Whenever there is an ascent that breaks away from expected norms in terms of tactics, style, difficulty, whatever—it is usually worth a second look, if for no other reason than to better understand its implications.
A recent example came across my desk on March 21, regarding an odd “mixed-style” (my words) free ascent of D7 (IV 5.11+) on the Diamond of Longs Peak (14,255′) in Rocky Mountain National Park.
For those unfamiliar, Jesse Huey, Matt Segal and Quentin Roberts completed a wintertime “team free ascent” of the high-alpine route utilizing ice axes to drytool the thin cracks—but on their feet they wore rock shoes instead of crampons. The team’s reasoning was that the rock climbing would be easier with traditional sticky rubber shoes, and also that crampons would be more likely to damage the rock than the picks of their ice tools. Anyone who has visited a popular mixed crag or popular alpine route where ice tools are commonly used has likely seen white scratches on the rock. Crampons, with their plethora of metal spikes, do seem to cause the most damage: the points are harder to finesse when your feet are scraping for purchase on thin edges, which can be hidden under snow, or non-existent on smooth slabs, and crampons prevent feet from jamming well into the wider cracks. Meanwhile, ice tools are more deftly placed, often slotted into thin cracks or torqued against opposing planes of stone when not otherwise used on edges and in pockets. Still, ice tools can break or scar the rock.
So, when I saw the photos of the climbers using ice tools on a classic alpine summer free route, like many people, I was startled. But then again, would we think twice if these tools were being used on a winter alpine climb elsewhere? And, in spite of what Instagram comments suggest, the ascent was still not easy. Yet, there is no denying that climbing is entering a new age of surging popularity, and we are having to consider various impacts that we have not had to give as much thought to before. That is especially the case for natural gems like the Diamond, which sits in view of Colorado’s sprawling Front Range communities, a population of more than five million people. A remote Canadian peak it is not, yet Neniisoteyou’u, as the Indigenous Arapahoe people have referred to the twin summits of Longs Peak and Mt. Meeker (13,911′), can offer a comparable challenge in winter, according to Huey and Roberts, who I spoke to extensively on the phone.
“I felt like I was on an expedition,” Roberts said. “It felt crazy to then be back in Boulder three days [after we started].”
Huey had been attempting a free ascent of D7 in winter every season since 2018. Segal partnered with him in 2020 and together their goal became focused on a team free ascent. This made the goal that much harder. Huey told me that if he’d had dedicated support with someone following on jumars, he would’ve likely succeeded a long time ago.
This past season, Huey and Segal recruited Roberts. All three climbers have impressive résumés. In 2023, Huey, Segal and Jordan Cannon completed the second free ascent of Cowboy Direct (VII 5.13) on Trango (aka Nameless) Tower in Pakistan (6251m, or 20,509′). That was just one of their exploits in the past few years. Meanwhile, Roberts and Alik Berg received a Piolet d’Or for their 2022 ascent of a new route, Reino Hongo (M7 AI5+ 90°, 1000m), on Jirishanca (ca. 6094m), Cordillera Huayhuash, Peru. Put together, this trio of Huey, Segal and Roberts presents a team worth watching—how they approach an objective carries all sorts of implications and promises a good chance of entertainment at the very least.
It’s no surprise that professional cameraman Jon Glassberg was keen to join them. But this presented some compromising choices in how they approached the route. More on that later. First, let’s recap some history.
D7 was first climbed as an aid route in 1966 by Larry Dalke, Wayne Goss and George Hurley. For a long time, it was the trade route on the Diamond; a straightforward aid climb in which pitons were liberally hammered into the arching seams that provided a direct line to the top of the wall. John Bachar free climbed the route in 1977, ushering in a new era, and D7 has now been considered a classic free climb for decades. Still, it is not uncommon for people to aid climb using the many fixed pitons that remain on the route in addition to a single rack of cams and nuts. For winter ascents it has always been the route of choice because of the direct line with straightforward aid and almost no wide cracks to deal with.
Whatever style and means are used, winter attempts of the Diamond, even with aid, fail more often than not.
No one had succeeded on a completely free ascent of the wall in winter until this past December on the first calendar day of winter, when 21-one-year-old Chris Deuto freed the Casual Route (IV 5.10-) as a one-day rope solo. The wall was fairly dry and he climbed mostly bare-handed on the technical portion of the route. He ended up with frostbite on one of his middle fingers, but he attributes that to something besides the cold: “I taped a flapper on my finger and forgot to remove the tape, so it was cutting off circulation for the rest of the day until I got back to the car,” he told me over the phone on March 22. His frost injury is now mostly healed.
By all accounts it was a mild winter and everyone I spoke to reported an unusually busy cold season on the Big D. As usual, though, many parties were turned around before summitting.
A Mission to Climb and Photograph
About a week before their attempt, Deuto helped Huey and Segal carry static ropes up to Broadway, a ledge that bisects the east face of Longs Peak at 13,000 feet and defines the base of the Diamond. They fixed ropes down the Lower East Face to enable Glassberg a safer and easier passage with all his camera equipment when they eventually returned. The climbers would not use the ropes, and would reclimb the snowy chute of the North Chimney. That same day of their preparatory mission, Huey, Segal and Deuto met two aid climbers who were rappelling D7 after an attempt to aid the route. The climbers agreed to tag up some of the static line to fix the first pitch of the route as well. Some days later, two friends agreed to push the fixed lines higher on D7, but they encountered sketchy conditions with fresh snow, getting caught in an avalanche at one point, and were only able to add one additional pitch.
Huey, Segal and Roberts returned with Glassberg on March 11 and made camp on Broadway.
On March 12, Huey said they had completed the crux pitch by 4 p.m.
“We could have climbed the last two pitches and summitted that day, but instead we decided to reclimb the crux to get top-down photos, fix our ropes, and finish the climb the next day,” he said. “I was like, ‘If I have to come back for a ninth year in a row to finish this goal, I’m going to be pissed.’”
Everything worked out, though: the climbers summitted—which was by no means a given, even with their proven abilities and experience—and Glassberg captured amazing images to tickle our imaginations.
While I was talking to Huey on March 21, he said that at that very moment Roberts was up on the mountain retrieving the rest of their gear.
“It wasn’t pure alpinism with all the rigging,” Roberts said. “But it was a satisfying experience. D7 is the route everyone tries in winter. It’s been an aid route and winter route for so long, if you’re going to push a new kind of style that may raise ethical questions, it’s a logical choice.”
Deuto and quite a few other high-profile climbers expressed support for their accomplishment.
“All things considered, I’m stoked for what they pulled off,” Deuto said. “At the end of the day, it was significantly harder to do it the way they did,” he said, referring to his solo ascent in which he had less gear and logistics to manage, and perhaps easier conditions.
Reactions and Concerns
Josh Wharton, who remains one of the best alpinists in the world after decades in the game, lives near Rocky Mountain National Park and has been climbing on the Diamond in summer and winter for about thirty years. In addition to redpointing the wall’s hardest route, the Dunn-Westbay Direct (5.14-), Wharton has spent considerable time on D7 in winter. In early March 2004 he set a round-trip speed record on the route with Jonny Copp, finishing in 14 hours, 17 minutes. In mid-March 2014 he reclaimed the winter record with Stanislav “Stanley” Vrba, finishing in 10 hours, 17 minutes. Additionally, he recalls that in approximately 2011, in April, he drytooled up to 80 percent of D7 “in ‘winter’ conditions that weren’t especially cold.”
Regarding Huey, Roberts and Segal’s ascent, Wharton wrote in an email:
I consider Huey, Quentin, Matt, and Chris all to be friends and I’m generally psyched for them to accomplish their goals. Kudos!
Chris’s ascent sticks out to me as psychologically impressive, but maybe a little less “true winter” as I remember the weather and conditions that day as very mild. Of course you can also categorize climbing it on a “mild” day as a wise move!
Matt and Jesse’s ascent sticks out for their year-to-year perseverance, and based on the pics and video I’ve seen, also as a true winter ascent given the conditions. It’s perhaps taken down a few style points because there were fixed ropes….
I would categorize them both as notable/good ascents, but not exceptional within the context of alpinism at large.
Topher Donahue is another highly accomplished alpinist and author who has also spent much of his life climbing in Rocky Mountain National Park. In January 1996, he set the first winter speed record on the Diamond, via D7, with Craig Luebben, going car-to-car in 20 hours, 40 minutes. Donahue has spoken out firmly against the drytool ascent. He and I corresponded online and over the phone. In the email he wrote:
In the early 1980s a climbing botanist named Chip Salaun found that there were flowers growing in the cracks on the Diamond that were found nowhere else that he could identify. Is scraping the last bit of soil out of those cracks with ice tools, after the aid and free climbers already cleaned parts of the cracks, a good direction for alpine rock climbing to go, or something climbing media should encourage?
Most climbing media consumers aren’t going to care much about flowers, but they do care about preserving classic free climbs. Drytooling puts way more stress on holds than free climbing and I can see tool impact on pretty much any route in the Park that’s ever had a drytool ascent. I’m certain those guys impacted the rock more on that one day than the last 40 years of fingers—but they’re not going to talk about the edges of the crack they crumbled or flakes they snapped off, even if they noticed.
More than just the one recent ascent with tools, Donahue expressed concern about what promoting a climb like this could lead to. There are some climbers who enjoy drytooling more than rock climbing, and if ice axes are acceptable to use on the route in winter, why not summer?
“Ten thousand drytool ascents are different than 10,000 fingers,” Donahue said.
Glassberg said he thinks it’s unlikely drytooling will catch on, especially in summer.
“It would be high investment for a low reward,” he said. “I’d be surprised if people thought it would be the way forward.”
Wharton doesn’t think drytool traffic is likely to pick up anytime soon, either. He wrote:
In reality drytooling on alpine walls like the Diamond, [Hallett Peak], and other alpine walls is done by a very small group of people and I think the risk of damaging the routes is relatively low. The classic counterpoint is Cathedral Ledge [in New Hampshire], where this is very much an issue due to its popularity both in summer and winter, and proximity to North Conway.
For perspective about the situation at Cathedral Ledge, I reached out to Nick Aiello-Popeo, a very accomplished alpinist who lives near the area. He responded:
Cathedral is a place where our entire community has struggled with the relationships of mixed climbing, drytooling and rock climbing…. Friends of the Ledges [FOTL], has done a few events based entirely around this topic. Recently I did some surveys of folks who climb at Cathedral and found some common ground. I compiled this into a list of tips for mixed climbing at Cathedral Ledge, which is hosted on the FOTL site.
Several rock routes at Cathedral now have obvious damage from crampons and picks. It’s damage that’s on par with the impact of decades of piton use, but this damage has accumulated on a shorter timeline. And the scratches from crampons are more noticeable than piton scars.
At Cathedral, some of these rock routes have been “sacrificed” to ice and mixed climbing because they see more ascents in winter than in summer (i.e. Repentance and Remission). Other routes, like the Prow, are clearly rock climbs that no one should consider torquing their way up. Routes with more ambiguity have seen an array of tactics.
People have decided that some routes are such important rock climbs that we need to stop climbing them with tools and crampons….
In my opinion, difficulty alone will not keep the masses from drytooling rock routes. Everyone is getting stronger quickly, and winter ascents that used to be considered exceptional are now the warmup. I haven’t climbed the Diamond, unfortunately, so I can’t comment on that particular ascent.
Cameras and Social Media
To start with, let’s take a moment to appreciate how difficult it must be to capture photos and video on an ascent like this.
Just getting to the base east face of Longs Peak involves an approximately five-mile approach if you’re going direct rather than rappelling in from the north to reach Broadway; one has to cross or skirt Chasm View Lake, depending on if it’s sufficiently frozen, and then navigate a boulderfield and/or snow slope to reach the North Chimney at about 12,500 feet.
Besides the physical challenges, there have also been stringent rules specific to each park that commercial photographers have had to carefully navigate. That situation recently changed with the passage of the EXPLORE Act on January 4. The National Park Service website indicates that there is now no need for permits for groups of eight or fewer who are using handheld equipment, in addition to other basic requirements. “This is HUGE!” photographer Corey Richards recently posted on Instagram.
As for Glassberg, he is a veteran when it comes to film work on the Diamond.
He spent one night with the climbers on Broadway. The next day, up on the climb, he was working in conditions that were about 5°F. He had to jumar with his equipment at altitude, keep ropes and shadows out of the frames, and in general keep up with the climbers and manage all the things that come with being on an alpine wall in winter while anticipating his positions, shots and camera settings. On the third day, he went home while the three others went to the summit and snapped a selfie. In the end, everyone I spoke to told me nothing was left on the mountain.
“My feeling was, ‘we kind of need to document this because I don’t think people would understand what we’re doing with this crossover stuff,’” Glassberg told me.
Donahue suggested that the better call might have been to not document and promote the ascent.
But professional climbers make a living by bringing us the sorts of wild images and stories that many of us crave; the content that inspires us to stick to our training plans and dream of what we ourselves might be able to climb and the places we want to visit. Or at least provide some Instagram fodder to distract us from a second of boredom. Something to look at or talk about.
Wharton chimed in on this topic. It’s worth pointing out that he was featured in a film for Reel Rock 18 with Vince Anderson on their 2022 ascent of Jirishanca. Early this year some controversy emerged when it was revealed that Berg and Roberts were summitting from the other side of the mountain at the same time as Wharton and Anderson, and the filmmakers subsequently photoshopped them out of the picture for the sake of more convenient storytelling. About the Diamond ascent, Wharton wrote:
I think the more interesting debate here is about social media, and the modern tendency for climbers to constantly share their “significant” ascents. As a climbing insider with a huge amount of experience across various genres I find it relatively easily to delve into the nuance that differentiates between perception and reality, and distinguish between exceptional, great, good, average, etc. ascents, and the blurry line between acceptable and unacceptable ethics. Yet many people won’t be aware of those nuances, and that can make nuanced “style-oriented” forms of climbing like big walling and alpinism tricky to report, especially when the “reporting” is often done by the climbers themselves.
Which brings me back to why I devoted this much time to the story in the first place. Without a real story to digest the facts and add context and perspective, these photos and a truncated version of events might have simply been posted to social media and fed to less-discerning audiences, little more than an advertisement for sponsors that can linger and have a bigger impact in terms of the tools and tactics it inadvertently promotes through images that are left largely unexplained.
Ice tools are generally expected to be used on winter ascents of alpine routes, but clearly there are some places where this style might not be a good idea. That means there is all the more reason to talk about it and clarify things sooner than later, while we can make active choices about how we want to navigate “the blurry line” as we face a future of rapid growth and change.
Facing the Climate Crisis
To that end, and on a more positive note, Wharton, Huey, Roberts and Glassberg pointed to how wonderful it is to have a testing ground like Neniisoteyou’u so close to home.
“It’s our Mont Blanc,” Glassberg said.
Wharton wrote:
It’s a not a secret that all the travel people do for climbing, and alpinism is very carbon heavy. Something I personally wrestle with. I think it would be cool if we see close to home ascents with less environmental impact championed [the] media and sponsors, as there are lots of rad things out there that don’t require getting on an airplane.
He mentioned a “super adventurous” first ascent that he completed with Jackson Marvell in 2021 on the east face of Wheeler Peak in Nevada.
“It was an equally cool if not cooler experience to many things I’ve done in the Greater Ranges,” Wharton said. “Yet as far as I know it got essentially zero press.”
He added another example: Séb Berthe and Nico Favresse using only bikes and trains to enchain Europe’s Alpine Trilogy—three famous multipitch 8b+ (5.14a) routes in the Swiss, Austrian, and German Alps over two weeks. Their two dogs were also along for the ride.
Wharton said it’s “one of the more badass/low-impact, inspiring things that’s been done [that] seemed to fly largely under the radar.”
These are all good reminders that adventure is often what we make of it, and with the right kind of eyes, we may not have to travel far to find it.