The Ledge (9 page)

IN A HALLWAY
at the Lory Student Center, I stood motionless, staring at a bright flyer tacked to a bulletin board, oblivious to the harried students racing to class around me. The photocopied announcement read:

EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING PROGRAM

1986 ACONCAGUA EXPEDITION (22,834 FT.)

Aconcagua, in Argentina, is the highest peak in the Southern Hemisphere. And the Colorado State University outdoor program needed climbers to join the team. This could be my first expedition.

I’d just arrived in Fort Collins to pursue a master’s degree in environmental geology. Things had fallen into place quickly for me at CSU, a sprawling campus with a commanding view of the Colorado Rockies. I’d been selected for a research assistant position under a National Science Foundation grant, which meant not only a $683 monthly salary but a tuition waiver. This changed my fortunes from nearly broke graduate student who wasn’t sure his paltry savings would last through a second semester to eager climber with a spare $2,000 who could contemplate a thirty-two-day expedition to South America.

I felt ready to grab this challenge. The last five years had been a time of intense mountaineering for me, from several seasons of winter mountaineering in New England to alpine rock and ice climbs in Wyoming and Colorado.

Briefly, I wondered if this expedition was a reasonable expenditure, given that I still had two long years of grad school in front of me. But those thoughts faded as logic, instinct, and desire all led to the inescapable conclusion that going on this climb aligned with how I wanted to live. The chance to experience high altitude, join a committed team, and travel to the remote Andes was too much to pass up.

The expedition’s coleaders, Daryl Miller and Pat Rastall, interviewed me, and two days later I was on the team. After a busy fall spent studying and getting into shape, Christmas Day found us sweltering on the roof of the Hotel Crillón in Mendoza, Argentina, as we sampled possible foods for our expedition. Canned squid packed in its own ink made a melancholy substitute for the holiday feast I imagined my extended family enjoying back home in Massachusetts.

After several days of preparation and bus rides, we started the two-day hike toward base camp. I had been above 14,000 feet only twice before, and altitude sickness racked me as the six of us worked our way up the mountain. On my first trip to Camp 1, a subtle headache flared into pounding skull pressure by the time we’d dumped our equipment at the 17,750-foot campsite. Day by day, headache by headache, we plodded our way up and around the west and north sides of Aconcagua, with me usually slogging behind my better-acclimated teammates. Though we had intended to scale the more difficult Polish Glacier, a reconnaissance climb to 20,500 feet led us to abandon that plan for the nontechnical Ruta Normal, or normal route.

The route change and storm delays lengthened our sufferfest. Biting cold and fifty-mile-an-hour winds ended our first summit attempt at 21,300 feet.

“The mountain is winning,” I wrote in my journal.

A slog back down to our food depot for more supplies let us extend our oxygen-deprived stay to a tenth night in a row above 17,700 feet. When weak sunlight hit us on the eighteenth morning on the mountain, we rallied for a final summit attempt.

Though wearisome, our multiple laps up and down Aconcagua’s slopes had left us fit and acclimated. We moved well to 21,800 feet, passing several slower groups as clouds chugged toward the mountain from the direction of Chile. The last thousand feet to the roof of South America ascends La Caneleta, a steep gully of loose rock. Starting this section, I needed a five-breath rest every twenty-five steps. An hour later, I slowed to one-fifth that rate, gasping a one-breath rest after every halting step. I buried my sickness and exhaustion by focusing instead on drawing strength from spiritual connections with friends and family. Two hundred feet from the top, I sought positive energy by mentally naming a loved one with each desperate breath I sucked from the thin air.

“I felt like they were all practically screaming in my ears and pleading with me to continue,” I wrote in my journal.

With one hundred feet to go, I saw my partners on the summit. Pat let out an encouraging whoop. I breathlessly yelled back, “Damnit … I’m … gonna … make it!” and we both cheered. The last painful steps somehow seemed fun.

Hugs from my elated teammates greeted me on top. Our last team member joined us ten minutes later, and after a summit photo by the sticker-covered metal cross, we descended with light snow swirling about. I had broken my personal altitude record by over 8,000 feet.

But the trip was notable for another reason, for it was through
one of my teammates that I met a wiry young outdoorsman with a mop of unkempt sandy hair and a quiet demeanor.

His name was Mike Price.

Mike had wanted to join the Aconcagua trip, but he simply couldn’t afford it. Still, when we’d departed for Argentina, he had gamely volunteered to drive us to the Denver airport. Amid a pile of gear-filled duffel bags, Mike and I had shaken hands good-bye. Grinning, he had wished us well, then driven off, madly beeping the van’s horn as he went.

THAT I’D EVENTUALLY
ended up at CSU was not a surprise, for it was the natural extension of the life I had built over the previous three years. When I’d returned to the University of Massachusetts Amherst in the fall of 1983, I had turned all my energies to geology and climbing. At twenty-one, I had already identified the focus points of my life.

I climbed with college friends whenever I could, learning the skills I would need for bigger, more challenging peaks. I found out I could endure subzero temperatures during a twenty-two-hour summit traverse across Maine’s remote Mount Katahdin. I learned the value of diligent map work after a navigational mix-up forced us to march eighteen miles toward Oregon’s Middle Sister with little drinking water. That mistake left us so dehydrated that we drank skanky pond water laced with swimming insects. Still, we summited the snowy volcanic peak the next day.

I explored the White Mountains of New Hampshire, taking in the adage that if you can deal with the harsh conditions of Mount Washington in winter, you can handle the weather on any peak in the world. Though my young ego hoped it was true, I had my doubts. I sensed that greater peaks must hold greater challenges, and so they must be the best places to learn more about the mountains and myself.
And I wanted to find out. I longed for higher, harder peaks and began scheming ways to include such mountains in my life.

At an Appalachian Mountain Club course on winter outdoor leadership, I met a quiet and capable climber my age named Patrick Heaney. Together we went on an ice-climbing binge across New Hampshire. We started climbing short, frozen slabs that allowed us to discover each other’s skills, strengths, and weaknesses in low-risk situations. Later we moved onto multipitch ice routes, where we took turns swapping leads. Soon we were chasing classic alpine climbs across the White Mountains, and I gradually became a competent lead climber on both rock and ice.

But I longed to return to a place where the mountains started at 10,000 feet and went up. After I graduated, in the spring of 1985, Patrick and I went climbing in Colorado. We hitchhiked and climbed our way through the Indian Peaks Wilderness and Rocky Mountain National Park, huddling under a green nylon tarp propped up by our ice axes at night, awakening at sunrise to the perfume of spring wildflowers and the gurgling of melting snowbanks. We scaled a half dozen high summits, including Longs Peak (14,255 feet), by the icy Notch Couloir. As we hobbled down the trail on our last day, Patrick said, “I hate to leave.”

“Yeah,” I answered, “it would be great to live here and climb these peaks all the time.”

That Rockies trip strengthened my resolve to make a life in the mountains. The physical exertions and mental fortitude that the mountains demanded forced me to face fear, manage doubt, and take action, even in the face of uncertainty. In short, the self-imposed challenge of climbing made me more resilient. People find self-reflection and self-improvement in a variety of ways—through running or music, therapy or bonsai. For me, the moving meditation of mountain climbing yielded these benefits, along with the bonuses of visiting remote places and experiencing wild beauty.

AFTER A YEAR
in Massachusetts working as an environmental geologist, climbing, and spending time with Gloria, I was accepted into graduate school at Colorado State University in Fort Collins.

Gloria and I excitedly made plans to move to the Rockies together, and in August 1986 we settled into a simple apartment about a mile from campus. Within weeks, I’d secured the grant-funded job, the tuition waiver, and a spot on the Aconcagua team. And I had a new friend, Mike Price.

One Friday afternoon, my Aconcagua teammate Scott Anderson, Mike, and I met up at a geology department beer party. Scott and I discovered that we hailed from adjacent towns in Massachusetts—he from Lexington, me from Concord. When Mike heard that, he asked me what I thought of the classic Concord-based book
Walden
by Henry David Thoreau. Though I had only superficial comments about the book, Mike got a kick out of the fact that as a kid I had taken swimming lessons at Walden Pond. A second-year grad student in English, Mike loved literature about wilderness, nature, and philosophy.

Mike stood two inches taller than me, at five foot nine, but was about thirty pounds lighter. Though he was not the most outspoken guy, his unassuming exterior hid an energetic fireball of a young man. I was impressed that Mike worked as an outdoor instructor and had been on a wild expedition deep into the glaciated wilderness of Canada.

While graduate school kept us both too busy to climb much, Mike and I socialized together and became good friends over the next eighteen months. We knew that we wanted to climb together, so as soon as I wrapped up my master’s degree, Mike and I hit the crags. The spring air chilled our skin, but the rock was warm enough to climb. We set out on a moderate route in Eldorado Canyon, a
popular climbing area near Boulder. The route included the Bastille Crack, a five-pitch ascent up a steep buttress of red conglomerate sandstone that sits right along a dirt road.

Mike was the better climber, so he led the first pitch, with its short, tricky section that required shifting from one crack over to the next. I followed him, and then I took the next pitch. We switched leads until we reached the top, about 300 feet above the canyon floor. This fine day of climbing confirmed that we moved well together. Our climbing partnership had begun.

TWO MONTHS LATER
, Mike was busy, so I went to California to climb in Yosemite National Park with my old Appalachian Mountain Club buddy Patrick. Early one morning we watched the rising sun paint Yosemite Valley’s soaring rock walls deep orange, then gentle gold. By the time they settled into a granite-white hue, we were huffing up the approach trail to Middle Cathedral Rock for our climb up the East Buttress. The fifth pitch of this 1,000-foot wall is the “crux” section—the hardest part of the route. This route’s crux can be free climbed with difficulty, or it can be aid climbed using an existing series of eight drilled-in bolts. Aid climbing involves hanging from gear to assist with the ascent; free climbing means advancing by one’s hands and feet with gear present only as protection in case of a fall. Almost all the climbing we had done over the years had been free climbing. The only aid climbing I’d ever done was fifty feet of practice six years earlier in Montana.

Aid climbing requires complex gear, rope, and knot systems that collectively allow a climber to move up. Many pieces of specialty equipment are needed for proper aid climbing, including aiders, which are flexible webbing steps, and ascenders, sliding, mechanical rope clamps that allow a climber to raise himself up a dangling rope.
We didn’t have any special aid gear, so Patrick aid climbed the short bolt ladder in a quick and dirty style by clipping gear into the next highest bolt and then pulling down on the dangling sling.

I followed in a jury-rigged fashion, yanking on gear Patrick had left clipped to the bolts for me and standing in nylon webbing loops that served as barely functional substitutes for real aiders. This allowed me to swarm my way up the nearly blank section while Patrick belayed me from above. With a mess of gear dangling from my neck, I soon flopped onto his belay ledge like a netted tuna hauled onto a boat deck.

“Graceless, but effective,” Patrick said.

I smiled, nodded, and panted.

Since aid climbing relied so heavily on gear, I had thought it wouldn’t be hard. In fact, hoisting myself up the 30-foot section with no ascenders or aiders wore me out in just minutes. I now understood how tiring aid climbing could really be.

ENVIRONMENTAL GEOLOGY JOBS
were plentiful in 1988, and though I already had a good offer in Fort Collins, I applied for a position as a corporate hydrogeologist with Shell Oil. The work would entail studying and remediating fuel leaks from underground storage tanks. It was a high-profile position overseeing subsurface cleanup projects across eighteen states. I was thrilled when Shell offered me this dream position.