adrenaline pumps the breath; maybe the complete and utter awareness between the mind and its body as the connection between what is and what awaits is recognized. Everything melts. In the nakedness between rock and body there is a delicate balance. It’s a dance between no one else but the mighty giant within. Careful planning, soft changes, and beautiful improvisation create this sacred balance both within and in nature, one that guides us through fear and transcends our boundaries.
No Country for Bold Men John Catto (‘82) Eyelids fluttering with fatigue, I barely noticed the shadow move. My hand jerked to the headlamp. The beam illuminated a black widow spider rappelling toward me as if to attack. I hesitated. I sensed a delicate balance of life and death in this desert and didn’t want to challenge it. “Kill it,” Greg said. Then he grabbed a shoe and struck, smearing the red hourglass mark on the sandstone beside me. I thought about vengeful relatives erupting from the web and crawled a few meters away to scrape out another bivy spot. Above me, Uranium Peak glowed in the starlight. Below, Red Canyon created its own gravity, bending the shadows along the walls, smothering sounds with darkness. It was bold, yet counter-intuitive, for a spider to attack a giant. Self-preservation does not always prevail. Two weeks earlier, Greg, Pete, and I drove deep into the southeast Utah desert, our sights set on the first technical ascent of Uranium Peak, an isolated 1748-meter sandstone mountain with a 300-meter north face. Only eight hours from our homes, the labels 2WD, 4WD-H and 4WD-L marked the shifts from civilization to wilderness to desolation. Pale-green tailings of abandoned uranium mines dappled the canyon’s sides around our camp. The topography played with light and sound in a way that confused the senses, warping and blending textures, colors, and noises into a kind of canyon-country aurora borealis. When quiet, Red Canyon’s stillness had a density to it. In the void of human noise, other sounds seemed amplified, especially the buzzing. Swarms of ferocious gnats mauled any exposed skin. Standing still was unbearable. Greg’s picture of the wall, taken last year, didn’t show the massive rockslide scar, now a thousand-foot pink stain on left side. To the right of the slide’s rubble, a line of unconnected corners and cracks offered the only probable route. It might continue to the top, but the last pitch was hidden from view. 46
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We’d find out if we got there. The cliff’s lower rock band appeared to be solid Wingate sandstone. Underfoot, it crumbled. We all gawked at the second pitch, a sixty-meter corner with perfect ninety-degree symmetry and a splitter finger crack that separated the glasssmooth walls, narrowing as it rose. Greg called lead on it. We agreed; he was the one who discovered the wall. Pete slapped the dust off his soles, stuck a meticulously taped hand into the initial jam on Pitch 1. Five meters up, his eager, confident movements suddenly turned to thrashing and clanking. Roaring obscenities, he descended, ripped the gear off himself, and threw it to the ground. Red Canyon amplified his curses, hurling them back from all directions. Charged with anger, the air crackled the way it does before lightning strikes. Greg recoiled. Desperate to leave the fear and fury behind, I picked up the rack and climbed, seeking protection. Three days later in base camp, Greg and I quit the climb with two hundred meters of rope still fixed to it. Heat, toil, and insects had gnawed our resolve raw. Pete stewed about retrieving his gear, much of which was on the wall. Greg said we couldn’t finish the route with the time we had left. I thought we could, but lacked the conviction to continue. A kind of spiritual desiccation seemed to have drained us all. The canyon blew our dust plume around us as we drove away. For a week my ears remained swollen from the bug bites. I wondered whether I still had the drive for this kind of escapade. Yet I promised Peton I’d get his gear back to him. Leaving a project unfinished irritated me. Perhaps more than anything, I needed to slake the parched feeling of the first attempt. Greg was sick now, but if we didn’t go back immediately, we had no idea when we could. So he and I went. Pete would say, “That’s logical reasoning within a framework of totally irrational perception.” He’d be right. Sheltered in the afternoon shade, we grunted back up our ropes, hefting forty pounds of water, four cans of tuna, ten tortillas, a bag of cashews, and some orange Gatorade. Canned fruit was dessert. Neither of us eats much when it’s hot. Warm nights required little bivy gear: half-length pads, mosquito-netting headgear, long-sleeve shirts and pants. On giant terraces 200 meters up, we settled in for the night. This is “rockneering,” mountaineering minus the dangers of avalanches and cold. On a desert mountain, soft rock adds unique hazards. Edges powder when pressured by hand, or foot. The rope cuts grooves when pulled. The leader has to toss loose blocks out of cracks when possible, or else place gear to guide the rope around them. It takes little effort for the rope to dislodge a rock. Yet these factors, along with the possibility of a first ascent in a desolate place, form the elements of a grand adventure. Usually our quests take us far away from home. To find one so close is sweet.