It was light when we woke below Longs Peak. Not great when you’d meant to wake at 5am for a very long day, when days weren’t that long to begin with.
Ian hadn’t heard the alarm because he’d been wearing earplugs. He claimed my snoring kept him awake, I personally preferred the term ‘heavy breathing’. I’d forgotten to bring my watch, and hadn’t heard Ian’s, buried as it was within his thick sleeping bag, necessary for the depths of Colorado winter. I’d also forgotten the food, which was lucky, as it was only my stomach that woke me.
We’d driven up from Boulder the day before in ‘Frank’s truck’, a municipal climbers truck once owned by the late ‘Frank’ who unfortunately died two years ago while soloing Fitzroy. The truck seemed to have about as much get up and go as us, who hadn’t gotten up and done anything in the two weeks we’d been here. It was turning into one of those crap times I hate, not fun enough to be a good holiday, not bad enough to be a great climbing trip.
Ian and I had been staying with the legend’s legend, Rolando Garibotti – alpinism’s answer to Julio Iglesias. He’d been a real gent in putting us up, seeing as we just turned up having found his address in the Yellow Pages. Some would say he hardy knew us, but I had met him once, in Camp 4 in 1997, for about 15 minutes. Nevertheless he made us welcome, and it was only when he groaned "I theenk I am going to have nervous breekdown" that we figured we’d outstayed our welcome and headed off to Longs Peak in the truck. Everyone said it was too cold, too early in the year, there would be no ice. But what the hell, it was a holiday.
Ian isn’t one to apologise for such oversights as oversleeping, which is a good technique as you start thinking that it must be your fault after all. It also turned out that he had left his headtorch on, its bulb now about as strong as my enthusiasm to climb. But we’d tramped up seven miles of forested zigzagging trails to get here, so it seemed daft to turn around now. We’d also signed in at the ranger station and we’d be letting the side down going back and ticking the “did you fail?” box. Plus I figured Rolo was hoping we’d be gone for a while.
The climbing was good. But although I thought I was climbing faster than usual it turned out that I wasn’t. At all. Something that became only too apparent when reviewing the pitch on Ian’s video camera later. In fact I couldn’t really understand what the f*ck I was doing. Instead of seeing the "super-slick, super-quick dude" that I imagined I was, all I saw was a bumbling idiot, who it seemed had no understanding of the word urgency. I would make a tiny movement, stop, think for a while, then either reverse that movement or make another miniscule effort. It was just painful to watch.
Ian came up and led the next pitch, which again seemed to take forever. He actually disappeared for half an hour, and the next thing I saw was a hand waving from deep inside a crack. Very off-putting. It turned out that the route involved a dash of caving, passing a huge chockstone. The exit was pure Parnell, as, with very little ice to help him, he bullied his way up to the belay. You could tell it was hard as his wordage dropped by the metre, always a bad sign if the climber is a journalist.
“Watch me on this bit Andy.” Pant. Scrape.
“Watch me here.” Scrape, scrape, pant.
“Watch me.” Pant, pant, scrape.
“Watch.” Scrape, scrape, scrape, scrape.
“Me.” Scrape, scrape, deep breath, scrape.
“uurgh.” Total silence for ten minutes...
“Safe, thank **** for that!”
The next pitch looked unpleasant, and very fall-offable. The choice was simple; a narrow snow-choked slot to the left, or an off vertical corner with a dribbling of ice to the right. Imagining myself getting upset on the right, I traversed left and started excavating the slot. Ian wasn’t convinced, and neither was I. The difference being he thought I should go right and I thought we should just go down.
Half an hour later I’d gibbered my way up the corner, feeling like a mixed climbing Homer Simpson. It seemed to me that I’d put in a heroic effort and had got higher then I’d expected, but the next section looked like you couldn’t fluke it. So I just moved around a bit, groaned, and put in and took out a few dubious wires to delay any decisions. Then I dropped my axe. Off it went, having “unclipped itself” from my leash. Unluckily that wasn’t going to be the end since up came Ian’s axe for me to carry on with.
But I couldn't carry on this way, so down I went, rather too easily considering how hard it had felt coming up, and marched efficiently over to the corner, muttering a quick ‘I knew I should have gone this way’ in order to make up for my appalling performance. It went slowly, but eventually easier ground was reached, at which point I promptly dropped the other axe. Luckily it landed fifteen feet lower in all the snow I’d excavated previously. But I still had to be lowered down like a lemon to retrieve it before scraping slowly back up again. I even started to feel sorry for Ian.
The pitch went on for what seemed like several more hours, at which point I was about 50 feet above the belay, poised beneath a dubious hanging pinnacle with nothing to clip into apart from a bleached white sling that seemed to be frozen under a boulder. Blame is the better half of valour; so I belayed off the sling and brought Ian up, so that if we did die then it would be his fault for coming off, not mine. Then with total disregard for my safety, Ian yarded up the pinnacle with his axes and ran it out onto the wall, making a series of uncomfortably contorted and bold moves up the finish.
There was about an hour left before it got dark by the time I reached the top. It had taken us all day to climb four bleeding pitches! Dean Potter had soloed Cerro Torre in less time then it had taken us to climb a scrappy M5. Thank god our sponsors couldn’t see us.
We looked up towards the summit, still a long way away. With only one head torch we’d have to bivi, something neither of us wanted to do even though we’d lugged all our bivi gear up the route. We just couldn’t face a miserable night on the mountain - we were too old, plus we were on our holidays after all. The desire for a warm bed, warm feet, warm food in fact warm anything overpowered any desire to visit the summit of Longs Peak. There was no paper scissors or tossed coins, the only thing thrown were the rope ends and down we went.
It was dark by the time we reached the tree line and began stumbling down the four miles of zigzagging trail back to Frank’s truck. My tired feet moved faster than they were able, sped up by Blair Witchian thoughts, made all the more real as we passed an old twisted sign pointing deep into the forest that read Goblin forest. Goblin forest? I thought, my mind racing, easily startled by fatigue, why is it called that? I started imagining the rangers standing over our shattered remains, flaming torches and shotguns in their hands, nervously eyeing the woods, “We told them to stay on the track and be down before sunset, God have mercy on their souls”
Every scrape of a boot or squeak of a ski pole tip was transformed into the trace of a blood curdling scream escaping from the deep wood, or a mind-snapping yelp as some poor victim was dragged to a sticky end. I was teetering on the edge. Fully accepting that at any moment Ian was going to scream “Holy mother of God…what the hell is that?” Luckily he didn’t, in fact he didn’t say a thing. He just tramped on behind me in the dark, no doubt simply wishing he could see where he was going.
It was 10pm by the time we reached the signing-out booth, glad to be out of the woods. Once back in the silent car park we stripped off our steaming layers and threw the lot into the back of Frank's truck, and with aching bodies climbed slowly inside for the hour long drive back to Boulder and a big Mexican meal as a reward. We could even invite Rolo to make up for the past two weeks. All my forgotten bivy food lay on the seat between us but it could wait. Ian turned the ignition key but nothing happened. He’d left the lights on.
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