Falling for Fall

So I dropped my camera on the Sherpa Peak climb and now I am piddling with a friend's basic camera trying to get a feel. I understand more than ever now how important the right tools are to the artist. Here are a few I've snapped recently (and one from my creative girlfriend):

Battle with the Mind

After chasing Nick at a blistering pace for 4 miles we left the trail abruptly and started the cross-country “climbers trail” section. It was now that I was noticing the sting of the frigid air on my sweaty skin. Keeping one’s self warm yet dry while being highly active is one of the hardest challenges of surviving extreme environments. Forest gives way to sloping boulder fields and scree slopes and day turns to night sprinkled with millions of visible stars. It is here under a monstrous boulder we lay our heads and it is here we enjoy a toasty fire. What a pleasure it is to warm fingers and toes for the cold rock we’ll endure later!

Next light finds us scrambling up a notch to gain the “crest” of the ridge. A running belay is all we need for the next couple hours as we pick and weave our two man team to the crux pitches of the climb. They say first impressions are the most important and that remains true in the mountains. What we saw sent a sharp tingle down my spine. From this point on, falling off would mean falling a thousand feet bouncing and then falling a thousand more onto steep sloping glacier ice. We studied what we could see, munched pemmican bars and checked our time. Once we continue on, we are committed, there would not be enough gear to rappel the route. The only way off this rocky massif would be up and over.

A rappel down to the thinnest ridge crest I have ever climbed and after a balancing traverse Nick took the first lead with style and renewed confidence. Reaching this point in the climb had coincided with us being so directly under this north face that we no longer had what little sun we had relished in before. A benefit of cold numb hands is that on this sharp granite you can’t feel the pains of jamming fists and fingers in cracks. It is hardly a benefit though because you also are left to guess what you are holding and on the drive home, your hands feel like fresh ground beef.

The rest of the climb was defined by big moves made more complicated by our packs. We topped out into the welcoming sunlight much later than we expected. On top is a precariously balanced boulder about 30 feet high. After re-fueling and pondering this oddity of nature, a couple short rappels down the opposite side dropped us into a gully . Here we began the long traverse across to a pass that would take us back down to our warm sleeping bags. This is also where we began to realize just how much more effort the descent required than the climb itself. Neither of us remembered our guide book mentioning the strenuous horizontal crossing of a steep mountainside scattered in vertical rock bands for half of a mile. But then that's why this became adventure and made it onto this blog! …to be continued...