Friday, July 27, 2001
Mark Oveson asked me if I’d drop a car at the Monarch Lake trailhead and, true to form, he had a sales pitch for me. Mark is a master at motivating me to do certain things. He knows how I think and he presents the idea in the best possible light. Earlier I had missed out on a cool adventure where Mark, Steve, and Homie had climbed Shoshoni, descended improbably to the west and climbed the remote Fair Glacier. This is one of Roach’s “classic” routes and I wanted to climb it, but it is very remote and now most of my climbing partners had already done it. Mark’s plan was for me to drop a car on the west side of the Divide and then do the long approach to the Fair Glacier, climb it, and descend the much shorter and easier way down the east side to Brainard Lake. The next day Mark planned to hike the opposite direction over Pawnee Pass with his wife and his parents. I’d pick up their car and they’d pick up mine. I had already planned to go camping at Brainard Lake Friday night, so after getting Friday off, I was set. I tried in vain to secure a partner for this adventure but the combination of either having done the route and having to take Friday off left me a soloist.
Originally I had planned to start the hike at 6 a.m. so that I could be done with the high, exposed climbing before afternoon storms. But with the late arrival of the family and not being organized, I moved things back and hoped to start by 7:30 a.m. As usual, with no one to force me to keep my schedule, things slipped. I didn’t leave the house until 5:30 a.m. and with a gas stop and some construction traffic on Berthoud Pass (they are building huge retaining walls on this pass and it looks like they might be widening it to more lanes for at least some of its length), I didn’t get over to the Monarch Lake trailhead (8,340) until 8 a.m.
I had just purchased a Camelback H.A.W.G. pack and I can highly recommend it. This pack has lots of space, is very comfortable, and boasts a number of convenient pockets. In it I carried a shell, tights, long sleeve shirt, crampons, food, 80 ounces of Gatorade, a topo map, the guidebook, and my MP3 player. I strapped an ice axe on the back of the pack. I wore shorts, a short-sleeved capilene shirt, and running shoes. The shoes I wore are the Adidas Buzz with a small, built-in gaitor. These shoes are my new favorites for mountain adventures. Judge for yourself after reading this report.
I started at 8:05 and pretty much ran the entire way to Crater Lake. This distance of about 8 miles and 2,000 vertical feet took me exactly two hours. Lone Eagle Peak’s north face towers majestically over Crater Lake and I was glad I wouldn’t be soloing that face, but traversing around behind it. I was feeling quite good at this point and hiked up steep talus above the lake to the base of Lone Eagle’s north face. Besides passing a group of boys and some adult companions on their way out from Crater Lake, I didn’t see a single soul for nine hours. After reaching the base of the north face, I continued traversing east and south into the impressive and intimidating Lone Eagle cirque. Steep rock walls surrounded me on three sides, split only by the icy headwall of the Fair Glacier at the far end. The glacier was now adorned with a couple of large patches of ice – taking up almost the entire lower portion and half of the upper portion. The glacier was cleaved in two by a bergschrund cutting across it at roughly half height. I already had my doubts about ascending it, but my first objective was to climb the Solo Flight route (4th class) on Lone Eagle Peak (11,920+). This is also a “Classic” and Mark and I had previously downclimbed the upper portion of it when we climbed the North Face of Lone Eagle Peak.
The Ascent of Rum Doodle (by W. El Bowman) is a hilarious parody on expedition tomes and I highly recommend, especially if one has read a few books about Himalayan expeditions. In fact, I consider reading at least two of these predictable Himalayan books as a prerequisite to reading Rum Doodle – it will make it much more hilarious. But why mention this book? In it, the team attempts to climb Rum Doodle, the highest mountain on earth at 40,000 ½ feet tall, but, in fact, they screw up and instead climb the sister peak, North Doodle, which is only 35,000 feet tall. The relevance of this tale will soon be evident.
I had followed some cairns as I made my rising traverse from the base of Lone Eagle’s North Face to the east side. The going was class 2 and up either solid talus or grassy slopes. Eventually, I could look down on Triangle Lake. I continued up and southwards on a rising traverse. Eventually, I didn’t see any more cairns. I was a bit surprised, but not too concerned. The climbing became steeper – 3rd class and then some 4th class. Now I was climbing straight up the face toward a notch in the ridge. From there I expected to recognize the rest of the route as I had previously descended that section when Mark and I did the Mohling Traverse.
At the notch I didn’t recognize things at all. I was a bit confused, but I decided to continue northwards toward the summit. I did some low 5th class moves here and had to carefully check the rock for stability. I was starting to get quite concerned when I topped out and could see, far to the north and hundreds of feet below me, the actual summit of Lone Eagle Peak. I had climbed a gendarme called Limbo (12,400).
I was extremely crestfallen and almost gave up the rest of my plans right there. How could I have been so dumb? What was I to do now? I was a bit nervous all day about this committing adventure and with the Fair Glacier sporting such a large ice patch, I was looking for an excuse to retreat and just hike the Pawnee Pass trail over the Divide. It was now so late in the day that I ran a considerable risk of hitting an afternoon thunderstorm. Stress and indecision engulfed me.
I didn’t want to reverse the climbing I had done, but I knew I could traverse from Limbo to the summit of Lone Eagle Peak since I had gone the opposite direction when I did the Mohling Traverse. I descended steep, familiar terrain to the north and on the east side of the ridge. I think the actual traverse then crosses to the west side and descends a 5th class ramp. I didn’t want to do that and continued down to the east a considerable distance, but on easy ground until I intersected the well-cairned Solo Flight route. I hesitated once again. Assuming I was just going to hike over Pawnee Pass, I figured I had better at least complete one of the routes I came for. I turned uphill and followed the easy Solo Flight route up to the ridge. To this point on the route, it is merely hiking. No climbing at all. But once on the ridge things get interesting and thankfully familiar. This route is 4th class only while downclimbing a steep section via a number of vertical steps. Once down this cliff more traversing and a little ascending got me to the final, narrow gang plank that led to the very summit of the peak. Oddly enough the summit is the low point of this fin of rock, though also the most inaccessible and exposed. I topped out at 12:15 p.m.
After descending back down nearly to Triangle Lake, I had a decision to make. The clouds had already built up, but they weren’t that dark – not pure white, but gray. Things change so fast in the mountains, but I decided to at least go test the ice on the Fair Glacier, assuring myself that if things didn’t seem solid and safe, that I would just turn around and hike back to the Pawnee Pass trail. I was anxious to try out a secret weapon that I had purchased the day before.
On my previous attempt, also solo, to climb the Fair Glacier, I was turned back by the scary descent from Shoshoni into the Lone Eagle Cirque. On that day, I tried to go light and fast, but I still had to carry an ice axe, crampons, helmet, food, water, and extra clothes, but by far the worst part of the load was carrying my mountain boots. Yes, I could have worn the boots and that’s what Steve and Homie did when they completed this same trip a few weeks earlier, but I dislike hiking in my mountain boots – probably because I’ve done so much trail running in past years. But boots take up such a large percentage of my pack and are considerably heavy – even a light leather boot. With such a load, running was out of the question and on that day I hiked, lamenting the fact that there wasn’t a satisfactory solution.
Two weeks after this outing, I read Clyde Soles review of an “approach” crampon in the latest Rock & Ice magazine. Specifically, Clyde said that these crampons could go on a running shoe! I was extremely excited by this. I own and had used instep crampons before and was completely dissatisfied with them. Instep crampons do not work on soft shoes, such as running shoes, as under even a trivial amount of force, they will roll off the bottom of the shoe and around to the top. The picture of these approach crampons, made by Kahoola, looked much more encouraging, as they were full length, ten-point (no front points) crampons. I called around to the local mountaineering shops and the only store to carry them was, not surprisingly, Neptune Mountaineering. The day before my outing, on Thursday, I went down and bought a pair.
I strapped on my approach crampons, turned up the tunes on MP3 player, and pounded up the glacier in a mere 35 minutes. I skirted the ice fields for the most part and passed the expanding bergschrund directly in the middle of the ice field – where the icefield was still intact.
At the top of the ice field there is an extremely unpleasant, very loose, talus gully that leads up to the ridge in about 300 vertical feet. Once above this, I moved easily across solid talus to the ridge connecting Apache with Navajo. Wearing only running shoes, I wasn’t excited about descending the Queen’s Way snow couloir – the standard descent off of Apache. I also wanted to bag another of the Roach classics. Hence, I traversed the ridge towards Navajo, passing the rock spire known as Dicker’s Peck along the way. I ascended the 4th class West Chimney route to the summit of Navajo (13,409), arriving at 2:55 p.m.
After resting and admiring the view for five minutes, I started down. I had a long way to go and wanted to be down in two hours to greet my family. I descended the fun 3rd class east off of Navajo’s summit and along the Niwot ridge, looking for the “Airplane Gully” – yet another Roach Classic. Mark told me I wanted the second gully leading down to the north off the ridge. It was crucial to find the correct one as it is the only one that doesn’t cliff out. Mark’s beta worked great and soon I had positive confirmation when I passed the wreckage of a large airplane.
I descended the loose and rather unpleasant Airplane Gully down into the basin below and then picked my way across fun talus and grassy tundra to the top of some waterfalls and then down ledges and slopes and eventually over to a climber’s trail. This trail led me down to Lake Isabelle and the main trail. I hiked most of the way out, but ran here and there and then constantly for the last 15 minutes.
I hit the Long Lake Trailhead at 4:59:55. Tired from my long adventure, I immediately switched from running to hiking and headed down the road towards Brainard Lake and the campground where my family should be waiting. Not five minutes had passed before the first car came by and I eagerly stuck out my thumb. They stopped, cleared some stuff from the backseat and in I hopped – only to instantly get cramps in both thighs. I hadn’t sat down, except to briefly don and doff crampons, in nine hours and the cramped confines of the backseat were enough to trigger the cramps. I was a bit dehydrated, having done the entire adventure – about twenty miles, 7,000 vertical feet – with only 80 ounces of Gatorade. These nice folks drove me directly to our campsite and I was pleased to see Sheri’s car in the site. In fact, Sheri was still in the car. She had just pulled up! What timing!
We spent the rest of the day relaxing, skipping rocks on Brainard Lake, eating, making a campfire and roasting marshmallows. The boys had their own tent and really enjoyed their first camping trip.
Saturday, July 28
We slept in as late as we could and then got up for breakfast. Afterwards I inflated my new Sevylor Kayak with a lame, automatic pump, which didn’t get the kayak to the right pressure. Nonetheless we had fun paddling around Brainard and Long Lakes. Derek and I herded a mother duck and ten ducklings along Long Lake so that Sheri and Daniel could view them from shore. They were so cute. Daniel got a number of butterflies with his hands and that was the highlight of the trip for me.
Around 1 p.m., after lunch, we packed up and headed for home. I needed more rest for a huge day was planned on Sunday. About 8 p.m. Mark brought my car back. They had spent 10 hours hiking over the Divide in perfect weather and had a grand time.
Sunday, July 29
Sheri prodded me awake at 2 a.m. – an insane time to wake up. I was out the door by 2:15 a.m. and picking up Hardly at 2:30 a.m. I was amazed that, upon arriving at the Longs Peak Trailhead, we were the absolute last car in the parking lot and it was only 3:30 in the morning! Crazy!
I set the pace to Chasm Lake and here we encountered three girls coming towards us. It was curious to see someone coming this way so earlier in the morning. I asked them if they had already summitted (and was quite curious what route they did that would bring them back this way) and they responded that they had planned to climb the Keyhole route, but took a wrong turn at the Chasm Cut-off! What a huge mistake. To their great credit, I found out later that they backtracked and made the summit via the Keyhole. I found this out by the next group of climbers we passed.
Once we got to Chasm Lake and it became light enough to see, we noticed a group of four climbers ahead of us. Now not everyone going this way is climbing the Casual Route, but it is a popular route. As it turns out this next group wasn’t even heading for the Diamond, but doing Stettner’s Ledges to Kieners Route – a great combination that I had previously done with the Trashman. I found out later that one of these climbers was an acquaintance of mine: Brad Brandewie, who’d send me some unrelated email on Monday and mention that he did this route. He told me the girls made the summit.
Hardly took the lead at this point and just hammered up to the base of the wall. Whenever anyone asked us where we were headed we’d respond, “Spearhead!” Two guys bivying at the cave by Chasm Lake just laughed at this and said, “No, really, where are you headed.” When we told them it was Spearhead via the Diamond they were psyched, “Right on!” was their response.
At the snowfield at the foot of the wall, I stopped to gear up, while Hardly climbed up the snow to a rock ledge to switch shoes. I saw a guy just below me and he was alone and obviously not climbing. I asked, “What are you doing up here so early?” It turns out it was Mike Caldwell – Tommy’s dad and he had helped carry gear into the wall for Tommy and Beth Rodden. They were up working “The Honeymoon is Over”, an aid line that had yet to be freed. Mike said Tommy had been up there once before and had freed it through 5.13c so far. I later learned that Tommy did free the entire route, so 5.13 has finally come to the Diamond. This line follows D1 for the first two pitches and then goes independently to the top via a crack system just to the right. Roger Briggs replied to my email about this event:
“My good friend Eric Doub put the route up and he and I did the only previous ascent. I did it about 40% free, but was sure someone of Tommy's caliber could do it all free. It's a brilliant line. Tommy told Eric that he was the tiredest he's ever been when he finished.”
We were on Broadway at 7 a.m. after soloing the North Chimney route (5.5) for the fourth time and for the second time after I swore I’d never do it again. This time, however, things felt very solid, probably because I was carrying a very light pack. While Hardly had geared and gone on ahead, and I should have also, I climbed up this route with Steve Levin and his partner Matt. They were headed for King of Swords (5.12a) on the overhanging right side of the Diamond.
The weather was perfect and the rock looked dry and brilliant. Looking up from Broadway the Diamond appears so high and so steep. It seems much higher than 900 feet. It looks almost El Cap-like in dimensions, yet the Captain is well over three times as tall. The climbing on the Diamond, though, is considerably steeper than on the El Cap routes that I’ve done (Nose, Salathé, East Buttress, and West Face) and because of this angle even the 5.8 and 5.9 pitches are continuous, tiring, and burly.
There were three parties ahead of us on the Casual Route (8 pitches, 5.10a). A team of two slow climbers was first, then Caldwell and Rodden, but they were soon out of the way. The problem was the third party. They hadn’t even started yet, having belayed all of the North Chimney, and were clearly much slower than we were. Hardly tried to reason with Mike, but he apparently wasn’t even able to discuss it reasonably. Mike started up the 4th class pitch and slipped off once, then took 20 minutes to lead this pitch. We tried talking to Michele, Mike’s partner, about passing but she just said, “Can we just drop it?” People that get to a route first do have priority and can either let people pass or not, but it doesn’t seem right to force another team to lose hours while letting them pass would only cost the slow team a matter of minutes.
We sat down in disgust and pondered our options while eating some food. If we followed these slow-pokes up the route, it would be all we got down today. I’d later found out from Brad that these two were yelling commands back and forth and still ascending at 5 p.m. We only had one rope and even descending from Broadway would be a challenge. I thought about climbing up to Chasm View via the Horbein Crack. It’s a good thing we didn’t take this option as I found out later that the last pitch involves 50+ feet of a 5-6” crack. We thought about doing Pervertical Sanctuary (7 pitches, 5.11a), but didn’t have a single #4 cam with us and thought it was too hard for us with such a slim rack. The Yellow Wall (5.11a) had a party on it also and was unfamiliar to us both. It really came down to this: did we want to climb the Diamond or did we want to try and link formations?
We had both climbed the Casual Route before and hence just repeating that route wasn’t sufficient for us. We decided to traverse Broadway to Kiener’s Route (5.4) and use that to ascend Longs. We agreed to tack on the Petit Grepon after Spearhead to make up for the loss of the Diamond. Looking across Broadway towards Kiener’s things looked scary and dangerous. A steep, loose slope had to be ascended before we’d be able to traverse further. This is the exact location where local superstar Cameron Tague slipped and fell a thousand feet down the wall below. Yet, we couldn’t rope this section. The whole slope was loose and protection non-existent. We soloed, but caution and not speed was uppermost in our minds.
The slope wasn’t as bad as it looked. It was just as loose as it looked, but not as steep. Once above the initial loose slope, we moved horizontally over to the start of Kiener’s route, where we found four climbers getting ready to start up. This wasn’t Brad’s team, but another team that had climbed Lamb’s Slide. Dang, this face is getting popular… We said “Hello”, as we continued soloing up the route.
Once above the steep lower section, we elected to climb directly up along side the Notch Couloir. This seemed much more aesthetic than to follow the regular Kiener’s route up the loose, 3rd class ramps that hug the Diamond. I also wanted to check out the climbing from the top of the Notch to the summit, as Homie and Mark had done this earlier in the year. The climbing turned out to be solid and very enjoyable. It was mostly 4th class with maybe some easy 5th class moves occasionally. We topped Longs at 8:50 a.m.
Descended the Trough towards Spearhead, hiked up to a big flat rock and dumped all our gear save a small rack and a rope. We brought no food or water with us. We simul-climbed the North Ridge – an eight-pitch route – as two pitches, passing three parties along the way, including Judy and the two Indians (Neeraj and a visiting colleague of Hardly’s). As we left our gear cache they were halfway up the route. When we returned to our cache they were three-quarters of the way up the route; as we were nearing the Glacier Gorge parking lot, they summitted Spearhead.
We did the roundtrip from our cache in an hour and 45 minutes, climbing the route in about an hour. Unfortunately an accident occurred on the descent. As with most mountaineering accidents, a series of things had to go wrong for something bad to occur. First, we were pushing for speed and hence a bit more careless than usual. Second, Hardly dislodged a rather large rock. Third, I happened to be in the fall zone at the time. Fourth, when I looked up the 3rd class slope to locate the rock and dodge it, I was completely blinded by the sun. Fifth, in moving at an extremely frantic pace, across sharp rock, in an effort to get out of the way of serious injury and maybe death, I sliced open the heel of the left hand.
Immediately, I knew it wasn’t just a scratch. The two-inch gash was at least a quarter inch deep and bled profusely and started to throb. Hardly asked if I was okay and I said no. I put immediately pressure on the wound in an effort to stop the bleeding and the pain. In a flash Hardly was at my side. Like a magician, he produced a paper napkin from his pocket (what was this doing there?) and I pressed it against my wound. Hardly was wearing pants where the bottom half of the legs detach to convert into shorts. In an instant, he stripped off one leg and had it tied around my hand before I knew what was happening. He insisted upon carrying the gear down as we continued the descent. Truth be told, I don’t even know the size of the rock I was trying to avoid. I just heard Hardly yelling rock with urgency and heard a big crashing sound. I’d like to say it was a car-sized block and I was lucky to get away with a little cut, but I don’t know that.
Back at pack cache, my hand was feeling a lot better and we thought briefly about continuing our adventure and heading over to climb the Petit Grepon. Another look at the wound on my hand convinced us otherwise. It would definitely need stitches. We relaxed on the rock and drank the last of our water. This was a relatively minor accident and maybe it is overly dramatic to bring up such things, but I’ll take this opportunity once again to praise Hardly. There is no better climbing partner. When things go bad, and this was nothing, there is no better person to have with you. He will do whatever is necessary; shoulder any burden; solve any problem. I’ve seen it many times. He is so strong, so solid, and so tough, that there is virtually no chance that I’ll ever be able to return the favors he has done for me in the mountains.
Thinking myself fit and fast in the mountains, I struggled and failed to keep up with Hardly the entire day. He was on Broadway in time to do the Casual Route. I lagged behind and because of that we didn’t climb the Diamond. He led the way up Kieners and even gave me his climbing shoes when mine started to hurt. He had sticky rubber approach shoes for the rest of the ascent. We did the same in climbing Spearhead. He blazed down the Trough at high speed and I fell far behind. Whenever I’ve done big, long days with Hardly, I’m the anchor. Now he’s training for a marathon with his soon-to-be-wife Judy. The gap will only grow wider. (When Opie read this last line he sent me this response: “Come over to the dark side, Luke! Have a doughnut!” Yes, this is quite tempting. Keeping up with Hardly is too difficult.)
We got back to the Glacier Gorge trailhead and drove Judy’s car back to the Longs Peak trailhead to pick up my car. While Hardly headed back to meet Judy and his friends, I headed home and then to the hospital. After three painful shots to numb my hand, they scrubbed and stitched my wound. Nine stitches later, I was told there’d be no climbing for two weeks as I’d rip the wound open again if I did. Of course that is unacceptable as Mark Hudon will be in town in 11 days and I’ll be climbing with him and, in fact, we’ll be heading back to the Diamond. Only this time we’ll go even earlier!