Excerpts from "High Infatuation: A Climber’s Guide to Love and Gravity"

From “Running Around”

This mirror inside me shows…
I can’t say what, but I can’t not know.

I run from body. I run from spirit.
I do not belong anywhere.
—Rumi

I wonder sometimes why climbers embrace climbing so ecstatically, with a passion that feels spiritual, even religious. For years, I never questioned this deep love. I simply realized that I had been looking for something for a long time and had somehow miraculously found it before I even knew it was missing. Now when I consider the mainstream, western culture that produced me, I see that there is something seriously missing for a lot of people. An altered experience of “reality” is fundamental to a spiritual world view. Perhaps that is what climbers glimpse, sometimes in the mountains, sometimes when reaching deep within to push past physical limits. Many of us have never felt it before, and we will give anything to get closer to it in the only way we know how.

I often hear people call climbing a selfish, egocentric pursuit. I consider this idea a lot. On the surface, as a sport or activity, this may be true. But for most soul climbers, it has never been merely about athletics. Climbing has shown me how to look beyond myself and my own desires. It has taught me how to be a part of a community, rather than living in a narrow world of my own making. I have learned, painfully, how to accept help from others. Physically and intellectually, climbing has tugged me into the larger world, beyond my own culture and comfort zone. And above all, climbing has shown me the existence of forces beyond the seen world. It has taught me to ponder the meaning of reality. It has shown me that I am small.

 

From “Falling”

I’m tired from the drive to Wyoming. The headlights flick over sagebrush and mannequin the deer rimming the road. I try to see the landscape that I remember as beautiful, but the moon is too new, and I’ve only been here once before. My climbing partner and I jump a little as the car bumps onto the bridge over the canyon. It’s a wild looking bridge, made to fit this strangely narrow canyon, only about a hundred feet wide and a hundred feet deep. I remember how the water is pinched between the walls. It is dammed and sluggish, and it barely covers the shadowy boulders on the bottom.

Climbing up the canyon walls can be intimidating. Once we slide down our ropes to a ledge above the water, up the rock is the only way out. The devious nature of the pink granite keeps most climbers away, leaving Fremont Canyon oddly isolated. Often the only sound I hear as I climb up the walls is my own tight breathing and the echoed plops of stones that Mike tosses into the still water.

The ribbed surface of the bridge vibrates the car and jiggles us into speech. “Do you know about those two girls that got thrown off the bridge?” Mike asks. The car gives a final bump off the metal and onto the dirt road. I spin around, groping for a view past the scaffolded sides of the small bridge, but the darkness makes it appear to float in the air.

“What? What are you talking about? Someone threw people off that? My God, you’d die for sure. That’s horrible Did they die?”

“One did,” he says. Behind us the bridge spirals away into the darkness.

For the next week, the girls are all I can think about. Lowering down ropes to start our climbs, I glance furtively at the water, trying to calculate depth. I look at the varying greens of boulders underneath and estimate their distance below the water’s surface. When I fall climbing, ten, twenty feet before the rope catches me, I try to imagine what it would be like to keep going. Mike gets tired of repeating the vague details he knows from hearsay and starts to look uncomfortable with the subject. All week, the canyon stays deserted; the stillness of this place feels laced with something.

 

From “Maybe the Swiss Were Right”

After a month of rain, wind, snow, sleet and numerous other forms of precipitation I never knew existed, I was starting to get skeptical of Charlie’s insistence that the weather ever got good in Patagonia. Climbing is believing, and to date, I’d stood on only one summit and descended in a storm.

“Are you going to come back?” I asked another first-timer as he packed his soggy tent.

“I’m sure the routes are great here, but it doesn’t do you much good if the weather’s always too bad to climb them,” he said dejectedly.

Over the next month of continuous storms, I learned the names and behaviors of eight different kinds of clouds. I listened to tales of the now legendary (at least in the base camp) Ten Splitter Days of early December, which Charlie and I arrived just in time to miss. And I began to take a desperate interest in the weather theories that were swirling around Campo Bridwell.

Charlie had been sticking to the calendar method all along. He claimed that late January had to show better weather—because it always did—and he was even looking forward to specific summit days in February. Charlie also had a sub-theory about flight patterns. He was convinced that commercial pilots would fly over the Fitzroy range in stable weather.

Two other Americans showed up and had us searching for low-flying condors as well, supposedly another sure sign of good weather. With days upon days of free time to kill, the American flight theories took discouragingly little time to research—we usually couldn’t even see the sky.

The two Swiss climbers sharing the hut with us were firm disciples of the barometer. Until their altimeter-barometers showed high pressure, they weren’t budging a single meter. Charlie made no effort to disguise his scorn for what he called Altimeter Paralysis.

“Barometers only tell you what the weather’s doing right now,” he’d say disdainfully. “Besides, if the barometer says it’s good and you’re still down at basecamp, you’re already too late.”

I agreed with Charlie, and we did manage to climb a couple more routes. But the most impressive result of our philosophy was an intensely intimate knowledge of the route across the glacier to our high bivy. We also provided endless entertainment for the Swiss, who were laughing more or less openly at our tendency to rush up to our bivy at the drop of a sunbeam. They would look up from their tea when we’d straggle into the hut, drenched to the skin from another lost gamble across the glacier. Without a word, they’d glance significantly at their altimeters and shake their heads.

From “Deep Cold”

In two days, we are packed and loaded. Fortunately I have brought a decent supply of dehydrated wall food, but we decide to take a box of the chili just in case. We haul our heavy bags out to the front yard, where they sit on the snow next to crude-looking wooden sleds, “kamotiks.” Jushua hefts the bags up as though they are full of cotton candy and lashes them down. I have packed all the warm clothes I own for this trip, and I’m already wearing them all. I’m starting to think I’m going to freeze. Russ has warned me that the worst part of the trip is leaving the indoors and sitting for days in the open kamotiks. This is really it. Tonight we will be sleeping on the ice, and leaving the last bit of civilization far behind. I’m wearing my plastic double boots with three pairs of socks, and my feet are cold already.

Jushua looks at me stomping my feet, and surprises me by saying, “You cold? Those clothes are no good in the Arctic.”

This is not very good news, as I am wearing the most high-tech nylon and down there is. Jushua drops the cord he is tying onto the kamotik and disappears. He comes back holding a pair of wellington boots, snowpants that have been hand-sewn with a sealskin outer layer, and a green cloth jacket. I am puzzled by the jacket at first. It looks like something I remember from Chilly Willy the Penguin cartoons, and I can’t figure out how to get it on. It is also handmade, but has no zippers or fasteners, with a second inside layer of thick wool felt. Eventually I realize that I have to pull the whole thing over my head. It’s work to squeeze my head through the neckhole, and the hood hugs my face tightly with a tickly fur trim.

“Dog fur,” Jushua says. “Doesn’t let the snow in.”

Once I am bundled into the Inuit clothes, I realize he is absolutely right. I have immediately become warm, for the first time since we got here. Too bad I can hardly move, or these would be great for climbing.

My satisfaction fades instantly when I notice I have to pee. I have three pairs of pants under the sealskin bibs, and three layers under my down jacket and the green pullover. This is going to be an epic. I have just discovered the interesting fact that holding my pee makes me colder, and isn’t an option here. Slightly traumatized, I struggle with my clothes until I peel down enough to make it happen. The whole battle takes at least ten minutes. My mind flicks to the weeks ahead, wondering how I will ever manage to perform this task day after day.

Jushua seems like a different man, now that we are loaded and ready to roll. He sits on his snowmobile looking undeniably bad-ass, like a cross between a cowboy and a Harley rider. Although he scoffed at my synthetic clothes, he is wearing a huge expedition parka that a climbing team gave him, along with massive gauntleted gloves and a hat with earflaps. Leaving the town of Clyde, flying over the ice into the Arctic, Jushua exudes the vigorous serenity of an alpha entering his territory.

I have to remind myself how excited I am to be here throughout the next two days of torturous open-air travel. In the twentieth century, dogs are passé, although the kamotiks haven’t changed. With no shock absorption or wind protection, they bounce mercilessly and redefine any previous concepts of cold.

Jushua and his two friends are tireless, and they never get cold. But they stop incessantly for skidoo breakdowns and tea breaks. The first time a snowmobile conks out, I am anxious. What will we do if no one can fix it? Jushua and his two friends stand in front of the open hood, drinking tea and examining the inner workings. After a while, Jushua reaches in and jiggles something. On the next try, the skidoo roars to life. This seems to be a common occurrence, and no one looks too concerned.

Jushua is entertained by my constant questions about polar bears. He tells stories about fighting bears with his bare hands, and surviving. He says it’s all about facing the bear down and feinting in the right direction, in the end actually diving towards the bear and baffling it. I believe him. I wonder if I could ever manage to survive if a bear comes after me. Russ tells me that even if you shoot a bear, it’s so full of fat and muscle, that it’s likely to kill you first. They sound terrifying, and I worry about camping on the ice when we reach our destination. On one tea break Jushua unhooks the kamotik from his snowmobile and suddenly tosses me on the back. We go careening far out over the white plateau until I see a cream-colored polar bear running next to us, at almost the same pace as the machine. I am in awe, and try not to wonder when we had the last skidoo breakdown. “A small one,” he shouts over the roar of the skidoo, “female.” Jesus. If that’s a small one, I don’t want to see a big one. Jushua chases the bear for several minutes, and then opens the throttle and speeds away. I am deeply impressed and instantly stop speculating about how to survive a polar bear attack. One look has shown me that if a polar bear wants to eat me, it will, and there’s no point worrying about it. Russ is green with envy when we rejoin the crew. “This is my third time here, and I’ve never gotten to see a polar bear,” he says.
“Well, I have to say, I hope you don’t get to. I could be fine not seeing another one.”

I am impressed by the Inuits’ blend of stoicism and rowdy humor. Jushua shoots a seal and drags it to the kamotik. I look at it, as round and fat as a giant furry egg, with a rather fierce-looking set of dog-like teeth. Jushua kicks it, apparently for the sole purpose of making blood gush from the bullet holes. He looks at my expression and laughs.

“I don’t hear no laughing, I only hear crying!” he sings. He seems to get a huge kick out of saying that to us, especially when we are looking particularly hypothermic or wretched.

 

From “Four Thousand Pullups”

Mark Wellman pioneered paraplegic climbing ten years ago when he climbed El Cap, and it is by no means a systemized type of climbing. My friend Timmy had let me tag along on his brother Sean O’Neill’s paraplegic ascent of Castleton Tower the year before, to help out and learn a few things along with them, but neither Russ nor Beth nor I had ever climbed in this style. At a certain point, you just have to start and see what happens.

As we climb, we discover that paraplegic climbing is all about creativity and unexpected glitches. For Russ and me, this El Cap trade route is turning out to be the most technical and demanding wall that either of us have ever been on. Everything has to be done right, with no shortcuts, and in a much more controlled manner than we would normally use. We have to rethink our rope management minutely, and rig things to make sure Beth doesn’t get stopped by any sort of gear cluster.

We quickly learn that it is not okay for Beth to scrape against the wall on less steep pitches, and we eventually get smart enough to just pull her rope out from the wall and use our bodies as sawhorses to make it hang free while she ascends. Russ and I take turns running extra trips up and down the rope, so that Beth leaves her portaledge to start jugging and then has it waiting for her at the next anchor. It’s crucial to make sure she is never hanging in her harness for too long, as that could cause damaging pressure points on her legs. Differences in injury levels that are aren’t obvious to an outside observer make major differences in techniques and potential problems for a paraplegic climber. Beth has a very high level of injury, with only one functioning abdominal muscle. This alone adds extra effort for her on the wall, as she needs to pull and hold herself upright all the time on the portaledge. She also doesn’t have much circulation in her legs, so she is more susceptible to injury.

Beth’s harness was custom-sewn for her by friends in Moab, and she diligently practiced her jumar system on ski lift towers at home in Breckenridge before driving her hand-operated VW van out to the Valley. She has nicknamed her harness, essentially a haulbag sliced in half lengthwise, the “leg burrito.” She wears extra wide leg loops inside it, along with a regular waist harness and a chest harness. To climb a rope, she pushes up her top jumar with a short pullup bar attached to it, does a pullup, and brings up the bottom jumar attached to her harness. When things are going right, she has an efficient rocking motion, leg burrito straight in front of her, gracefully bobbing through the air. On the Zodiac, we figure she will do about four thousand pull ups. This might sound like an impossible task, if you didn’t know Beth.

 

Excerpts from "High Infatuation: A Climber’s Guide to Love and Gravity"