I'll Never Come Back

I first tried climbing Ingalls Peak in May of 2018 with my childhood friend Jeremy. 

We’d settled on taking a crack at the South Face, the standard route up the mountain. It’s an easy affair: four short pitches of low fifth-class lead to the final summit scramble. Truth be told, it’s not the most exciting climb. In fact, it hadn’t even been our first choice that day.  

We’d arrived in Leavenworth the previous evening with hopes of hiking up to Colchuck lake and spending a couple days lounging by the lake and bagging Colchuck Peak, but we’d been defeated by Leavenworth’s infamous permit lottery. We’d hoped to stand a good chance in the morning lottery since it was mid-week, but three other groups had shown up and applied for the Colchuck Lake zone. A one in four chance. Not great odds. It had been no surprise when the ranger had drawn another group leader’s name from the hat, but I’d still stormed off angrily as a mild, almost apologetic rainfall beat against the colorful hardshells of other permit hopefuls. 

“Whatever,” I’d grumbled to Jeremy as we sat back in my car. “Let’s go do Ingalls.” We’d driven off without another word.  

We crested Ingalls Pass after two hours of wet, windy hiking. We couldn’t even see the peak, smothered in capes of grey clouds. Our prospects weren’t too good. We’d passed two groups coming off failed attempts on Mount Stuart, a nearby, much taller peak, and they’d both warned us that the entire valley was still choked in snow. We’d brought neither crampons nor ice axes. I’d made a gametime decision at the trailhead to leave them in the car. 

Luckily, a small break in the clouds allowed me to spot Dog’s Tooth Crag, a highly recognizable feature just left of Ingalls Peak. At least we knew where to go. We trudged across the valley, our approach shoes getting wet in the snow. After a miserable slog, we made it below the small col where the route started. By then the weather had somewhat cleared, and we could just glimpse the dark hunk of brown rock above us. It was cold and the weather was unstable, but we hadn’t come here for nothing. I racked up and made short work of the easy first pitch. 

Things started getting tough halfway through the second pitch. The fog closed in again below me so I couldn’t see Jeremy, and I had to climb with the unnerving sight of my rope snaking into nothingness below. Still, Jeremy paid out the rope as I climbed, so I knew that beneath the curtain of smoke was an attentive belayer. 

I made an anchor and Jeremy joined me at the third belay. He wasn’t in a great mood. His feet were cold, and he couldn’t feel his toes. I shrugged him off, reminding him that the summit beckoned. I went to work on the third pitch, another easy, low-fifth class affair. I was within sight of the anchors when it started snowing. It was a light snowfall, thin and shaken by wind gusts, as if we’d been inside a half-filled snowglobe. Still, it was enough to make Jeremy panic. “I really don’t like this,” he shouted up to me several times. “It’s fine,” I yelled back down time and again. I was focused on the anchors above me. We hadn’t been able to do Colchuck, and now we were going to miss out on Ingalls, this easiest of easy climbs? Not on my watch. 

I made the anchors and belayed Jeremy up. By the time he joined me on the tiny ledge, it was fully dumping. “We can still make it,” I told him. “It’s just a little cold and windy, but we can’t get lost on this route.” But Jeremy was adamant. He was wearing thin socks and hadn’t been able to feel his toes in some time. He had no interest in continuing. 

I lost the argument. We set up a rappel and retreated. As I glided down the rope, a tiny hole in the clouds revealed the rocky lip onto which I would have pulled myself at the top of the fourth and final pitch. 

We’d missed the summit by fifty feet. 

* * *

Two months later, I returned to the South Face with my good friend Melissa. This time, I was determined to reach the top. I couldn’t possibly fail twice on this entry-level climb, could I? No, the summit might as well already be in the bag. 

Melissa and I had dated for a while, and it was the we’d spent any extended amount of time together since the break-up. I think we were both pleasantly surprised at how well we got along during the drive in. We went to sleep in the back of my old Toyota Highlander, looking forward to a day of climbing and renewed friendship.  

The weather couldn’t have been more different if it had been opposite day. It was a perfect day, complete with a high, white-hot sun, and just three or four fluffy, innocent clouds to properly punctuate the eternal blue spread of sky. 

The Spring snowpack had disappeared, and our approach shoes only touched dirt until Ingalls Pass. Across the valley, Mount Stuart thrust its sharpened mass into the sky perfectly. Ingalls Peak modestly reigned over the other side of the valley. It was my first unhindered view of the mountain: a squat wedge of crenelated rock, as if someone had broken a turret off an ancient castle and dumped it there for us to climb. 

No time to waste. We headed down the valley and reached Ingalls Lake quickly. From there, we donned micro-spikes and ice axes and trudged up to the small notch where the climb begins. 

The weather was still perfect, but now a human factor stopped our ascent: a long ant-line of climbing parties inching up the face. Of course. We hadn’t been the only climbers in Seattle to have the same idea, and presently we had to reckon with a crowd of pilgrims come to pay their respects to this humble route.  

I don’t wish to bore anyone, nor do I wish to proselytize at length to my reader-base (hi, mom!) about a certain climbing club that treats the Cascades like its own personal property, so I’ll skip the details of which basic rules of climbing decorum were trampled that day. Suffice it to say that we endured miserably long, utterly needless waits at each belay station, and that the juicy plum of a beautiful summit barely consoled me from slovenly affronts to climbing conventions that exist to safeguard the experience of the many, but are too often eschewed to the benefit of the very few. 

Still, the climb and the views had been beautiful, and I’d taken care of fifty feet of unfinished business, so it was hard to call the day a failure, though it had undeniably had the feel of a formality. Rather, it felt like I’d removed an asterisk from the name of Ingalls Peak, having previously climbed 99% of the mountain. For Melissa, it had been an entirely new climb and experience, and I’d drawn more happiness from seeing her reach the top than from my own ascent. 

After all, I’d essentially done the climb already, and in a much more engaging style, against the vagaries of weather, and, more importantly, in the solemn, inspiring ambiance that can only be conferred on a rope team by isolation and adversarial circumstances. 

Still, the climb withMelissa hadn’t quite felt like a visit to the DMV. There had been glittering views of Ingalls Lake, Mount Rainier, and many other Cascadian treasures. We’d even watched a bold soul launching a paraglider from the summit of Mount Stuart. 

Jealous of the colorful glider effortlessly soaring down-valley, I’d rigged the first rappel and started the long trek down with a stark, limited feeling that could best be summed up by one phrase: mission accomplished.

* * *

I wasn’t done with Ingalls. 

In July 2019, I returned with my good friend Lauren, this time to climb the East Ridge. Unlike its south-facing cousin, the East Ridge is a hairy enterprise. Aside from the initial first pitch over broken terraces of scree and dirty rock, the route gains almost no elevation. It is a true traverse, complete with long sections of knife-edged “climbing,” tricky terrain that must be down-climbed and protected, and choss-covered pitches where holds crumble into dry dust when you pull on them. Poor rock characterizes the route more than anything, and one must be prepared to “chossaneer” to reap the rewards: a true alpine setting, mind-boggling 360 degree views throughout the whole climb, and the accomplishment of traversing what is not an insignificant peak. 

Same formula as last time: we drove to the trailhead the night before and passed out in the back of my Highlander. I knew we had our work cut out for us when we awoke to high winds in the morning. If it was blowing like this 4,000 feet below the summit, what would it be like on the ridge?

Still, we’d driven three hours, so we got in gear and made the all-too familiar ascent to Ingalls Pass, pausing every so often to let vicious, dust-loaded gusts of wind wash over us. As we neared Ingalls Pass, the galls blew down a weather-beaten hiker who shouted over the din of the wind that it was “really whipping up there” and hurried back down towards the valley floor. We poked our heads above the pass and were immediately pelted by winds that felt less like displaced air and more like angry freight trains. 

We could have turned around, but the same logic drove us across the valley: now we’d not only driven three hours, but also hiked uphill for two. We owed it to ourselves and to the mountain to take this adventure as far as it could go. 

The wind died down as we neared the start of the climb, but I wasn’t kidding myself. The hulk of Ingalls was shielding us from the storm as we drew nearer to it. What would await us on the ridge once we’d climbed the first pitch? 

We donned micro-spikes, ice axes, and helmets, and climbed up the snow-choked gully guarding rotten bands of rock, below which we threw on harnesses and rock gear. Abominable route-finding mistakes on my part turned the pitch into two, but soon I was belaying Lauren up to a small ledge right below the ridge. We were about to get our comeuppance. 

A large, alarmingly hollow flake precluded using the rock face above me to traverse to the ridge. I shoved a #3 camelot behind the flake, quietly regretted my lack of belief in an afterlife, and launched into questionable acrobatics across the flake, my feet skittering on the polished shield of the face below as I grunted my way over. Breathing a sigh of relief as the massive flake stayed attached to the face, I pulled myself onto the ridge and braced myself. 

There wasn’t a breath of wind. Nothing. Just the holy, frozen silence of this lonely mountain ridge, and around me, endless tapestries of jagged crags, lakes, peaks, forests, and the smoky band of the horizon shimmering in the distance. Of course, the wind could start up again, and if it did so while we were in the middle of the ridge, we would be in massive trouble. I stayed there for a while, wondering, looking for a sign. Should we risk it? Was it worth it? Far above, Mount Stuart looked down on me, imposing and moody as ever. It seemed to say: “well, are you just gonna stand there gawking, or are you gonna climb?” I decided to take the hint and start across the ridge. 

I don’t really remember any individual pitch of the climb, but a spicy few sections have left indelible marks on my memory. I remember an insecure, blocky gendarme I had to squirm around, and a heinous downclimb that I knew, unfortunately for Lauren, would be much easier to lead than to follow. I remember a terrifying, cardboard-thin arete with 400-foot drop-offs on either side, and I remember wondering if the chossy rock would even hold my pro if I fell (in which case, of course, it would be better to fall on the side of Ingalls Pass to make it easier on the poor saps who’d have to scrape my sorry butt off the rocks below.) I remember wandering across a crumbling plateau of coffee-cake rock for half an hour, searching and searching for solid cracks in which to build a half-passable anchor. I also remember my relief once Lauren and I had made it through the crux safely (and on a highly questionable anchor), and the realization that no, the wind hadn’t started up again, and that even if it did now it no longer mattered, because we were safe and on the homestretch, with only two easy pitches left. Lastly, I remember the weight I felt sloughing off my shoulders as I started across the final, easy rope-length, with the now-familiar summit gleaming ahead of me, no longer a hope against the odds, but a beautiful, shining guarantee of success, a just reward for our toils and for the risks we had been bold enough to take. 

I took the last few steps to the summit and belayed Lauren up. We stood on the summit for a while, the air perfectly still, the views free of clouds or mist. It was my second time on the summit, on this concentric point from which the mountain’s features flowed into the world. 

To my surprise, I found that my eyes were wet, and that a new feeling was bubbling within my ribcage. I wasn’t quite sure what it was. The achievement hadn’t been large enough to warrant such emotion...this wasn’t Mount Rainier or even a hard, technical line. I hadn’t had to overcome much to be here.

I soon understood the new feeling brewing in my chest. It was the certainty that I’d never come back here. I’d done all I wanted to do on Ingalls Peak. I’d tasted defeat. I’d climbed it in perfect conditions. I’d felt frustration waiting in line. I’d tackled the harder line on it, grappled with self-doubt, taken a risk, and come out ontop. I’d done all I wanted to do on this mountain. It had been beautiful, banal, scary, thrilling, boring, and vibrant. And I was done. There were too many other mountains to climb, too many other experiences to have, too little time left to me, too much life needing to be lived, too many experiences waiting to be had to ever justify the investment of time to stand on this summit again. It was time to move on. 

I thought of Maurice Herzog’s famous parting lines in his book, Annapurna:

 “Annapurna, to which we had gone empty handed, was a treasure on which we should live the rest of our days. With this realization we turn the page: a new life begins.

There are other Annapurnas in the lives of men.”

We hadn’t climbed Annapurna. The East Ridge of Ingalls Peak had barely been a noteworthy ascent within my own mediocre, insignificant record as an alpinist. And yet, it was with a sense of pride that I turned to Lauren and explained myself:

“I’ll never come back.” 

The page was turned. We headed back down to see what else this crazy old world had in store for us. 

A Tale of Two Whitneys

June 2017

I wake up to a tapestry of stars. Jeremy, always industrious in the morning, is already moving around outside the tent. I perceive a tiny orange glow through the tent fabric, and hear the familiar hiss of our stove, closely followed by the loud clunk of the bear box. Soon, we’re eating Mountain House meals in big, hurried bites, pressing the warm plastic bags against our chests. 

We’re on the move before the sun. The air is warm and the going is not too hard. The twin beams of our headlamps scurry quickly up the dirt trail as we pant in the thinner air. The trailhead for Mount Whitney is at 8,200 feet, and I’m feeling it already. As a Seattle-based climber, I don’t get much exposure to altitude. In fact, we’re already higher than the summit of 99% of the peaks in Washington.

We crest 9,500 feet as the horizon pinkens. The day dawns golden in a corner of deep, blue sky, and soon the air around us is tinged in rich morning light. 

The trail is busy, with many teams joining us for an alpine start. Already, a young couple is making their way down. The guy is drenched, and they explain that he fell in a creek higher up. They warn us the log bridge’s beams are broken and covered in an invisible veneer of verglas. We thank them and move on, soon reaching 10,000 feet. I make fun of the couple turning back several times, joking to Jeremy that they’re soft and only using his fall in the creek as an excuse to turn back. 

As it turns out, Karma is often swift and unforgiving. We reach the log bridge and, forgetting all about the verglas, I confidently step over the broken beam. My boot immediately bounces off the log and I twist in the air, landing in the creek with a sonorous splash. I haul myself out in record time and can only inspect the damage: I’m soaked from the waist down. 

Well, I can’t use this as an excuse, now can I? 

I strip just about everything off below the waist: my gaiters, my pants, my socks, my liners, and my boots. It’s all drenched in frigid water, and I’m shivering in the cold, bitter air. I wring everything a hundred times, twisting each garment until my arms hurt, squeezing out every drop of water I can, until they only retain an unleaking, wet heaviness, their color visibly deepened. I put everything back on and continue to shiver. It’s probably going to be a pretty miserable climb, but I can manage. 

We set off again and Jeremy, who has mercifully refrained from mocking me too much (he’ll save that for after the climb), leads the way up and around the creek, and discovers a place where it runs thinner and we can traverse by stepping on rocks. Unfortunately, it’s a little too late for me. 

Soon after the crossing, we encounter the snowline, a big white tongue lolling onto the next switchback. We take off our packs and don crampons, helmets, and ice axes. As we start kicking steps up the snow, I wonder how cold it’ll be high up. For all my bravado, I’m getting pretty darn cold in my damp clothing. 

November 2019

I wake up in the high desert of Alabama Hills. Jeremy and I get out of the tent and into the dusty, peak-studded landscape. Peerless and omnipresent, the sharp triangle of Mount Whitney glistens higher than all of them. At 14,505 feet, it is unequaled in height within the contiguous United States. If you want to climb higher, you have to go to Alaska or try another country. As such, reaching the summit is a coveted feat, though not a particularly hard mountaineering endeavor. It’ll be a cold, long slog at altitude, but little more. At least, we hope it’ll be that easy. 

We break down camp quickly, eager to collect our permits and eat breakfast. The day is bright and frozen, stuck in a tug-o-war between Fall and Winter. We pick up our permits at the ranger station, eat a monstrous breakfast, and rent a bear canister. Then, we find a small, dusty pullout in the long, boulder-speckled hills outside of town. We go through all our gear, packing no technical gear, but lots of cold weather equipment. For my part, I bring a single-wall, mountaineering tent, a sleeping bag rated to -20 degrees, and a 700-fill down jacket. It’s going to be freezing up there, and I want to sleep comfortably. 

We leave the car at the trailhead, stash our spare food in the bear boxes, and start the long hike up. We’re planning on sleeping at the 10K camp, or possibly the 12.5K camp if we’re feeling spry. 

I turn on a podcast as we slowly plod uphill, huffing and puffing under our heavy packs. It’s “Alpinist,” and David Roberts is reading from his essay, “Death and Climbing.” He’s one of my favorite writers, and he’s been facing a serious cancer over the past few years. In this essay, Roberts discusses how alpinists justify continuing to climb in the wake of their friends dying in the mountains. I listen intently, feeling the gravity and fatigue in Roberts’ voice, and also the enduring wonder and thirst for knowledge. 

Before I know it, we’ve hiked past the first set of switchbacks, over the infamous log bridge (the beam is now fixed), and past the small plateau where the snowline began last time. We make the 10K camp in just two hours, and since we’re feeling good, we push on to the higher camp. 

The next 2,500 feet are long, and my legs are burning by the time we wander into camp around four in the afternoon. Camp is a generous term: three dozen bivy sites next to a small lake. We pick an empty platform and put my Assault 2 up, unfurling sleeping bags, pads, and pillows. We then go down to the lake to melt water. First we have to break the ice at the surface of the lake by tossing a large rock into it. We then boil pot after pot of water, enough for both of us to eat two dehydrated meals, drink a liter, and have two one-liter bottles filled with hot water. The latter, buried in our sleeping bags, will keep up warm throughout the night and will serve as drinking water for the climb the next day. 

The sun sets completely and the light withdraws behind frigid peaks. Below, in this amphitheater of granite built for giants, we tiny mortal slither into our tents. Night has arrived, and the colossal emptiness of the cirque is filled with cold. 

The alarm is set for an alpine start. We settle down into our sleeping bags, knowing we only have a few precious hours of rest. 

June 2017

I’m still cold, and we’re not making much progress. The snow conditions are bad; mushy, slippery tracks have slowed our progress to a crawl. Still, after five hours of laborious effort, we’re toiling away around 12,000 feet, having left most of the gigantic valley behind us. We can see the regular switchback route covered in snow, and faint tracks criss-crossing over the long, broad snow-chute climbers use to ascend to Trail Crest this time of year. 

Most of the other climbers attempting a one-day push have dropped off at this point. We know of one pair of young, tall guys pushing on somewhere above us. Other than that, we abandon the one other group still in contention a good mile from the chute. They have decided to head down because one of them is complaining of fatigue and moving too slowly to make it in a reasonable time. 

He and me both. I’m moving like a mollusk, my crampons dragging against each little snag of hard snow. The altitude is getting to me. I feel like I’m expanding gigantic amounts of energy, and yet getting nowhere. The start of the chute should be getting closer, but every time I pick up my head to see how far we’ve come, it still seems a long way away. Jeremy is still moving well, about fifty feet ahead of me. 

I sigh and push myself up off of my ice axe. I take a step, and then another step. And then another, until I fall back into my cadence. I decide to start counting steps. I’ll count in groups of a hundred, and every hundred I’ll take a short break. Once I’ve done three of four counts, we should be at the bottom of the chute. 

But I’m wrong. Each count to a hundred seems to ebb into an eternity, and it’s eight counts, not three or four, that see me to the bottom of the chutes. Jeremy leads the way again, and I follow him, kicking his footsteps deeper into the mountainside. It’s hard labor. We’re almost at 13,000 feet, and I am breathing raggedly. I decide to count steps again. The summit is still so far away. Another hundred steps. I lean on my ice axe and breathe heavily. Ahead of me, Jeremy is slowing down. Below me, far, far below, the two specks of the other pair of climbers inches back down the valley. Smart decision. I take another step. And another. 

...96, 97, 98, 99, and 100. I lean heavily on my ice axe again. Jeremy and I talk. We decide to take a break and discuss our options. I get some food and water in me. It’s late, almost noon. We’re still over two miles from the summit, with over 1,500 feet to go. We’re exhausted, it’s late, and the snow is mushy and will only slow us down further. Jeremy feels a bit better from drinking and eating, but I still feel awful. I tell him we should pull the plug. He doesn't argue. He knows I’ve had it. 

We shake hands and take pictures at our high point, and then we make a solemn serment: we will come back one day, the two of us, and finish this thing. The words are spoken and branded into my brain - the pact is made. 

I take off my crampons and sweep off in a tumultuous glissade, my whole body gliding swiftly towards the valley and its thicker air. 

November 2019

We rise before the sun. The mouth of the tent is black, littered with dozens of constellations. We get the stove and cook right outside the tent, warm and cozy in our sleeping bags. Outside, the cold of November awaits us. We see headlamps floating by as we gulp down our breakfast mush. People are heading to the summit already. Time to follow them. We zip up the tent, shoulder our smaller day-packs, and set off down the trail. It’s easier with  a lighter pack, but every step takes us to a higher altitude, and soon I am huffing and puffing away. Jeremy is a more conscientious pace-setter - I let him take the lead and settle into his rhythm. I turn on another podcast and continue to plod away in the dark. 

Soon, we switch our headlamps us as a beautiful, golden disk rises over the horizon, bathing the dusty rock trail with dirty, morning light. My eyes settle to the new view, one in which the gargantuan valley is no longer black and empty, but filled with white, California granite and deep blue sky. 

We continue up the switchbacks, turning and turning up the mountain flank, until I’ve long lost count of each turn in the trail. Finally, we see the sky open up as we go up the last switchback and reach Trail Crest. It’s breathtaking. On the other side of the ridge is a landscape of equal grandeur and magnificence as the one behind us: brown and white mountains towering out of the flat, dusty plateau at 6,000 feet. In between each ripple of mountains, flat, dark lakes sprawl out in dark shimmers.  

We take a short break and then cross over to the other side of the ridge and into this new side of the mountain. Now the view is to our left, and we marvel at the Gothic castles of peaks on the west side of the mountain. From within that desertic wildness, the John Muir Trail scrawls its way out and up the mountainside, finishing on the summit of Mount Whitney. We reach 14,000 feet and take a break. We will summit now - it’s inevitable. The sky is clear of clouds and the weather is fine. There’s not a breath of wind. It sinks in slowly, but it sinks in: we’re going to bag the big bastard. 

We’re happy now, and we take our time getting up the last section. It no longer feels like hard work to move at these altitudes, but like the simple, organic currency of upward progress, and one that I pay without grudge. It’s clean, beautiful, honest work, this struggle against gravity and into the thinner air, and more than that it makes us happy. 

Near the summit, we see a poor puppy in a down-suit made for dogs. He whimpers miserably, his padded feet rubbing against the granite. He seems to be in some pain, but unfortunately it’s not our place to relieve the poor pooch of its imbecile of an owner. We go on and reach the small hut built on the summit plateau. It’s tiny, with rough, uncomfortable benches, but looks like it would provide adequate shelter in case of a lightning storm. The latter are quite common in the Sierra Nevada, so the hut is equipped with a lightning rod. Still, not a place I’d want to spend the night. 

We sign the register and take the last few steps onto the tippy-top. It’s a great place to be. Jeremy and I hug it out, our pact fulfilled. Around us, a whirlwind of valleys wallpapered with clean, white granite give way to the enormous, desertic plains below, speckled with lakes of a blue so deep their surfaces almost look black. 

I stand there for a long time and take in the views. I’m not sure there’s a lesson in this summit. We don’t always learn something. Sometimes, it’s just good to go back and finish what you started.

Last Climb of the Season

First, the air changes. It’s no longer warm or sticky, but crisp, firm, tingly - almost minty. The snowline spreads downhill like lava from its summit crowns. It creeps to lower altitudes, covering glacier and rock. It fills crevasses, flattens trees, swallows the landscape; it leaves nothing but a uniform, paper-white sheet of snow. Then the leaves turn. Not all at once or in sharp, stinging colors, as they do in New England. No, softly, their edges brown like batter in an oven, crumbling into muted, anonymous colors. The grass follows suit. Lush, trembling alpine meadows become straw-colored. Row after row of smoky, yellow tufts fill the space between disrobed woods and snow-splashed crags. 

We change too. We no longer walk the same way. We arrive with purpose. Each step is counted and measured against the sand left in the hourglass of the season, against each weekend of good weather we might still get. It’s a heavy step, full of purpose. We no longer saunter or even hike through the woods, but rather tromp and stamp, the fall of our boots military in its purpose. 

We discover the yellowed meadows with a sober sort of alacrity. It’s beautiful, yes, but there is a task at hand. Mountains loom above us, their lofty flanks enclosed in a thin crust of snow.

We wipe away the sweat and change into clean layers. Tents are unfurled, sleeping bags unrolled, pads inflated by the force of our lungs. Headlamps are readied, summit packs are stuffed with water, food, spare gloves, glacier glasses. We blow up our pillows and organize our small comforts: headphones, a piss bottle, a chewed-up paperback. Each movement is precise, measured, practiced. Each one is the apogee of five long months of climbing mountains every single free day we’ve had, and we’ve had many. Movements rehearsed in our living rooms, delivered time and again on frigid glaciers, on rock plateaus, or in meadows such as this one, to the vague applause of thunder and cold winds. Movements executed time and over with fake stoicism, only our inner selves glimpsing how good it feels to still play, to camp with your friends, to climb a mountain because you want to. This routine means everything. It is civilization. 

We use big rocks to hammer in stakes, the plastic cover of the stove to scoop snow, and a black tarp to line the roof of our four-season tent. Everything has been packed to serve double, or even triple, purposes. Each item’s weight has been accounted for, considered, debated, sometimes unpacked and then repacked, until every object only appears to the mind’s eye accompanied by a little number. Ice axe: 1.2 pounds. Tent: 4.6 pounds. Glasses: 45 grams. The minutiae of this calculation contains the joy of packing for the climb. We are scientists, engineers, explorers. Not to mention our other jobs: weathermen, chefs, expedition planners. 

And above all, climbers. 

Every statement is uttered in relation to the climb: “I’ll eat another dehydrated meal...we’ll need calories to burn tomorrow.” “I’m going to take two warm bottles into my sleeping bag...I have to sleep so I can be rested for the climb tomorrow.” “I can’t believe this weather we’re having...I’m so happy we’re getting one more climb in.”

And yet, there is doubt. Will we be able to make a summit bid? Presently, the weather changes. Gray clouds laze across a marble-streaked sky. Flecks of snow spin down and litter the dry, cracked dirt. We shelter in our tents, mired in fluffy down, taut canvas, and doubt. Will it happen? Will we stand up there? We cannot say with any certainty, so we trade platitudes. “Just being out here is awesome already.” “As long as I get to be outside, it’s fine.” We are liars. The summit means everything. But if ignoring a bully gets them to stop teasing you, then who’s to say we can’t trick this weather system by pretending we don’t care?

We are lucky on this day. The snow turns into rain, then back to snow, and then pitters to a stop. We hold our breaths. Soon, lances of sunlight draw a patchwork of smoke-stained sky, slowly brightening into a deep blue. The cloud cap rises, splits, and dissipates. Pink clouds swirl over the mountains as the sun crashes into the woods in a splatter of color.

The night is short, cold, cruel. Through the vents, we see stars brighter than jewels, Orion’s belt a scintillating accoutrement. They diminish and pass, replaced by shy, pale skies. A sickle of a moon levitates above the clouds. We stir. We rise. We brave the harsh, cold air outside the cocoon of our sleeping bags. We make small talk while some brew coffee, and all comment on the cold: “It’s chilly.” “It’s nippy.” “It’s fucking freezing...better get moving.” We get out of camp, behind schedule as always. 

The way to the summit is hard. The way to the summit is always hard. There is always a difficulty. What is it this time? Oh, I suppose it doesn’t really matter. I could say it’s crossing the immensity of a glacier in a single, roped line, scaling sheer rock faces, encumbered by a bric a brac of climbing gear, or simply stumbling up a simple mix of scree and snow. But it’s always the same struggle, the same fight. The meandering, intricate, unrelenting quest to move up. 

Up. There is no other way, no other creed, no other religion. Up is a prayer uttered in the cathedral of the mountains. 

The mind goes through moods in these yawning stretches of time in which the climber pushes up. “My legs hurt.” “This is beautiful.” “I’m out of breath.” “We’re gonna make it.” “My pack is too heavy.” “I love this.” The brain is a slobbering, bipolar creature, torn between its pains and its pleasures. 

Eventually, the going gets easier. We are no longer shocked at the effort expended by the body. It’s become normal, factual, even acceptable. The mind starts to wander again...ah, the delight! How rare and beautiful those moments are, where body and soul both wander, one drowning in the immensity of its own thoughts, the other lost in the movements of the climb. To feel oneself moving so freely, quickly and efficiently, physically and spiritually liberated from the shackles of everyday life, to feel oneself so wonderfully fragmented in one’s existence, and yet so unified in one’s purpose, is to truly feel what it means to be human. 

This is why we climb. In spite of the pain, in spite of the cost.This is our spiritual food, and we will not be starved. 

And then a snow-splashed spray of black rock in the sky, dripping in ice, and one can go no higher. The ceremony begins. Solemn handshakes and a few strangled words, followed by quiet contemplation. The presence, felt by each one of us, of all the things that need not be said. Because it’s sheer joy to stand at this confluence of ridges, seasons, and stories, at this highest place in the sky where friendship is easy and the soul can breathe.