
stains. With reverence, we rolled him over. These days, Jase lives with her wife, whose I’d only ever known the Painted Wall as the
The man stared expressionlessly at the ceiling. kids call her their “stepmom.” All I’ve done backdrop of Jase’s proposal. It wasn’t until my
“Help him! Help him! Help him!” the since she left me is drive my beat-up little friends Sam Stuckey and Lane Mathis asked
woman shouted. SUV around the United States and Mexico, me to join them on a first-ascent attempt that
“He’s dead,” I told her. exploring new caves, climbing first ascents I did my research.
That’s it. That’s how you do it. You don’t and trying to explain to friends and family At 2,250 feet, the Painted Wall is the
try to let them down gently. You don’t say, why I’m not actually heartbroken. “I grew biggest big wall in Colorado and the third in
“We did everything we could.” You don’t up seeing my folks divorce over and over,” the contiguous United States, behind El Cap
tell them that their loved one is in a better I sometimes say, to put a quick end to these and the Diamond of Notch Peak, Utah. The
place. We leave no room for misunderstand- awkward conversations. “Ours has been chill great Layton Kor failed at least twice to climb
ing. Just, “He’s dead.” Those two awful words by comparison.” And sometimes, “Everything the main face after successfully opening both
were what it took for this woman, a newborn in life, including life itself, is ephemeral.” the Northern and Southern Arêtes in 1962
widow, to fully understand the new reality she Jase and I were together for ten years and and 1966, respectively. Many parties would
was about to live in. married for almost half of them. We fell in try, but none would succeed until the follow-
Working around so much trauma and love while teaching belay classes at a climb- ing decade, when Coloradans Bill Forrest
death has forced me to come to terms with— ing gym outside Kansas City, Missouri. She and Kris Walker completed the first ascent
to fully accept—the impermanence of life. was only nineteen, but had been around long of the wall’s main face, placing a single bolt
Still, the sleepless nights and weeping strang- enough to be managing the place. She was over twenty-six pitches. A mere month later,
ers affect me. Many times while leaving work, one of the strongest climbers there—people Arizona-based climbers Scott Baxter, Rusty
I’ve had to pull over for a good cry. And more called her arms “the Pythons.” Back then her Baillie, David Lovejoy and Karl Karlstrom
than once, after a particularly terrible shift, name was Jasmin, but as she discovered her made a second ascent of the wall via another
I’ve leaned on friends to drive me home. Yet more androgenous self, she became simply new line. Their route, The Dragon, followed
I’ve also developed the ability to accept and “Jase.” I was a skinny twenty-year-old with up the center face, the route that Kor had
work through just about any situation. Like in a sad, patchy beard who’d just moved from envisioned several years before. In 1982 Leon-
December 2021, when the sausage and rice I’ve Fargo, North Dakota. I wanted to become a ard Coyne and Randy Leavitt made the wall’s
prepared is left untouched as my wife asks to professional setter; instead, I fell in love. We first free ascent via Stratosfear, which links the
end our five-year marriage and walks out, I eat moved to Colorado, mostly so I could play in Forrest-Walker into The Dragon via a series
both our dinners. And when it seems like every the mountains. Years later, during a trip to the of wildly dangerous traversing pitches four-
hold I grab crumbles to sand on a lead where Black Canyon of the Gunnison in Colorado, fifths of the way up. Several decades since its
any mistake is fatal, I climb through the sand. Jase took me to an overlook on the South first ascent, only a handful of independent
I am like water: either I flow through circum- Rim across from the monstrous Painted Wall. lines have been opened on the massive wall.
stances or I pound straight at them. Standing nearly a half mile tall, the cliff In a 2006 Climbing article, “Nature of

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the Beast,” Jeff Achey described encounter- other tackled the wall’s right side, where the
ing some of the wall’s more horrific features, junky white rock thinned out. I couldn’t deny “The Black Canyon is
including a “minefield of loose flakes and the strong potential for an obvious line on
blocks” and “hospital grade poison-ivy”
during the first free ascent of The Dragon
such a huge wall—an opportunity not often
readily found in 2021. I was in.
the stuff of climbing
(The Serpent) with Kennan Harvey in 1999.
On their climb, Achey discovered that a On the North Rim of the Black Canyon,
folklore: long routes
crucial five-by-fifteen-foot bivy ledge on
which Kor had previously slept was nowhere
the ranger station whiteboard is adorned with
everyone’s climbing objectives so that other lacking any sign of
to be found: the massive island of gneiss had
simply cleaved off the face. It was easy to
parties know which routes are occupied. At
the bottom of the board, in tall blue letters, passage,…nauseating
imagine why so few risked a journey up the Sam writes our names followed by “Painted
Painted Wall.
In October 2021, Sam returned from a
Wall FA.” The weight of the called shot feels
heavy. As if there wasn’t already enough pres-
heat, ravenous ticks and
successful aid ascent of the historic Halluci-
nogen Wall, the quintessential Black Canyon
sure to succeed, now others will know if and
when we fail.
glistening thickets of
big-wall route. Any normal person would’ve
been content having safely navigated worn
Lane never seems afraid of failing. In fact,
as he likes to remind me, “If there isn’t a high
poison ivy.”
hooking placements and rusting fixed heads chance of failure, then what’s the point of
for 1,800 feet, but Sam’s bright green eyes even trying?” Though he’s only been climb- –Vic Zeilman, Alpinist 65
shone with a more ambitious dream. He ing for four years, I find his try-hard attitude
wanted to attempt a first ascent on the Painted and belief in the team to be contagious and
Wall, and he knew just how to convince me to empowering. they hide it well behind jokes. “You think
join him. “The new guidebook by Vic Zeil- We descend 2,000 feet into the canyon this is bad, just wait ’til we gotta hike these
man says there’s still tons of room for new via the SOB Gully—an eroding staircase of things back up after we bail!” Sam says with-
lines near the middle section of the wall.” chunky gravel apparently made for giants. out breaking pace. I laugh half-heartedly,
Showing me a photo, he ran his finger over With each heavy, pounding step, the seventy- knowing just how likely that outcome is.
two possible paths: one drove straight through pound haulbag digs deeper into my shoulders Lane, looking like a frenzied Willem Dafoe,
the wall’s thickest pegmatite bands, while the and waist. If Lane and Sam are struggling, chimes in, “There’s NO WAY I’m hiking this

[Preceding Page] The Painted Wall looms large while bushwhacking down the to slippery, grassy troughs that break off into sheer cliffs where many rappel pitons
infamous SOB Gully. In the very first issue of Climbing (May 1970), Layton Kor would have to be abandoned in order to arrive safely at the bottom.” l [This Page,
described the arduous nature of canyon approaches: “Not all gullies…are Left] Sam Stuckey’s optimistic prediction decorates the ranger station whiteboard.
reasonable—they vary, just like the climbs, from easy scree and boulder descents l [This Page, Right] Stuckey and Dakota Walz prepare for success. Lane Mathis (all)

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bag back up through this garbage. Either we
top out or I’m buying all new gear.”
Darkness sets in as I race up the first slabs
out of the roaring waters of the Gunnison.
The three established climbs on the east side
of the wall all share this same approach slab.
The ninety-meter length of clean rock is the
only path to the major terrace above, where
the climbs diverge. I stuff a beak into a hair-
line seam and half-heartedly pound it in
with a rock. Ping-ping-crack! Gneiss shatters
in my hands as fragments tumble down the
slab, reflecting the light of my headlamp for
a moment before fading to black. A single,
faltering step and my rope-tangled body will
tumble into the same annulling void. I stay
attentive. Most of the beak—my only piece of
protection for 300 feet—is still hanging out.
“Good enough for who it’s for,” I mumble
to myself.
I picture Jase back home at the 100-year-
old white stone house we rent in Golden.
Her furrowed brow is illuminated by a work
computer sitting in her lap. She’s on the couch
under the soft light of a lamp, likely wishing
her high school design students would turn
their projects in—even if it means she has to
stay up later grading them. Moo, our speckled
cattle dog, lays her cold snoot on Jase’s legs and
stares up with her big brown eyes as if to say,
“Hey, it’s time for bed.” If I was home tonight,
I’d be curled up with them, snug on the couch. “I love you more than anything. Yes, even baseball. “Hey-o, ten points!” I shout up into
Instead, I’m alone in the dark wondering climbing.” At first it was true. But at some the showerhead of rock. Lane hollers back,
why I’m here. If I love those two couch potatoes point between writing that note and reflecting “Yay. I’m winning something.”
so much, why not just stay home? I picture Jase’s on it now, 300 feet up the Painted Wall, I’ve I wonder how many of the little missiles
eyes tearing up as she asked me this very same let those words expire. The hours I’ve spent can hit me before the bright blue plastic dome
question before I left home for two months dreaming of the next route dwarf those spent protecting my skull starts to crack—or how
back in 2014. Jase had burned out on climb- planning our lives together. big of a rock it would take to punch through
ing years ago, in part because of my fixation my helmet or compress my neck. I wonder
on the sport. In the early days, we’d take little In the morning, Lane “wins” the coin toss how many days a year I can be gone on trips
road trips to climb along the banks of the to lead the second pitch—seventy-meters before Jase finally cracks. Once, before we
Osage River, camping in secluded caves and riven by a massive band of pegmatite that we were married, I told her I wanted to live in
watching fireflies dance above the water. She dub the Pegmatite Pillars. While beautiful Yosemite for six months. She said I could, but
hadn’t joined me on a climbing trip since from afar, up close the white band rains sharp that she wouldn’t be around when I got back.
2016, and even then it wasn’t the same. What shards down on the belay. All the belays will DONK! Another rock. I strain my neck until
began as a shared joy had become a source be like this: you keep your head down and I hear it pop. “Dang…that was a good one.
of pain. listen to the little sprinkles and bigger clonks Twenty points!” I yell up to Lane.
Years ago, I stuck a blue Post-it to the of the canyon shedding onto your helmet. Sam leads the next pitch looking like
corner of Jase’s desktop monitor that read, I startle at the periodic DONK! of a granite a young Harrison Ford in a chest harness,

[Facing Page] Lane Mathis puzzles out the Pegmatite Pillars. While detailing the first myriad of ghostlike crack systems and a thousand phantom ledges appeared and
ascent of The Dragon for Climbing, Karl Karlstrom described the wall’s striking then vanished before my eyes. The wall was in a state of flux, constantly changing
aesthetics: “It’s a strange wall: shadowy black rock streaked and spattered by whitish its appearance with changing light conditions and never revealing its true aspect.” l
veins. Its appearance is sinister, nearly demonic, and its features are elusive…a [This Page] Walz’s topo for Act I (VI 5.11 [5.10 R] A2+, 2,260'). Dakota Walz (both)

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 decked out with dangling iron wind chimes.
Without warning, he jettisons a stone the
size of a mini-fridge into space. Dozens of
smaller satellite stones and dirt clumps follow
its doomed trajectory to the earth, 700 feet
below, where they explode like mortar fire.
“You guys are good, right?” Sam yells from
sixty meters above. Lane and I shout our
approval—his that of a deep-voiced barrel-
chested ape: “OOO! OOO! OOO!”; mine,
more that of a scrappy howler monkey:
“ooooUH!”
How much rock will remain after we’re
done? And on a wall this chossy, will a second-
ascent party even be climbing the same route? I
think of Kor’s Cave simply disappearing and
imagine a future party failing to find the ledge
I’m perched on now because it, too, fell to the
canyon floor. Up above, Sam pounds a slew
of beaks into black seams that spider across
a glimmering slab and calls it an anchor.
Lane and I join him at what will become our
second camp. We slam in a couple bolts so
we can hang portaledges under a small roof
and bivy in relative safety.
[Photo] Sam Stuckey and Lane Mathis rise and shine on day three, dangling from a brittle mix of schist and
gneiss born of ancient volcanic activity. The Gunnison River and other erosive forces carved through these That evening, we’re only two pitches above
layers to create the present-day Black Canyon of the Gunnison—2,722 feet at its deepest point—over the span the terrace, where we’d slept the night before,
of roughly two million years, at a rate of just one inch per century. The process continues today. Dakota Walz with another fixed above. I’m in a single

NAMESAKE

Gwazhał (the Brooks Range) Above the community hall in Arctic Village,
Alaska, near the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, hangs a sign that reads, “Izhik Gwats’an Gwandaii Goodlit:
the sacred place where life begins,” referring to the coastal plain between the Brooks Range and the Arctic
Ocean. ¶ The bush plane scheduled to ferry us and our load of gear to the Aichilik River on the north
end of the range had been delayed by a menagerie of weather and events that are unique to flying in the
Arctic Circle, such as the ice and caribou covering the gravel strip along the Aichilik. As we entered
the second hour of waiting on the gravel tarmac, the faint outlines of the peaks began to appear with the
morning light through the haze of smoke from wildfires burning in the south that had started in early
June, a couple of weeks before our arrival. I anticipated the view we would find less than a hundred miles
to the north, where the vast coastal plain of tundra would appear in stark relief below the peaks that were
nearly 9,000 feet tall. ¶ Each winter ice and snow entomb the landscape for months. Temperatures
drop as low as -70°F. And each spring Porcupine caribou migrate hundreds of miles from their winter
ranges, passing through Arctic Village, following the Brooks Range to calve on the Arctic tundra. Most

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portaledge while the boys share a double four pushing the rope and driving the bags upward fact, I can see a tiny family gathered at the
feet below me. A full moon highlights massive with such speed and aggression that one very lookout where my crumbling marriage
angled blades of stone all around. Between the might think we had a grudge against grav- began. So much has changed between then
dimly lit walls are swaths of void so perfectly ity. Thirteen-hundred feet of rock pass in a and now. In my thirst for adventure, I have
black they appear to have never known light. flurry under our split fingertips and swollen slowly but steadily painted myself into the
“Who’s got the morale bag?” Sam asks with toes. Pull down. Not out. Down. Not. Out. background of Jase’s life; in the thick streaks
glee. “Oh, I got that bad Larry right here,” The Choss Climber’s Mantra runs on repeat of whites and greys, I am a single speck of
says Lane, passing him a stuffsack filled with in my head as I commit to runouts in favor yellow ink. One nearly too small to see, yet
fruit snacks and candy bars. The night settles of adding bolts or slowing down to jump in exactly where it belongs.
into quiet, save the sounds of tearing plastic my aiders. On the seventh pitch, a tower of
and smacking lips. shoebox-sized blocks, stacked a bodylength That night, instead of worrying about
I attempt to imagine my home, but the high, seems barely attached to the dry, flaky home, I worry about water. By our math,
images of Jase and Moo on the couch have dirt on the wall. I squeeze every inch out of tomorrow’s end will find us wringing our
distorted, like a watercolor left out in the my six-foot arm span and reach past them sweaty undies into our parched mouths. It
rain. I blink, trying to see them more clearly, to an incisor-like chockstone dangling from seems as though we should be high on the wall,
but instead find my attention drawn to the a roof crack. Don’t break, don’t break, don’t not too far from the top. But we failed to get a
Gunnison’s crashing white waters—a torren- break: the Choss Climber’s Prayer. It doesn’t, good look in the daylight as we finished up our
tial roar audible even from some 700 feet up. and I traverse across a ceiling of loose, pitches, so it’s now impossible to tell exactly
Truthfully, I just don’t miss Jase the way I used dangling teeth, climbing free on 5.11 terrain. how much wall remains. We lie on our backs
to. I get the sense that this feeling is becoming A crunch follows every step as I drive my toes on a slanting ledge stippled with cactus and
mutual. Lately, she’s been oddly bubbly about hard into the wall, crushing the pebbles to brush. The waning moon seems to illuminate
my leaving. When I left for this trip, she said, dust, reminding myself that the pain in my a daunting headwall of soaring white angles
“Have fun, I love you, don’t die!” beaming feet is miserable but temporary. A fall here and steep faces above us, but it’s hard to tell its
while she held Moo back from chasing me would be unthinkable. size. Eventually Lane speaks for the rest of us:
down the driveway. Jase wasn’t just happy for Above the roof I notice that, for the first “I don’t want to say it, boys, but that wall looks
me; she was happy for her. time, we’re high enough to make out the fucking big.” I purse my cracked lips, exhaling
The next morning blurs into night and obscure outlines of strangers taking photos hard. Trying to expel the fact that there appears
into the fourth day as we hit our stride. We’re across the canyon at the South Rim. In to be at least another full day above us—more,

calves are born in early June, just as the nutritious grasses rise from their winter dormancy and just before
the flies and mosquitoes hatch during a small window of summer. Nearly a quarter of these calves perish
within the first few weeks because of predation by golden eagles, grizzly bears, wolves and even flies and
mosquitoes. In no small way, the life of these caribou is a miracle, and the Gwich’in people have centered
their worldview and culture around protecting this coastal plain where the Porcupine caribou have been
central in sustaining their people for millennia, hence the sign on the community hall. ¶ The mountains
that funnel the caribou to the coastal plain were mapped in the early twentieth century, but they were not
officially named by the US government until 1925, after geologist Alfred H. Brooks, who had died in 1924.
So it came to be that the tallest range in the Arctic Circle, in a region referred to as the Serengeti of the
North because of the diversity of life within its ecosystem, became known as the Brooks Range. ¶ The
Gwich’in name for the range, Gwazhał, roughly translates to “place where the land bulges up.” It’s a name as
old as the people’s long-standing connection to the caribou and the coastal plain buttressed by mountains
on the south and the ocean in the north: The sacred place where life begins. LEN NECEFER

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[Photo] Sam Stuckey slips in a beak above the as-yet-intact second-pitch ledge. In gigantic overhanging blocks and the absolute reality of nearly 3,000 feet of exposure,
the 1973 American Alpine Journal, Bill Forrest described the bittersweet endgame coupled with questionable anchors and nearly impossible leads were agony and
of his and Kris Walker’s first ascent of the Painted Wall’s main face: “The last day ecstasy.... We arrived on top at dusk and stood together as the sun sank. We knew the
was awful and it was beautiful.... The top was near. The rich pink and red hues of the secrets of the Painted Wall, we knew each other, and we were happy.” Lane Mathis

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 “There is a fair amount of loose rock on most of the routes
in the [Black Canyon].... Those climbers who demand
ironhard, compact granite would do well to avoid the area.”
–Layton Kor, Climbing (1970)

if the climbing is difficult. back above the rim so quickly its white belly
I recall the comical image of Kris Walker is difficult to track with my eyes. The bird
printed in Zeilman’s 2016 guidebook. It’s circles once more before it dives back down
1972, and Walker and Forrest have just into the canyon and out of sight.
completed the first ascent of the Painted Five hours later, as Lane’s van kicks up a
Wall’s main face. Walker sits on the canyon rooster tail of gravel dust along the plains west
rim, drinking a Coke. He’s wearing thick- of Crawford, Colorado, our phones light up
rimmed glasses and a huge yellow-and- and buzz with the first bits of cell reception
green-striped wool sweater. A polka-dot in a week. Lane slams the brakes and gravel
handkerchief is tied around his neck. How is slides beneath the tires as the van scrapes to a
it that they were able to do all that back then halt along a field. I step out into the settling
and still have a Coke to spare for a victory dust now lit teal by my phone, to call Jase.
drink? Here I am in 2021, wearing Gore-Tex Like a child, I recite the entire experience to
and calculating our trip needs with a pocket- her in one long, breathless rush. She responds
sized computer, yet it’s me, not Walker, who’s with her favorite curt impression of me—“I
run out of water. like rocks!”—and we share a good laugh. Like
The next morning, I wake up to soft a ritual, she says the same thing she says every
blue sunlight illuminating the inside of my time I’m away: “Me and Moo are ready for
sleeping bag. I hesitate to pop my head out you to be home!” But then, only a few weeks
to see how much climbing is left. Then, in later, she will ask for the divorce. She’ll say
his rugged voice, Sam says, “Wake up, boys. she wants a wife and kids, two things I cannot
It’s time to stand on the North Rim.” Sure give her. She’ll say she wants someone who
enough, daylight has transformed last night’s will be home every night. Something I could
foreboding headwall into a mere ropelength have given, but never quite did.
or two of low-angle free climbing. The rest The distance between the Black Canyon’s
of the morning is a blur. Eat. Pack. Rerack. South and North Rims is equal to the depth
Giddyup. of the chasm that separates them. For me,
On the North Rim at 3 p.m. on the fifth that distance is measured in years. Four and
day, we stand above our completed route. We half of them. A marriage done and undone.
name it Act I. It’s another called shot, this A distance too far to reverse. An uncross-
time not for just the success or failure of a able maw in time. The two canyon edges
single climb. This time, the Painted Wall is form a permanent bookend to our imper-
just the beginning of what will be many more manent lives. They are a symbol of the strife
years of grand adventures. and joy that came from giving something
I seek the shade of a wind-twisted juniper, bigger than myself an honest attempt, even
and the sweat that has soaked into my harness if the endeavor crumbles to dust beneath my
over many days starts to cool. My cuticles are fingertips. I am a visage of the Painted Wall’s
raw and dry. My toenails are compressed and eroding granite, anew with each ascent. My
bleeding. It’s such a gentle relief not to have weaknesses shed in humble flakes and erupt-
to worry about gravity, and for a moment I ing torrents. In their wake, scars outline my
live weightless. Then a rush of air as a swift freshly weathered skin. I am always new.
slices past me into the canyon. It shoots —Dakota Walz, Addressless in the USA

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TOOL USERS

Progress Capture
Device In 2009 Tommy
Caldwell rappelled solo from the top
of El Capitan (Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La)
and began a multiyear odyssey to find
a free-climbing route up the Dawn
Wall, the tallest, sheerest aspect of the
3,000-foot monolith. In the ensuing
years Caldwell would spend days self-
belaying on toprope with a pair of Petzl
Mini Traxions. BOB GAINES
In his 2017 book, The Push, Caldwell wrote: “I carried a huge pile of ropes
to the top of El Cap and began rappelling down in different spots, looking for
a feasible passage. If the route was even possible I would have to piece it
together, bit by bit.” Progress capture devices (PCDs) like the Mini Traxion
would be integral tools for the Dawn Wall project.

The first widely used PCD, the Jumar Pangit ascender, came onto the market
in 1958. Adolph Jüsi and Walter Marti created the device not for climbing,
but to use in Jüsi’s work studying eagles. Jumar was a combination of their
last names. Tom Cochrane was among the first people to bring Jumars to In the late 1990s, Petzl introduced the Tibloc, a tiny aluminum PCD that
Yosemite in the early 1960s. In a 2013 SuperTopo post, he wrote: “I showed could be used as an ascender or as a ratchet for lightweight hauling. It
[a] pair…to Royal [Robbins] and [Chuck] Pratt, who…considered them to also proved useful for simul-climbing by adding protection for the lead
be an inappropriate and dangerous contrivance for Yosemite climbing.... climber from sudden downward pulls on the rope, such as a fall by the
However Royal borrowed that first pair of Jumars for several walls that follower. Petzl’s Mini Traxion, a pulley/cam combination that came onto
summer.” Jumaring became the generic verb for the act of ascending a the market soon after, was the game changer. In a 2012 GearLab review,
rope with any mechanical ascender. Chris McNamara called the Mini Traxion “the best and lightest hauling
device for hauling small loads.” Climbers also found the Mini Traxion useful
Using the newfangled “Yosemite Method,” where the leader fixed the for an unintended purpose: rope soloing. Valley locals were soon running
lead rope and hauled the bag on a separate haul line while the second laps up fixed ropes all over the Cookie Cliff, often with two devices in
cleaned the pitch on Jumars, Robbins and Tom Frost completed the second tandem for redundancy. On El Cap, climbers began rappelling from the
ascent of El Capitan’s Dihedral Wall in one push without using fixed ropes. top and rehearsing free climbs using Mini Traxions instead of recruiting
Robbins later became the first person to solo El Cap, which he did via belayers for marathon hangdog sessions. After a few accidents, a caution
the Muir Wall route over ten days in April of 1968, self-belaying with was issued: “Petzl does not recommend using a system consisting of only
Jumars. The 1972 Chouinard Equipment catalogue and Robbins’ 1973 book two Mini Traxions for self-belayed solo climbing with a fixed rope.” Petzl’s
Advanced Rockcraft included a diagram of the hauling setup, depicting newer design, the Micro Traxion, is now the most popular PCD. It’s even
what Chouinard called the “détente” ascender, rigged upside down, in lighter and smaller, and it has a bigger pulley than the Mini, which has
conjunction with a pulley. been discontinued. Petzl has also introduced a featherweight model, the
Nano Traxion, while other companies produce similar devices, including
The next advancement in big-wall PCDs happened in 1987, when Rock one of Caldwell’s current sponsors, Edelrid.
Thompson founded Rock Exotica. One of Thompson’s first products was a
PCD called the Soloist. The device allowed smooth, hands-free progression. On January 14, 2015, Caldwell’s years of solo toproping on the Dawn Wall
But it was heavy, cumbersome and tricky to rig, with one major flaw, achieved fruition when he and Kevin Jorgeson finally topped out on what
explicitly stated in their user manual: “Will not lock if you fall headfirst.” many consider to be the world’s most difficult big-wall free climb, with
Rock Exotica also created a ratcheting pulley. “John Middendorf... thirty-two pitches up to 5.14d.
Photo: Bob Gaines

suggested making a camming pulley and explained what was wrong with
earlier designs,” Thompson wrote on the company website. Larry Arthur of As climbing has evolved, so have progress capture devices. It all started
Mountain Tools named it the Wall Hauler and marketed it as “the original with a Swiss ornithologist who just wanted a rope-ascending tool to get to
self-ratcheting climber’s haul pulley that makes all hauling chores easier.” eagle’s nests. Then a guy named Royal came along and turned the climbing
It quickly caught on. world (and a Jumar) upside down, and the rest is history.

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 THE CLIMBING LIFE
The Last-Chance Tourist with forty pounds’ worth of avalanche
gear, glacier goggles, mixed nuts, gaiters,
Around 5 a.m. the slow creep of sunrise dehydrated pad thai and enough outer-
bathed the jagged outline of the Casca- wear to suit all four seasons. I’d ratio-
dian skyline in red, while the volca- nalized the attempt to climb a glacier
nic crater of Rainier (t qwu b d in the while it still existed as something of
Puyallup language) came, at long last, a “vanishing-earth voyage” or even a
into view. At 14,411 feet, this summit “doomsday adventure.” Since we’d hit the
could be the closest I’d ever climb into upper mountain, the notion of dooms-
outer space. My lungs were ragged from day had started to seem more literal:
lack of oxygen and I felt on the verge of the guides’ walkie-talkies crackled with
vomiting. So we slogged upward, roped reports of areas they needed to speed us
together, through wet snow and cold through, slopes riven by cascades of rocks
winds. It was the final day of our climb, and rivers of meltwater.
July 2, 2021. We needed to reach the top
before dawn to be well on our way back “Last-chance tourism” is a term that
down before the sun torched Rainier’s describes travelers’ quests to experience
snowcaps, leaving its flanks even slush- the most threatened corners of the globe:
ier and slippier, its cliff faces even more Australia’s rapidly bleaching Great Barrier
fragile and brittle. Reef, the flood- and drought-threatened
Fourteen thousand feet below us, islands of Galápagos and the Maldives,
a weeklong heat wave was scorching the melting ice sheets of the Arctic. Of
Seattle, during one of the many “freak” course, opportunities for adventure in
climate events of 2021. Normally, west- climate-threatened landscapes abound,
ern Washington is crisp and overcast in so I’ve tended to stay closer to home.
late June. But by the time I’d made it to By the time of my Rainier trip, I’d
base camp on June 28, the heat dome had spent several years working at Sierra
hit a record 104°F in Seattle and closed magazine, and I’d been steeped in reports
countless businesses in the Pacific North- of climate apocalypse and eco-anxiety.
west. It would go on to kill hundreds of In October 2017—during my first fire
people. For now, all I knew was that the season after moving to the Bay Area for
temperatures weren’t making this climb the job—I’d watched the sun turn into a
any easier. I’d spent months running crimson ball, shining ominously through
up hills with coffee-table books. But I the thick black air that seeped through
hadn’t accounted for the physical toll of door cracks and into my Berkeley apart-
mountainsides melting in extreme heat. ment. Ecological destruction accelerated
To keep myself stable, I was expending at a dizzying pace: hurricanes, intensified
more energy than I should have, bearing by climate change, battered homes, infra-
my crampons and hiking pole down into structure and power grids across multi-
the upper mountain’s slush-covered shale. ple states and Puerto Rico; the Greenland
For the second time that morning, ice sheet melted by a record amount,
I slipped, swearing as I slammed my ice contributing an estimated 40 percent of
axe into Rainier to self-arrest. Lying in the rise in global sea levels in 2019; the
the snow, I entertained the notion that Amazon rain forest and then the Austra-
despite being so close to summiting, lian bush ignited into flames; record
I might not make it. Seven from our droughts and floods plagued the US. And
Illustration: John Svenson

guided group of eighteen had already all the while, Donald Trump and other
turned back, bested by altitude sickness US leaders described climate change as a
or leg cramps or fear. A novice moun- mythical Chinese hoax. Checking news
taineer, I’d been sore since the start of releases at work, I’d stifled tears while
the climb because of a pack that burst watching online as the 2018 Camp Fire

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 obliterated the town of Paradise, was glad it was too dark for anyone
California. Buzzer to see my tears.
By May 2021, after learning that The puny ladder whinnied
the African forest elephant—a favor- The rock asks questions under the weight of me and my
ite from childhood zoo trips—had Tests you pack. “Don’t look down!” some-
been red-listed on the IUCN’s criti- Makes practical jokes one shouted. I stifled a sob, realiz-
cally endangered list, I had trouble Invites your rejoinder then giggles when you fluster ing how much I didn’t want to die.
sleeping and focusing. I hadn’t been Three seconds later, when I cleared
a particularly outdoorsy kid or teen, A game-show host the crevasse, my gratitude for being
but now I felt an ever-burgeoning Some kind of quiz-master alive on this earth felt every bit as
desire to spend vacations climbing With a wicked crystallized as the ice columns that
cold, scary West Coast mountains. Sense of humor sparkled up from within it. I was
This longing was, I suspect, some almost spooked by how much I real-
manifestation of my grief as I tried You move, gripped ized I wanted a chance to create new
to come to terms with the end of Hyper-conscious of the buzzer life myself.
life on Earth as I knew it. To borrow Use sinew and muscle to fashion your answer
from an exchange in Wendell Berry’s With some attempt at wit I forced myself vertical and
novel A Place on Earth, death might then bowed forward into the dark,
have “become part of the way I —Sarah-Jane Dobner, Bristol,United Kingdom leaning into my sore body as I kept
love.” climbing. I began to think that all
[The above poem is excerpted with permission from
Meanwhile, I’d settled into a A Feeling for Rock (Dob Dob Dob, March 2021).] those hours of hard training for
relationship with my partner, Kevin, mountaineering might help me
a fellow mountain enthusiast and build better mechanisms for coping
astrophotographer I’d met in 2019. with psychological suffering as well.
A lanky and excitable scientist who made thought of bringing more humans into this While a 2022 scientific study published in
adulthood seem like one long, strange field disaster complicates the matter for me and Nature shows that some of the worst effects of
trip, he was the first person to make me feel for many others. In 2021, University of Bath climate change can be staved off if all govern-
hopeful about the idea of sharing our outdoor researchers surveyed ten-thousand people ments meet their substantial pledges to reduce
passions with children. By then, I was already aged sixteen to twenty-five in ten countries fossil fuel emissions, I’m not feeling partic-
in my midthirties. Though I realized I didn’t (including Australia, Brazil, Finland, France, ularly optimistic, especially considering the
have much time left to have a baby, like so India, Nigeria, the Philippines, Portugal, the Supreme Court’s recent decision to limit the
many others of my generation, I was terrified UK and the US) and found that four in ten EPA’s power to control climate-frying emis-
of bringing more life into all this extinction are “hesitant to have children as a result of sions. Something tells me that even if the
and destruction. the climate crisis.” next few years usher in a climate-concerned
I’d recently reported a story about a Still, over time, I’d allowed myself to Congress, we’ll still have to train ourselves and
nascent movement to opt out of parenthood become more curious about parenthood and our children to cope as swaths of our world
for environmental reasons. A 2017 study had then more hopeful. Before flying to Wash- burn down or flood.
suggested that the most climate-mitigating ington, I’d scheduled an appointment with Rainier’s summit flag shook wildly in
action an individual could take was not to a gynecologist to get my intrauterine birth thin, still-frigid air. Thousands of feet above
go vegan, nor to stop driving and flying— control device removed right after my return sea level, I gazed out on an earth that seemed
but rather, to have one fewer child. But most to sea level. Last-chance tourism, indeed. If to stretch endlessly around us. A red-gold
of the people I’d interviewed—one of whom Kevin and I had a baby, we might not have light permeated the sky, tinging the clouds
launched a UK-based “BirthStrike” move- many more opportunities—for a while at that haloed the Cascadian skyline’s soaring
ment—weren’t necessarily holding off because least—for such adventures. peaks and the rivers that swirled below. The
of the 9,441 metric tons of carbon dioxide Around 1 a.m. on our summit bid, a smaller I felt at this unfamiliar altitude, the
the average human born into a wealthy coun- guide had calmly gestured to a vast crevasse more the peaks and valleys and the sun over-
Photo: Paul Zizka. Climber: Marco Carrillo

try produces over an eighty-year lifetime. in our path ahead and informed us that we’d head seemed held together by some intelli-
They were opting for child-free lives out of a have to step carefully across a metal ladder gent pattern.
sense of grief and guilt about the world any to cross this chasm. My friends and I were Just for a few minutes, I let myself revel,
offspring might inherit. clipped into the same rope, climbing by the putting the deadly heat dome out of mind. I
I don’t think the onus of reversing the light of our headlamps and the glow of the whooped with my co-adventurers. I made a
catastrophe should come down entirely to stars that constellated so closely overhead it snow angel on the summit crater. I tried not
intimate individual decisions, when it’s the felt as if we were trekking up a snow-covered to vomit. And as we bundled back up for our
massive and powerful fossil fuel industry moon. Sharp-edged columns of silver-blue ice slushy descent toward tree line, I felt ready to
that mostly got us into this mess. But the sparkled ominously in the gaping cavity, and I move on. I wanted to be able to tell a child,

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maybe even a grandchild, what it different. Whatever’s in store for my
was like being up there. child, I take solace in knowing she’ll
Maybe it’s because I felt stronger still get to experience moments like
than ever before—and also loopy that. Maybe—likely—hers won’t
from sleep deprivation—but as we be atop Rainier. But we can intro-
trekked back into the habitable zone duce her to a state of wonder early.
of the mountain and I heard bird- Because once you learn to recognize
song once more, I experienced a it, awe becomes all the more acces-
buoying surge of belief that not only sible—harnessed from the fleeting
could I raise new life in the Anthro- glow of dusk over a mountain range,
pocene, I wanted to. By example, I or that last sparkle of reflection on
could show a child how to care for a lake before all that remains is the
the profundity of our natural world. dark night sky.
And perhaps (I hope, anyway) more —Katie O’Reilly, Potomac, Montana
love for the earth could help balance
the toll of so much grief. Contours
The next day, off the mountain In July 2021, Climbers of Color
and reunited with Kevin, I’d expe- (a Washington-based nonprofit
rience an even more acute surge of organization promoting diversity,
awe during a gentle nearby hike. equity and inclusion in the climbing
Kevin kneeled down before a pale community) and Trail Mixed Collec-
turquoise lake that reflected the tive (a community space working to
snow-drizzled peak I’d so recently increase access to outdoor sports for
climbed. And, much to my surprise, he back when we were just constantly reproduc- women of color, founded by Quena Batres
offered up an antique engagement ring. Two ing bacteria. “Like, the huge death comet and Liselle Pires) hosted the first mountain-
months later, I’d grieve again: this time, for came and went, and yours and my ancestors eering leadership course for women of color,
the mountain, when I learned that commer- still decided to procreate,” he said. “The dino- led by women and nonbinary people of color.
cial guiding companies were canceling several saurs and whatever other creatures lived on For four days, nine participants practiced the
scheduled climbs on Rainier because the dry Earth at the time didn’t get together after the fundamentals of glacier mountaineering on
spring, followed by summer’s heat dome, giant meteor struck and say, ‘Eh, things look Koma Kulshan (Mt. Baker) under the tutelage
had reduced the Cascadian snowpack to rough out there; let’s stop.’” of Dawa Yangzum Sherpa (the first female
dangerous levels. The month after that, I’d After coming down from my initial preg- IFMGA-certified guide from Nepal) and
pee on a stick, watch with surreal disbelief as nancy high—and before my daughter Magno- ourselves, Mariko Ching (the cofounder of
double lines etched into view and experience lia Jane was born on the summer solstice of Climbers of Color) and Theresa Silveyra (a
a rare state of being wholly, uncomplicatedly 2022—I cried again, over the autumn floods Climbers of Color mountaineering instruc-
excited. that plagued the Pacific Northwest and Brit- tor). On July 11, 2021, eleven of us reached
For several hours and days later, I didn’t ish Columbia and the “freak” December 2021 the summit of Koma Kulshan together. In the
think of the world as a place rapidly dying, blaze that tore through Boulder County, following narrative, we recount what we expe-
didn’t obsess over fires and floods and record Colorado. The grief is compounded now— rienced as some of the course’s most signifi-
temperatures, didn’t feel bittersweet about the with every fresh hallmark of the climate catas- cant moments.
diminishment of our freedom to have wild trophe, I suffer something like pre-TSD on
adventures now that I was with child. Instead, behalf of the being who grew inside me. Theresa:
my head filled with visions of Kevin and me I don’t claim to be fully at peace with “Who here knows how to tie a figure-eight
showing our child our favorite places. I took my decision to bring forth more life. But follow-through?”
joy in planning slower, safer sojourns, in imag- now and then, I mentally transport myself Several hands rose slowly into the air.
ining having a complete beginner with us— back to places like the snowy, pink-tinged “OK,” Mariko continued, “if you have
someone who’d be doing everything for the peaks surrounding Rainier’s summit—a your hand up, I want you to practice teach-
first time, from observing wildflower blooms sight more intense and otherworldly than ing it to the person next to you.”
and technicolor vistas to making eye contact anything I’ve ever witnessed. I recall how I walked through our teaching area at
Illustration: Hamdi Hum

with frogs and deer. the peaks and valleys and the sun overhead Sandy Camp, carefully picking my way
An evolutionary biology enthusiast, Kevin all seemed ordered, how they filled me with through the boulders and scree as I observed
likes to remind me that reproducing is some- that rare sense of peace. I remember how I each group. Our small community of blue
thing all our ancestors decided to do, going climbed back down with a distinct feeling and green tents dotted the snowfield nearby.
back before humankind, before invertebrates, that the world, for me, would now be forever The jagged, rocky spires of Colfax Peak

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Social Media Pakistan 0345-6738217
 Photo: Alexa Flower

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 Theresa: abutting the camp and started
ONE–ONE THOUSAND, two–one our debrief.
thousand. Step. One–one thou- “I can’t believe we summited
sand, two–one thousand. Step. My this mountain,” Fernanda said.
team of four gradually inched our Like the rest of us, she was tired
way up the glacier. The firm snow but still smiling. Other students
crunched beneath our crampon bobbed their heads in agreement.
points. We had already been There was a long pause of silence
awake and moving for a couple as we took it all in. I looked
of hours in this trancelike state, down at my feet, a habit when
having started our summit push I’m deep in reflection. The rand
by headlamp in the dark. of my boots was peeling and my
Dawa’s team marched ahead laces looked ready to snap. I had
of us. At the edge of a particularly a hard time believing these boots
icy section, she stopped to assess had climbed Koma Kulshan so
the path ahead. Until this point, many times.
we had mostly followed tracked- “But you did do it,” said
out snow. Now only a faint path Theresa. I looked up and saw slow
appeared to switchback through nods from the participants.
a series of holes and deep cracks. “So what’s next?” Quena, one
“Step where I step,” Dawa of the cofounders of Trail Mixed,
instructed her team. “It’s icy. asked after our debrief. “Where
Watch your footing.” do we go from here?”
She strode confidently In my mind, I started to list
over the ice. Her team slowly several other climbing objec-
followed, each member moving tives—Pahto (Mt. Adams),
with caution. This bare glacier ice Dakhobed (Glacier Peak) and
was new to them—our practice Waka-nunee-Tuki-wuki (Mt.
sessions near camp had been on fairly soft the rope between climbers on a glacier. “Don’t Shasta)—but before I said them aloud,
snow. I waited until her team had made it allow slack to build up!” Theresa chimed in. “Continue practicing
through before starting across myself. As we weaved our way through this intri- your skills,” she said. “This course was about
“OK, follow my exact path,” I said to my cate maze, we seemed to fall into a steady leadership. It’s time for you to be a leader for
team. “Keep axes in your uphill hand. Mind rhythm, working together to keep each other your friends and your community.”
your feet and the rope.” I spoke firmly, with as safe and supported. Once back on softer, less I agreed: this course marked the begin-
much authority as I could muster, doing my icy terrain, I turned around to check in with ning of something much bigger than any one
best to hide the nervousness I felt for them. my team. Everyone was beaming. Maybe of us. I gazed toward the now tangerine-hued
I remembered how tentative I’d felt the first some of the smiles resulted from nerves, or slopes of the Easton Glacier and let out a big
time I traversed icy terrain in crampons, espe- from the slight thrill that often accompanies sigh. I was reluctant to leave this beautiful
cially on a rope team with all men, when I’d moments of fear. Maybe they were thank- place and this small group of women that
feared being the weakest link. god-we’re-done-with-that! smiles. Perhaps they I’d quickly grown close with. Tomorrow, we
Now, I took care to model how I wanted were a combination of all those feelings. would descend to the trailhead, go our sepa-
my team to move. Make sure every crampon Ahead, melted-out towers of volcanic rock rate ways and start new chapters in our climb-
point is firmly biting the ice. Keep the rope on rose above Sherman Crater, our final break ing journeys. Down below, I could make out
the downhill side. Mind that gaping hole there spot before the summit push. the faint contours of the road as it weaved
and steer clear around the switchback. Watch “Just another couple hundred feet, team! through the valley floor. The evergreen foot-

Photo: Austin Schmitz. Climber: Fred Campbell

the rope as you step over it. How thick is that Then we can rest!” I exclaimed as I returned hills rolled on endlessly.
snowbridge? Cross quickly, then start guiding to guide pace. One–one thousand, two–one —Theresa Silveyra, Portland, Oregon (occu-
the rest of your team. thousand. Step. One–one thousand, two–one pied territory of traditional village sites
“There’s a snowbridge right here, thousand. Step. of the Multnomah, Kathlamet, Clacka-
Fernanda. Move carefully, but quickly, Mariko: mas, bands of Chinook, Tualatin Kala-
through here. Don’t linger.” She thanked me By the time our team regrouped after our puya, Molalla and many other Tribes who
and relayed the same instructions to Yasmine post-summit siesta, the sun was low in the made their homes along the Columbia
after she’d made it safely across. sky. Golden alpenglow illuminated the snow River), and Mariko Ching, Everett, Wash-
“Make sure the rope is still smiling,” I around our campsite. The hiss of camp stoves ington (occupied territory of the Tulalip,
said, referring to the ideal level of tautness in filled the air. We sat together on the boulders Snohomish and Stillaguamish Tribes)

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 Athlete: Aaron Mulkey. Photographer Jeremiah Watt.

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Photo: Jan Novak. Climber: Toni Arbonés

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Social Media Pakistan 0345-6738217
What If We Almost Died? Chihuahua, Mags, and make up stories mountains. In 2010 in Pittsburgh, I’d almost
about her misadventures. Kristy cracked up been run over by a car while skateboarding
It would have been easy to turn around if as I pretended Mags was performing triple home after a college class. And then, in
we’d been facing a storm; it was much harder backflips off snowy hummocks. “Slow down 2014, while working as an arborist, I was
beneath the blue skies of a Pacific North- there, doggie, let’s not get carried away now,” launched ten feet into the air while holding
west spring day. It was short-sleeve weather, I joked. It felt natural and effortless when a rigging line, nearly colliding with a giant
2019, in the Olympic Range. Wisps of Kristy and I were in the mountains together, tree limb that could have killed me. It’s all so
clouds floated by, and a warm breeze tickled having built our relationship around adven- random: a matter of seconds or simple bad
our sunburned faces. Lulled into a false sense tures from the moment we became a couple luck can wipe us out, with neither sympa-
of security, my wife, Kristy, and I crossed on the Ptarmigan Traverse (a classic Cascades thy nor explanation from the universe. We
under the snowbound, thousand-foot south- route) in the summer of 2014. are all so much closer to death than we ever
east aspect of Buckhorn Mountain, knowing We traversed back under Buckhorn’s acknowledge.
a wet slide could happen at any moment but southeast face, following the trail from Kristy and I should have paid attention
convincing ourselves it would not. Beyond, the day before. But now, as we neared the to the clues—the warm temperatures, the
we set up camp at Marmot Pass. A sea of spot where I’d worried about slides, things wet snow, the fifty-degree slope above—and
peaks stood before us: mountains sat silent seemed out of place. A tree lay horizontally, turned around. Yet, the avalanche happened,
like soft pillows; sharp ridges stretched its broken limbs scattered across the path. and we weren’t crossing its path when it took
upward, reaching toward unblemished atmo- A boulder was dislodged, exposing dark place. We could have died, but we didn’t.
sphere; steep valleys cut deeply into a forest brown earth where there’d been white snow. I
speckled with old-growth trees. Safe on our looked over at Kristy and caught a glimpse of Kristy and I met at a climbing gym in
gentle slope, we engaged in easy conversa- horror, her face pale and ghostly. Our tracks Seattle in 2013. After a few sessions climb-
tion, melting snow, inflating a sleeping pad, had been wiped out. In their place were ing together with mutual friends over the
drying out gear, preparing dinner. car-sized chunks of snow, dirty, misshapen course of three months, we ran into each
The next morning, we broke down camp pieces of ice and uprooted rocks, some as other at Frenchman Coulee, a nearby basalt
and plodded up Buckhorn’s southwest ridge, small as a fist and some as large as a refrig- crag. Without hesitation, and having never
the sound of our feet like Styrofoam rubbing erator. I looked up. At the base of the cliff skied with me, Kristy invited me on a multi-
against itself. It was the kind of firm, squeaky five hundred feet above, there was no snow. day ski traverse from Whistler to Pemberton
snow that’s perfect for light movement and It had all slid, fanning out as it hissed down in the Coast Mountains of British Colum-
quick ascents. On top, we experienced a the mountain, gaining momentum, power bia. We bonded over searching for my lost
rare, spectacular vantage of all five Wash- and weight. A classic wet-slab avalanche, the ski that popped off and slid into a thick
ington volcanoes. To the north, Mt. Baker, result of an unusually warm spring day, had Douglas fir forest. Kristy booted back to
where I’d walked slowly up its glaciers, taking broken free, causing the entire snowpack to camp with me, instead of skiing down with
clients on mundane yet beautiful snow slopes slide, exposing the soil four feet underneath. the group. We celebrated our friend Jerry’s
during a short guiding stint in 2015. To the Though we had avalanche gear, it would have birthday on a glacier, breaking out party hats
east, Glacier Peak, where Kristy’s stamina been a miracle to come away unscathed. and candles in the vast, snowy expanse. We
and quick pace had stood out during a one- Kristy turned to me, her concerned look linked smooth turns down exposed moun-
day push on the south face. To the south, unchanged, and asked, “When did the slide tain faces, cautiously sideslipping together
Mt. Rainier, Mt. Saint Helens and Mt. occur? What caused the avalanche?” I shook in consequential terrain, high-fiving at the
Adams, where we’d bonded over late-spring my head—I didn’t know. A strange mixture bottom. Not long after that first trip, we
corn skiing, linking smooth turns, Kristy of relief and anger washed over me for having began dating.
in her sports bra, me in my boxers, laugh- not been buried and for how casually we had In the beginning, we were ambitious
ing at how ridiculous we looked with our made the decision the day before. Kristy dug partners, pushing each other on long
sunburned thighs and chapped lips peeling for answers, probing as if I had any clue. endurance climbs, ridge rambles and back-
in the afternoon sun. In front of us on Buck- “What were we thinking crossing this slope? country ski tours. We had successes, like
horn, the Puget Sound and the Strait of Juan What if we’d been under the face when the the traverse of the Enchantments in the
de Fuca glistened, glassy seas sparkling in the snow slid? Did we almost die?” she asked. Central Cascades in winter, punctuated
midmorning light. Our trance was broken As we hiked back to the trailhead, our by a climb of Prusik Peak, which revealed
by the voices of hikers on a nearby peak. conversation kept returning to one focal that we had similar levels of endurance and
Unaware of our presence, they enjoyed their point: Does it matter that we could have died perseverance. We had failures, like bail-
own magical solitude. when we didn’t? I couldn’t stop thinking ing off the Torment-Forbidden Traverse in
Kristy and I picked our way down the about what would have happened if we’d North Cascades National Park three separate
Cartoon: Tami Knight

mountain, starting with rocky scree then been under the face when the avalanche times, teaching us that we had comparable
thirty-five-degree snow leading to a tree- occurred. My thoughts went to a dark place, levels of risk tolerance. We were OK turning
strewn slope, laughing at each other’s silly spiraling down into the litany of close calls around when we felt unsafe. Yet there were
jokes. We always bring along a stuffed throughout my lifetime, and not just in the also close calls. On the Mountaineer’s Route

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on Elephant’s Perch in Idaho, I took Kristy
off belay while she was still leading, think-
ing that I’d heard her clearly communicate
her safety at the anchor. When I made it
to the anchor and sheepishly admitted my
mishap, she burst into tears, her confidence
in me rattled.
On Mt. Garibaldi outside Squamish,
we were crossing a slope when the wind
began to load it. Cracks shot across the
surface until it became equally unsafe to
go forward or backward. Choosing to go
down, we triggered and then narrowly
avoided getting caught in a slab avalanche.
We were forced to spend an extra night in
our tent after losing precious time, succumb-
ing to indecision and fear and not wanting
to make another mistake in the dark. In the
Picket Range, Kristy and I were climbing a
gully when I dislodged a bowling-ball-sized
rock that narrowly missed her. If she hadn’t
anticipated how loose the rock might be and
ducked under an outcrop, our climb could
have ended in tragedy.
As the years passed and we traveled to
places we’d never imagined—the moun-
tains of Kyrgyzstan, Alaska and Iceland—
our doubts and questions grew. Ridgelines,
couloirs and snow slopes that once seemed
pedestrian now haunted our thoughts. The
toll of losing people we knew to accidents
in the mountains and the reality of aging—
of coming closer to our mortality with each
passing day—began to affect our tolerance
for risk. We were no longer willing to throw
it all on the line without thinking of the
consequences. On backcountry ski trips,
Kristy imagined herself tumbling off an
exposed cliff to her death, or an avalanche
ripping her skis out from under her, bury-
ing her in snow. On alpine rock climbs, I
imagined an errant block cutting my rope,
sending me thousands of feet into the void.
We second-guessed ourselves constantly. The
joy of unencumbered movement gave way to
fear and insecurity.
During a 2018 attempt on Mt. Spickard,
a glaciated, nearly 9,000-foot peak deep in
the North Cascades, I made the poor deci-
sion to forgo avalanche gear, not heeding
Kristy’s accurate reading of a forecasted
storm that ultimately deposited several
inches of new snow on the late-summer
snowpack. A short pitch of forty-five-degree
snow led to a ridgeline to gain the summit.

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In the heat of late morning, unroped in hike out, we exchanged few words. Kristy wife buried under avalanche debris, slowly
the middle of the slope, we began shout- was angry that we’d been up there with- suffocating to death. Did we almost die? I
ing curses as snowy pinwheels rolled down out avalanche equipment. I was upset that wondered silently. My tired mind couldn’t let
around us. “What are we doing here without we’d spent a precious three-day weekend not my worries go as I analyzed the climb. Does
avalanche gear?” Kristy wondered aloud. We summiting. As we lay in bed that night, Kristy it matter that we almost died when we didn’t?
debated going up or down, trying to justify turned to me and quietly asked, “Should we
continuing forward, not wanting to give up have been on that mountain? What if the D    more about
but unsure of the right move. slope had given way?” I had no answer. I was our safety in the mountains, Kristy and I
At last, we bailed. During the long still struggling with the image of my beautiful found that climbing up and skiing down

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 summit that overlooks the chairlifts at the
Whistler Blackcomb ski resort. Kristy was
six months pregnant with our first child.
Despite our close calls on Buckhorn Moun-
tain and Mt. Spickard, we felt good about
where we were on this particular day. Our
doubts still lingered, but with a moderate
avalanche forecast and excellent ski condi-
tions, we felt that we were playing it safe.
The night before skiing Rainbow Mountain,
en route to our campsite near the peak as the
sun set over the Canadian Coast Mountains,
we happened upon two skiers waiting on a
helivac rescue. A woman in her midtwenties
had twisted her knee and couldn’t make it
out of the backcountry. Kristy sat with her,
brewed tea for her and draped her sleeping
bag over the woman’s chilled legs while I set
up our camp on a frozen lake. Once the chop-
per took off, leaving the valley quiet again,
Kristy and I decamped to our tent. We felt
safe, snuggled up next to each other on a
still, moonless night. I felt pride in my wife’s
strength to enter this rugged alpine environ-
ment while carrying our baby inside her belly.
If this was to be our last hurrah in the back-
country before our time and energy refocused
on caring for another human life, it felt right
to be in this place.
As I watched Kristy ski off Rainbow
Mountain, I wondered what our son would
be like. Would he love the mountains like we
do, or would he shun them as unforgiving,
indifferent and callous? I knew he would not
be immune to danger if he chose to climb
and ski in the backcountry—nobody is—
and yet I felt at peace with this thought. I
choose to keep climbing and skiing because
Photo: Emily Walis. Climber: Chris Vultaggio
peaks remained integral to our happiness, obsessively discussing minor missteps— it’s in the mountains where I’m most in the
both individually and as a couple. Still, it a slough triggered here, a few rocks kicked moment. And yet time, perspective and age
seemed that our trips had shifted. We now down there. The what-ifs and what-could- have helped me realize that simply being in
sought objectives in safer terrain and based have-beens became the focus of our adventures the backcountry, without pushing the limits
our plans around mitigating risk, rather than rather than pure enjoyment of the wild. If an of safety, is good enough. I clicked my boots
seeking goals based solely on what inspired accident happened to someone we knew, we into my bindings, pointed my skis straight
us. Had we become smarter or more afraid? wondered if it could have been us. and took off after my wife, unsure where our
After each trip, we debriefed, analyzing our In February 2020, Kristy and I sat powdery turns would take us next.
decision-making to an agonizing degree, perched atop Rainbow Mountain, a broad —David Gladish, North Cascades, Washington

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 It was the day
before Easter 2021.
The sun was setting. Snow started to fall.
Nick Aiello-Popeo, Ryan Driscoll and I were
tucked in our tents on the glacier below
the east face of Mt. Neacola in Alaska. This
was our second time here to attempt the
unclimbed Medusa Face on the north side
of the mountain. We’d waited two years to
return after bailing from the face in 2019,
when a storm soaked us to the skin while
we suffered through a night on a tiny ledge.
This trip would be different, we hoped.

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 The first ascent of the Medusa Face

Odyssey on
Mt. Neacola
by Justin Guarino

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 omorrow is Easter, a day to celebrate resurrection, I liebacked a steepening corner with ice tools for a bodylength before

T
thought in mystic reverie, fading into sleep. placing gear and yelling, “Take!” The rest of us looked up and thought
As I slept, a distant, booming echo cracked twice about what lay ahead. Ryan was one of the strongest guys I
across the land and entered my dream. A moment knew. We’d been climbing together since 2014, when we spent all
later an explosive blast flattened my tent. I woke summer together, guiding and sport climbing during our spare time.
to find myself suffocating on nylon fabric, unable That was the summer we formulated a plan to make our first trip to
to see anything in the tumbling blackness, and I Alaska the following spring.
felt myself being crushed between the walls of After Ryan bailed on Daedalus, Nick went up and came down
the collapsed tent as the avalanche carried me after reaching the same spot. A hundred feet of climbing remained
across the glacier at terrifying speed. above our team’s highpoint. I racked gear and drew my focus before
starting up the pitch with my carbon fiber ice tools.
Horseback riding was my first direct experience with mortal risk as “Those fancy tools ought to climb this pitch themselves!” Nick
a kid growing up in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. A rider teased.
can never expect to have complete control over such a large creature. That jest was the fire
A certain level of synchronicity is required, in which the rider and I needed to unleash the
horse anticipate each other’s movements to flow over the landscape inferno I had inside. I blew
in tandem. past the highpoint with-
I remember gripping the mane of a trusted horse during a cross- out a misstep. But the fire
country race when I was twelve years old. It took all the courage I started to burn through
possessed as we weaved through hills and fields separated by stone my pumped forearms as I
walls. One more fence remained. I crouched on the back of the thou- climbed higher. I was dis-
sand-pound animal as it reared up and we cleared the jump...and the covering how sandbagged
next thing I knew I was gasping for air in a mud puddle. I collected this route was and what
myself and the horse and rode back to the stable, determined to ride M7+ could mean at a place
again. There was beauty in harnessing that energy, even if I didn’t like Cannon—capital on
always have control. the Plus! Moments later my
I feel a similar attraction to climbing. A mountaineer must learn torqued pick shifted out
to anticipate the weather, the conditions of snow and ice and loose of the crack and I was air-
rock, or where good protection and shelter may be found. To succeed borne. Eventually I finished
on a climb is to synchronize with the natural environment. For me, leading the pitch, and we all
there is nothing more addicting than riding a wild mountain into topped out together. It was
the sky. clear that Nick had a way of
Ryan and I had a close call when we were bucked off an Alaskan getting the best out of me.
peak in 2017. We’d been simul-climbing on Mt. Bradley and hadn’t
found any protection for hundreds of feet as we neared the top. Fall- In the spring of 2019 Ryan reached the top of the Citadel, complet-
ing ice knocked Ryan unconscious as he surmounted a rockband. He ing a new route to the seldom-visited Alaskan summit with Elliot
cartwheeled down the slope and pulled me off. We fell about 250 feet Gaddy. The wind was driving ice crystals into their eyes as they inves-
before coming to a stop. I came home from the trip shocked, unsure tigated the horizon. The spine of the Aleutian Range stood in the
if I wanted to keep climbing, but I decided to get back on the horse. brilliant fading light, cutting a line between the earth and sky. Ryan’s
Six months later, Nick and I were in India to attempt the eyes squinted to focus on a faraway, mysterious wall that appeared
unclimbed northwest pillar of Baihali Jot. Six hundred feet from the to be higher and grander than any other mountain in the range. The
top, the sun had set, the snow was flying, we were above 20,000 feet dark face emitted a special presence, as though it had been brooding
and we didn’t have bivy gear. Exhausted, I looked at Nick and told for millennia, and the image was burned into Ryan’s mind as soon
him I wanted to go down. Nick clearly wanted to continue, but there as he saw it. His eyes beamed. He told himself that he would climb
was only kindness in his eyes as we started descending together. That that next. But first he had to navigate the difficult descent from the
is the kind of partner you want in the mountains. Citadel with Elliot.
Nick and I first met on a February day in 2016 when I joined Ryan couldn’t contain his excitement. The minute he reached cell
him, Ryan and our friend Jimmy Voorhis to attempt Daedalus, a phone service while buzzing over Cook Inlet in a bush plane, he sent
supposed M7+ route with scant protection on Cannon Cliff in New a group text message with the photo he’d snapped from the summit.
Hampshire. Until then I’d only known Nick by reputation and had The three of us convened to discuss the photograph and read the
heard rumors of what he’d done in Alaska. I was a bit nervous because only story we could find about the wall, the north face of Mt. Nea-
I looked up to him and was eager to prove that I could hang with the cola—the Medusa Face. In Greek mythology, Medusa had snakes
best climbers around. protruding from her head and anyone who met her gaze would be
Ryan took the first crack at the crux pitch. We heckled him as he turned into stone. The very name stirred trepidation in me. It would
climbed a WI4 icicle in mediocre conditions. He placed a piton and be our first expedition with all of us together.

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Mt. Neacola (ca. 9,350') was first climbed by the West Face Couloir climbing either of us had ever done or ever will do. Tricky aid, hard free
in May 1991 by James Garrett, Lorne Glick and Kennan Harvey climbing, steep ice and bizarre route-finding kept us focused like racecar
while Fred Beckey waited in base camp. Beckey had first attempted drivers for hours on end.
the peak in the 1970s and liked the area so well that he kept it secret One pitch in particular stands out in my mind as if it were yesterday
until the 1991 expedition, according to a “Recon” story about the instead of 20 years ago. I removed my crampons for tenuous aid climb-
range by Erik Rieger in the 2016 American Alpine Journal. In his 1992 ing off the belay, and after 40 feet of A3 insecurity I placed a good piece
AAJ report, Garrett noted that they had “underestimated the route.” of gear below a free-hanging dagger of ice.... I’ll never forget putting my
Harvey returned with twenty-three-year-old Topher Donahue in crampons on from my last aid piece and chipping delicately up the dagger
May 1995. Their eyes were set on the north face. An account from onto steep ice above. When the ice ran out, an overhanging corner of tech-
2014 on Donahue’s blog, titled “The most out there I’ve ever been,” nical stemming took me to the end of the rope. I’d just used every climbing
said it all. Donahue wrote: trick I knew in a single pitch of climbing.
It stormed for all but one day of the next 25 days. We mostly skied With the summit ridge less than a pitch away of easy terrain, the
our brains out, bagging peaks and skiing steep faces and tight couloirs on weather deteriorated into a spindrift nightmare, pummeling us for hours.
untouched peaks. When our pick up date was nearing, we decided to go Our bivy kit consisted of a down jacket and a bivy sack. Kennan took the
climbing in the storm just to see how far we could get. The weather did jacket and I took the sack. We stood on [a] boot-sized ledge chipped out of
improve a little, and after a couple of days of dragging a haul bag and the ice all through the thankfully short Alaskan spring night.
portaledge up a complex alpine wall, we got sick of big wall style and When it was light enough to climb again, we made one of those deci-
decided to just go for a single push as far as we could from our portaledge sions we’ll always wonder about—could we have made it? The weather
camp 1500 feet up the wall. was dismal, and Kennan’s hands were too cold to even rig his rappel
For 24 hours we sorted through some of the most difficult and diverse device.... We were really far out there—farther than I’ve ever been in my

[Opening Spread] Lorne Glick cragging below the north face (the Medusa Face) of Mt. collection l [This Page] Topher Donahue on the north face of Mt. Neacola in May 1995.
Neacola (ca. 9,350'), Alaska. Glick, James Garrett and Kennan Harvey made the first Donahue dubbed the wall the Medusa Face, he told Alpinist, in part because of the
ascent of the peak in May 1991. Kennan Harvey l [Facing Page] Justin Guarino and “white intrusions snaking across” the dark face, and in part because “it just looks
his horse, Gypo, out for a training ride in 2002 in The Plains, Virginia. Justin Guarino scary.” He added, “The climbing we did was actually pretty safe.” Kennan Harvey

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[This Page, Top] A sliver of the Neacola Mountains as seen from the air. Alaska
mountaineering historian Steve Gruhn recently told Alpinist that he estimates
that more than 90 percent of peaks in the area remain unclimbed. In the 2016
American Alpine Journal, Erik Rieger documented thirteen known climbs and
attempts in the central Neacola Mountains over fifty years of climbing history.
“Lower-elevation peaks (for Alaska), a remote location, harsh weather, and
unnamed mountains...likely play a large part in the range’s obscurity,” Rieger
wrote at the time. l [This Page, Bottom] Ryan Driscoll on the Lobsterclaw Glacier
on the approach to Mt. Neacola in the Aleutian Range. Justin Guarino (both)

life. Nearly 3000 feet above our portaledge, in the middle of a moun-
tain range nobody even knew about, with no way of contacting even
the one guy, our pilot [Doug Brewer], who knew where we were.

In spring 2019, less than two weeks after Ryan’s text message with
the photo from the Citadel, the three of us met in Anchorage and
did some shopping to pick up supplies. According to tradition, our
last stop was the New Sagaya, our favorite Chinese buffet.
Sitting in the corner eating an egg roll, I thought back to our
first trip to Alaska four years before. Ryan and I had been trying to
remember the name of a shuttle service to Talkeetna that Jimmy
had mentioned. The moment replayed in my head:
“Purple Shuttle!” Ryan exclaimed. “I’ll give them a call.” The
phone rang as we sat on our hotel beds.
“Gary, Purple Shuttle.” The phone had been picked up after the
first ring, as though he was poised, waiting for our call. “OK, boys,
let me see if I can get the van started; if I can, I’ll come pick you up.”
Get the van started? I wondered. Who is this guy?
“Got it started,” Gary texted.
“OK, I guess he is coming to pick us up then. That’s great,” Nick
said.
Gary showed up, and the van was a bit rusty but otherwise not
half bad and in good working order. “Welcome to Alaska, boys!” Gary
boomed. “Where ya from? Gonna do some climbing, hey?!”
“Well, sir, we are from New Hampshire,” Nick said.
Gary paused in thought. “Well, hell yah, New Hampshire! Live
free or die, right?!” He continued without pause, “Hey, I’ve got to
make a lunch stop at the New Sagaya—listen, it’s the best damn buf-
fet around.” His whole body chuckled in anticipation of the culinary
delights. “Hey! Hop in, let’s go!”
A lot had changed since then but not the New Sagaya. We’d
spent years training since that first trip, dreaming of a metamor-
phosis that would see us become people who could climb Alaskan
first ascents.

“Ya’ll want to land down there?” Doug Brewer said in his thick
Alaskan accent.
“Yessir!” Ryan said. “That's Neacola’s east face. If you can, any-
where down there in the sun would be perfect.”
“Damn, boys, that’s a tight valley! I don’t know of anyone else
landing down there besides me,” Doug reminisced with a cocky
smile. “Back twenty-five years ago. I flew in those climbers.” Doug
paused, trying to recall their names. “It was those badasses, Topher
and Kennan....”
He had begun his landing approach with a sickeningly tight

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 A fierce, frigid wind blew into the shadowed
,
valley where we stood. I d never felt such cold.

turn. I felt the wings chatter, and my head swam as we passed by the challenge and beauty of a storm: the wind whipping snow like water-
cliffs of our intended peak. I tried not to vomit. He exhibited a seam- falls over black rock, demanding all our endurance and every skill in
less bond between himself and the aircraft. What a hotshot, I thought. the playbook. The climbing was difficult and exposed on steep, con-
Ever so smoothly, Doug guided the ski-mounted plane down onto solidated rock with corners and cracks just wide enough for us to slot
the glacier. We got out and had to grab the wing and hold on to a rope in the picks of our ice axes. All the fears I felt in base camp had been
to turn the machine around. All three of us hung on the rope as Doug left behind, lost in the action. But as night approached, there was no
pegged the throttle, spun the aircraft around and cut the engine. ledge in sight.
“See you boys!” he shouted five minutes later as he accelerated, “We need protection, it’s too cold to spend the night out.” The
kicking up ice and snow. The plane echoed down the valley into the words escaped me. I was scared and felt embarrassed in front of my
distance until all that remained was silence. I breathed a sigh of fear brave friends. They both looked at me, poked me in the ribs and
and anticipation. The cold air carried my frosty breath away, and we laughed as if to say, Loosen up.
settled in for the evening. Nick shouted down from the next lead: “There is a snow patch
Waking up the next day under a clear sky, I was thankful, feel- up here! It’s not much but it will work!” Nick’s positivity always helps
ing positive. The glow of the morning sun on my skin relaxed me. I me find courage.
thought of Dan, the taxi driver who’d taken us to the airport. He’d At once the darkness was upon us. We did our best to dig into
worked hard to immigrate to the US from Albania and might never the tiny snow patch. The resulting snow cave was more akin to a cof-
see a place like this. Talking to him was a reminder that these trips are fin. The ceiling was two feet high, six and a half feet long and two
ultimately hyped-up vacations. and a half feet wide. All three of us crawled in one at a time for a
After breakfast we skied an hour up the glacier to look at the good old-fashioned bivouac. The cave sheltered us from the frightful
north face, the sleeping Medusa. We gazed up and were immediately exposure of more than a thousand feet of air below. I thanked God
struck with awe by the magnitude of it. A fierce, frigid wind blew into I was sheltered. All night the tempest raged while avalanches washed
the shadowed valley where we stood. I’d never felt such cold. I shiv- over our cave.
ered to think of freezing to death on a bivouac. None of us said much, The next day we quickly realized we had to bail. The climbing
we just took it all in as we skied back to base camp. was hard, and the weather was harder. Our sleeping bags were soaked.
The ski back to camp was restorative and enlivening. The con- Our overnight gear was not suited for such wetness. We feared a sec-
ditions were a delight and the scenery unparalleled. We felt strong, ond night out would freeze us to death. The decision was clear. We
cocky almost. We felt at home. There was a peace in this place, and went down. There was a lot more work to do and experience to be
it gave us energy. gained if we wanted to become the type of climbers who could com-
But as soon as the sun left the valley, the cold air returned, and plete such a project.
fear came with it. I thought about what I had just seen, the size and
remoteness of the wall. Do I have enough endurance to stay alive on this During the two years that we waited for our second chance on
wall? Is there enough life force in my body to survive such a pilgrimage? I the Medusa, as the Covid pandemic spun out, I often found myself
asked myself, sitting in our cook tent with numb toes. thinking of those moments on the face. I lay in bed replaying and
Back in my tent, I looked at a photo I’d snapped earlier in the rehearsing all that I had seen, unable to sleep. I would perseverate,
day. That’s when I saw the snakes that the Medusa was named for, like a monomaniac, trying to draw out every last detail that could be
sweeping down in all directions from the summit. The snakes were extrapolated from my vivid dreams. There was the great chimney over
alive in my mind, beautiful and terrifying. I tried to relax and let the halfway up, I would think, sleepless. A chimney, but how do I get to it,
night have me. which series of broken ledges will take me there? Will it even go? Will I
Quiet doesn’t describe the Aleutians. During calm weather, the die trying?
land is devoid of sound, like space, a vacuum. There’s just the beating My family is used to me being obsessive when it comes to Alaskan
of your heart and the thoughts in your head. I contemplated the void climbing. They’re supportive, but I never expect them to understand.
of the cosmos on the moonless night, and the twisting snakes that we They smile and say, “That’s nice. How about the Patriots this season?”
hoped to ride to the top of the mountain in the coming days. About as soon as the world reopened from the pandemic, we were
headed back. We’d been concentrating our energy, training our skills
In 1995 Harvey and Donahue spent most of the trip waiting for a and, most importantly, refining our strategy. We were ready.
weather window. In 2019 we endured a sixteen-day snowstorm. Time
was running short. We had to try. The conditions were not right but BACK ON THE GLACIER, back on vacation. Round two, I thought. I found
we went up anyway, battling spindrift and raging winds. We love the it funny that such a remote place could put me at ease. Despite the

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 shelter. The storm continued to intensify the avalanche danger. We
were pinned down below a mountain face that was about a mile high
and loaded with tons more snow, pointed at us like a cannon.
We sent a message to Doug. It was Easter after all, and we needed
a savior. The familiar beep-boop-boop-beep of a successful satellite mes-
sage indicated our SOS had been transmitted. Doug quickly replied:
“OK. I’ll be ready when the weather breaks.” If anyone could save
our asses, it was him.
We flew out after two days of storm with -40°F windchill and two
feet of fresh snow. We had made it. Back in Soldotna, a bit shocked
but no worse for the wear, we sat around a table in the bar where we
had been dropped off. None of us felt like drinking beer. We wanted
to stay sharp, so we drank coffee. We deduced that the avalanche had
been triggered by the collapse of a massive serac. We’d seen the evi-
dence clearly during the flight out—a line cutting across the east face,
tracing back to the freshly calved face of the shimmering blue serac.
Knowing we needed a distraction, Nick put us in stitches with his
jokes, as he often does. It felt good to laugh. It felt good to be alive.
We all agreed not to get too comfortable. The Medusa remained in
our minds; she’d caught our eye and now we couldn’t think of any-
thing else.

danger, I felt a deep relaxation wash over me. I was able to forget We returned to work about as soon as we got home. As construc-
about 2020. I felt like I was finally home and that I was on track to tion workers who grew up in working-class families, we tend to feel
complete the metamorphosis I sought. I relaxed into the cold, into like we’ll sink to the bottom if we take a day off. Besides, we love to
space. I’d learned that I needed to let the cold hold me. To fight the work. It’s a lot easier than our “vacations” in the mountains. And the
cold was only a waste of energy. discomfort and risks are not dissimilar: the heat and cold, the pos-
CRACK! sibility of being crushed or taking a bad fall. At the end of the day,
Then there we were, about to be buried alive in our tents in the construction helps prepare us for the mountains.
middle of the night by a D4 avalanche and we hadn’t even left base “Oh my God, guys, I’m so glad you’re OK. I was worried about
camp. you,” said Grant Simmons, a friend who was living in the house that
Suddenly the crazy train of rumbling debris stopped. The spin- Nick and I were renovating. “I’m so glad you’re OK,” he repeated,
ning ceased. I fumbled in the darkness, searching for my headlamp. smiling from behind his beard as he brought us in for a hug. I felt
We hollered to each other—everyone was OK. At last, my hands how much he cared. I felt how much our community cared for us.
seized upon the light, and I was able to unzip the door to escape. “We’re going back,” I told him before we left. I’m not sure he
“Better lucky than good,” Nick said as we cut him out of his tent. knew what to say. Maybe he expected it.
It was an hour before sunrise and the storm was still raging. My boots
had been in the vestibule of my tent. I shuddered at the thought of One week later, we were back in Doug’s plane. He dropped us off
being stranded in the wild without boots, then refocused on the task at the site of our former camp.
of cutting Nick free. “Give it hell, boys. But don’t take too long up there,” he said,
“I found them!” Ryan yelled. shaking our hands. “Spring’s coming fast. Listen, I might not be able
“Found what?” I shouted through the storm. to land here in a week. The glacier changes quick, it gets suncupped.
“Your boots!” You’ll break a ski on the plane, and you don’t want that,” he chuckled.
We converted my four-man tent into a temporary shelter. Inside “If that happens...remember plan B.”
the tent we held the walls against the wind. We needed to wait until Plan B was grim; I loved it. Ryan said he loved it so much that he
dawn to reassess the situation. We huddled under shredded fabric and hoped it would happen. I couldn’t tell if he was joking. Plan B was
made jokes about it all. Our fight for survival had just begun. to descend the entirety of the glacier to its terminus. At the end of
In the morning we were lucky to find a duffel with a stove and the glacier, we would pick up Wolf Creek, hike east to “Grizzly Bear
a summit tent that we could use instead of my broken base camp Flats” and camp at “Dead Man’s Lake” until the weather cleared for

[This Page] Nick Aiello-Popeo negotiates a slab below the headwall on day five, returned in 1991 with James Garrett, Lorne Glick and Kennan Harvey. Though
making a few moves at a time between pauses to rewarm his numb fingers. Fred Beckey didn’t venture onto the peak during that expedition, Garrett referred to
Beckey and Hooman Aprin attempted Mt. Neacola from the north in the early him as their team’s “spiritual leader” in his 1992 report for the AAJ. l [Facing Page]
1970s, as Erik Rieger reported in the 2016 American Alpine Journal. Beckey Ryan Driscoll on the descent of the east face of Mt. Neacola. Justin Guarino (both)

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a flight home. These weren’t official names but references to local folklore.
Doug’s voice lingered in my head: “Yep, Dead Man’s Lake. They’ve called
it that ever since, well, a couple fellas like yourselves were out there fish-
,
ing and...well, the bear ate them alive. Anyway, have a good climb, boys!”
In a twisted way, I wanted to wrestle a grizzly bear and survive to tell
We d spent
the story. The wildness of the whole experience tapped something inside
of me. All of us had a gleam in our eyes. Crossing the bergschrund for the years training
second time, I was committed to completing the metamorphosis I had
begun. I submitted a prayer to the mountain for safe passage. At the same
time, I was all too aware that the pursuit of this goal could kill me. If that
since that
was to be, then I hoped it would be a quick death.
Stones whizzed by as Nick surmounted the first obstacles. It has begun,
first trip,
let us see this through, I thought. We climbed two huge snow slopes that
we called the Americas, because they resembled the continents in shape dreaming of a
and orientation. The Americas were suspended on the lower reaches of
this imposing wall. The climbing was easy, but the anchors were difficult metamorphosis
to find. We hammered pitons into shallow cracks and pushed upward.
The steep snowfield of South America led to the ramp of Central America,
which led to the snowfields of North America. It was slow going, and it
that would
was merely the approach to the greater difficulties on the upper three-
quarters of the wall.
see us become
On the first night we pitched our three-man tent tightly behind a
boulder in the upper end of the North America snowfield. We tried to people who
sleep while an unforeseen storm opened upon us. I could feel snow pil-
ing on, pushing me off the small ledge. The tent would be on the verge of could climb
collapse every hour, and we took shifts digging it out. This would be the
routine for the next two days.
The digging made it wetter inside the tent, and the temperature was in
Alaskan first
the single digits. Thankfully, we’d learned from our first attempt to bring
synthetic insulation instead of down feathers. We stayed warm...enough.
ascents.
I believed I had the upper hand on the cold because I’d spent two years
relentlessly subjecting myself to daily cold-water training. That Wim Hof
stuff. Friends thought I was nuts.

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 On the first night, I noticed that rocks were being carried down “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” he said, blaming himself for a circum-
in the constant spindrift that bombarded our tent. I was terrified to stance we had all overlooked. The stove should’ve been clipped off,
imagine being killed by rockfall in my sleep. I chose to dismiss those plain and simple.
thoughts. Embracing the fear, to test ourselves and learn from the “Don’t worry about it, Nick, we have the backup,” Ryan said.
experience, was partly why we were there. The first lull in the storm arrived that afternoon. Nick started
“This is the stuff dreams are made of,” Nick said. racking gear without us noticing.
“Nightmares are dreams too?” I retorted. We all laughed. We “Justin, bro, give me a belay,” he said in his animated Boston
really were having fun. tough-guy accent. “I’m gonna fix a couple of pitches.”
“We are on vacation!” Ryan kept saying, and we would all laugh,
shovel and drink coffee, talking about anything and everything like On the third day we jumared up the fixed ropes and climbed three
we were kids at camp on Lake Winnipesaukee. more pitches to a campsite that we dug into the snow. The next
After the first night, in order not to suffocate the team with the morning, we ascended snowy ramps to our previous highpoint. It
noxious fumes of our gas stove, Nick volunteered to brew our morn- was the middle of the day, so I set off on a nice M6 seam. A couple
ing coffee outside. We sat quietly, eagerly awaiting hot sustenance, of more pitches brought us to an icy snowfield below a headwall. The
when he shouted: “NO! NO! NO!... Not the stove! Oh my God, the angle of the slope and limited options for anchors prevented us from
wind took the stove!” doubling up the inflatable portaledges. Nick, being the toughest of
A strong downdraft had blasted our camp. Nick had been excavat- the group, chopped a ledge to lie out on the ice while Ryan and I
ing fresh snow when the unexpected gust blew the stove off the ledge. stayed in our shelters.

[Facing Page, Left] Ryan Driscoll prepares for another cold night in an icy sleeping It was just cool,” Donahue said. “Since then, that type of climbing has become really
bag high on the Medusa Face. Topher Donahue, who attempted the wall in 1995 with popular. It was kind of a view into a futuristic style of climbing.” Justin Guarino l
Kennan Harvey, reflected on the climb to Chris Kalman for Alpinist: “I remember [Facing Page, Right] Guarino “relaxes” in an ice bath. Justin Guarino collection l [This
climbing out of my aiders, then mixed climbing, then climbing onto these ice daggers. Page] Medusa Face (5.10 A2 M6, Aiello-Popeo-Driscoll-Guarino, 2021). Kennan Harvey

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 [This Page] Justin Guarino negotiates a mixed lead on day four of the climb. Nick
Aiello-Popeo l [Facing Page] Nick Aiello-Popeo and Justin Guarino at the location
of their final bivy on the Medusa Face. “I keep saying the route will clean right
up with more traffic,” Aiello-Popeo told Chris Kalman for Alpinist in 2021, “but
everyone else seems unconvinced that anyone will ever return.” Ryan Driscoll

I thought. My brain distractedly circled the ongoing debate about

the meaning of climbing grades before snapping back to the present
moment, where I found myself high-stepping in my aider on a half-
driven Birdbeak. If the tiny bit of metal holding my weight dislodged
from the rock...I didn’t want to think about it. Twenty feet below, the
belay anchor consisted of tied-off pitons and tipped-out cams, and
there was no gear worth a damn between me and it.
Higher up, the two-foot-wide crack constricted at an overhang,
and I had to transition from aid to free climbing. There were edges
inside the crack that were just big enough to grab with my hands.
Feeling heavy and unsure if I had enough gas in the tank, I commit-
ted to the roof. Careful not to let my feet cut loose as I pulled around
the overhang, I gunned for security where the crack widened above. I
grabbed a chockstone, hoping it wouldn’t shift, toed onto a foothold
with my crampon and wriggled into the chimney, safe.
We could do this! I reassured myself, resting atop the fabled pitch.
Soon my friends reached the belay with beaming faces. They looked
cold, having endured a two-hour hanging belay. We had been climb-
ing for fourteen hours. The wall was relentless. There was nowhere
to stand without hanging and certainly nowhere to camp. We had to
continue. I was on the edge of hallucinating.
We weren’t setting speed records, but we were doing it. Thanks to “ROCK! ROCK! ROCK!” Ryan’s shouting from above brought
our jobs, we’re used to big projects and long, hard days. We needed to me back to reality. Stones the size of an oven and two dozen footballs
compartmentalize. Each pitch was a win. We couldn’t think too big. came barreling at us. Half a yard was the margin that left us alive.
We had to grind. Ryan told us later that his backpack had only brushed the perched
On the fifth day I watched Nick with admiration. Above us the rubble when it dislodged.
great wall was broken only by a huge chimney. Between us and the After sixteen hours we were thankful to find a small place to sleep.
chimney was an eighty-degree slab that continued for 200 feet. At Even in my dreams I was aware that we were running out of fuel and
first glance the slab appeared to be an impasse. The only weakness in food.
the slab was an overlap a hundred feet above the belay that appeared I woke cold on day seven. The wind was blowing. We struggled to
to have a crack that might take a piton. Another storm was building get moving, packing our bivouac in silence. Only a short distance of
as Nick proceeded up the slab without crampons in double boots the overhanging wall was visible above. Nick took the lead. There had
and bare hands. Bare hands! On a north wall in Alaska! I thought. I not been enough room on the ledge to fit all three of us in the tent, so
would’ve cheered him on, but any hollering would’ve been snuffed by he’d volunteered to spend a second night alone in the open with his
the raging wind. Ryan and I huddled close on a tight anchor with a legs dangling off a four-foot ledge.
void of air as big as El Capitan below us. “Tie in tight, sleep all night,” he laughed as he racked up for the
“Man, that looks dicey,” Ryan snickered. first pitch of the day: M6 R/X for breakfast, served cold. Moments
Nick’s boots skated on icy rock edges, but he held fast and pushed into the lead, Ryan and I were dodging rocks as Nick hung it out
upward. I looked on, proud to think he was my comrade. He built a there, leading out of a chimney and manteling onto rubble.
belay after an hour and a half, and we climbed up to him as fast as our Then it happened—a sizable rock fell about sixty feet and struck
tired bodies would allow. Ryan on his helmet. He staggered from the impact and seemed to see
On day six, thinking we were two days from the summit, we pared stars. Then his grimace turned into a smile. He was miraculously OK.
our gear down to a minimal alpine kit, stuffed the inflatable por- Nick continued, none the wiser, laser focused on his own survival.
taledges and a few other items into a haulbag and tossed it off the One pitch later, we crested onto a knife-edge ridge 4,000 feet up
cliff. The bag bounced once and never touched the wall again before the face. I was taken aback when I saw the 500-foot headwall that
hitting the ground thousands of feet below. barred our exit to safety. The sight brought great sorrow. Hours of
I stood at the base of the great chimney; it was my lead. I didn’t uncertainty remained ahead of us.
look down, only up. This portion was legendary to me because The difficulties persisted as Nick led up an emerald-colored ramp
Topher and Kennan had graded it 5.10 A3 AI5. I had to try. It’s hard, for two pitches, up and over the abyss. Nick clawed toward the

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proverbial light, and we took shelter from the rockfall.
The final pitch was the worst. It seemed like the shelling from
above would never stop. For two hours, Ryan and I hid as stones
whirred and pinged past. We hid beneath a small rock ceiling that
offered a minimum of protection. This was our bomb shelter on what
we called the Air Raid Belay. Ryan passed me a lit cigarette as we
traded duties holding the rope. “For relaxation. We’re almost there,”
he said.
Nick reached the ridge soon after. Minutes later, the fixed rope
that Ryan was ascending flossed off a toaster-sized rock that clobbered
him in the leg. For the second time that day, he was lucky to be OK.
Nick was hunched over when we reached his belay on the ridge. He
looked like every last drop had been wrung out of him.
It was our final night to endure. The fuel sputtered, nearly
exhausted, as we made our last brew. We camped on a meager ledge
of snow we’d created with an ice hammock that was attached to medi-
ocre anchors. I felt as though it was suspended on a willful dream.
Our personal tethers were attached to a rock feature that was sixty feet
away and to the right. If our ledge failed, we would be in for a huge,
swinging fall in the dark while stuck in our sleeping bags.
Before long I drifted into a nightmare in which rocks were pouring
down on us. The oven-sized block hit me, our ledge was crumbling
apart and Ryan was slipping off the edge when I woke with a start.
“Ryan! What’s going on!” I demanded.
“I just gotta pee,” he said, half asleep. He’d shifted the hammock
while rustling around. Our lungs were heaving when we reached the base of the wall. The
“Oh my God, dude, I thought we were taking the night whipper!” avalanche debris from two weeks earlier was still evident, a reminder
We laughed. of how close we’d come to being annihilated. Enfolded in that short
time was an odyssey that had dissolved each of us into our constituent
Morning dawned and we climbed the last sixty-five feet to the top components as climbers. Now we were bonded into a stronger team.
of the face. The true summit was still too distant. We looked across It was the lustration I’d been seeking all these years. We’d survived
the insurmountable gap, squinting. The wind was blowing at hurri- and would be returning home as friends. We would finally be free of
cane force. Ball bearing ice crystals stung bare skin. A tinge of remorse Medusa’s petrifying stare. But the ride wasn’t over.
welled up in me. We wouldn’t be visiting the top of the mountain— Following two hours of rest, we returned to the north face to col-
just a few hundred feet higher, separated from us by a technical lect our skis and the haulbag we had tossed. The bag was unscathed,
traverse along a snowy ridge—and our planned descent route was but I wasn’t sure if we would be as fortunate when Ryan and Nick
also out of reach. bombed down to camp on their skis in tucked positions at breakneck
My focus recentered on the next task. After escaping from so speed. “You guys are insane,” I said when I caught up to them, my
many close calls, our hands and minds were numb as we plotted the legs shaking with fatigue.
next course, the final trial.
Our topo map indicated that the east wall, unknown and The sound of an airplane roused our excitement while waiting for
unclimbed, was about 600 feet taller than the north face, about a our flight out on the morning of the ninth day. It turned out to be a
vertical mile above our base camp, which we could see from the spine different plane in another valley. Then Doug swooped in, dropping
of the summit ridge. What we could not see were the rappel anchors out of nowhere like a dive-bomber.
that would get us there. It was a gripping mystery. “Doug, you the man! Take us home! That’s our hero!” we cheered
Ryan’s blue eyes were all I could see through his bundled layers of and danced.
clothing protecting him from the wind. I saw no fear, only courage Doug pulled up and left the engine idling as he got out. The gla-
and focus as he assumed the burden of leadership. I slung a point of cier was so icy from melting that the aircraft slid a few feet downhill.
rock while he racked gear for the rappels. Soon he was dropping into “You boys didn’t wait a minute too long!” he said, sounding a bit
the chimney below. Slowly the rope stretched and rebounded in this on edge. “Did you check out the runway for ski-breaking ruts?”
tense moment as our friend began our journey home. “Yes! But maybe you want to look at it?” Nick yelled over the
Six hours, fifteen rappels and a thousand feet of down climbing engine.
led us directly to the edge of the serac that had nearly killed us two By this time, we were all loaded and strapped into our seats. Doug
weeks earlier. One final rappel put us directly beneath it. All that looked at all of us and flashed a daredevil’s grin. “Hang on, this will be
remained was a gauntlet run. a rough takeoff!” He laughed and pinned the throttle. z

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 Outer
Realms
A c o l l e c t i o n o f s p e c u l at i v e
m o u n ta i n f i c t i o n
I n t r o d u c t i o n by T h e E d i t o r s

Artwork by Jeremy Collins

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M ountains have long
been landscapes
of fascination and
Alpine environments themselves can
sometimes seem otherworldly, as the six-
teenth-century Swiss naturalist Conrad
essay, “Through the Skin of the World,”
Katie Ives commented, “Much of moun-
taineering is an act of imagination. Even
Gesner observed in a letter to a friend. “The backyard peaks and crags offer us the chance
imagination, stoking highest parts of the loftiest peaks seem to be to become a character in a novella of our
nightmares and dreams. above the laws that rule our world below,” own creation, following the natural narra-
The sound of wind he wrote, “as if they belonged to another tive arc that sweeps from base to summit
tearing over a fluted sphere.” And yet, of course, these far-seem- and back again.”
ridge fills the air with ing realms have always been tethered to local Perhaps part of what captures our atten-
communities and the social and political tion about mountain narratives is a shared
ghostly music. A glacier
realities of everyday life. belief that both climbing and literature can
shifts and groans, the Nevertheless, images of the dreamlike be portals to other realms, where the pos-
murmurings of some nature of the vertical realm persist, offer- sibility of encountering something new
primordial beast. An ing glimpses of something like magic and appears in even the smallest of moments—
avalanche peels down bending our ideas of the real. Traces of beyond the next hold, the next ridge, the
the mountain like a ancient seabeds appear on high summits. next page.
Even a small swatch of rock can contain a In the following pages, you’ll find a col-
dragon shedding its
community of microorganisms that, over lection of short stories of speculative fiction
skin. Cornices arch up time, slowly shape the stone. Reflecting on (a somewhat umbrella term for science fic-
over a summit and then Gesner’s words in Mountains of the Mind tion and fantasy). Much like the act of
collapse down a cliff (2003), Robert Macfarlane wrote, “Return- climbing itself, these tales can open us up
face, leaving clouds of ing to daily life after a trip to the mountains, to new ways of seeing and thinking about
pearly dust in their wake. I have often felt as though I were a stranger the world and ourselves—revealing underly-
re-entering my country after years abroad… ing truths, even at the edges of reality and
bearing experiences beyond speech.” the seemingly impossible. In the stories you
Much has been written about the chal- are about to read, you may recognize some
lenge of transmuting the experience of familiar human traits—competitiveness,
climbing into words—an act that can doubt, ambition, longing, empathy and
require a bit of alchemy itself. All the while, compassion—but the situations in which
the very art of storytelling seems somehow these climbs take place will hopefully leave
embedded in the art of ascent. In a 2015 you wondering, What if...

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 On e Small Step
Kim Fu

Good morning. I sabotaged your suit. And our com-

municators. Don’t try to get up. It’s not possible. Don’t bother
to speak. You can hear me, but I can’t hear you, and base command
looking at. A trip best made by humans in their suits, with their car-
bon dioxide converters. Humans, ever adaptable. Always pushing the
limits of what’s possible.
can’t hear either of us. Stop, stop! You’re just wasting energy. Your life- Look, you can still see your indicators. You’re fine. Am I boring
support systems are fine. Base command will fix everything remotely you? It doesn’t matter. You have to listen. God, that feels good. My
in just a few minutes. You can rat me out then. I just want to tell you whole life, no one has ever had to listen to me.
a story, OK? We’ve been working and living and training together for Everyone said it was a once-in-a-lifetime thing, once-in-a-gener-
years, and I feel like you don’t know the most basic things about me. ation. That it would take a hundred years for another achievement
I’m telling you, stop. We’ll be fine. You’ll be fine. Just listen to me. like that. And then they did Mons Huygens practically the next day.
So my grandfather— Before I could join up. Like it was nothing. Stabilizing the sharp,
OK, seriously. Stop. You’re going to hurt yourself. You know you loose moondust as they went, buoyant as children. That’s what it
can’t lift the suit without the power hydraulics. You know you can’t reminded me of: when I first started climbing as a little kid, when I
stand. Just listen to me talk for a few minutes while base command felt like I was so strong and weighed nothing. It looked fun.
figures out what I did. I was devastated when they told me that training for our mis-
Thank you. My grandfather used to say that he was born too sion could take fifteen to twenty years. My youth, my peak physical
late. He loved pop history books about the so-called “age of dis- years. No training could compensate for that. What was worse was
covery”—Europeans sailing to the edge of their known world, watching the summits disappear. Look at Mars and the moon now—
circumnavigating the earth. Old books that cast them as heroes and practically tourist destinations. Look at the asteroid belt. Swarming
adventurers. He was fascinated by the first polar expeditions, the first with billionaires. When that kid on TV joked that “the Vera Rubin
summits of Everest, tales of deep-sea exploration. Cabot, Vasco da ridge is a great place to practice crack climbing,” I wanted to kill him.
Gama, Columbus. Perry and Cook, Cousteau. Edmund Hillary, but I’m not like my grandfather. I worked for my dreams. I worked
not Tenzing Norgay. He liked to say that by his time, there was noth- harder than anyone.
ing left to conquer. No new stories to tell. It’ll only be a few more minutes, I promise.
I never liked him—he was a romantic, petty, more than a little You and I, we won’t live to see the ice climbs of the outer solar
racist. He would drink and bawl over the smallness of his life.Why do system. Anyone who says that is delusional. This is our one shot. I
anything if you can’t be the first to do it? Or at least, the first white man know, I know, look at how many times the impossible turned out
with the world’s attention. to be possible. They said our mission was impossible, that the suits
I didn’t think about what it would be like to talk to you with couldn’t possibly withstand the heat and the sulfur, that all the stress
your helmet light turned off. I can’t see your face. Just the reflection testing and simulations would be nothing like the actual conditions
of mine. on Maxwell Montes, that no one had any real idea what those condi-
Thank you for staying calm. tions would be like, that they were sending us to our deaths. And I
It’s only recently that I started to understand how he felt. I was, didn’t care. And I know you didn’t, either.
to be frank, an extraordinary athlete as a teenager. I assume you And here we are. The two greatest climbers in the known uni-
were too—no, that’s a lie. I know everything about you. Everything verse. No one could deny it. Every day, as we inch up the eastern
that’s online. You know, we were at the same Climbing World Youth slope, the sun seemingly near enough to touch, we see something
Championships, when I was fourteen and you were nineteen. Nei- no human eyes have ever seen. And today, at last, we make for the
ther of us ranked that year, and both of us stopped competing not summit.
long after. I would guess for a similar reason. They figured out long ago that they had to dictate who goes first.
Do you remember the broadcast? The final moments were a little Who would technically be first. Of course. Everything is planned, to
anticlimactic. Watching them wandering across that plateau, coordi- the millisecond, to the nanometer. But also, of course, just imagine if
nating with base command about precisely where the highest point we fought. The wasted resources. The time, the money, the tech. The
is, the cameras obscured by red dust. No panoramic views, just end- dreams. It’s unthinkable. And there’s no arguing with seniority. With
less flat ground. But the months, the years, leading up to it—that years. With waiting.
changed my life. I know there wasn’t much climbing, not once they I have the same dream almost every night. Watching you take that
found that break in the cliffs to the northeast, the gentlest slope of the last step, from behind. Listening to whatever words you’ve prepared
entire perimeter. Mostly a long hike, through the kind of dust that for posterity. When I close my eyes, I see the back of your helmet.
would choke the wheels of a vehicle, through the lack of atmosphere You know, don’t you? You knew the moment you woke up. Your
that would require blasting tons of fuel in reverse to slow a ship to communicator isn’t going to come back online. No one will ever hear
land, scrambling nimbly across shifting terrain in the time it would you speak again. You must be getting a little warm.
take the best supercomputer to even model and process what it was I can see the top from here. z

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 65

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 “Hey! Hey, you!” Sal was yelling.
Still many yards away, having stood from the ground, the
boy was making his way down the narrow trail cut through the gorge
by an extinct river. He held himself stiff and upright as a tightrope
walker. His fingers followed the cliff wall to one side of him.
“Are you all right?” Grace asked, more quietly. She left the rope
hanging, limp above them.
He didn’t answer until he could speak without yelling. “I’m all
right,” he said. Even standing still, he held his body strangely, leaning
onto his toes, pulling his chin back toward his neck. The trail was
loose, dry dirt now in the late summer, and a fine layer of it coated
his sneakers and ankles, his hands. Grace imagined a cat, landing on
all fours.

Beam Me “You could have hurt yourself,” she said. She was suddenly angry.
She and Sal had been wrapping up their day, talking about who
would drive the long road from the gorge to town with their one fad-

U p , S c ot t y ! ing headlight, about french fries and burgers and maybe milkshakes
once they got there, about whether it was clear enough to sleep out
that night, back above the gorge, beneath the spread of stars in the
Endria Isa RichardsoN dark country above them. And now the day was ruined, and perhaps
the whole trip, and there was no saying where they would spend
their night.
“Where did you come from?” Sal asked. “You fell...?”
“He fell out of the
“I didn’t fall, not really. I came down.” The boy looked from Sal
sky!” Sal said. to Grace.
Grace had seen him. Grace studied him. His face was difficult to look at, difficult to
Right through the pink hold on to. It seemed to bend the way an image in a warped mirror
might. His skin looked greyish. Grey with mottled purple marks.
sky, past the gold
Could be bruises, she thought. But he was not so different from what
rimrock and the tawny she looked like if she didn’t get enough sleep, enough water, enough
and white tuff, right down sun. She looked away, uncomfortable. It was easier to look at the
to the base of the wall, woody sagebrush all around, with curves and angles that didn’t make
where the rock was grey her feel as though she were seeing double.
and black with shadows. “Do you want to sit down?” she asked, calm now. So this time
was ruined. It had been a good time, and she would remember it for
But she said, looking up
a long while. “You’ll feel better.” She raised her hand a little, to pat
to where he had come his arm. But he backed away quick as a brush lizard, scrabbling at the
from, “Oh, I don’t know.” close canyon wall, trying to find purchase somewhere. The toes of his
sneakers slipped against the blunt rock, until, defeated, he stood in
that funny way on the loose trail. He left one hand clinging to the
rock, then shook his head.
“No. I’d just like to get back.”
“It’s a long way to cell service,” Sal said, worried. “It’s a lot of
scrambling just to get up to the rim, and then it’s a hike on the road
to the car. Do you think you can make it all that way?”
Grace could see Sal’s mind working. Trying to decipher, trying
to understand. What to do when someone falls from the rimrock,
walking, talking? And wasn’t she, herself, worried? The narrow trail
wound for miles, down from the fire road through the canyon along
the old river’s path. They really were far from everything, everyone.
She tasted bitter saliva at the back of her throat. Yes, she was worried.
But she felt it from far away.
The boy didn’t answer for a time. He hadn’t moved his hand from
the chink of rock he’d slipped his fingers into. Now, he let go care-
fully. He took one step forward. Then another. He kept his eyes on

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the yellow dirt, the pebbles, the faint path that scrawled on ahead as
he stepped, lifting each leg high enough to clear an invisible hurdle,
placing it down slow and careful as a deer. He made it a yard that way,
stopped, and looked at Grace. He licked his lips and shook his head.
“We could go up here,” Sal said, gesturing to a faint line of com-
pacted scree leading up the steep western slope. “And...” They looked
from the kid to Grace. “Try to call someone? Drive to town?”
Grace looked at the slope, her eyes following it up and up until
the grey-white scree disappeared into the sky. Like walking on air.
Yes, cutting right up the slope would at least shorten the hike to the
car by half. The temperature had already dropped a degree or two
in the gorge, and it would be dark soon. Sal was inching up already,
eager to do something. Rocks spilled beneath their sneakers, tum-
bling little pebbles into a pile at Grace’s feet.
She reached down and touched the little rocks. She had fallen,
too. Not that day, but many years ago. The memory was rising up in
her throat from where she had pressed it down. It was always rising,
and she was always pressing it down, a tireless, squeezing motion she
could make deep inside of herself without thinking about it. And
now cool, dusky air was gathering around her, and the scree looked
loose and unstable, and she pressed it down again. She picked up one
of the little chalky rocks and slipped it into her pocket. “No,” she
said. “Not all of us.”
Sal brightened. “Just me, then? And you’ll stay with—” Their eyes
flicked to the kid, flicked away. “And you’ll stay until I send some-
one?”
Sal was never afraid of going up. They were excited to get to the
tops of climbs, to look around for whatever was higher, to go up
again. To bring Grace with them, higher and higher, showing her the
sky, the clouds, the great hawks and vultures lifted on pillars of warm
air. “Look how they float!” they’d cry. “Like spaceships! They go in
all directions!”
Sal was the first to find her when she appeared at the crag, a little
lost, unsure of what she thought about this place. They had said,
“Would you like to go up?” And she had answered, relieved, “Yes. I’d
like to go up.”
That felt like a long time ago. Today, she and Sal had spent hours
on the cool rock, taking turns trying out a steep climb. Her hands
were raw and bruised from the long crack in the cliff that began wide Grace studied
as a body, and then pulled closer and tighter until they could only
place their hands and then their fingers inside and twist them to hold
him. His face was
their bodies in place. The most difficult section was a protrusion of difficult to look
rock they needed to pull their bodies over. They had each tried and
fallen many times, gasping, swearing, swinging into space. From at, difficult to
below, as they hung in the bright, hot air, it looked like they were
floating. hold on to. It
“Beam me up, Scotty!” Sal would yell down when they were ready
to reach the rock again. And Grace would haul on the rope to help seemed to bend
lift them. Grace yelled when she fell, too, frightened and disoriented,
unsure of where she was. She would not yell, “Beam me up!” She the way an image
would ask to be lowered. Tense, downward gazing, until she could
return to earth where Sal waited, grinning.
in a warped
Now Sal pulled out their phone, shined a thin light up the line of mirror might.
scree and began to climb.
“We’ll wait down here,” Grace yelled up. She regretted, now,

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being so deep in the canyon. “You really she felt the old back on the ground. The weightlessness,
want to go back up?” she asked the kid, the anticipation of space beneath her. It
and her voice sounded too loud against ease, the one couldn’t be remembered. It had to be felt.
the walls. She crimped her fingers onto an edge of
The kid shrugged. “I came down she forgot once rock, pressed one foot against the wall—
already,” he said, simply. and up! She was breathing hard by the time
“Only once! And only for a short she was back on she reached the roof. She eased her left
time.” She shook her head. “I’ve climbed hand into the thin crack, locked her palm
these walls many times. Each go, it is like
the ground. The against its cool, rough inner surface, tried
the very first time. I always wonder,” she weightlessness, to grind her shoe right into the cliff and for
stopped to watch a bat cartwheel through a moment felt the rock hold her in place.
the sky, “how many times I’ll climb up, the anticipation The cliff rose, the air swooped, she tried
and up, and fall, and swing—and then get to find herself in space.
to come back down!—before I trust that of space beneath After a while, she realized she was
everything is fixed in its place?” swinging. The earth swayed gently below.
“Fixed...?” her. It couldn’t “All right,” the kid yelled up.
“Until I can trust that after I climb up, “All right!” Grace yelled. She shook
when I come down, the earth will still be be remembered. her hands gently, one at a time, and shook
beneath me, the sky above...” her feet. From above, she could see the old
“But they’re not fixed,” the boy said.
It had to be felt. river’s path through the thin, dusty valley
The sky deepened a darker blue. Shad- floor, the soft yellow earth she had known
ows unfurled up the walls until they reached the sky, and everything up close. She turned her head up and yelled into the night: “Beam
was the same dense color. A smooth, deep blue into which seconds me up, Scotty!”
could stretch, invisible and uncounted. And it would stay that way A light rose very quickly, a pale moon in the sky.
until moonrise cast its silver light and called the textures of the No, not a moon. It was her old ship, deep black and dense
world out of the silky timelessness, and lost time could be found enough to fill the sky. Its trawl light illuminated everything below.
again. The boy’s face shifted, water to rock to flesh again. In its bright beam, she saw the kid rise beneath her, his eyes silver
Grace sat in the middle of the trail, hugging her knees to her- in the white light, skin silver, hair silver. In this light Grace could
self. She shut her eyes and tried to imagine living inside of this read his face as clear as anything. Happy! A little guilty, a little
deep, blue sameness. Beside her, the boy relaxed in the darkness. sheepish. Not one thing shifting to another—many things all at
He lifted his feet carefully onto the air, as though onto steps. One once. He’d come down to Earth just to try it; the place hadn’t
step, two steps. Until he hung there just a few feet above Grace, his worked itself into him yet; he didn’t mind leaving.
body soft and easy, instead of tight and wound. They couldn’t always find the ones who jumped ship. They had
And then, breaking the long silence, Sal’s voice leapt down the never found her, when she’d decided years ago to come down to
canyon walls at them. “Oh. Oh my god! Oh!” Earth, to see what that vast and wild place was like. And learned
there were such things as down, and up, and falling, and rising.
Sal’s phone tumbled softly out of the sky and The kid must have followed her path—faint, old; washed away
landed in the air. by years, she’d thought. And the ship had followed him. Now she
“We need to go up,” Grace said. She wondered how much felt a snag as her rope caught. There was a tug, and she was being
time had passed. pulled again. They weren’t supposed to leave, to be on Earth, to
“I know,” said the kid. show themselves to humans. Now that they’d found her, the long
“We can’t leave Sal up there.” trip was over.
The kid looked at her, maybe a little sorry. “I know.” She went up. Past the dark black rimrock, and above the rim-
“It’s really nice down here,” Grace said. “You didn’t stay long rock. She saw the tablelands, craggy and dark. Saw the whole
enough to really know.” gorge, cut black in the folded blue earth, saw the mountains rise
The kid made a face. “Maybe you’re too used to it.” and fall to the east and south in greys and blues. She saw the stars
“No,” Grace said. She’d never be used to it. The silver tuff, the scattered out around her, and the gentle curve of beautiful Earth.
sage, the yellow dirt. The pebble that had once been part of the It couldn’t be remembered; still, she would try to remember.
magnificent cliff above them, and now was something else entirely, Sal would be waiting in the ship’s large holding bay. And
able to fit in her pocket. “I want to climb. One more time?” maybe, she thought, Sal could stay for a while, try out a place
The kid shrugged. where there was no up or down—just space in every direction.
She tied herself into the rope she’d left dangling and rigged She thought of Sal’s birds, of how much Sal might like it. And she
her belay device so that she could belay herself up. Now that she smiled. She had thought, all this time, it was only the earth she
was tied in, she felt the old ease, the one she forgot once she was wanted. But the earth fell away, and the feeling was fixed. z

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 S e l k i e - B oy
Heather Dawe

selkie noun (Scottish) a mythical creature that resembles

a seal in water but assumes human form on land.
-Oxford Languages

Go now, Selkie-boy, swim from the shore

Rinse your ears clean of human chatter
Empty your bones of heather and moor
Your skull of its human matter.
-Robert Macfarlane, The Lost Spells

It was stifling in the city and, three weeks into the

heat wave, there was no end in sight. Nell pushed back against her
desk and sighed, eyeing the time silently ticking by on the clock in the
streaked grey rock, rough and textured in her grasp, following stepped
holds for her feet. Nerves and tension combined with discovery and
joy into an explosion of emotion. Even that first time Nell had felt
corner of her laptop, the spinning circle in the middle of her screen it, that sense of complete engagement and absorption, the elemental
indicating her code was still churning its way through the millions nature of climbing the rock of a seacliff, wildlife all around, white
of rows. spray and rolling ocean beneath.
Despite working close to many thousands of people in the same Afterward they’d walked south along the cliff path and from a
square mile, this grid of gleaming high-rises was where she felt at her distance watched two climbers traversing the high line of Heart of
loneliest. A data scientist, Nell developed algorithms for some of the Darkness on the prow of Mowing Word, another sheer cliff prom-
world’s largest companies. Each day she wrote code that would scan, ontory jutting out sharply into the sea. A combination of terror,
loop and explore, so seeking and revealing intricate patterns hidden fascination and excitement built in Nell. The two climbers seemed
within endless streams of numbers, text and symbols. Then she rep- completely at ease in their outrageous location. The leader steadily
licated the patterns, predicting the next book somebody would read, traversed, sometimes pausing to place protection, but otherwise
their dress size, what they would eat at dinner. Glimpses of a mun- calmly moving leftward, despite the waves crashing high up the cliff
dane future that could be monetized. beneath their feet and the occasional dive-bomb from a seabird.
Through an open window, the smells of fried food and traffic “What a place to be!” she exclaimed aloud to her companions. She
fumes drifted into the already stuffy office floor. Police sirens started wanted to learn more, to climb the cliffs, to become absorbed to the
up again, for what felt like the hundredth time that day. A bead of point of forgetting anything else but the feeling of the rock and her
sweat rolled down her back, and she decided it was time to get out, movement across it.
for at least the weekend. When she was eighteen, Nell went to university, studying maths
Nell would head west, as she always did. Far, far west, to the fresh in Yorkshire, the heart of gritstone country. She’d been climbing for
breeze of the sea and the immense skies above the cliffs at the land’s two years and was drawn to the north of England for its climbing
edge. Just the thought of Pembrokeshire and its limestone coast on scene and crags close to the city limits. Pembrokeshire was a long way
the tip of southwest Wales was enough to give Nell a thrill. She knew from England’s Pennines, but all the while she kept in touch with
if she left her desk within an hour, she could be at the pub by last those limestone cliffs; from the beginning they had been her favorite
orders. to climb. To earn some money through her long university summers,
She had learned to climb on the Pembrokeshire seacliffs a decade she worked as an outdoor instructor near Bosherston, a small village
ago, when she was sixteen. Her best friend’s mum took the two of in South Pembrokeshire. In the evenings after work and at weekends,
them to Stennis Head, a promontory that pushed out westward from she went climbing with her fellow instructors from work and local
the main cliffs, with fierce routes on its steep, exposed prow and easier climbers she’d met in the village pub.
beginner lines on the lee side of the crag. Close to Bosherston were crags with evocative names: Hunts-
As the three of them approached the base of their climbs, Nell man’s Leap, Mother Carey’s Kitchen, the Cauldron, Stack Rocks.
looked about her in wonder. Wispy white clouds were set in a deep Nell loved their physical forms and features, always enhanced by
blue sky, the sun twinkling off the sea like a field of stars. Above her the swell of the sea at their bases. She was addicted to the com-
head, red-legged choughs whirled effortlessly in the breeze, and in the mitment the Pembrokeshire walls forced upon her. When she first
deep sea at the base of the cliffs, she saw the faces of seals bobbing in abseiled into Huntsman’s Leap—a deep, narrow chasm in the cliffs
the water, gazing up at her with inquisitive eyes. only accessible from above—she felt a mixture of claustrophobia and
When she first climbed, Nell tentatively worked her body up the anticipation as she stared at the line of cracks that rose above. The

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climb took its name from one of the old tales, after a hunter on along the cliff, following the path that, by this hour, was lit with
horseback who, having jumped the chasm, turned back to see silvery moonlight. When she got back to her tent, as soon as she
the fearful gash in the cliffs and died of shock. Mother Carey’s put her head down, she slept solidly until dawn.
Kitchen, an amphitheater of jagged limestone you had to rap- The morning after, Nell decided to take it easy, have a rest day.
pel to get into, was so named after the sea witch that personified She took a walk around the large freshwater lily ponds to the east
storms and dangerous waters. of Bosherston. Afterward, she wandered over to the café next to
She loved the stories associated with the coast. Myths from the pub. Sitting outside in the garden, at a table under a sunshade,
folklore and similar fables, many of which were created by climb- she ordered afternoon tea from the elderly lady who had run the
ers, inspired by their intense experiences on those very faces, caves place for decades. Someone had told Nell that her name was Aun-
and crevices. Nell would seek out these stories, talking with climb- tie Vi, but she had always respectfully called her Mrs. Weston. She
ers and Bosherston locals in the café or over a pint in the pub after was a kind person who always seemed to give Nell an extra-large
a day on the rock. They would tell her of wild creatures from the slice of cake with her afternoon tea. Nell figured it was probably
sea, of an old woman enchanter who watched over adrift climbers because she looked like she needed the extra calories. She gener-
and other such yarns. ally did.
After university Nell followed her love of math and probability As Mrs. Weston placed a teapot, scone and sandwiches on the
into her job in the city. Her climbing friends back in Pembrokeshire table in front of Nell, she smiled and looked the younger woman
became used to her arriving unannounced and then leaving, per- in the eye. “They say if you swim in the Cauldron Pool on Mid-
haps for months, in as equally a low-key way. Whenever she did summer Eve, you turn into a selkie.”
return, they greeted her warmly and drew her into their latest plans After Mrs. Weston returned to her pantry, Nell waited a little
for exploring the cliffs. while before picking up the tea strainer and pouring her brew into
Deskbound that afternoon in her stifling office, Nell found an intricately patterned china cup. Stray tea leaves churned in tan-
herself daydreaming. She thought back to the year before when, nin-stained water, whirling in circles against the walls.
stupid tired after a long day’s climbing, she wandered along the
cliff to watch the sunset from the rim of the Cauldron, so-called It was midafternoon. Nell realized that con-
because of its shape: a steep grey amphitheater of saltwater-worn tinuing to try to work at her desk until 5 p.m. would be futile.
limestone, streaked with lichen and guano. On stormy days, the She snapped shut her laptop and began to gather together her kit.
pool at the base of the Cauldron whipped up into a frothing fury. Nell often thought back to the strange evening above the Caul-
At high tide, onlookers risked a drenching from waves that sprayed dron. That afternoon, as she drove away from the city, she found
up to the rim. Nell frequently scrambled down to its entrance, herself reliving it again. On her car stereo, Neil Young sang about
which was formed by a contorted cleft in the cliffs. As she traversed a harvest moon.
through the dimly lit cave, she felt as though she were entering In Bosherston, Nell went straight to the pub. It was quiet.
another world. The rock above had some of the most exquisite “They’ve all gone to North Wales for the weekend, climbing in the
lines she had ever seen, weaving along cracks, clambering beneath mountains,” the landlord told her as he pulled her a pint.
overhanging roofs and gently balancing up delicate faces. Sitting alone in the corner of the bar, Nell looked out of the
It was mid-September, and the light had that end-of-summer window, gazing west toward the cliffs. The longest day makes for
feel. Nell had sat at the top of the cliff, hugging her legs close to her the shortest night. Despite the lateness of the evening, the sun had
for warmth. The pool was calm, rippling only slightly with the sea’s only just begun its descent to the horizon. There would be time
gentle movements. The sky turned pink, lilac and then a deep pur- enough to get to the Cauldron and climb in the last light the day
ple; the sea at the horizon line grew darker. As she listened to the had to offer.
soft waves lapping against the Cauldron walls, she was suddenly Nell quickly finished her beer and hooked her pack onto her
aware of a louder sound, something emerging from the water. shoulders. Leaving the pub and the houses of the village behind,
When she caught sight of him, he had his back to her. He she followed the narrow road alongside yellow wheat fields that led
was climbing, following a rising traverse line from the waterline. to the coastal path, then headed north. By the time she reached the
Naked, his muscles taut against his frame, his body beautiful. little descent path, the deep colors of sunset had begun to appear
There was a thoughtfulness to the way he glided over the rock. on the horizon.
Nell was filled with an intense desire. She wanted him. More The pool glowed with light from the low sun that shone in
than that, she wanted to always be with him, to climb without through the cave. At the foot of the amphitheater, on the edge
inhibition above the rolling sea, to swim with him in the deep of the water, Nell started climbing, following the rising traverse
water beneath the towering cliffs. above the Cauldron Pool. With it came that familiar feeling of
When he reached the top of the line, he arched his head over release, the tensions in her overthinking mind becoming forgotten
his shoulder, turned and dropped back into the water. Nell anx- as her body moved fluidly up the sea-roughened limestone. Soon
iously scanned the pool, looking for bubbles or some other sign of enough, she heard the noise of something swimming.
life, but he did not resurface. The seal’s smooth skin broke against the slick salt water, his
At the top of the Cauldron, Nell shook herself, feeling as if she wake glistening in the late rays of the sun.
were waking from a fitful sleep. She wandered back to Bosherston Smiling, she let herself drop into the golden sea. z

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 Visions of future trips whirled in the air when
a desperate knock interrupted the solitude. I wasn’t sure what
I’d heard at first. The steady rumble of heavy drops confounded the
noise, but sure enough, there it was again. I opened the door, and the
sight stole my breath away.
A sodden, grizzled man with a greying beard stood before me,
hunched beneath the awning. He wore a tattered shell jacket, and
his shoulders bowed with the weight of an old backpack. Battered
ice axes and crampons dangled from the straps. Each metal point was
worn to a nub.
“We meet again,” he croaked in a hoarse voice, stepping past
me through the door. A chill followed in his wake. He dropped his

Es c a p i n g dripping gear on the floor and fell into a chair, spooking a white cat
that had been dozing in a musty blanket. “The last time I was here,
I was you.”

t h e Va l e There was an aura of familiarity about this stranger, but I couldn’t

quite place where I knew him from. Perhaps a distant relative? The cat
quickly settled into his lap. I poked the embers of the woodstove and
Derek Franz put a kettle on, but I couldn’t seem to get warm, even as I huddled by
the crackling flames. The sounds of the falling rain and the purring cat
filled the silence until the kettle whistled. I handed him a cup of tea,
and we sat quietly across from each other, sipping from chipped cups
Rain pounded the tin
that had been in the cabin longer than I’d been alive.
roof as I studied a book “I remember planning that trip,” he said, nodding at the pile of
on the eastern Himalaya books and maps.
“I haven’t planned anything yet,” I said. “Just looking into pos-
in the family cabin one
sibilities for next year.”
evening. Some of the “Well, I remember when climbing was the only thing that mat-
peak names were familiar, tered, anyway,” he said.
I leaned back into my chair, content to let him go on, and didn’t
embedded in the lore of
speak until well after he finished.
famous climbers who
had endured epics or Many years ago, I can’t remember exactly now, three
friends and I and a few hired hands traveled to the end of a valley in
disappeared within their
Tibet. We established base camp on a glacial moraine below a cirque of
folds. Other mountains peaks that we guessed to be around 6000 meters high. The mountains
I didn’t recognize. But didn’t seem to correspond with any of our maps.
For seven days, drizzly grey clouds had socked into the basin, and we
the photos conveyed
couldn’t see more than fifty feet in any direction. The cacophony of ava-
another world of white- lanches in the foggy cauldron above us could be heard at regular intervals.
and-black horizons I knew the edge of the glacier wasn’t too far away from our base camp, so I
took my tools for a walk. I followed a rivulet up the moraine to a beautiful
against blue skies.
ice cave where the stream ran out from the glacier.
The cave was a natural wonder in its perfection. The dense tunnel
walls had smooth ripples that looked like marble polished by lapping
ocean waves. Each facet was like a mirror—I could’ve used the reflection
to shave.
I couldn’t resist the impulse to swing my sharpened axe into the
unblemished surface. The metal pick made a satisfying THUNK. I swung
the other tool—THUNK! The sticks were too good to resist. I stepped off
the ground, kicking my crampons into the ice: THUNK, THUNK. I
began a rising traverse toward the back of the cave, trying not to get too
high off the ground. Each secure swing lured me higher, and soon I was
twenty feet above the boulders. I was committed to the steepest part of the

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ceiling when the ice began to crack. The fissure shot up the wall.
Debris collapsed in its wake. Swinging and kicking for survival,
I stayed ahead of the fracture until it opened around me like the
jaws of a megalodon. Snow poured from the crevice, and I swam
upward until my limbs could no longer move. Even my lungs
could barely pull in a breath.
Then suddenly, everything became still. I remained stuck
there for some time, unsure of which way was up or down.
When I woke sunlight was streaming through some uncon-
solidated snow. I willed my body to move, wriggling fingers, toes,
arms, legs, whatever I could. Gradually I created small pockets
of space in the snowpack. At last, my fingers broke through the
surface, and I finished digging myself out with my ice axes.
I emerged in the middle of a tent city surrounded by tow-
ering peaks I didn’t recognize. As I rose to my feet, all sorts of
climbers bustled to and fro on the wide pathways. No one paid
attention to me. I tried to make eye contact with someone to ask
where I was, but every gaze was averted.
I walked around until I found a mess tent with picnic
tables around it. “Lamb or chicken?” a cook asked impatiently.
“Where—” I started to ask, but he cut me off.
“Lamb or chicken?!” he repeated.
“Lamb, I guess.”
A man and two women were huddled around the end of a
table discussing plans. Their voices sounded intense and frenetic.
“Hi,” I cut in. Their stares shifted over to me. “Uh, can you
tell me where I am?”
“You’re at Josie’s place,” said the man. His dark hair poked
out from under a stocking cap, accentuating his thick, furrowed
eyebrows.
“Yeah, but...where am I?”
“No one remembers how they got here exactly,” he said. “We
live to climb, that is all. The past doesn’t matter. We seek our
answers up there.” He pointed toward the sky and circled his
finger. “We call this place Valhalla, the Vale.”
“Valhalla? So I’m dead?” “Well, I remember
“What is death? Do we seem dead to you? This is a paradise.
You’re lucky to be here.” when climbing was
The woman with strawberry hair introduced herself as
Cindy. “This is where dreams come true!” she said. the only thing that
“Where does all the stuff come from?” I motioned to the sur-
rounding tents. mattered, anyway,”
“You picture what you need, and then you search for it. It
turns up. You’ll see,” she said.
he said. I leaned
“What?” I pleaded. “How?” But the three resumed their con- back into my chair,
versation without me. I walked away puzzled. It was easy to
imagine all the things I wanted so badly. If only I had my back- content to let him
pack and bivy kit, or a tent and dry clothes. Wandering around
with these thoughts, I found myself back at the hole I’d emerged go on, and didn’t
from. I started digging—and voila! My gear—in shiny, new
condition! A tent was even in the backpack. Christmas! speak until well
I found a place on the outskirts of the settlement to pitch my
tent. When I awoke the next morning, I was surprised to discover after he finished.

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that I was still there. It was more than a passing hallucination. nary a conscious effort. I felt I was near the top when doubt entered
This land was indeed a manifestation of climbers’ dreams. In the my mind. That’s when I encountered the overhanging cornice. For
main valley, one side consisted of limestone, the other side granite. the first time since I’d arrived in the Vale, my strength waned. My
Farther off, I was told, were canyons of desert sandstone, which also tools wobbled in their placements, and I fought against the feeling of
hosted ice climbs in winter. uncertainty that coiled around me.
It didn’t take long to find myself enchained by a radical rou- I summoned all of my remaining energy to hack away at the
tine. Each season delivered bountiful opportunities. With sunny snow blocking my exit. For every clump that cleaved off in a muffled
walls in summer and ice-plastered faces in winter, there were endless WHUMP and dissipated into the mist, there was more. I was going
first ascents to be done. Ice pillars and névé laced the high cliffs and to fade away into the void as well if I kept at it much longer.
accepted my axes and frontpoints like dense Styrofoam. The terrain I need to find another route, I thought.
was somehow always perfect. If the snow, ice or rock itself wasn’t I looked in the other direction and saw a narrow, angling ramp
ideal, it was perfect in the challenge it presented. As time passed, of verglassed stone, less than a foot wide, with a perfect crack to
the landscape evolved in subtle ways. A mountain would be buried accept my tools and fingers. At the top of the ramp, I clambered care-
by an unusual amount of snow, then its features would be changed fully over a small snow mushroom and found myself on a pinnacle
slightly when the snow melted in the spring. just big enough for myself. The mountain of my dreams!
One day I explored a crystalline peak that resembled the glass I was relieved to find a steep snow slope on the back of the tower.
pyramid at the Louvre. The dense ice was so hard that my metal It looked possible to access my planned descent route. Thick, wet
points barely penetrated the dark, glazed surface. Another time, I snowflakes engulfed me as I stepped down slowly, foot over foot, using
found a tower that rivaled the Great Trango in vertical relief and my axes to keep my balance in deep drifts.
appearance, except this one had a hidden ramp of moderate rock I paused to catch my breath, feeling a sense of peace I hadn’t felt
and ice that spiraled up the tower, allowing a relatively easy passage since I’d arrived. That’s when the snow slid out from under me.
around the precipitous rock from bottom to top. Crawling out from the stillness of the frozen cocoon for the sec-
When I first arrived, few people bothered to talk to me until I’d ond time, I felt like I’d aged thirty years. Even my gear is showing
proven myself as a climber. During my second winter in the Vale, I the wear, as you can see. Anyway, there was nowhere to go but down.
soloed a new 4,000-foot route in five days, starting with a line of ver- I got below the mist and recognized these familiar hills above the
glas that was barely more than a vapor trail up a granite slab. Above, family cabin.
diagonal hairline seams led to huge roofs with hanging daggers of ice.
More than once, I found myself with one foot in an aider and the The man sat quietly, staring into his empty teacup. It
other wobbling on a crampon point in chandeliered ice as I tapped was late and I was too tired to get up from my chair. He covered
an axe overhead, hoping the dagger stayed attached to the rock. At me with a blanket as I nodded off.
the top of the wall on the last day, I raced the sun up a runnel below The cat was staring at me from the chair in the morning. I sat
a blue serac that leaned over the edge of the mountain like a crashing up, thinking it had all been a dream until I saw the pile of gear
wave. Cindy had provided the key on my first day in the Vale—the and empty teacup. Then the cat turned its head as though regard-
trick was to visualize precisely what I needed and keep moving. ing an invisible presence. Footsteps tapped along the floorboards
I got the feeling that a new climber was seen more as competi- just before a gust of wind blew open the door. Daylight poured
tion for routes and partners than as a potential friend. When it was in, and I realized the stranger was gone.
obvious that I could be an asset to their ambitions, I gained a hun- Eighteen months later, I traveled with three friends to Tibet.
dred “friends” overnight. But very few of us maintained what could I had the strangest déjà vu while waiting out stormy weather
be considered real friendships. It was all about climbing, and only in base camp. I had a fleeting urge to explore the glacier above
climbing. our temporary settlement. I picked up my tools and paused;
Somehow, as time passed, no one aged, and our gear never wore they felt strangely heavy. I set them down. I've been here before, I
out. People sometimes took bad falls and got hurt, but they weren’t thought. An icy wind shook the tent, and I recalled the words of
hurt for long. Occasionally someone disappeared, though it wasn’t the grizzled man: “I was you.”
ever clear why or how. There was one place where people were known A flutter of dizziness passed through me, and I sat down.
to disappear—a mountain at the head of the main valley that Where am I going? I wondered, considering my future through
stood higher and more imposing than all the rest. “Anyone who has the eyes of the former stranger, the old man who once seemed
climbed past the bergschrund has never come back,” Cindy told me. so different from me. Where do the mountains take a person if
After so many years the hedonistic pursuit of climbing began to they only serve as a distraction from the internal challenges that all
feel monotonous. I became more curious about crossing the forbid- humans must face?
den ’schrund. The storms cleared a few days later. I took in the vibrant col-
Leaving the tent city at midnight, I followed a silver path that ors of the emerging spring flowers blooming against the crisp,
was only visible in the starlight. Once I got onto the huge wall, I felt blue sky. There is more to life than climbing, I thought for the very
like I had wings. Thousands of feet spilled away beneath me with first time. z

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 G r av i t y i s
No Joke
Jerry Auld

You should be used to the madness of a

long spaceflight. It isn’t that different
from tenting out a blizzard in the
Antarctic or huddling in a sandstorm-
shaking habitat in the peak district on
Mars. But floating within a thin aluminum
capsule while the void pulls at your mind
from every direction wears on your humor.

You listen to pod-comedies where your laughter

echoes in the emptiness. You listen to long audio-histories
on endless repeat until they pass from knowledge into delirium;
frozen just as quickly, is a spire, twenty-five kilometers high. That
peak, the highest in the solar system, wobbles around Vesta’s
south pole like clay on the edge of a potter’s wheel.
The Rise and Fall of Rome or Herodotus’s The Histories, read by a The irony of having to travel so far to pay homage to the god-
tinny AI voice without inflection so every sentence sounds like dess of home fires is not lost on you. You’ve watched Vesta for
a question. months, slowly growing, bright and solid. You’ve studied your
orbital mechanics, your high-g knots. You listen endlessly:
Vesta was the virgin goddess of Roman hearth and home?
The Vestal Virgins were six in number, selected from youth If a Vestal virgin was discovered to be unchaste, she was
to serve a thirty-year period, living an existence that was buried alive in the Campus Sceleratus (the Evil Field), the
revered but isolated, privileged yet eschewed? barren border just outside the city walls? They were given
a lamp, a few days of food and water, then lowered into to
Not so different from a climbing career, you tell yourself, in a small underground chamber, and sealed in? What hap-
this close, lonely time with a little bit of food and a little bit of pened next, well, that was up to the Gods?
water. From the outside it may be easy to see the moments of
glory in climbing, but not the boredom, the self-doubt, the worry In transit, you float to eat, to sleep, to stretch. You write the
that you’re wasting your precious life on monthslong approaches, history of your inspiration on the walls. You start with Petrarch,
even as wonder spins all around you and the ancient unanswered Mont Ventoux (1336), run through Tenzing and Hillary, Mess-
questions of where it all began bubble up from inside. ner and Morrow, all the way to the peerless Solange von Tharsis,
You approach the target of your current desire. Vesta, the sec- Olympus Mons (2214). And then Varma, the great pathfinder on
ond-largest asteroid in the solar system and the holder of the final Vesta....
great challenge: the Rheasilvia Central Peak. But of course, that climb doesn’t count, as he is still...out
Eons before humans had ever looked up at a mountain, an there. Varma, it’s surmised, got flung off while traversing near the
object hit Vesta on its south pole. That collision created the summit, where the rotation is most severe. You must come back
Rheasilvia crater, nearly 500 kilometers across. In the middle, from the summit for it to count. That hasn’t changed. Nothing
formed in a molten flash by the elastic shock of the impact and has changed, even as everything has. In space, your destination is

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 You must come
back from the
summit for it
to count. That
hasn’t changed.
Nothing has
changed, even as
everything has.

like fate: you can see it coming for weeks and there is noth- sacred. One way to that knowledge is to be trusted, to be
ing you can do. invited into the inner circle. The other way is to steal it. Your
You know you needed a way to secure Varma’s traverse, so sin was not hubris, not arrogance, just age-old deception.
you called on Solange von Tharsis on your layover on Mars. You were shameless in your flattery, rubbing enviro-
You climbed together in her home range in Mars’s peak suit-shoulders with her at the base of climbs. She finally
district. People think it’s easy climbing on a planet with a acquiesced and joined you on a stiff testpiece of Martian
third the gravity. But there is so little atmospheric resistance fine-grained basalt on Ascraeus Mons, an 18,000-meter peak
that the terminal velocity on Mars is more than five times in the Tharsis province.
that on Earth. Forget the 8000-meter cliffs at the base of On a tight belay, bulky envirosuits smashed together,
Olympus Mons. If you fall from just four ropelengths up on you fiddled with the gear in front of your helmets with one
Mars, you’ll hit the ground harder than you would on Earth. hand as you told the best jokes you’d gleaned from climbing
Not just a crack in your helmet, but a complete collapse of partners over the years, all the while discreetly cranking the
your organism. Gravity is no joke. oxygen on Solange’s pack with the other hand. Your tinned
You were climbing with her because you needed a system laugher played to a crowd of one; you ransomed your dignity
that would allow you to self-belay across Varma’s traverse: a to the faint stars above in the blue sunset. You showed Sol-
system that would lay out line as you moved, but lock slowly ange a hitch that you claimed the Phoenician seamen used
if you moved too fast, and release again if you resumed. to whiplash their sails. The knot allowed a broad range of
There are things that are guarded, considered secret and play but would cinch tight under quick loads. You showed

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her how it would release if the working end was bent away from disorientation, and then the lurch as the centripetal force tries to
the fall line. Solange looked at you with surprised delight, like rip you off. Without the rope and the Dorsum hitch, you would
you’d just showed her a full cask of amontillado. And then, her be lost to the void. You hook a toe on an edge, pinch down on
laughter still echoing in your helmet, she showed you the hitch a flake and move into the spinning fury of the stars. And then,
that she used to do the famous cinch-pendulum on the Dorsum almost there, a basalt flake breaks and you come free.
ridge on the doomed moon of Phobos. The one you’d need for The hitch allows you enough slack to regain your holds, but
the Varma traverse on Vesta. just as you reach the rock, it cinches tight! The elastic tension
Three months out from that stop on Mars, you arrive at pulls you fully off the rock, and then the hitch seems to unravel.
Vesta. It looks like a rapidly spinning top, with the point being Whatever knot Solange taught you was as real as your version of
the Rheasilvia Central Peak. By the time you finish your braking the Phoenicians’. The rock swings wildly out of reach, and you
burn and take up a fast orbit, the audiobook has been on endless cut the rope lest you get dragged in its wake.
repeat for weeks. You hear it even in your dreams, unsure if you Beneath your breathing, echoes from the audiobook replay in
are listening or remembering... your memory, like a warning resounding from the long passages
of history:
The Vestals were regarded as fundamental to the continu-
ance and security of Rome? These women cultivated the It was a general belief, that the Vestal virgins had the
sacred fire that was not allowed to go out? power, by uttering a certain prayer, to arrest the flight of
runaways, and to rivet them to the spot, provided they had
You land on the frozen lava plains of the asteroid and not gone beyond the precincts of the City?
prang hard. The whole ship clatters like a bell. It feels like all the
fires have gone out. It’s -170°C. Everything but nitrogen is fro- Whatever prayer that was, you don’t have it, and Solange’s
zen, and you are kept alive by the heaters in your suit. They are laughter echoes in your memory.
not allowed to go out. Now the peak is swinging around like a hyperactive sundial,
You become Vesta’s subject: the asteroid is still, but the stars coming back around to hit you like a ball out of the park. Like
now wheel endlessly, almost streaks in the sky. Above you rises Varma. You hammer your jets to stay within the slight gravity of
the Central Peak’s cone for more than twenty kilometers, like a the asteroid, aiming to rest in the “eye” of the south pole’s spin.
finger tracing through velvet. You tint your visor and block the You float, fuel exhausted. The echo in your memory mocking:
stars to settle your stomach.
You work your way upward slowly, following the flash-frozen Allowing the sacred fire of Vesta to die out was a serious
lava, looking for handholds to push down on as much as to pull dereliction of duty? It suggested that the goddess had with-
up on because you have to hold on from all directions. Gravity drawn her protection from the city? Vestals guilty of this
here is only 2 percent of that on Earth. You can’t risk a misstep offence were punished by a scourging in the dark to pre-
that might take you off the rock: you won’t fall, but you won’t serve their modesty?
be able to get back on the route either. Meter after meter, the
slope seems endless. Yet the top of the mount gets narrower and Now you’re wondering how to get back to your ship other
the whirl of the stars more pronounced and—because the axis than a long, slow settling. At Vesta’s mass, it could take months
of rotation is just offset from the peak—the wobble that much for you to make landfall. You’d be kept alive by your suit, but
stronger. You try not to look up. Climbing this is like holding on your mind may be gone. Maybe it already is. The voice echoes
to a mechanical bull. in your memory:
You focus on the rock. Obsidian-like shards, long and jagged,
all jutting up. It’s like climbing a frozen splash of stone. You fling Buried alive in the dark, on the border between civiliza-
the loose holds over your shoulder, and they pinwheel into the tion and wilderness, with a small light, a bit of food and
dark, taking up their own orbit around the sun. water, and just enough air...?
Days in, now, and you climb the inner-facing side of the peak,
pressed in by the rotation. Yet a cliff band blocks the last pitches, Then, from behind the peak, as it swings wide with the rota-
so you must move to the far side on the Varma traverse. Varma tion, you see the braking flare of a Martian ship’s engine and
had been the only one to get this far. Yet you have Solange’s Dor- know that Solange is on her way, with the Dorsum hitch still a
sum hitch, which will allow the rope to feed just enough for secret and the ascent just a matter of fate. And you, now, with a
steady movement and cinch slowly if you slip. front-row seat to history.
As you traverse to the other side of the pinnacle, to the out- Have you been unchaste? Are you being punished? It is up to
side of the rotating peak, you feel your world go upside down, the gods now, because even this far from home—like the indomi-
the wobble and the spin doing the Coriolis polka. First there is table force of gravity—nothing has changed. z

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 79

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IN SEARCH
OF SUBLIME
Madness
WORDS AND PHOTOS BY DOMINIC NGO

"The airplane has unveiled for us

the true face of the earth."
—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

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IT’S AN ALPINE START BY HEADLAMP, AND A BUILDUP OF HOARFROST
ON THE WINGS NEEDS TO BE GENTLY BRUSHED OFF BEFORE
TAKEOFF. MANY DAYS BEGIN LIKE THIS FOR ME IN 2017, WORKING
FOR AN AERIAL SURVEY COMPANY IN BRITISH COLUMBIA.

[Photo] Robyn Stewart pilots a twin-engine light aircraft heading

eastward above the Skagit and Chilliwack Valleys.

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 THE HOURS SPENT FLYING
BETWEEN PROJECT
LOCATIONS CAN BE LONG
AND UNPREDICTABLE.
The evolving terrain below and the gentle bumps of light turbu-
lence can shift me into a reflective mood where the passage of time
blurs. Throughout the changing seasons, we watch from our vantage
point in the sky as the budding of spring foliage eventually gives way
to the stark colors of autumn. Looking through the aircraft’s rear
cabin windows, I am lulled back into childhood memories of gaz-
ing out at the rolling landscape unfolding on long road trips with
my family. These drives to visit friends and relatives were sometimes
broken up by short camping trips that allowed my brother and I
to explore nature relatively unfettered. The view from the highest
nearby tree or structure was usually the most prized.
Like many of my generation, my introduction into the world
of climbing began at a gym. A grade-school friend, Danny, was my
first partner. We soon swapped dusty gym sessions for the fresh air
afforded while “taking our gear out for a walk” to the local hills and
cliffs. As it has for many others, climbing proved to be a great rem-
edy in calming my frenetic teenage energy and penchant for thrills.
Out there, in the wild space, a greater appreciation for nature and
self-discovery was able to be nourished. Escapades with skateboards,
spray paint and bicycles gave way to adventures with a rope, racks
and packs. I bought our first meager set of cams to accompany Dan-
ny’s assortment of nuts, hexes and draws, along with a rope that had
been gifted by his aunt.
Around our hometown of Ottawa, Ontario, we tried to find
some of the magic we’d read about in climbing literature, guide-
books and anything else we could find. With many routes in the
area dating back to the 1960s and ’70s, it was easy to work your way
through the grades on the humble, yet historic cliffs peppered along
the Eardley Escarpment of the Gatineau Hills. Always beckoning in
the backs of our minds were the larger, more exotic objectives out
west and beyond.
Our cadre and our appetites grew along with our geographical
striking range. We were armed with a youthful surplus of gusto. Team
BAIT (Badasses in Training) was sometimes relegated to Team Bail as
we negotiated failure. At the base of cliffs, we were routinely flabber-
gasted at the extraordinary imagination and resolve of the climbers
who came before us. Learning to move efficiently in and around
the Laurentians, Niagara Escarpment and Adirondacks, we grew
to be particularly mindful if we found ourselves in terrain affiliated

[This Page, Top] Morning light over Kananaskis Country, April 2016. l [This Page,
Bottom] Dominic Ngo (left) and Robyn Stewart (right) above 10,000 feet. Ngo wears
a nasal cannula and Stewart wears an oxygen mask in the unpressurized cabin.
Robyn Stewart l [Facing Page] Mt. Assiniboine in the Canadian Rockies, as seen from
the northeast. The mountain lies within the traditional lands of the Ktunaxa people.

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with names such as John Turner; Helmut Microys; Jimmie Dunn; librarian and auxiliary coastguard. She remains the company’s chief
Guy Lacelle; Fritz Wiessner; Halka; Adcock and Cotter; Zabrok; pilot and operations manager, as well as an intelligence operator in
DeMaio and Kaandorp; and the Smart brothers. Soon more names the Canadian Armed Forces Primary Reserve. Robyn’s well-worn
would enter the paradigm as the call to travel west was answered: ball cap emblazoned with the words “Vulcan – Alberta” was a fix-
Layton Kor, Jay Smith, Fred Beckey, Dean Potter, Steve Hong, Don ture on all of our adventures throughout the five seasons we spent
and Phyllis Munday, Jim Sandford, Peter Croft, Tami Knight, Colin flying together.
Moorhead and Perry Beckham. She translates Klingon for television screenplays, and we bonded
What gave these people the vision to go where others could not over languages and their many nuances. I offered up my knowl-
or dared not? Could it be likened to a heightened sense or vibration? edge of Cantonese, the language most commonly spoken in Hong
When at our best, I believe people are sometimes able to pick Kong, the city where my mother was born and where my parents
up on subtle vibrations that help steer our rhythms and guide us first met. I would share a word or phrase, and in exchange Robyn
on our way. Robyn Stewart, the pilot for this flight, is a seasoned would provide the Klingon equivalent. We were both left in awe of
aviator and an example of such a person. She has been flying com- the enormous tonal range of dialects, earthly or not.
mercially since I was a preteen in middle school. Robyn has always
been one to follow her intuition, which is informed by a healthy THE SPRING FLOODS and ensuing wildfires of the sum-
dose of realism. mer of 2017 proved to be a potent season of extremes that tested
An everlasting thirst for knowledge and adventure drove Robyn our wits and our aircraft’s airworthiness. Once, while fueling up on
to pursue her commercial pilot’s license after stints as a ditch- a particularly long, hot, smoky day, I listened as Robyn whispered
digger, chemistry research assistant, doughnut decorator, corporate encouragement to our weary aircraft in a gentle tone.

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Social Media Pakistan 0345-6738217
 [Photo] Two of Washington’s
iconic stratovolcanoes as
seen from the north: Mt.
Baker (foreground) and Mt.
Rainier (background) in
early morning light.

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 The evolving terrain
below and the gentle
bumps of light
turbulence can shift
me into a reflective
mood where the
passage of time blurs.

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[Photo] A climber negotiates around a pine
tree blown over by a typhoon on a route at
Insubong, Bukhansan, South Korea.
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 On this day, we fly up and pass the southern tip of Brit-
ish Columbia’s Coast Range. Young, glaciated valleys give way
to the steppes of the Okanagan-Thompson Plateau, and we
approach the hallowed Canadian Rockies—the “stripey border
mountains” as Robyn calls them. The route takes us directly over
the Bugaboos. On one of my first operational flights, I screamed
with joy at this view of the range and startled Robyn so much
that she scrambled to readjust controls. After that I could be
counted on as the one in the company who was delighted to
share the names and stories of climbers associated with the ter-
rain below—the successes, the failures and the never-been-done.
Up here, mapping the earth, I imagine myself as the tip of a
paintbrush making long, broad strokes on a vast open canvas. In
the predawn light, I am greeted by familiar and unfamiliar faces
draped in alpenglow. Howser Spire, Goodsir, Assiniboine and
Temple sit radiantly amid the myriad of lesser-known peaks and
drainages. I trace lines up and down their features and admire
the wide shadows forming on their flanks. The contrasting light
affords a brief perspective of otherwise hidden angles and laby-
rinths. My mind wanders back to the question of what propels
the first ascensionist upward despite the inherent adversity of
the unknown.
The late American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr suggested
“a sublime madness in the soul” is what permits those with
the requisite imagination a glimpse of the possibilities that are
obscured to all but the visionaries, artists and madmen. This
madness, he noted, is a moral imperative for sustaining hope in
the face of insurmountable odds.
Operating the camera equipment, I marvel at the resilient
beauty of our planet and its ability to harbor continued mys-
tery despite our great efforts to tame and master it. Within the
folds and creases of the earth’s landscapes are stories that hold
considerable knowledge and insight if we can tune in and lis-
ten carefully; if we are able to decipher the language of Nature.
I hope that, like Robyn gently whispering to our aircraft on
that hot, smoky day, we can treat our shared planet in the same
tender and responsive manner. Perhaps this work carried out
among the clouds will give more people a glimpse of possibili-
ties that might otherwise be obscured—the madness that gives
us hope against seemingly insurmountable odds. z

[Previous Spread, Left] Finding stable air amid turbulent cloud layers off of British
Columbia’s central coast. l [Previous Spread, Right] The Bugaboos’ Howser Spire
Massif, as seen from above East Creek Basin. l [This Page, Top] The south face of Mt.
Waddington appears in the foreground, with the Tiedemann group and Serra Peaks
in the background. l [This Page, Bottom] Stewart (left) and Ngo (right) celebrate
completing a successful flight and collecting a fresh batch of data. Trevin Muscat

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 I marvel at the resilient beauty of
our planet and its ability to harbor
continued mystery despite our great
efforts to tame and master it.

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 S HA RE YOU R LOV E
OF MOU NTA IN S

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discover new viewpoints on the past, present and future—
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 FULL VALUE
JASON NARK I ILLUSTRATIONS BY ANDREAS SCHMIDT

What We Search For going that day and never returned. He was on climbing forums, like SummitPost, asking
reported missing thirteen days later. “peak baggers in the Central Sierra Nevada”
What they searched for wouldn’t look like With no last-known destination, no offi- to keep their eyes open. Volunteers and SAR
a body, not anymore. They looked for a small cial search and rescue team was dispatched members posted flyers at trailheads and shut-
thing to place in a grave, a way for his family to look for him in the rugged Sierra back- tle stops. Dean Rosnau, a retired SAR expert,
to say goodbye. His ice axe glinting in the country above Mammoth Lakes. “There’s spent over 200 days searching for Matthew’s
snow, perhaps, or a boot, wedged between nowhere to search,” Mammoth’s police chief body. He returned for several summers,
some boulders. told CBS News at the time, “because there’s mostly alone, scouring an endless landscape
Maybe his bones. hundreds and hundreds of square miles just of snow and shifting rock. Another searcher,
Most of the searchers didn’t know in our county.” Peter “Maverick” Agoston, organized yearly
Matthew Greene. Most hadn’t met him. He’d The author Norman Maclean once trips with members of an online outdoors
climbed mountains, as they did, and that’s wrote, “One of the finest things men and forum. He picked a new location each time.
why they went looking. Some went into Cali- women do is rescue men and women, even The volunteers made calculated guesses,
fornia’s Eastern Sierra shortly after he disap- when they know they are rescuing the dead.” reading the runes of what gear Matthew left
peared and found nothing. Others went back, Those people emerged after Matthew disap- in his tent and broken-down car. They specu-
year after year. peared. Some Mono County SAR members lated over what he might’ve taken with him,
Matthew left his campsite in Mammoth did go looking, checking summit registers the ice axe and boots, missing pages from a
Lakes on July 17, 2013. He’d had car trouble for Matthew’s signature under the guise of guidebook. They imagined Matthew’s ambi-
in Mammoth, and he often hitched rides or training exercises. A California Highway tions, which routes would have intrigued
took shuttles to trailheads while it was being Patrol helicopter visited the Minarets on a him, which climbs he’d skip. All of the search-
repaired. He didn’t tell anyone where he was training run. Mono County SAR also posted ers could be wrong.

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I didn’t know Matthew either. I’ve never thought we’d found lives we could live with. I pain I have,” Anthony wrote to me in Janu-
rescued anyone. I’m just a reporter. When I married and had kids in my early twenties and ary 2012.
first saw his face on a missing person flyer, yearned for the steady life. Anthony moved to “I know,” I replied. “I thought I could,
I was sitting in a cubicle in Pennsylvania at San Francisco. He dated beautiful women and but I can’t fully understand it. I want to help
the newspaper where I work. Matthew’s half- had lots of odd jobs and adventures in Lake you, though.”
smile and pale blue eyes reminded me of a Tahoe and Napa. When I visited him once, Those who need our help the most, as
dear friend I’d loved and lost. Matthew and we took mescaline and crawled around Joshua Maclean wrote in A River Runs Through It,
that friend, Anthony, didn’t have any connec- Tree’s mind-bending landscape for hours. For often elude us. All Anthony seemed to want
tion or much in common. People often many years, his life in California seemed idyl- from me was a “goodbye,” a promise to move
pointed out that discrepancy over the years lic, until I learned, one day, that it wasn’t. on without him, and I couldn’t.
as proof I’d gotten lost in this story. It was September of 2011 and Anthony had “I wish people could just forget I am
Anthony and I met in high school in the flown home for a wedding. Over coffee, he here,” he wrote me.
early 1990s. We were partners on the wres- told me he was finished fighting. He planned Anthony died on September 23, 2013,
tling team and wannabe poets; two brooding, to fly back and take his own life. He wanted a few months after Matthew Greene
psychedelic explorers of our suburban New to say goodbye. disappeared.
Jersey landscape. One impulsive night, when Instead, I alerted his family and, a few Grief, we’re told, has distinct stages. We
we were teenagers, I decided I didn’t fit in days later, confronted him at the Philadel- expect to pass through each one, like a door-
this world. Adulthood, I figured, would be phia airport in a panic, threatening to pull fire way, from denial all the way to acceptance.
worse. Hours later, when I awoke on railroad alarms if he boarded the plane. He promised I expected that too. As the months wore
tracks, I carried Anthony home and dumped me he’d stay alive and flew back to California. on, a sense of guilt metastasized inside me.
him on my lawn. We talked more than ever after that. He came Friends and family said I tried my best with
“You need to take us to the hospital,” I back to New Jersey a few months later to be him. I had no special power, they said, to keep
told my parents. closer to family. He juggled jobs and medica- him alive. I rejected those words and turned
We each spent a night or two in the ER tion and we continued our long debates about inward. Grief warped my ability to love, and
and went to see therapists afterward, then life and death. to accept it, too. I spent a lot of time in bed,
seemingly went on with our lives. We didn’t “You will never get or understand what barely present with my kids. I sobbed in my
talk about that night much. As adults, I it feels like to be me. Sorry. You can’t feel the car during commutes.

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 Those doorways through grief soon Matthew’s belongings were placed in storage.
became unhinged, and then the walls A friend reported Matthew missing on July 29
disappeared. after learning his car had been repaired and
had been sitting in the shop for over a week.
Matthew Greene had grown up in north- Within days, news of his disappearance
east Pennsylvania, in a middle-class family of spread. Matthew’s mother, Patricia Greene,
six, not far from where Anthony and I grew told a reporter he was a bit of a loner and
up in New Jersey. He felt at home in the that weeks could pass before the family heard
rivers and lakes around him. He was will- from him in the summer, so his silence wasn’t
ing to test limits, too, and said as much in unusual. In the weeks after Matthew was
1991 when he graduated from Lehighton reported missing, his friends and climbing
Area High School. Greene, a National Honor partners converged on Mammoth to hand
Society member, was chosen as the student out flyers and talk with business owners. His
speaker. “We must not be too scared to take disappearance became a popular topic on
risks, and most of all, we must live life to the SuperTopo, where users posted hundreds of
fullest,” he told classmates. comments and searchers, like Dean Rosnau,
After college, he taught for three years wrote trip reports. The Greenes hired a plane
with the Peace Corps in Papua New Guinea. to scan and photograph large swaths of the
Afterward, Matthew became a high school Eastern Sierra near Mammoth to no avail.
math teacher in Nazareth, Pennsylvania. They hoped survival skills he’d learned in the
Matthew was in his midtwenties when his Peace Corps would help him stay alive.
colleague and close friend Viola Krouse intro- “It’s possible,” Patricia said. “It’s just that
duced him to climbing and mountaineering it’s so long. No matter how good you are, no
during a road trip through Canada. He honed one is invincible.”
his skills in New York’s “Gunks,” she said,
and summited most of the Adirondack high In the spring of 2014, I was using my own
peaks. Krouse told me Matthew quickly grad- journalism as a sort of makeshift therapy.
uated to more difficult routes, his skills and None of my editors saw I’d become a vampire
ambition outpacing hers and those of most for grief. Instead of going to grief counsel-
other climbers she knew. He lived alone in ing, I focused on stories full of heartache. I
Bethlehem, a former steel town seventy miles arrived at funerals early and lingered in places
The volunteers made north of where I worked in Philly, and he
spent summer breaks driving west to bag
where the shock of bad news hadn’t worn off.
Pain that raw made me forget my own for
calculated guesses, reading peaks and tackle challenging climbs in Utah
and Colorado.
a moment. When I read about a man who
watched his wife die while BASE jumping
the runes of what gear When the school year ended in June of
2013, Matthew headed west toward Califor-
in Zion National Park, I reached out to him,
barely pretending to be a journalist.

Matthew left in his tent nia. He camped in Mammoth and climbed

nonstop. On June 29, he met up with friends him.
“How did you deal with the grief?” I asked

to climb the iconic Crystal Crag above Lake I first read about Matthew around this
and broken-down car.... George. On July 8, he soloed Riegelhuth time and saw his photo from a newspaper
Minaret, a striking, 10,560-foot spire of loose in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley. I was at my
They imagined Matthew’s rock in the Minarets. He told a friend it was
“scary.” One of his last-known climbs was
desk in downtown Philly and began to dig a
little more. Journalists had written a dozen
ambitions, which routes Unicorn Peak, south of Yosemite’s Tuolumne
Meadows, on July 13.
or so articles about Matthew’s disappear-
ance by then, often focusing on the vastness

would have intrigued On July 16, he told his parents, Bob and
Patricia, that he was planning one last day
of the Sierra and the long odds the searchers
faced. One article mentioned students wear-

him, which climbs he’d in the mountains. Then he would retrieve

his car and rendezvous with friends for more
ing “green for Greene” at a Nazareth football
game, while another highlighted a scholar-
climbing in Colorado. The next morning, he ship the Greenes had created in Matthew’s
skip. All of the searchers left campsite 164 at New Shady Rest Camp-
ground and didn’t tell anyone where he was
name, for a student interested in “hiking, the
outdoors and math.” (Later, while still look-
could be wrong. going. On July 21, the campground host noti-
fied police that a camper hadn’t returned, and
ing for information about the case, I came
across an excellent article in a 2016 issue of

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Climbing magazine by Monica Prelle that wary. I didn’t blame him. she wrote on Facebook before departing for
chronicled the days leading up to Matthew’s “Grief,” Joan Didion once wrote, “turns home. “Waiting for my red eye home. Can’t
disappearance.) out to be a place none of us know until we begin to describe how hard it was to turn
On the “Find Matthew Greene” Face- reach it.” Over time, that statement felt truer away from the place that brought me closer
book page, I connected with Matthew’s than anything else I’d read about the subject. to Matt and to my father for the past week.
sister, Tiffany Minto. She let me read letters One winter night, in 2015, I reached my I think it was the first time all week I cried.”
Matthew had sent her during his Peace Corps own dead end. I was sobbing over a bowl of Bob kept an online hiking journal, where
years, when she was still home, navigating cereal at 3 a.m. and wished I could fall asleep his methodical journal entries reflected his
adolescence. He had lent her his car while and not wake up. I decided, finally, to seek former profession as an engineer. He detailed
he was gone, with the caveat that there be counseling. precise elevation changes and shifting weather
“no making out in the back, front, or in the In those dark years, my journey to the patterns, a deer crossing his trail. His stoicism
trunk.” He’s the epitome of a big brother in Sierra remained a future to cling to. rarely cracked but he mentioned, briefly, writ-
the letters, both wise and a bit of a wiseass. ing personal messages to Matthew in registers
An easy idol to look up to, I imagine, and a When Matthew’s family, friends and atop Mt. Ritter and Pridham Minaret.
hard person to lose. former students traveled to Mammoth in the There’s no common word to describe a
Tiffany told me her family was heading summer of 2014, they were looking for ways parent who loses a child. They’re not widows
to Mammoth that summer. Her dad planned to say “goodbye.” They hiked the lower eleva- or orphans. It’s something far worse, I think.
to “hike, find peace...I don’t really know.” I tions, safer trails below the ice and summits For a while after Matthew disappeared, Bob
hatched a muddled plan. Despite minimal where Matthew likely died. Dean wrote an cut his lawn and shoveled snow from his
research about the Sierra Nevada and zero affidavit that the Greenes presented before a sidewalk. Even now, almost ten years later,
climbing experience, I would fly to Califor- there’s been no funeral, and there’s no grave to
nia to help search for Matthew’s remains or, visit. Bob replied to one of my emails, about
better yet, drive there with Bob Greene. Find-
ing Matthew’s bones could inch the Greenes
A trampoline sat on the a year after he returned from his search in
Mammoth. He thanked me for reading his
closer to closure, I thought, and also pay off
my perceived debt to Anthony’s family on lawn, beyond the flowers, journal entries and apologized for not answer-
ing me earlier. Making his pain public would
some cosmic ledger. just be more painful, he said.
I wrote Matthew’s parents letters and left
voicemails, asking them if I could tag along
and I imagined my kids Bob told me his trip to the Sierra was a
failure. He believed it would take a “chance
on their journey or interview them at length
in Pennsylvania. I mentioned my friend, what
jumping on it, their heads encounter” for someone to find Matthew’s
remains or gear.
I thought was our common bond, but the
Greenes didn’t respond. I stopped short of
reaching for the sun. A “Hopefully within what is left of my life-
time,” he told me.
driving to their home in Pennsylvania.
“They are really nice people; just set in lump rose in my throat, It was late August of 2017 when I finally
their ways and stubborn,” Tiffany explained.
“What happened with Matt just hangs and I had to look away. flew to California. I’d booked four nights in
the campground where Matthew stayed. I
around us in various ways; we’re all still deal- was freshly divorced, between grief counsel-
ing with it separately.” ors, and completely unprepared.
The Greenes’ silence led me to Dean Pennsylvania judge, who declared Matthew Dean Rosnau was still searching, and
Rosnau, the retired SAR expert looking for dead. Dean later told me that he thought he’d recently published a memoir, The Short-
Matthew. Tiffany said he was going to guide Matthew likely died in a fall, possibly in the est Straw: Search and Rescue in the High Sierra.
her father in Mammoth. I found Dean on Ritter Range west of Mammoth. I planned to join Dean on a hike to his base
SuperTopo, where he went by “Cragman,” Bob Greene spent the entire summer camp at 10,500 feet and write a profile of him
and we messaged each other for years. I of 2014 in Mammoth. He hiked over 650 when I returned.
mostly pestered him about gear and his search miles looking for his son, spending several Wildfires had dotted the Eastern Sierra
plans. I revealed things he didn’t need to days searching with Dean. Bob was close to that summer, and smoke forced Dean down
know: “I think I’m going camping in Maine seventy then and he’d dropped thirty pounds from his search area near Banner Peak just
this summer,” or “I think my marriage is fall- in preparation by hiking Pennsylvania trails before I arrived. He warned me that he’d
ing apart.” I made and canceled plans to join with a backpack full of rocks. torqued his knee, too. We met at a gym
Dean for a search in California several times Tiffany spent a week in Mammoth and in Mammoth, where he was speaking to a
over the years. I had three children, a second joined Bob for a few hikes. She told me the Rotary Club about Matthew and his book,
job and a bloated mortgage. He could prob- trip gave her a better understanding of her which I’d read again on my red-eye to Sacra-
ably see how chaotic my life was, how little brother’s passions. But it wasn’t closure. mento. According to his memoir, Dean had
backcountry experience I had, and he seemed “Today was my last day in Mammoth,” helped recover sixty-six bodies, one of them a

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dear friend who had died in an ice-climbing in California, about wild places untaming our me, like a bird carrying off some last pieces
accident in 1996. kids, and love returning to our marriage the of pain caged inside, and I cried a little when
“I’ve always found the things I go looking same mysterious way it had arrived. Anthony I felt it leave.
for,” Dean told the Rotarians. would be there too, wrestling with my sons “I completely understand why Matthew
Dean finished his talk with Matthew’s and sharing a beer in my imaginary cabin. Greene came here,” I said aloud.
case, and afterward, an older man spoke Anthony died three weeks later. The trip didn’t feel like a failure after that.
up with an observation about the life he’d “So many things fell apart for me after
chosen. It must be so painful, he said. Dean that trip,” I told Dean. A month later, I was wandering the hall-
took a deep breath. At the campground later that night, I ways of the high school where Matthew
“Matthew’s case…,” he said before chok- stayed awake in my tent, blood pounding taught in Pennsylvania. Dean was giving a
ing up. He paused and pursed his lips. in my ears. I kept ruminating on my losses. presentation in the auditorium, the same talk
“Matthew’s case has become very dear to I wouldn’t see my kids on Thanksgiving or he’d given to the Rotary Club in Mammoth.
me,” Dean said. “The Greenes are family to Christmas, per the divorce, and a friend said “Do you know where Matthew Greene’s
me now, so yeah, it’s tough.” I’d lost my identity as “the family man.” It classroom was?” I asked a custodian.
Afterward, Dean told me he was return- pained me when he said it, because it was so He didn’t recognize the name.
ing home to California’s central coast to get true. I also worried about losing the woman About 100 people had come to hear
his knee checked out. We wouldn’t be hiking I’d met in the midst of all this grief, that she’d Dean, many wearing shirts that honored
into the backcountry. Instead, Dean drove me bail on such a broken person. Matthew with a familiar John Muir quote:
to the Minaret Vista, a sightseeing spot a few On another sleepless night, I tried to “The mountains are calling, and I must go.”
miles outside of Mammoth. At 9,265 feet, visit Matthew’s campsite, number 164. But Viola Krouse, Matthew’s dear friend and
it was the highest elevation I’d ever been to. it was closed for construction, cordoned off climbing mentor, urged the crowd to answer
An endless field of mountains stretched by orange safety fencing. I finally understood that call.
as far as I could see. Mt. Ritter, at 13,143 a quote I once saw etched into some fancy “Don’t let anything stop you,” she said.
feet, was the tallest of them. Matthew could Grand Canyon lodge: “Dreams of mountains, Dean projected slides of the Ritter Range
be there, I thought. My brain swirled at the as in their sleep they brood on things eternal.” onto a large screen, the mountains undulat-
view. Before I arrived, Dean told me I’d need One morning, I drove east to Crowley ing across his body as he paced the stage. One
to bring a “willingness to suffer” to complete Lake to interview a man who’d helped Dean slide paused on Matthew’s face, those blue
the twenty-mile round-trip hike to base camp. search for Matthew in the early days. The eyes and that smile, and people wiped away
I figured that was bluster, but those minutes White Mountains seemed to float above the tears. Bob put his arm around Patricia and
at the vista convinced me I was wrong. shimmering heat beyond the lake. The man’s pulled her closer. While they mingled in the
“You can see it’s the ultimate needle in wife followed their dogs as they chased butter- lobby afterward, I decided I would apologize.
a haystack,” Dean said. “It would be hard flies through the wildflowers on their lawn. I made it clear who I was—the writer who
enough to find a living person.” Wind chimes swayed. A trampoline sat on had mailed letters and left voicemails, trying
Dean had wandered off to help some the lawn, beyond the flowers, and I imagined to hitch my grief to theirs.
tourists with photos. I was so lost in the view, my kids jumping on it, their heads reaching “That was unfair of me,” I told them.
I hadn’t heard him return. for the sun. A lump rose in my throat, and I The Greenes needed searchers willing to
“I really had no idea,” I said. had to look away. hike into mountains and climb peaks, like
Dean and I went to a tiki bar for dinner On my last day in Mammoth, I hiked to Dean, not writers looking for absolution.
in Mammoth. I drained my beers. We spoke McLeod Lake. On the far side of the shore, That night in the school lobby, Bob told
about marriage, how I’d longed to raise my Mammoth Crest rose above the water and me about the ritual he and Patricia perform
kids in a mountain town like Mammoth, lodgepole pines like an ivory wall at 11,483 in the absence of answers. Before they go to
as he had, and how that wouldn’t happen feet. Matthew climbed it on July 12, 2013, a bed, they place a candle in a window. I kept
now that I was divorced. The beer kept me few days before he vanished. I found a boul- imagining it as I drove home to New Jersey in
talking. When I drove in from Sacramento der and pulled myself up to take it all in. The the dark. The candle faces west, Bob told me,
that morning, I had pulled over to sleep at a mountains felt like they were pressing on me a waymark to guide their son home.
gas station, and at sunrise, I recognized the for most of the trip, drawing something out
town. My ex-wife and I had passed through like a salve. Maybe it was the altitude. The woman I’d met in the midst of all this
Lee Vining in 2013, celebrating our tenth Flies buzzed in the willow by the water, turmoil stuck with me. She once stood alone
wedding anniversary. We camped at Calav- more than I’d ever seen in one place. The on a street corner in Philly, holding up a sign
eras Big Trees State Park, Yosemite and Lake vibration of a million wings made the hair in support while I walked eighteen miles for
Tahoe. We lay in the Travertine Hot Springs, on my skin hum. My sweat evaporated. My a suicide prevention fundraiser. She never met
not far from Mammoth, both of us staring breathing was slow and deep. A woman stood Anthony, of course, but her father mentioned
off at the brown hills of sagebrush and cheat- in the water with a little boy somewhere off to him in his toast at our late-summer wedding
grass and the snowcapped Sierra peaks beyond my left. He was throwing pebbles and giggles in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in 2019. Antho-
them. I daydreamed about a better life for us bubbled up from him. A breath rushed out of ny’s sister was there, smiling at us.

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 Before I proposed, I had written to him poked out from his half-buttoned shirt. thumping hard against my chest. During
again. “Hey dude, miss you. I think I’m “I’ve been chasing mountains all my life,” one break, we stood in chest-high mountain
getting married again. So much has changed.” he told me. willow, and a coyote trotted through the wild-
Wedding guests were puzzled about why The group would grow to twelve. A hand- flowers below us. You belong here, I thought.
I was going to California in the coming days ful were serious climbers and former world- At dusk, when the two groups convened
and why my wife wasn’t. She was familiar class cyclists, speeding toward their sixties for dinner, I rested against a fallen hemlock.
with Matthew Greene’s story well before with bodies of people half their age. Everyone Ribbons of purple clouds stretched out in the
we married. I didn’t have a new contract to had backcountry experience, besides myself. sky. Some searchers threw sticks to Bear or
write about his disappearance, but I thought Even Bear had a climbing harness. I was there snuck him bits of jerky. Others planned out
I could have one of those “chance encoun- as a journalist, but I yearned to be a set of eyes their next routes. No one had found anything
ters” Bob had mentioned to me years earlier. too, for the Greenes. that day.
I felt mentally and physically ready too, The hike to Minaret Lake felt like climb- A headache pounded against my skull,
unlike before, having lost weight for wedding ing a staircase for five hours. Views of water- and my stomach swirled. I wanted to turn in
photos. My wife knew, perhaps without fully falls and alpine meadows gave me an excuse early without looking suspicious. If Maver-
understanding, that I had to go and ick saw me getting sick, I feared he
gave me her blessing. We agreed to would send me down and have to
honeymoon later. sacrifice a searcher to help me. So I
Peter “Maverick” Agoston had slipped into my tent before sunset
organized his fourth search for and sent my wife a text message: “a
Matthew with buddies from High little nauseous and worried.”
Sierra Topix, a California climbing After hours of squirming in
and outdoors forum he moderated. my sleeping bag, I stepped into the
I had reached out to him in Febru- darkness in long underwear and a
ary of 2019, and he invited me to down jacket. I shuffled toward a
join them around Labor Day that stand of pines about fifty yards from
year. Maverick would pick me up at the tents, hoping I’d get sick quietly.
Mammoth’s small airport. I’d camp I swayed there in the cold, my head
at New Shady Rest again and have still throbbing. Clyde Minaret stood
twelve hours to acclimate. We’d hike like some monster’s ragged tooth,
up to the Minarets and camp along silhouetted against the stars above
Minaret Lake for several days, break- me. At night, the pillars looked elec-
ing off into smaller groups to search trified, like neon black.
the area. Back in my tent, I decided to
Storms forced my flight to play it safe and spend the next day
Mammoth back to Los Angeles. If by the lake while others searched
I caught the next day’s flight, the higher elevations. On Saturday, I’d
searchers would be gone, and I’d hike down to the ranger station and
have to hike to Minaret Lake alone. ride the shuttle back to Mammoth.
I wound up renting a car with two I’d get some tacos, find a shower,
strangers on the plane and we drove then fly home to my family. I’d
315 miles through the night, into probably gotten closer to Matthew
the high desert, to Mammoth. I got than I had in 2017. That would
dropped off at New Shady Rest just after to rest and suck down water. Maverick, the have to be enough, I told myself.
midnight. Maverick helped me pitch my tent leader, moved fast on the trail, but he back-
without waking everyone. He wanted us up tracked past me to stay with the slowest At dawn I boiled water for coffee and freeze-
at 5 a.m. hiker. I was one of the last to arrive in camp. dried eggs and tried to ward off the disap-
“Crazy day for you. Get some sleep,” he I soaked my tired feet in the frigid lake and pointment creeping in. I felt much better, but
said before disappearing back into his tent. fell asleep early while the others were still was still resigned to stay put by the lake. The
The searchers met at the Devils Post- out talking. climbers had left the campsite early and the
pile Ranger Station around dawn. One had The next morning, I joined Maverick searcher sleeping closest to me, Dave Ayers,
driven up from Anaheim and slept in his car. and a half dozen other searchers on a hike came over to chat while I sipped my mug on
Another was seventy-four and battling pros- to Volcanic Pass, just above us at around the hemlock.
tate cancer. One searcher emerged from a 10,500 feet. The more experienced climbers “You should come up with me since
thicket of shrubs and lodgepole pine with a went higher, to tackle the Minarets. I guzzled you’re up early. I’m going up to Cecile Lake.
rust-colored cattle dog named Bear. Flowers water and couldn’t catch my breath, my heart We can get a head start on the others,” he

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Social Media Pakistan 0345-6738217
said, warming his hands with his mouth some rocks seemed as large as compact cars. roads into Mammoth, my eyes followed the
between sentences. I couldn’t keep up, stepping gingerly from one Minarets, miles away now, beyond the shuttle
Cecile Lake sat in a bowl of rock above to another, trying not to peer into the dark window. They felt familiar, not ominous like
us, just below the approach to Clyde Mina- spaces between them. The shifting boulders they had before. The shuttle dropped me off
ret. Getting there would bring me to over made a sound I felt in my spine. I sat down, by the tiki bar I’d visited with Dean years
10,000 feet. The search area Dave had in pulled out the binoculars and kept scanning, earlier. The street was bustling with tourists,
mind included snowfields and talus fields, having edged past my comfort zone. I waited women in wide fedoras and men dressed for
both foreign to me. for Dave, watching him disappear high up golf. I was grimy and sore, not a climber, but
“Well,” I said, looking up toward the trail, into a snowy chute beneath Clyde Mina- somehow different than who I was when I’d
“I felt terrible yesterday and I think I should ret. Things could end so quickly in the Sierra, arrived.
stay by the lake today to play it safe.” I thought. A boulder rolls, a rope breaks on a The shower at an RV park cost a few
Maybe Dave sensed disappointment in vertical wall or you slide into a lake, like the bucks. Afterward, I walked across the street to
my voice. I’d come this far, he said. You’d one below me, and death snatches you in the New Shady Rest Campground. At campsite
regret it. You could always turn back. Maybe breath between heartbeats. 164, I knelt down, leaned my head against the
Dave just didn’t want to go alone. But he was Back at our campsite, I made a video post and closed my eyes for a few minutes.
right, I would regret it. Matthew had urged call to a close friend, someone who’d been a “Are you OK?” a woman asked me.
his classmates to take risks, to live a full life. sounding board for the grief I carried over the She’d wandered over from a nearby camp-
At Anthony’s memorial, long before I’d heard years. I thanked him for being there through site where kids were kicking a soccer ball. I
of Matthew Greene or imagined myself two all this, for the thousandth time. Then I told her about Matthew Greene, the people
miles above sea level, I’d urged mourners to phoned my kids too. searching for him at that very moment up in
do the same. “You wouldn’t believe the places I’ve been the mountains. This is where he last stayed, I
I felt good, physically, for the first time today,” I told them. told her, before he vanished.
in days. I felt I owed some effort to Matthew When I saw Dave, I thanked him for “Was he a friend of yours?” she asked.
and the Greenes, to my wife, my ex-wife and nudging me and wanted to hug him but “No, I didn’t know him,” I said. “But he
our children, for the hours I’d lost thinking didn’t. Later, when everyone returned, I reminded me of a friend.”
about these mountains, for not being present. drank pennyroyal tea plucked from the Anthony didn’t reach out to me in the
And to Anthony and all the times I’d begged meadow beside the campsite. I did whisky days before his suicide. His boss found him
him to keep going. shots from a travel flask, and one searcher on a Monday afternoon and called me. He
Dave and I took the trail up to an over- helped me catch a small trout with a fly rod. was standing in Anthony’s driveway, peering
look above Cecile Lake. I had grown to rely I felt like part of the group, like a searcher, into his black car. Maybe he’s just asleep, he
on my trekking poles, but I had to stow perhaps, for the first and only time. Everyone said, but I knew.
them in my pack. We needed feet and hands recounted their climbs that day, their adven- I last saw Anthony a week earlier, at a
to scramble up the narrow chutes. In some tures from the past. It would be easy to imag- fundraiser where he worked. He was quieter
sections, as I edged my body over a protru- ine Matthew sitting there too, sharing pita than usual that day, but sweeter too. I didn’t
sion of stone, it felt as if the rock was push- bread and peanut butter under the Eastern know he’d stopped taking his medication.
ing me off. I moved upward, slowly. Dave Sierra’s rainbow-sherbet skies. Grief counselors said I couldn’t have done
said it was “Class III climbing,” but I didn’t Maverick told me the group would return, anything to save Anthony. Even now, nine
know what that meant. When we rested on when it could, to search somewhere new. years after his death, some part of me thinks
a flat overlook above the lake, Dave gave me “Just being out here, you understand how they’re wrong.
binoculars and I scanned for something that nature can really hold you and have a draw We hugged when we parted that after-
didn’t look like snow, rock or gnarled vegeta- on your soul. We can relate to that, and that noon, making plans to meet up, and he
tion, any burst of color. relation is something that made me think we held that embrace a second longer than
“There’s something shiny,” I told Dave. “I can help, especially for the family,” he said usual. I still feel him, pressing on me, like
think it’s a balloon.” that night. “It has to be anguish, the constant a mountain.
There was a wet rock reflecting in the sun, wondering—where is he, what happened. If “Love you, bro,” we said to one another.
then a small wire grill, wedged under a boul- we can help with that by climbing here and The flower I took from the Minaret trail
der. Everything looked the same, for miles, getting people together, we will. People are was wilting on my hat. The colors still blazed
like a shifting puzzle of rock and snow. willing to help.” burnt orange but it would never be this
We pushed on, stepping onto a snowfield In the morning, I said my goodbyes and bright, this beautiful, again. So I left it there,
that sloped down into Cecile Lake. The ice hiked down to the shuttle stop alone. I found draping it over the post at Matthew Greene’s
was soft. I inched along, steadying myself with a trampled flower with petals dipped in reds campsite, and said goodbye.
my poles, trying to not look down. “It would and orange on the trail and stuck it in the
[Resources for anyone who is struggling with thoughts
be hard to get out of the water if you fell in,” I brim of my hat, a small reminder to pin to a of suicide or who is concerned about someone who
said to Dave. “You wouldn’t,” he replied. Dave wall, perhaps, or place between the pages of might need help can be found 24/7 by calling or texting
moved upward into a boulderfield where a Sierra guidebook I owned. On the winding the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988.—Ed.]

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 Michigan Ice Fest
th presented by

February 8-12
www.michiganicefest.com

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 LOCAL HERO
CLAUDE GARDIEN on SIMONE BADIER

In the spring of 1970 at Fixin—a limestone cliff overlooking vineyards in Burgundy,

France—I watched a climber calmly overcome a bold runout on a delicate slab. After
lowering off, she said a cheerful hello. We discussed her ascent, and she took an interest
in my climbing as a young beginner. I’d heard about a woman who had completed many
challenging rock routes in the Alps. There were not many women at that time attempting
such climbs on the sharp end. It could only be Simone.

Simone Badier was born in northeast France in 1936. Having lost him, wearing blue. She confirmed that she had not swapped clothing.
her male relatives to war, she grew up among women. Her mother The man sputtered: “To think that I saw a rope party in the Philipp-
took her on road trips through Italy, which gave Simone a taste for Flamm without suspecting that it was a woman leading!” The man
adventure. A diligent student with a formidable work ethic, she was Vittorio Varale, who had written extensively about the “Sesto
earned a doctorate in theoretical nuclear physics and taught at the grado” in the 1930s.
University of Amiens. In the early 1960s she discovered climbing on Simone soon collected ascents over 900 meters long at higher alti-
Fontainebleau’s sandstone boulders. She progressed rapidly, but always tudes: the Croz and Walker Spurs on the Grandes Jorasses’ north face,
insisted that she was not a gifted climber. the Central Pillar of Frêney on Mont Blanc, the American Direct on
In 1966, at age thirty, Simone visited the the Drus and eventually the Matterhorn’s
Dolomites with Daniel Joye. He appreciated exposed north face. In 1973 she led the
her leading because he often went offroute, steep South Face (Harlin-Hemming-Frost-
she later recalled in her memoir, La Dame de Fulton) on the Aiguille du Fou, then among
Pic (2008). They amassed an impressive tick- the most difficult routes in the Western
list: the wandering 800-meter Via Carlesso Alps. And yet difficulty was not Simone’s
on Torre Trieste; the striking corner of the sole motivation. Simone sought out other
Via Livanos on Cima Su Alto; the Brandler- adventures beyond Europe, climbing routes
Hasse on the monolithic Cima Grande di in Yosemite and the Karakoram, explor-
Lavaredo—all within the “Sesto grado” ing spires in the Sahara Desert’s Ahaggar
(Grade VI), then the limit of the UIAA scale. Mountains and venturing up peaks in Peru,
Three years later, Simone published an Cameroon and Mali. “I climb according to
article in La Montagne et Alpinisme, “Sesto my whims,” she later reflected in La Dame de
féminin.” By then, she had led close to 150 Pic. “The practice of climbing in the moun-
routes, most of which were rated V and VI. tains has had a profound effect on me. It is
In the article, she exulted in feeling an innate, not only a matter of sporting effort, which
gymnastic mastery of climbing moves: “How is undoubtedly part of it, but it also requires
I love this impression of walking on the rock, a spiritual commitment that adds a meta-
of arriving at this point of training and technique where you have physical dimension.”
perfect control over the slightest of your movements, where balance In the 1990s, I met Simone again while I was guiding on the Mer
is a matter of millimeters, but where you feel sure of yourself!” de Glace near Chamonix. She had just completed a new route. “You’re
That same year, Simone displayed her phenomenal stamina by a lucky man,” she joked. “Your job is to climb routes that we can only
climbing some of the biggest routes in the Dolomites back-to-back. do during our holidays!”
The day after completing the steep, 700-meter Andrich-Faè on the Simone was never famous, nor did she want to be. She practiced
Punta Civetta, she headed for the strenuous cracks and chimneys of her art as a true amateur—for the love of it. Simone died in Chamo-
the 900-meter Philipp-Flamm dihedral (VI+), which was then among nix on March 18, 2022, discreetly, as she had lived. “It was in the
the most difficult rock climbs in the region. Back at the Tissi hut, they mountains that I learned to love life,” she wrote. “The joys I felt there,
were questioned by a shocked old man: he had been watching them I could not experience anywhere else.”
and spotted the leader in a blue jacket. Now Simone stood before —Translated from French by Natalie Berry

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[Facing Page] Author and mountain guide Claude Gardien. Wilfried Colonna l [This Page]
Simone Badier climbs on the east face of Gerbier in the Vercors Massif, France. “The
world of mountaineering was born from the presence of mountains, their beauty and
mystery,” she wrote in her 2008 memoir, La Dame de Pic. “But the idea of climbing
them is a creation, a dream of the human mind.” Courtesy Claude Gardien

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 O F F B E L AY
BOREDOM CAN BE ILLUMINATING I KRYSTLE WRIGHT

Conjuring a dream and embarking on a journey to create for the I did not have a specific climb in mind when I arrived in Moab
sake of creating is one of my greatest satisfactions. in June. I knew I’d find something among so many iconic sandstone
As per usual, I began to question my sanity as I was wrangling cracks. I stumbled across Seventh Serpent while reading a friend’s
rigid strips of LED lights inside a desert crack outside Moab, Utah, guidebook. The next day I visited Long Canyon and immediately
during a summer heat wave. What the hell am I doing? I wondered. fell in love with the line.
Every time I embark on these projects they tend to be epics. Is it really The hot days reached a high of 103°F during our time there,
worth it? so our opportunities were limited for scouting and rigging. Angela
“Always say yes” was a motto that shaped me when I was a univer- sent Seventh Serpent on the first afternoon and I started setting up
sity student in 2007. Fast-forward to 2019 and I didn’t know how to the lights. Ultimately I used six battery packs attached to six LED
say no. One day I realized I had preplanned twelve months of travel. light strips that were each five meters (about sixteen feet) long. Each
There was little to no room for spontaneity. I couldn’t remember the battery hung in a small drybag from a cam placed in the crack. I was
last time I had indulged in a vision. Creativity requires boredom, a relieved to find that gaffer tape held remarkably well to the stone.
chance to let the mind wander. Growing up in rural Queensland, Only three batteries were hung on the first day before dusk was
Australia, I would fill “boring” days by drawing in my sketch pad, upon us. Not wanting to waste a shooting window, I asked Angela
climbing trees or simply basking in the morning sun, staring off into to try climbing the route while I took close-up photos. It was nearly
nothingness. I started making space for boring moments to enter impossible for her to ascend as she tried to delicately place her hands
my life again, resisting urges to check email and scroll on my phone. in the crack without disturbing the rigging too much.
Last April, I was enjoying the sunrise on my balcony in Australia On the second day, I jumared up the route to fix the lighting
when I felt one of my usual compulsions to go climbing at Coolum and tape and to hang more batteries. Angela finished putting in the
Cave, twenty minutes away from my front door. I’d been dream- lights while I descended back to the car to drive and then hike to
ing up some ideas for photos that simulated lightning, as setting up another crag across the canyon that would offer the perfect view of
lights to create striking images always brings a unique challenge. On Seventh Serpent.
the drive to Coolum I had the vision of illuminating a desert crack Like a flash of lightning, with the click of a shutter I finally found
to look like a lightning bolt. the fleeting satisfaction I’d been yearning for. z

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[Facing Page] Krystle Wright photographs Angela VanWiemeersch on Seventh
Serpent (5.11), Long Canyon, Utah. Wright reflected on her development as an artist
in Alpinist 62: “I wanted to try to see the unconscious levels of the world, the
fragments of hidden emotions and dreams.... [And] to translate these half-glimpsed
imaginings into pictures and words.” Pablo Durana l [This Page, Top Left] LED lights
within Seventh Serpent. Krystle Wright l [This Page, Bottom Left] Krystle Wright. Pablo
Durana l [This Page, Right] Angela VanWiemeersch climbs at dusk. Krystle Wright

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 “I believe there’s a
presence in the void,
in the light and
shadows—and this
presence is the ultimate
medium that shapes
all narratives.”
–Krystle Wright, Alpinist 62

[Photo] Angela VanWiemeersch on

Seventh Serpent (5.11). Krystle Wright

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Photo: Andrew Burr © 2022 Patagonia, Inc.
M O L L Y K A W A H A T A O N C L I M A T E , C L I M B I N G ,
A N D T H E F I G H T F O R S Y S T E M I C C H A N G E

THE

SCALE
OF

HOPE
PATAGONIA presents a LIARS & THIEVES! production a film by JOSH “BONES” MURPHY music by WILLIAM RYAN FRITCH edited by
COLLIN KRINER directors of photography AUGUST THURMER and MIKEY SCHAEFER executive producers ALEX LOWTHER, MONIKA
MCCLURE, JUSTIN ROTH produced by LAURA WAGNER, JOSH “BONES” MURPHY

patagonia.com/thescaleofhope

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Social Media Pakistan 0345-6738217