Four years ago, my brother Bruce and I climbed the East Face route on Mt. Whitney. It's a classic climb and includes one of the quintessential pitches in the Sierras, the Fresh Air Traverse, named for bringing the would-be climber out left over the face and 1000 feet of fresh air. At a rating of 5.8, the climb itself isn't that technically demanding, according to today's double digit pushing hyper-athletes, but it's a beautiful, alpine adventure that should be on every climber's tick list.
Four years ago I was climbing to forget an unexpected and difficult personal tragedy. I'd set the summit out in my mind as an accomplishment that would purge my memory and reset my life. When the first clouds came over the top, sprinkling hail and suggesting a much darker near future, my mind was already too set on reaching the top that I ignored the signs. A few brief moments captured on my fathers handicam show my brother asking "shall we go down?" accompanied by the ticking bounce of tiny balls of ice. I was leading the pitch at the time, sidestepping out onto the Fresh Air Traverse. Nothing was going to stop me and I said so, on camera. This is important because it isn't often that one's turning point mistakes can be immortalized on magnetic tape. When they are, you are left with no way to deny them and it's cathartic in a way, being forced to take total responsibility.
From that point on it was an epic. Accumulating hail turned the rocks slippery. Lightning struck so close we could smell it burning rock and feel it humming under our feet. We tried waiting it out, hiding from the lightning by crouching down as small as possible. When we got too cold, we moved between lightning strikes. Somehow we climbed out onto the summit and ran crying into the hut. The descent continued the epic with sketchy rappels down slippery rocks, but we made it.
Four years later, last Thursday, I returned, this time under very different circumstances. Time has passed, I'm a different person, healed and grounded. Life is also different for my brother Bruce. Two years ago he met Caroline, a professor from Emory University. They climbed together, fell in love and were married in a meadow, 100 miles North of the Whitney Portal. Caroline would come with us this time. Rounding out the climbing party was Ryan, a friend of Caroline's from Georgia. The plan was to climb the East Buttress route in two rope teams, Caroline with Ryan, Bruce with me.
We started the approach hike on Thursday afternoon. I brought too much of everything, including a plush but heavy sleeping pad (I like my rest), and my newly acquired, but also very heavy Sony XDCAM video camera and monopod. In all, my pack weighed 55 pounds, not that heavy really, but not exactly light considering an approach hike of six miles rising four thousand feet to the foot of the mountain. The effort of hauling all my gear, my sea level address and lack of aclimatization combined to give me classic altitude sickness. I managed to crawl into camp, thanks to my brother's encouragement. Mercifully I slept through the night and felt good enough to climb the next morning.
We climbed fast, with no hail or lightning this time to complicate the journey. The climbing was clean and beautiful; challenging enough to be fun but not gripping. We reached the top just after noon. After lounging for a little while, we started down the mountaineer's route, a couple of long snow gulleys that flank the mountain's North side. We had hauled our ice axes up the mountain for this, in case we got going too fast but I didn't really need mine. I skied down on the soles of my boots, making it to the base in about an hour.
Four years later the mountain gave me a very different day of climbing. The routes were of similar difficulty, the granite was the same. Four years ago my life was stormy; complicated, and so was the climb. There's no connection. I didn't cause the weather four years ago, or clear it up this year. But I did get exactly what I needed on both climbs. It isn't always that simple, we don't always get what we need from our experiences, in the mountains or otherwise.
well-written contribution to mountaineering literature. Bravo!
Posted by: brote' | June 22, 2008 at 09:52 PM