Total Gumby or Light and Fast Alpinist?

I had a funny thought while climbing Glacier Peak last weekend.

It happened on the way down from the summit, as my rope-team was stepping down the boot-pack scrawled into the glacier by thousands of sharp little crampon points. I was placing my own boots into the tracks with exceeding caution, my knees arched and leaning slightly backwards, the way you do after a long uphill push when, on the way down, you suddenly remember that gravity does occasionally cooperate.

Concentrated as I was, I still noticed two climbers woosh past me on their way to the summit: athletic guys in their late twenties or early thirties, both in shorts and long-sleeved T-shirts, without helmets, their bulging, tanned calves pumping away happily. If they’d been instructed to climb this mountain in a manner completely opposite to my own (short of chartering a helicopter) this would have been the end result.

I was roped up to my teammates, they were climbing freely and side by side, chatting carelessly. I was focused and deliberate, they moved in gargantuan leaps over the snow. I’d summited early in the morning when conditions were safest, they were moving up in the daytime heat when rockfall increases and crevasse lips melt right off the glacier. I was laden with several pounds of rescue gear that made me clang like an assortment of windchimes, they didn’t even have harnesses on. I was bent under a 50-liter rucksack filled with water, food, and extra layers, while they each wore one of those backpacks that is little more than a hydration bladder and a single pocket you could probably fit a headlamp into if you used brute force to shut the zipper. And finally, I had on top-of-the line mountaineering boots, weighing in at 1.1 pounds each, plus crampons, while they had on simple trail runners with lightweight microspikes.

What a couple of wackadoos, I thought. Someone’s gonna have to scrape them off the bottom of a crevasse. But I didn’t think about it much more. I’ve been climbing big glaciated peaks in the Pacific Northwest for over a year now, and I’ve been climbing in general for over three years. That’s not a very long time, but every climber worth their salt will tell you that’s more than enough time to see just about every shenanigan you can possibly imagine: people glissading with their crampons on and without an ice axe, sport-climbers who don’t know what a Z-clip is, mountaineers who thought a jaunt to the top of Mount Rainier without a pair of gloves would be a good idea, etc. You name it, I’ve seen it. So again, I didn’t think much of these two happy gentlemen bounding away up the Cool Glacier.

But later on, as I was scrambling down one of the many little ridges separating us from our camp, I was struck by a singular notion: what if those two weren’t a couple of Sunday climbers headed for an early grave, but extremely accomplished alpinist at the cutting edge of their field?

Now I know that sounds crazy, but hear me out. Imagine you were climbing the Mont-Blanc or another comparable peak in the alps and ran into Kilian Jornet or another cutting-edge alpinist in the Ueli Steck tradition. Odds are, they’d be wearing a visor, t-shirt, shorts, low-top shoes, and not much else. Perhaps a short ice-axe and some aluminium crampons, and a minuscule backpack you’d hardly notice...in fact, they’d look exactly like the two gentlemen I’d passed going up the mountain!

This got me thinking some more. If you saw this theoretical Kilian-like hero blazing up the trail and devouring ground quicker than a homeless man would a free burrito, you’d think: oh wow, they’re hardcore! If you passed them while they were tying a shoelace and only saw their total lack of gear or safety precautions, you’d think: gumbies on parade. They’re gonna die today. But the fact is, the amount of gear one carries does not equate to overall gumby-ness (please pardon the term).

Climbers tend to be judgmental, and I’m no exception. Okay, I might even be amongst the most judgemental (which is ironic, considering what a ridiculous gumby I used to be not so long ago), and this got me thinking: how often have I mistaken a top-notch climber taking the sport to new heights for a novice questing for a premature, snowy tomb?

I started thinking back to some truly spectacular gumbies I’d encountered in the hills. Could they be the misunderstood boundary-pushers of the mountain world? There were the two guys holding their ice axes backwards on Mount Adams. Who’s to say they hadn’t developed a new way of self-arresting more efficiently than even Pete Schoening’s legendary miracle ice-axe belay? What about the two guys climbing Mount St. Helens in winter without crampons or headlamps, with a lantern tied to their waists? I can still hear them now: “Dude, you wearing your microspikes yet? Or are you just raw-dogging it?” “Raw, man, I’ll probably wear them on the way down.” They offered us tequila shots halfway up the mountain before downing two apiece. I can’t say with absolute certainty that their alcohol-based summit-day diet wasn’t a groundbreaking nutritional advancement reserved for elite athletes...or that their seemingly crude method of communication wasn’t a super-efficient code meant to multiply the speed of exchange of their respective analyses of complex weather patterns, snow conditions, and general mountain conditions. And I can’t say that their lanterns weren’t...uh...well, I guess I don’t have an explanation for the lanterns. But who’s to say that’s not just way too advanced of a mountaineering technique for me to even comprehend? And what about that guy who tried to go above Camp Muir without crampons that one time? Maybe he was just...hum. Well, okay.

I scrambled down another ridge and found another one quite like it waiting for me. I stopped and took out my water bottle, draining its too-quickly diminishing contents. My little theory was breaking down pretty quickly. I guess ninety-nine percent of the time, a gumby is just a gumby, I thought. It’s really pretty damn obvious. At least, it had been a fun theory to think about. Not even a theory, really. Just a funny thought, that’s all.

Still, I hope I never do run into Kilian Jornet in the mountains. I’m not exactly sure what he looks like, and I’d hate to mistake one of the world’s best climbers for a chucklehead.

In Defense of Turning Back

 I’m trying to change my attitude towards turning around in the mountains because I’m willing to bet that few climbers loathe bailing on a climb quite as much as I do.

Sure, it’s a part of mountaineering, and I do it when the situation calls for it. There are myriad reasons for bailing on your objective. Weather comes in. A teammate is hurting, exhausted, or freezing, In the worst case scenario, someone is sick or injured. There’s not enough time to reasonably summit and come back down safely before nightfall or afternoon thunderstorms. Avalanche conditions aren’t right. You’re missing a crucial piece of gear you thought you wouldn’t need, and you head down wanting to punch yourself in the face, imagining the exact closet shelf on which the item in question is currently resting in utter contentment. You’re just not feeling it. Something in your gut says: “this isn’t the right day, something’s off.”

I’ve turned around, at one time or another in my young mountaineering career, for every reason listed above, and several others. But I’ve never done it with anything even vaguely resembling grace, equanimity, or good cheer. As many of my climbing partners will attest, my grumbles and groans of frustration have usually followed them all the way down the mountain before echoing across social media.

Let’s speak plainly (and vulgarly): turning back fucking sucks hot shit. I’m not a professional alpinist. As a weekend warrior who spends five days a week riding a desk and daydreaming about his two days in the big hills, it’s maddening to use my entire weekend trying to accomplish something that won’t come true. And more than that, because I’m a purist (read: pretentious douche), I know I’ll have to use up a whole other weekend to come back and bag the damn summit, hence reliving the same climb, the only new experience being the last few hundred feet (or last few dozen feet in some particularly cruel cases) I didn’t climb last time. And again, I’ll do so with no assurances that I’ll even make the summit the second time around.

Any of you still reading (Hi Mom!) will by now have formulated objections and counter-arguments. Featuring among the tritest should be: it’s about the journey, the summit isn’t important, the main objective is to have fun, all that matters is coming back safely, etc. But come on, let’s not kid ourselves! We all want to be able to say: “I climbed Mount Rainier,” not “I got to 13,500 feet on Mount Rainier, and then my toes got cold so I decided to turn around because I thought there might be a chance of frostbite.” Yes, they’re both good stories, they’re both interesting and educational, and they both demonstrate qualities essential to an alpinist. But when you pack your rucksack for a climb, which one are you shooting for?

And yes, I understand that you can’t have one without the other...you can’t reach the top without sometimes turning back. And here’s where I’m trying to change my attitude.

Take my sinusoidal history with Mount Rainier (speak of the devil)! I first tried to climb the big bastard in June 2016. As a thoroughly inexperienced and enthusiastic alpinist, I hired a highly-recommended guiding service to take me up the mountain. I spent a year observing a strict diet and a Ueli Steck-ian training schedule. I flew out to Seattle, laser-focused, hyper-fit, and more excited than a golden retriever in a frisbee museum. I could see myself planting my ice-axe into the summit, a deserving conqueror stabbing its victim in the eye. But “June-uary,” as my guides so cleverly called it, had other plans. The weather got worse and worse during the approach, and on our second day we made it about ten feet out of Camp Muir before a monster storm bullied us off the upper slopes. I flew back to Boston in complete disarray.

It was the biggest disappointment of my life. I’d trained and worked so hard to stand on the summit of Rainier, and I’d been defeated by dumb meteorology. The moment I’d dreamed of hadn’t happened. I’d seen myself at 14,411 feet, ice-axe in hand, triumphant, rewarded for my year-long discipline, and instead the weather had sent me scurrying off the mountain.

But here’s the thing. Some say life is short. They’re right. But in other ways, it’s also long. Opportunities tend to present themselves more than once, especially when it comes to the realm of permanence in which mountains exist. I eventually moved to Seattle, and, armed with a lot more experience and a little less enthusiasm, this time guideless, made the summit of Rainier on a bluebird day. I was overwhelmed. I didn’t even smash my ice-axe into the snow. I just sobbed into my climbing partner’s shoulder, splattering mucus onto his brand new hard-shell. It was the happiest moment of my life.

Two weeks later, I knocked out another one of the big boys, but on my first try: Mount Adams. I felt happy upon reaching the summit. Happy, content, even delighted. But I didn’t feel anything like the shattering orchestra of emotions that had wrung me like an old dishcloth on the summit of Rainier. I instantly knew why. Mount Adams had been a relatively tough climb, but, in the grander scheme of things, it had come too easy. I’d never tasted defeat on that mountain’s slopes. I hadn’t trained for it, or longed for it. I hadn’t flown out to it, made it two-thirds of the way up, and had my heart broken by high winds and pounding snow.

I only experienced that amazing moment on Rainier because it had been so hard, had taken so long, and had only come at the second time of asking. A few months later, I experienced similar feelings on my second bid at a winter climb of Mount St. Helens, which saw me reach the summit in beautiful conditions.

I’ve spent my time since chasing similar moments in the big hills. High emotions on frozen mountaintops, attained in spite of every hardship you can imagine. The strongest ones have been those that came hard, and usually not on the first attempt.

So now, when I have to turn back, I try to think differently. I still hate it. It still fucking sucks hot shit. But in defense of turning back, it’s a phenomenal investment. When I turn back, I’m investing my emotions into the mountain. And when I come back and summit on my second, third, or umpteenth try, the emotions are proportional to the failures I’ve stacked up in my attempts to summit. What a fantastic, easy investment! Guaranteed ROI for any investor. All you have to do is come back and try again until you make it.

I’m attempting Ingalls Peak this weekend. Last time I was there, high winds and snow forced me to bail fifty feet from the top. It’s going to be one hell of a summit, or one hell of an investment. Either way, I can’t wait to try again.

10 Tips for Ice Climbing In Washington State

My first ice season in Washington is coming to a close! The slushy, drippy columns of “ice” still clinging to rock here and there are turning into slushier, drippier columns, signifying the end of a banner season seeking vertical adventure on “frozen” water. As these melting events usher in the end of winter, I feel compelled to share a few lessons I’ve picked up along the way to ensure a successful season -here are my ten tips for ice-climbing in Washington State:

1. Keep an eye on the weather

You’re gonna want to keep a close watch on the notoriously capricious PNW weather. Luckily, there’s a myriad of weather sites dedicated to tracking and forecasting weather in the big hills -invaluable assets as you plan your trip. Start each morning in front of your computer by opening each one in a separate tab in between Facebook and ESPN, comparing conflicting data across sites, and moving on to checking your email more confused than ever. Rain? Snow? Tropical paradise? Cyclone? Each more likely than the last! You won’t be able to actually commit to a trip until the very last second, when finally your plethora of tabs confirm that the temperature will hover right above freezing, granting you a marginal chance of encountering some solidified H2O. Sounds stressful? Naaaaah.

2. You’re not gonna climb any ice

This is the big one -don’t actually expect to climb any ice. Remember, ambition is the enemy of success. If you define success in ice climbing as actually climbing ice, you’re bound to fail. If you define success as really, really wanting to climb ice, trudging in snowshoes for hours through a winter wonderland as you chase the vague rumor of a juicy flow that might be in “condish” this time of year, only to discover a fully running waterfall and having to trudge back while dragging your two gigantic, ice-climbing blue balls, then success is 100% guaranteed!

3. Tell everyone you’re going ice-climbing

Shout it from the rooftops. Tell your friends, your colleagues, your family, your doctor during a physical, your priest during confession, and just about anyone who’ll agree to even remotely listen. Post about it on social media. Bonus points if you announce you’ll be “sending the gnar” or “crushing ice” and divulge your specific objective, which you’ve heard from a reliable source on a Facebook forum is “so in.” Nothing beats the follow-up conversation when your friend asks you about the climb after a frustrating weekend spent trudging! “Oh, we didn’t get to climb. It was too warm. Nice snowshoeing though.” If you like a bucket of lemon juice poured into your gaping wound every Monday morning, then this is right for you.

4. Ice climbing gear is a great investment

Why keep disposable income in your bank account when you can have it sitting around in the form of ice tools and a set of screws? Everyone knows sound investing is the way to independent wealth, and nothing screams wealth louder than a bunch of metal gear designed for the specific pursuit of ascending frozen waterfalls. Worried about pricing? At $300 per ice tool, $80 per screw, $600 for a pair of boots, and $150 for a good pair of crampons, it’s a bargain! You can’t afford not to get a kit. Not in this economy. Plus, the money’s a lot safer in the form of gear in your closet than dollars in the bank. Banks get robbed. How many times has your gear closet been the target of an old school western-style hold-up? Exactly.

5. Take an avalanche course

Not satisfied with the amount of reasons you won’t be able to climb any ice this winter? Take an avie course! Your newfound knowledge will open up a whole new range of climbs, from which you’ll immediately be scared off by the prospect of suffocating beneath several metric tons of snow rushing at you faster than a galloping horse! Not to mention further investment opportunities in the forms of a beacon, probe, and shovel...they only retail at $400! Time to make some room in your inviolable gear closet!

6. Turn your approaches into hikes

Is it still an approach if you don’t get to climb? Let’s get Webster’s to lend us a hand! Approach: verb. To draw closer to, to come very near to. Oops, guess there has to be a destination for it to be an approach. Oh well, just tell everyone you went hiking. Instead of saying you broke trail through four feet of snow at six in the morning on a Sunday morning just to discover yet another unclimbable flow, say that you went for a beautiful sunrise hike to a gorgeous waterfall. Seriously, it’s all about how you sell it.

7. Take care of your equipment

Functional equipment is paramount to a successful day out. How do you expect to be able to walk miles to a somewhat frozen waterfall, take one good look at it, say “there’s no way in hell I’m leading this sweating piece of shit, this looks more like a waterslide than an ice climb, I don’t want to die young,” and begin the long march back to your car if your tools and screws aren’t properly sharpened? You think you’ll be able to stay at home smoking pot and watching Netflix all weekend and bitch to your friends that it’s fifty degree in January if your crampons get rusty because you haven’t dried them properly? Well...yeah. But that’s not the point.

8. Take advantage of the beta

Good beta is the key to any successful climb! Unless you’re a badass putting up FAs and charting new territory for the rest of us mortals, it’s always good to have comprehensive knowledge of any new route you attempt. Not satisfied with the one ice-climbing guidebook available for Washington? Luckily, there are literally dozens of fellow ice-climbers in Washington (perhaps even as many as a dozen dozens), each one more willing than the last to share beta via Facebook groups or shady online forums. Feel a little sketched out getting your beta from strangers over the internet? Come on, don’t be a such a wuss -if you can’t trust the internet, who can you trust?

9. Try alpine ice

Need a cooler story to tell your friends? Take up alpine ice climbing! The ice in the mountains is always in condition. Too bad you’ll never get anywhere near it. Avalanche conditions, bad weather, dangerously high winds, rock fall -these are just some of the vagaries of the big hills, which will eternally keep you away from even reaching the base of any alpine route. But hey, instead of saying it was too warm to climb, now you get to look off into the distance like a grizzled mountain man and say: “the weather came in -we had to turn back if we wanted to survive.” That sounds badass...now just cross your fingers that people actually believe you.

10. Head north if you actually want to climb

Seriously, just go to fucking BC. Marble Canyon is so dope.

(Not) Getting Out

I usually take advantage of this blog to write about my adventures in the great outdoors. Today, I’m struggling to conjure the right words because I’m attempting a more daunting task: writing about my lack of adventures.  

It’s been a tough winter. My beloved mountains have been drowning in dangerous snow, resulting in less than reassuring avalanche forecasts -I’ve had to stay away from the big peaks. In the meantime it’s been too warm for the handful of ice formations that normally grace Washington to form up -I’ve yet to swing a tool this season. There are eight shiny, brand spanking new Petzl ice screws in my closet that have never seen ice. They’re so clean and polished I can see my face in them.

To put it more succinctly: there’s been tons of snow and unusually warm temperatures. The bottom line: I haven’t been getting out.

For those of you who know me (and I’m pretty darn sure my entire readership indeed does know me...hi mom!) I’m sure you can imagine how it’s affected my psyche. I live for the outdoors, the fresh mountain air, the self-discovery and the indomitable spirit of mankind, which can only find its fullest expression when pitted against the elements, and blablabla...basically all that crap John Muir wouldn’t shut up about.

Speaking of which, the mountains are indeed calling...and I can’t go. My outdoor activities were limited in the month of January. In fact, I only got out for a grand total of four days, and they were all bitter disappointments.

I spent the first weekend of January chasing ice with some friends. On Saturday morning, we trudged in snow-shoes through a mile of breakable crusty snow covering four feet of powder, hoping Gil Creek Falls would be climbable. After getting lost, fighting our way through snow-covered trees that were literally raining on us in the heat, and fording a creek covered by a questionable snowbridge, we found a running waterfall covered by about an inch of ice. A hole had started to melt right in the middle, revealing the roaring water. We tried our luck at Rainbow Falls in Leavenworth...the whole climb was a slushie, and much too thin to take a screw. My friend and I spent a good hour trying to hang a good toprope above it just so we could climb something, even this thin, melting mess, but we couldn’t find a good anchor, and neither of us had brought snow pickets.

The next day we hoped the Practice Wall at Alpental would offer a change in fortunes -no dice. Only one pillar was thick enough to climb...a guided group had already picked it to shreds. We walked away, wondering how it hadn’t collapsed yet. All in all, my ice tools went for some lovely walks and got plenty of fresh air without the slightest wear and tear...lucky them.

A week later, I spotted a lucky weather window over Mount Saint-Helens. I drove down there with two friends on a Saturday night, climbed all night and all morning, pushing through headwall after headwall. We covered 5,700 feet of elevation over five miles, reaching the crater rim around ten in the morning. I could see the summit farther down the ridge, beaming down at me, just a quick walk and a hundred vertical feet above me. We’d be there in a half hour. And then, unthinkably, the prize was snatched away. My climbing partner got sick, probably from the rapid gain of altitude, and we made the tough decision to turn back without summiting. I knew it was the right thing to do, but it didn’t ease the disappointment.

The following weekend marked my last day out in January 2018. The weather was awful everywhere, so I went skiing with my brother at Crystal Mountain, hoping for the minuscule taste of being in the mountains that resort skiing typically brings me. Sadly, there was none to be found. We stood in line to get ski lift tickets, to rent skis, to rent boots, to catch the ski lift, to buy a disgusting lunch at the lodge -we did more standing in line than skiing. I’m honestly incapable of grasping why people enjoy resort skiing...I love cross-country skiing and the feeling of being in nature, gliding along in the woods, but all that standing in line to go down some slopes in five minutes and then freeze my ass off on a ski lift for twenty minutes...it beggars the imagination. And all for the modest price of a hundred and fifty dollars! If I ever seriously get into skiing, it’ll definitely be backcountry.  

I’d hoped to at least see Mount Rainier that day, to admire its beautiful summit crater and wistfully think back on the few steps I’d been lucky enough to once take there. Only Little Tahoma stuck out of the fog, as if my favorite hill was giving me the middle finger. It pretty much summed up the month.

Now I know what you’re thinking at this point: are you done bitching yet? And I don’t blame you; I am bitching, after all. Boohoo, poor me, I can’t go out to play. And that’s just it. I can go out to play. I just haven’t been. Why? Because conditions haven’t been perfect. So what? Am I only going to get out in good weather? Then I picked the wrong state to live in!

Starting today,I’m turning a new leaf, and going back to what I love. It’s not about conquering peaks, or sending a climb, or accomplishing so and so...it’s about being in the mountains. Sometimes that means staying below the tree line because the avalanche danger is too great, but that doesn’t mean you have to stay home. It can also mean going to your favorite crag instead of doing an alpine climb...and wearing gloves in between climbs because it’s forty degrees and the rock is numbing your fingers. Or even going for a nice snowshoe hike knowing full well you won’t find any ice. Or winter-camping somewhere flat and freezing your nuts off for the hell of it!

The point is, unless there’s a bone fide winter storm that actually puts you in danger of severe frostbite if you’re exposed to the elements too long, you can always get outside in some capacity. Today, I’m recommitting to that publicly, because I want to be held accountable, and because life is far too short to spend my weekends not doing what I love...and that’s being in the mountains. Maybe at their feet, maybe somewhere in the middle, and maybe occasionally on a summit. But definitely in their general vicinity, and not on my couch bitching about the forecast.

The mountains are still calling...and this time, goddamnit, I’m goin’!