1998: Leaving Llamaland

[This story was first published in Alpinist 53 as part of the 30-page Mountain Profile on Zion National Park-Ed.]

JANUARY: SHADOWS AND SILENCE fill the canyon of Zion National Park. Within the Emerald Pools amphitheater, icicles clatter to earth. I pull out my binoculars. A gently overhanging prow on Mt. Majestic catches wan winter sun. Bracketed by deep clefts, the sleek, southeast-facing buttress rises through dark-red sandstone and mahogany iron stains. A central chimney leads to discontinuous thin cracks. Up higher, the seams close down, but the rock looks rough and featured in the side light. Other lines emerge as the sun’s angle changes, but none captivate me as much as the prow. The days are short and cold–so many hours of darkness to spend with just my thoughts and a circle of light from my headlamp. After two pitches, I descend.

Memorial Day: traffic clogs the canyon, a constant rumble. It’s worse than rush hour in Boulder, where I work at a video-game company. Still, the air smells of desert, clean and pungent. A cool damp lingers along the Virgin River. Park visitors amble on the hiking trail, necks craned, wafting sunscreen and deodorant. They startle when I ask to pass, my torso canted to counterbalance my eighty-pound haulbag. There is mutual confusion when we consider each other’s purpose. I wish it weren’t so. I’m longing for just one person to understand when I say I’m scared.

The truth is, I’m often lonely in a crowd, not sure where I fit. As a child, I’d tote my books into the rafters of our hay barn or wander by myself on desolate sagebrush hills. As a climber, I’ve learned that I succeed most often when I’m soloing; when there’s no one to hear my insecurities, they seem like conjurings of the imagination–unvoiced, and therefore not real.

I am an impostor, pretending to be a climber and first ascensionist.

The wall is steep. If I make a mistake, retreat will be as hard as going up.

No one will know if I fall.

I leave the trail, striking out up the hill alone.

My cache of water has grown stringy grey colonies of…something. Another trip to the car, another sloshing load humped through a gaggle of sightseers. I slide on safety glasses to keep out the constant rain of sand. The rack settles over my shoulders, jangling and heavy. I touch the stone, grunting and shoving my body into a flaring chimney that drools sand down my collar. After two ropelengths, I’m back at my old highpoint. In January, the lonely sweep of stone above me loomed dark and cold. Now, the amber sunlight warms the wall. This is work that I love in a place where I belong. Climb, rap, clean, haul. Repeat. My fear falls away.

Where one crack peters out, another opens just within reach. Ledges appear just in time to set a belay. By evening, the growl of the traffic wanes and the songs of canyon wrens echo. Feet dangling off my portaledge, I watch the last, smoldering glow fade from the rim. Later, I wake to claws scratching nylon. A rodent scurries over my sleeping bag, goggling me with eyes big enough to drink the starlight. I roll over carefully to keep from knocking it into space.

Halfway up the wall, my drill bit pulls out mud. Belay bolts sink through a dry layer into sodden rock. Maybe the storm water of winter is still percolating down, or maybe the formation never really dries out. Will my gear hold a fall?

Two pitches later, I’m hooking through corrugated stone, knuckle-wide bumps crusted with patina. I’m stepping onto a new placement when the wrinkle that held the previous hook crumbles away.

Two millimeters of metal tooth into fragile rock. Ten feet down, a pair of tipped-out beaks wedge in an angling, calcified seam. Beyond, meters and meters of blue kernmantle arc across bare rock, cross a blunt arete, disappear from sight. Somewhere, half a pitch below, is a hand-sized cam in waterlogged sandstone.

Fingers pinching features, weight spread among patina edges, I step up, afraid to breathe. Afraid to drill a chicken bolt because I don’t want to rattle my hook off its nub. I find a bigger edge–my eyes shut while I give it a firm pull. Movements blur until I finally get a hand jam between detached flakes. I wedge a cam into the gap and swallow the metal taste of fear. A breeze cools my neck while I pant, forehead against the wall.

I am an impostor. But I’ve made it this far.

After months behind a desk, my body and mind aren’t prepared for these dawn-to-dusk days. Each morning, I stare at numb fingers for five minutes before I can curl them into fists. My swollen wrists ache from the repetitive strain of hand-drilling belays.

Exhausted, I leave my portaledge assembled and clipped under the haulbag. I’m at the next belay, hauling, when the wind kicks up. The ledge is an azure aluminum kite, clanging against the stone while it rides the air. Ropes snarl.

I want off this wall.

On the fourth day, the sun presses on my shoulders like an iron. Brown and beige huecos tilt just beyond vertical. I take a few tepid sips of water. Climb, rap, clean, haul.

Finished.

Lips too cracked to smile, I’m adrift in a slab that slants like the deck of a sinking ship. Four hundred feet away, a pinon tree leans over a sandy dish. I fix lines and ferry my gear before taking off my harness for the first time in days.

Reluctant to think about descending, I recline against the tree and read away the afternoon. The next day, I rappel into a slot canyon filled with ferns and the peeps of frogs. At dusk, I sink to my ankles in soft sand. Zion is empty when I climb into my truck. I’m glad; tomorrow I’ll be ready for crowds and conversation. But not today.

Not yet.