7 minute read
CLIMBING INTO A COMMUNITY
by Darrin Gunkel
“You’re in luck. No thunderstorms in the forecast tonight. Have a good climb.” The ranger lingers a minute more, taking in the view from our perch on a snow-bound saddle beneath a soaring rock tower at the edge of the alpine world of Mt Shuksan. The landscape is vast: west, Mt Baker silhouetted in the afternoon sun, and east, deep ravines falling off into dark forest and canyons to, somewhere below the rising evening fog, Sulphide Creek and eventually Baker Lake. To the north, shoulders of Shuksan’s lower reaches block long views but mark tomorrow’s route. It’s a giant landscape, and the silence is profound. And once the ranger plods down the ridge and away into the forest, we feel tiny, entirely alone, and it’s exhilarating.
I’m used to spending time alone in the wilderness, in fact, until now, have preferred it. I’ve done many many solo backcountry trips. But it’s time to try something new. I am ready to try more challenging climbs. My main experience with mountains, so far, has been walk ups. A few big ones, granted, but nothing technical. My friend George grew up a stone’s throw from Rainier in Yelm, Washington, and spent countless weekends backcountry skiing at The Mountain, which led to decades of climbing throughout the Cascades. Shuksan is one of the last big ones he has to bag. So he’s been mentoring me the past few months, and I’m ready to start sharing my wilderness.
The weather report pans out, and our camp is fortunately not wracked by the huge storms that engulfed the mountain as we drove towards it yesterday. Clear and calm up here above a sea of clouds. Early sun strikes our camp as we gear up, and begin the first traverse and then the climb up to the edge of the Sulphide Glacier, brimming against the west edge of the Shuksan massif. The scenery is off the charts, and it appears we have the mountain completely to ourselves. It’s as otherworldly as it is lovely.
On the big plateau at 7,600 feet, we stop to take pictures of each other with Mt. Baker behind, and, wonderfully, partly below. Seemingly out of nowhere, a figure appears, approaches, and introduces himself. Tomas, from the Czech Republic. He’s been up here a couple of days, on his own scouting routes up the summit pyramid. “Yeah. The gully. But what gully? I found the wrong one yesterday, so I’m going back to the right one today.” We exchange more beta and pleasantries, and then, “Shall we go?” Our team of two is now three.
Tomas is the definition of dirtbag. He’s in the States “until I get tired of it,” climbing whatever he can. Apparently with whomever he can: not that I’m in bad shape, but next to this man of steel, forearms like a pile of cables, calves like small boulders, I feel positively flabby. And my near total lack of experience fazes him not one bit. He started climbing in the Alps in his teens, and he’s nearing 60. And pretty unflappable. I ask how yesterday’s storm was up here. “You would have laughed to see me chasing my tent around!” Okay. George is pretty bad-assed. Tomas is definitely.
The pleasant plateau stroll is over all too soon, and it’s time for the slog up past the hourglass to the base of the summit pyramid, looking more intimidating with every step. We pause to trade the rope before heading up, and again, this wilderness that I believed belonged to George and I solely coughs up another soul: Frederick, from Olympia. Like George, another Washington native born with spikes on the soles of his feet. He’s mellow, and a little less assuming than Tomas, “Mind if I join you?” And so, on my first big technical thing, I find myself approaching the summit with an international trio that between them, possess a century’s climbing experience. And no one seems bothered by my several hours’ experience.
It dawns on me that I’ve trudged my way from solitary forest depths into a community that exists across the world, and comes alive up here on the rock, snow, and ice above the clouds. There’s something powerful in the trust that these strangers are showing me, and each other. It’s assumed we know what we’re doing, it’s assumed we accept the risks. It’s stunning though, that these strangers have some unspoken understanding that they can count on each other to share a rope on a cliff 9,000 feet above the world where most humans enact their versions of community. Or not share a rope: We reach the base of the pyramid, and Tomas describes the ways not to go, and the way to go, and I start feeling out of depth. The first steep bit is a snow field. It’s beginning to feel really exposed, and maybe not more than I bargained for, but more than I can manage. Halfway up, I call it quits.
“I think this is getting too hairy for me.”
“We can rope up, if you feel like it,” Frederick says. I’m grateful for the offer, but I decline, sure that I would at best slow them down, and at worst, become a liability. “If you’re sure,” he says and climbs a few more steps before turning back to me. “You know, sometimes the mountain wants you. Sometimes it doesn’t.”
As they slowly ascend and disappear among the crags, I find a spot to wait. There are worse ways to spend a few hours on a July afternoon than sitting on a boulder looking nearly 8,000 feet down to Baker Lake, and across the empty sea of space between Shuksan and Baker. High clouds drift by, dappling the glaciers. I have this all to myself, but am keenly aware I never would have made it to this astounding spot without help and encouragement. And while this moment of solitude is profound, I know I wouldn’t be able to test these sorts of limits without that community that opened up to me when George asked one day, “Hey. Want to climb Mt. Shuksan with me?” At the time, the joke was that he just wanted someone to carry the rope. Which is an apt metaphor. We go out there together to share the burdens of climbing as much as the joys. Up until now I’ve savored the effort of wilderness travel; now I am learning to share it.
A few hours later I see my ad hoc team picking its way slowly down that first steep snowfield. Back at my boulder they share their summit story, and I am glad I didn’t go.
“The snow was light up higher,” says Tomas. “You had to climb like a cat, just on the claws!” I’m relieved, knowing I would have choked. And somehow I’m not disappointed. None of them tells me that I missed out, or that it’s a shame I didn’t make the summit. I’m thrilled for them, and as we make the slog back down, I’m struck again by the sense of community, even as it slowly dissolves, Frederick needing to hurry to get back home, then Tomas peeling off to “Go see if my tent ran away again.” The community dissolves as naturally as it began, without apologies, with an understanding that what came alive here above the clouds will live on, suspended, ready to become real again when the mountains require it.
