Justification for an Elitist Attitude
Defining Consciousness on Denali's Czech Direct
Mark Twight
I spent my first trip of 2000 to Denali trying to put as much distance between myself and my partner as possible. Mark and I never climbed together before. I went because, at one point, it sounded like a good idea and I'd said I would. Our stated goal was to flash the Cassin. We were without a clever strategy, though, and the West Buttress mentality seduced us up on arrival. There was nothing light, fast, or high about us.
Discord was immediate; he sang and whistled songs I detested. Mark isn't part of my crew, those few alpine climbers who are at the top of the game. Although he climbs because he loves it, and I do the same, there's an ocean separating how and why we each love climbing. Mark's technical ability and survival skills are unimpeachable. He's lived through some mind-blowing adventures, but I didn't trust his judgement, or care enough about him to make any concessions.
We hadn't shared enough to develop the belief in each other that dangerous climbs demand. And since I was only with him to train for a bigger route, I chose the West Buttress over the Cassin because it could whip me into shape as well as anything. The decision made little difference to me. Mark was disappointed and questioned why I didn't consider us a team. The climbing experience I'm after can't be had without the current of mutual love and respect electrifying the rope. When I climb with Scott or Steve or Barry, the rope is a high-tension wire. The best part of the trip with Mark was untying from him at 10k. I turned up my Walkman, pointed 'em straight, and skied away.
When it was over and folks asked what we did, I answered that we barely got up the West Buttress. Denali by any route is a substantial undertaking and minus-40-degree temperatures level the field. Our toes were just as cold as the next guy's. But I couldn't truthfully say we "climbed" the mountain because there's no climbing on the West Buttress. Unless on calls dragging a sled 11 miles, jugging fixed ropes up 500 feet of 35-degree ice, and hiking along a wide ridgetop "climbing". Folks call it what ever their egos need to hear.
A week after unroping from Mark I flew back to Kahiltna International with fellow cynics Steve House and Scott Backes. Each of us is intolerant of empty words and arrogant about action. The posturing among virgin Denali suitors sickened me more than ever. I guess the gray in my beard means I'm older, not wiser.
"Outside," in the Lower 48, it's not uncommon to hear a young buck claim he's going to doe new routes on Hunter and Foraker, then blast the Cassin. I know. I was one of them once. Some men manage to posture all the way to 14,000 feet. During my trip with Mark I actually heard a guy say, "I'm doing the Seven Summits." When I asked how many he'd climbed he answered, "Well, um, Denali will be the first." Back at 7200 feet, more sober statements are exchanged: "22 days, not exactly what I envisioned," followed by pathetic rationalization about how no one else summited during that period either.
I'm an elitist prick and I think posers have polluted mountaineering. They replace skill and courage with cash and equipment. They make the summit, not the style, the yardstick of success. Only marginal minds or true individuals used to discover mountaineering. Lack of social support forced them to be autonomous, to turn climbing into a lifestyle, isolated from society. We had community back then. Now I'm embarrassed to call myself a climber, because close on the heels of the admission some dilettante will ask whether I've read Into Thin Air, or done Everest.
Today's acceptance of climbing as sport, combined with technological and financial advances, allows casual participation. "How-to" books -- including my own -- offer recipes for success. Guidebooks for particular routes define the rules more specifically. I can't think of another mountain besides Denali for which such a rigid formula is prescribed: "Drag it all to 8k. Carry to 10k, sleep at 8k. Move to 11k, back-haul from 10k. Carry to 13k, sleep at 11k. Move to 14k, back-haul from 13k. Rest. Carry to 16k, sleep at 14k. Move to 17k, with three days' food. If the weather's good go for the top. If not, fetch enough supplies from 16k to wait out the storm." The indoctrination is so strong that some guys busy caching at 16k said, "You went for the summit from 14k? Wow. We didn't know you could do that."
Scott, Steve and I skied to the base of Denali's South Face. We spent two days trying to comprehend the massiveness of the wall and glassing features on the 900-vertical-foot Czech Direct. The route was first climbed over 11 days in 1986 by a team of three Slovaks, who fixed 1000 feet of rope. Kevin Mahoney and Ben Gilmore repeated it at the end of May in a seven-day, alpine-style effort. Hearing they'd done it saddened us until we realized we didn't care whether we made the second, third, or eighth ascent. Only our chosen style mattered. In fact, a modern comparison would make our message that much clearer: We wanted to climb it in one push, without sleeping.
To go as fast as the dream demanded we had to acclimatize, so we pointed our skis up the West Buttress. Within 19 hours of arriving at 14k, Ranger Roger Robinson invited us to help rescue a 62-year-old climber with broken ribs and the onset of pneumonia from 17k. An armada of strong guys, including Joe Reicher and Pete Athans, made the rescue in eight hours roundtrip. Afterward I rhetorically asked Steve what my true motivation for helping was, and why I enjoyed being so skilled at it.
"Because it further justifies your elitist attitude," he replied, and it became our motto.
A Nova video crew pounced on us the next day. They acted as if we should be excited to answer questions about footware. We gave the interview as a favor to our friend Colby Coombs, the camera crew's guide. Although I am happily orchestrating Steve's sell-out by introducing him to sponsors, encouraging media presence, and programming slideshows, I'm often galled by my own sleazy, subconscious attempts to claim any 15-minute period of fame within reach. Steve calls it The Poison Wanting and shames me for it. Two days later the shame spurred me to the summit from 15k in 5 hours and 39 minutes.
Back at the airstrip, bad weather stalled our return to the South Face. Each day at 7k stole a bit of acclimatization. Each inch of fresh snow changed the route and its approach. Scott figured the gods made it harder because we had made ourselves stronger.
The Czech Direct posed many questions. As high pressure built we raced up its first 1000 feet to determine how much they'd cost. Afterward we strategized. Proper timing was critical. So were hydration and nutrition. We'd stop every 12 hours to brew and eat; the first break during the afternoon's warmth would place the following one in the middle of the night. As a counter-measure each of us brought a 2-pound Polarguard jacket and balaclava. We packed two MSR XGK's, 22 ounces of fuel and a titanium pot for each. Two stoves meant we could melt snow quickly enough to prevent an irreversible chill and loss of momentum while brewing. We split 55 pounds into two loads; 18 pounds were water. The leader would climb with a light summit pack or nothing at all.
We planned to ditch gear as it became superfluous: the rack, a rope, useless stoves. Armchair intellectuals will shout ethical opposition to this behavior, but until such critics confront the likelihood of death they can't understand how easily ethics are traded for continued existence. Honor means winning, which requires surviving. This style of climbing isn't poetic. It's primitive battle with clubs and stones.
After dinner Steve read to us from Yukio Mishima's manifesto, Sun and Steel, "Pain, I came to feel, might well prove to be the sole proof of the persistence of consciousness within the flesh, the sole physical expression of consciousness. As my body acquired muscle, and in turn strength, there was gradually born within me the tendency towards positive acceptance of pain, and my interest in physical suffering deepened." Mishima, who killed himself in 1970, had described our need to climb the CZD in a single push without knowing the context. We were on Denali to prove the existence of consciousness.
At 4 a.m., above the roar of the stoves, I listened to seracs disintegrating on the Ramp Route below the South Buttress. Mugs Stump died over there; buried by a collapsing crevasse lip a mile from our camp. I took these avalanches as his blessing. We knew he'd appreciate our plan because he had followed the European lead toward single-push climbing in the mid-1980's. Erahrd Loretan, Jean Troillet, and Pierr-Alain Steiner climbed Dhauligiri in winter without packs. Loretan and Troillet sped up Everest in 36 hours. Benoit Chamoux climbed K2 in 23 hours even though fixed ropes and camps threatened to trip him every step of the way. Cho Oyu, Shishipangma, G1 and G2 were also climbed without bivouacs. Europeans raised the bar a long time ago. Mugs took notice. He tested non-stop tactics on giant faces in Antarctica and refined them further during his 15-hour dash up the Cassin. Since his death in 1992, few have shown the courage to acknowledge his torch.
We crossed the bergschrund at 6 a.m., passed the Czech's second bivouac at 8 a.m., their third at 11 a.m. We reached their fourth bivy site on the First Icefield at 2 p.m. and moved into a ledge chopped by Mahoney and Gilmore, where we brewed, ate, and refilled our water bags. We led in blocks of six pitches and simul-climbed or soloed what didn't merit a belay. I finally took the sharp end at 7 p.m. on the Czech's 32nd pitch. We were hauling ass and moving into another pre-chopped ledge at 1 a.m.
Scott lead out at 3:30 a.m. Steve snored while I belayed. The topo showed ice steeper than 90 degrees. We joined Scott on his hastily chopped stance. He confessed that he was "glad to have gotten off that without getting hurt." Steve led through. His back-stepping and stemming told us everything we needed to know. From our belay it looked like Steve was connecting blobs of ice on El Cap.
As the sky lightened Scott looked down.
"Do you see that?" he asked. I looked over my shoulder and saw nothing unusual: Denali's shadow smothered Mount Hunter, the East Fork was almost a mile below us.
"What?" I asked.
"Look how far down the glacier is. We couldn't retreat if we wanted to."
Shit. The terrain would eat us. We pointed our faces upward.
Higher, Steve dropped a tool.
"I used that hammer on every route I've done since 1996," he said.
The list included his solo first ascent of Beauty is a Rare Thing on Denali's Direct West Buttress, Mascioli's Pillar, King Peak, our new route on Mount Bradley, and M-16 on Howse Peak in the Canadian Rockies.
"At least it was KIA. I won't have to retire it when I don't trust it anymore, and it never let me down," he said thoughtfully. We passed a silent moment in memory and honor. Most of the hard climbing was over so it didn't matter.
An hour later we were lost. Mist lapped at the broken rocks and ice. Visibility was nil but we sensed Big Bertha, the serac dominating Denali's South Face, pushing us west. That we were still conscious enough to be scared of falling ice comforted me. The topo was unclear and each apparently simple exit from the icefield proved more difficult than we could afford. I scouted toward the Cassin but saw no easy way out. Scott wondered out loud whether we were going to get off Denali at all as our collective confidence ebbed. We'd found the uncertainty Messner spoke os eloquently about 30 years ago but it wasn't as beautiful as he'd led us to believe. Our minds were fried. Making the decision to stop and brew up was a farce. Tick-tock, tick-tock.
Thirty-four hours into it we scraped off a little perch at 15,900 feet. Calories and a break from the stress refreshed us. Scott traversed into a gully safely distant from the polished chutes and slabs beneath the serac. Sleep deprivation triggered our sluggish decline. No one could lead more than two pitches efficiently before indecisiveness and fear slowed his progress. Instead of adapting, we stupidly clung to the six-pitch block strategy that had worked so well 24 hours earlier. Scott placed four pieces of gear on a 30-degree ice pitch; he spent 20 minutes building an anchor. I'd never seen him that wrecked before. Steve and I were angry but said nothing because we knew fatigue worked its disease on us as well.
An ugly gail lashed spindrift against our goggles. We were too cold to climb further into its teeth and stopped in the lee of a massive boulder; hoping sunup would calm the wind. Steve and I chopped hard for an hour. Scott watched with glazed-over eyes, too wasted to lend a hand. Things were falling apart. The stoves hissed away the last of their fuel at hour 48. Their silence sent my imagination down a deep, dark hole. We had eight luke warm liters of water to get us to the top and down to our 11,000 foot cache but no idea how long it might take. The Steve threw up, chucking five hundred calories into the snow. His stomach was troubled enough that he couldn't replace any of it. "Shit," I thought, "he's done." Out loud I asked if he was OK.
"Yeah," he said, wiping his chin. "I'm just defining my consciousness."
We couldn't retreat, or escape sideways. I wasn't sure how much higher we'd get before Denali swallowed us forever. Cold numbed my toes and as the icy feeling crept up my legs I quietly accepted that we might have finally gone too light.
Survival instinct blinded us to the splendor of sunrise. Its beauty might materialize across years of memory, but seeing the sun right then just meant our jackets were finally warm enough. With the frigid Alaskan dusk another 18 hours away, Scott and Steve snatched a nap. Uncertainty about the remaining effort left me sleepless and vibrating. After 15 minutes I started packing, prepared to shut up, put up, and maybe die trying.
I climbed away from the ledge onto yet another amazing mixed pitch. Face to face with the upper edge of Big Bertha, I belayed from four tied-off pins. My partners followed quickly. The slope laid back so I ran on blunt frontpoints until I was out of rope, then shouted for them to move with me while I continued tugging.
"What about the anchor?"
"Leave it. We're done," I shouted back.
Before starting up I'd joked that the last 4000 feet would be my block, "since you guys won't be able to keep up anyway." We crested the Cassin at 17,400 feet, 56 hours above basecamp. Two climbers shouted to us from above. They were high enough that we couldn't accidently catch them and be compelled to break trail. They left nice track. The views behind us were heart-rending, and the gods smiled.
I stomped one foot in front of the other, each step taking me higher. I used to love the sound of my crampons chewing up the ice and admire the brutal efficiency of my tools. Then, I felt invulnerable, as vanity overcame innocence. I've since crossed a pride-killing eternity. A 40-long list of dead friends and partners crushed conceit beneath the pressure of reality. I learned to respect my fear and sometimes dredge up the courage to face it. And despite understanding my humanity, I still feel superior within a narrowly defined discipline. Mostly because I've proven how far a disciplined mind can take the man that isn't particularly strong, or brave.
I couldn't believe Scott had emptied himself so completely but clawed enough from his reserves to keep going. If I stopped I fell asleep; when I slowed my pace it was the same. Previously unknown will moved my legs fast enough to keep me from falling off. We passed beyond any preconceptions of endurance, broke free of accepted limitations. Fatigue multiplied itself geometrically inside us: hour 56 was at least 12 hours harder than hour 48. Minutes were hours and hours meant nothing. We hovered across an unfamiliar landscape between the conscious and unconscious mind. We hurt, but we didn't feel it. We tired, but it did not matter. Concentration on the task was total. The "I" each of us revered so highly disappeared. We became each other and we became the mountain. Mishima was right: In our suffering we discovered the bright and ragged doors of perception, our exhausted minds were powerless to resist such pure, human experience.
Near the top Steve wanted to traverse west. I insisted we follow the tracks because it was so casual. Scott agreed. Fifteen minutes higher, Steve said he was going to traverse whether I came with him or not. I relented, and led the way for a bit. With self-preservation paramount, any action that made our push toward safety faster was fair.
Thin snow over rock required careful attention. Traversing made the big drop to our left more apparent and reminded us how careless of consequences we'd become. Halfway to salvation Steve apologized for his insistence and bad decision, admitting "Staying in the tracks would have been easier." I accepted. Scott caught us and asked, "What the fuck are we doing over here?"
"I'm not sure," answered Steve, "I apologize though," and led through.
"This is scaring me," Scott admitted as we followed.
We pulled over a little cornice onto "Pig Hill" just below Kahiltna Horn, 60 hours after crossing the 'schrund. The summit was a hundred feet higher but light years away. As danger disappeared, hard-won clarity faded with it. Dehydrated and hallucinating, we stumbled toward the trench thousands of thundering hoofbeats had pounded into the West Buttress.
During a break on the Football Field, I told Scott I hadn't the will to resist Steve's desire to traverse, "and I couldn't let him take off alone. I can't think of a good reason for making that choice."
"I can think of 60."
"I don't understand."
"That you don't get it proves my point," Scott answered lucidly. "Sixty hours of climbing led to Steve's decision."
We drank the last of our water.
We got to 14k at the 63-hour mark. Our brains were mushy, and the offer of sandwiches and tea meant more than it would have any other time. We spent 24 hours being fed and nursed by friends in the Park Service Weather-Port then hiked to our cache and skied from there to 7k. After a rest we recovered the tents left behind in the East Fork. That same afternoon we flew the time warp between where we'd been and the rest of the world, between primordial and civilized man.
Steve left Talkeetna the following morning. Scott and I felt robbed. We wanted to hang out, to eat, drink and talk it over. Instead we hugged one another and put Steve on the shuttle. Each of us knew without having the language to say it that the Czech Direct had been one of the most powerful experiences of our lives.
The pendulum arcs between chest-puffing egotism and the sense that success resulted from fantastic luck. It's a difficult route to live with. We were transformed during those hours and recreating the "consciousness without exclusion" may be impossible. Visiting it in our memories is little consolation. I've tried to explain the crack we peeped through, but even close friends can't understand. What truth we learned is locked in our three hearts alone.
This is as simple as I can say it: We went north, we picked up Mug's tourch, and shined its bright light down the long corridor of potential. Who will take the next step?
Discord was immediate; he sang and whistled songs I detested. Mark isn't part of my crew, those few alpine climbers who are at the top of the game. Although he climbs because he loves it, and I do the same, there's an ocean separating how and why we each love climbing. Mark's technical ability and survival skills are unimpeachable. He's lived through some mind-blowing adventures, but I didn't trust his judgement, or care enough about him to make any concessions.
We hadn't shared enough to develop the belief in each other that dangerous climbs demand. And since I was only with him to train for a bigger route, I chose the West Buttress over the Cassin because it could whip me into shape as well as anything. The decision made little difference to me. Mark was disappointed and questioned why I didn't consider us a team. The climbing experience I'm after can't be had without the current of mutual love and respect electrifying the rope. When I climb with Scott or Steve or Barry, the rope is a high-tension wire. The best part of the trip with Mark was untying from him at 10k. I turned up my Walkman, pointed 'em straight, and skied away.
When it was over and folks asked what we did, I answered that we barely got up the West Buttress. Denali by any route is a substantial undertaking and minus-40-degree temperatures level the field. Our toes were just as cold as the next guy's. But I couldn't truthfully say we "climbed" the mountain because there's no climbing on the West Buttress. Unless on calls dragging a sled 11 miles, jugging fixed ropes up 500 feet of 35-degree ice, and hiking along a wide ridgetop "climbing". Folks call it what ever their egos need to hear.
A week after unroping from Mark I flew back to Kahiltna International with fellow cynics Steve House and Scott Backes. Each of us is intolerant of empty words and arrogant about action. The posturing among virgin Denali suitors sickened me more than ever. I guess the gray in my beard means I'm older, not wiser.
"Outside," in the Lower 48, it's not uncommon to hear a young buck claim he's going to doe new routes on Hunter and Foraker, then blast the Cassin. I know. I was one of them once. Some men manage to posture all the way to 14,000 feet. During my trip with Mark I actually heard a guy say, "I'm doing the Seven Summits." When I asked how many he'd climbed he answered, "Well, um, Denali will be the first." Back at 7200 feet, more sober statements are exchanged: "22 days, not exactly what I envisioned," followed by pathetic rationalization about how no one else summited during that period either.
I'm an elitist prick and I think posers have polluted mountaineering. They replace skill and courage with cash and equipment. They make the summit, not the style, the yardstick of success. Only marginal minds or true individuals used to discover mountaineering. Lack of social support forced them to be autonomous, to turn climbing into a lifestyle, isolated from society. We had community back then. Now I'm embarrassed to call myself a climber, because close on the heels of the admission some dilettante will ask whether I've read Into Thin Air, or done Everest.
Today's acceptance of climbing as sport, combined with technological and financial advances, allows casual participation. "How-to" books -- including my own -- offer recipes for success. Guidebooks for particular routes define the rules more specifically. I can't think of another mountain besides Denali for which such a rigid formula is prescribed: "Drag it all to 8k. Carry to 10k, sleep at 8k. Move to 11k, back-haul from 10k. Carry to 13k, sleep at 11k. Move to 14k, back-haul from 13k. Rest. Carry to 16k, sleep at 14k. Move to 17k, with three days' food. If the weather's good go for the top. If not, fetch enough supplies from 16k to wait out the storm." The indoctrination is so strong that some guys busy caching at 16k said, "You went for the summit from 14k? Wow. We didn't know you could do that."
Scott, Steve and I skied to the base of Denali's South Face. We spent two days trying to comprehend the massiveness of the wall and glassing features on the 900-vertical-foot Czech Direct. The route was first climbed over 11 days in 1986 by a team of three Slovaks, who fixed 1000 feet of rope. Kevin Mahoney and Ben Gilmore repeated it at the end of May in a seven-day, alpine-style effort. Hearing they'd done it saddened us until we realized we didn't care whether we made the second, third, or eighth ascent. Only our chosen style mattered. In fact, a modern comparison would make our message that much clearer: We wanted to climb it in one push, without sleeping.
To go as fast as the dream demanded we had to acclimatize, so we pointed our skis up the West Buttress. Within 19 hours of arriving at 14k, Ranger Roger Robinson invited us to help rescue a 62-year-old climber with broken ribs and the onset of pneumonia from 17k. An armada of strong guys, including Joe Reicher and Pete Athans, made the rescue in eight hours roundtrip. Afterward I rhetorically asked Steve what my true motivation for helping was, and why I enjoyed being so skilled at it.
"Because it further justifies your elitist attitude," he replied, and it became our motto.
A Nova video crew pounced on us the next day. They acted as if we should be excited to answer questions about footware. We gave the interview as a favor to our friend Colby Coombs, the camera crew's guide. Although I am happily orchestrating Steve's sell-out by introducing him to sponsors, encouraging media presence, and programming slideshows, I'm often galled by my own sleazy, subconscious attempts to claim any 15-minute period of fame within reach. Steve calls it The Poison Wanting and shames me for it. Two days later the shame spurred me to the summit from 15k in 5 hours and 39 minutes.
Back at the airstrip, bad weather stalled our return to the South Face. Each day at 7k stole a bit of acclimatization. Each inch of fresh snow changed the route and its approach. Scott figured the gods made it harder because we had made ourselves stronger.
The Czech Direct posed many questions. As high pressure built we raced up its first 1000 feet to determine how much they'd cost. Afterward we strategized. Proper timing was critical. So were hydration and nutrition. We'd stop every 12 hours to brew and eat; the first break during the afternoon's warmth would place the following one in the middle of the night. As a counter-measure each of us brought a 2-pound Polarguard jacket and balaclava. We packed two MSR XGK's, 22 ounces of fuel and a titanium pot for each. Two stoves meant we could melt snow quickly enough to prevent an irreversible chill and loss of momentum while brewing. We split 55 pounds into two loads; 18 pounds were water. The leader would climb with a light summit pack or nothing at all.
We planned to ditch gear as it became superfluous: the rack, a rope, useless stoves. Armchair intellectuals will shout ethical opposition to this behavior, but until such critics confront the likelihood of death they can't understand how easily ethics are traded for continued existence. Honor means winning, which requires surviving. This style of climbing isn't poetic. It's primitive battle with clubs and stones.
After dinner Steve read to us from Yukio Mishima's manifesto, Sun and Steel, "Pain, I came to feel, might well prove to be the sole proof of the persistence of consciousness within the flesh, the sole physical expression of consciousness. As my body acquired muscle, and in turn strength, there was gradually born within me the tendency towards positive acceptance of pain, and my interest in physical suffering deepened." Mishima, who killed himself in 1970, had described our need to climb the CZD in a single push without knowing the context. We were on Denali to prove the existence of consciousness.
At 4 a.m., above the roar of the stoves, I listened to seracs disintegrating on the Ramp Route below the South Buttress. Mugs Stump died over there; buried by a collapsing crevasse lip a mile from our camp. I took these avalanches as his blessing. We knew he'd appreciate our plan because he had followed the European lead toward single-push climbing in the mid-1980's. Erahrd Loretan, Jean Troillet, and Pierr-Alain Steiner climbed Dhauligiri in winter without packs. Loretan and Troillet sped up Everest in 36 hours. Benoit Chamoux climbed K2 in 23 hours even though fixed ropes and camps threatened to trip him every step of the way. Cho Oyu, Shishipangma, G1 and G2 were also climbed without bivouacs. Europeans raised the bar a long time ago. Mugs took notice. He tested non-stop tactics on giant faces in Antarctica and refined them further during his 15-hour dash up the Cassin. Since his death in 1992, few have shown the courage to acknowledge his torch.
We crossed the bergschrund at 6 a.m., passed the Czech's second bivouac at 8 a.m., their third at 11 a.m. We reached their fourth bivy site on the First Icefield at 2 p.m. and moved into a ledge chopped by Mahoney and Gilmore, where we brewed, ate, and refilled our water bags. We led in blocks of six pitches and simul-climbed or soloed what didn't merit a belay. I finally took the sharp end at 7 p.m. on the Czech's 32nd pitch. We were hauling ass and moving into another pre-chopped ledge at 1 a.m.
Scott lead out at 3:30 a.m. Steve snored while I belayed. The topo showed ice steeper than 90 degrees. We joined Scott on his hastily chopped stance. He confessed that he was "glad to have gotten off that without getting hurt." Steve led through. His back-stepping and stemming told us everything we needed to know. From our belay it looked like Steve was connecting blobs of ice on El Cap.
As the sky lightened Scott looked down.
"Do you see that?" he asked. I looked over my shoulder and saw nothing unusual: Denali's shadow smothered Mount Hunter, the East Fork was almost a mile below us.
"What?" I asked.
"Look how far down the glacier is. We couldn't retreat if we wanted to."
Shit. The terrain would eat us. We pointed our faces upward.
Higher, Steve dropped a tool.
"I used that hammer on every route I've done since 1996," he said.
The list included his solo first ascent of Beauty is a Rare Thing on Denali's Direct West Buttress, Mascioli's Pillar, King Peak, our new route on Mount Bradley, and M-16 on Howse Peak in the Canadian Rockies.
"At least it was KIA. I won't have to retire it when I don't trust it anymore, and it never let me down," he said thoughtfully. We passed a silent moment in memory and honor. Most of the hard climbing was over so it didn't matter.
An hour later we were lost. Mist lapped at the broken rocks and ice. Visibility was nil but we sensed Big Bertha, the serac dominating Denali's South Face, pushing us west. That we were still conscious enough to be scared of falling ice comforted me. The topo was unclear and each apparently simple exit from the icefield proved more difficult than we could afford. I scouted toward the Cassin but saw no easy way out. Scott wondered out loud whether we were going to get off Denali at all as our collective confidence ebbed. We'd found the uncertainty Messner spoke os eloquently about 30 years ago but it wasn't as beautiful as he'd led us to believe. Our minds were fried. Making the decision to stop and brew up was a farce. Tick-tock, tick-tock.
Thirty-four hours into it we scraped off a little perch at 15,900 feet. Calories and a break from the stress refreshed us. Scott traversed into a gully safely distant from the polished chutes and slabs beneath the serac. Sleep deprivation triggered our sluggish decline. No one could lead more than two pitches efficiently before indecisiveness and fear slowed his progress. Instead of adapting, we stupidly clung to the six-pitch block strategy that had worked so well 24 hours earlier. Scott placed four pieces of gear on a 30-degree ice pitch; he spent 20 minutes building an anchor. I'd never seen him that wrecked before. Steve and I were angry but said nothing because we knew fatigue worked its disease on us as well.
An ugly gail lashed spindrift against our goggles. We were too cold to climb further into its teeth and stopped in the lee of a massive boulder; hoping sunup would calm the wind. Steve and I chopped hard for an hour. Scott watched with glazed-over eyes, too wasted to lend a hand. Things were falling apart. The stoves hissed away the last of their fuel at hour 48. Their silence sent my imagination down a deep, dark hole. We had eight luke warm liters of water to get us to the top and down to our 11,000 foot cache but no idea how long it might take. The Steve threw up, chucking five hundred calories into the snow. His stomach was troubled enough that he couldn't replace any of it. "Shit," I thought, "he's done." Out loud I asked if he was OK.
"Yeah," he said, wiping his chin. "I'm just defining my consciousness."
We couldn't retreat, or escape sideways. I wasn't sure how much higher we'd get before Denali swallowed us forever. Cold numbed my toes and as the icy feeling crept up my legs I quietly accepted that we might have finally gone too light.
Survival instinct blinded us to the splendor of sunrise. Its beauty might materialize across years of memory, but seeing the sun right then just meant our jackets were finally warm enough. With the frigid Alaskan dusk another 18 hours away, Scott and Steve snatched a nap. Uncertainty about the remaining effort left me sleepless and vibrating. After 15 minutes I started packing, prepared to shut up, put up, and maybe die trying.
I climbed away from the ledge onto yet another amazing mixed pitch. Face to face with the upper edge of Big Bertha, I belayed from four tied-off pins. My partners followed quickly. The slope laid back so I ran on blunt frontpoints until I was out of rope, then shouted for them to move with me while I continued tugging.
"What about the anchor?"
"Leave it. We're done," I shouted back.
Before starting up I'd joked that the last 4000 feet would be my block, "since you guys won't be able to keep up anyway." We crested the Cassin at 17,400 feet, 56 hours above basecamp. Two climbers shouted to us from above. They were high enough that we couldn't accidently catch them and be compelled to break trail. They left nice track. The views behind us were heart-rending, and the gods smiled.
I stomped one foot in front of the other, each step taking me higher. I used to love the sound of my crampons chewing up the ice and admire the brutal efficiency of my tools. Then, I felt invulnerable, as vanity overcame innocence. I've since crossed a pride-killing eternity. A 40-long list of dead friends and partners crushed conceit beneath the pressure of reality. I learned to respect my fear and sometimes dredge up the courage to face it. And despite understanding my humanity, I still feel superior within a narrowly defined discipline. Mostly because I've proven how far a disciplined mind can take the man that isn't particularly strong, or brave.
I couldn't believe Scott had emptied himself so completely but clawed enough from his reserves to keep going. If I stopped I fell asleep; when I slowed my pace it was the same. Previously unknown will moved my legs fast enough to keep me from falling off. We passed beyond any preconceptions of endurance, broke free of accepted limitations. Fatigue multiplied itself geometrically inside us: hour 56 was at least 12 hours harder than hour 48. Minutes were hours and hours meant nothing. We hovered across an unfamiliar landscape between the conscious and unconscious mind. We hurt, but we didn't feel it. We tired, but it did not matter. Concentration on the task was total. The "I" each of us revered so highly disappeared. We became each other and we became the mountain. Mishima was right: In our suffering we discovered the bright and ragged doors of perception, our exhausted minds were powerless to resist such pure, human experience.
Near the top Steve wanted to traverse west. I insisted we follow the tracks because it was so casual. Scott agreed. Fifteen minutes higher, Steve said he was going to traverse whether I came with him or not. I relented, and led the way for a bit. With self-preservation paramount, any action that made our push toward safety faster was fair.
Thin snow over rock required careful attention. Traversing made the big drop to our left more apparent and reminded us how careless of consequences we'd become. Halfway to salvation Steve apologized for his insistence and bad decision, admitting "Staying in the tracks would have been easier." I accepted. Scott caught us and asked, "What the fuck are we doing over here?"
"I'm not sure," answered Steve, "I apologize though," and led through.
"This is scaring me," Scott admitted as we followed.
We pulled over a little cornice onto "Pig Hill" just below Kahiltna Horn, 60 hours after crossing the 'schrund. The summit was a hundred feet higher but light years away. As danger disappeared, hard-won clarity faded with it. Dehydrated and hallucinating, we stumbled toward the trench thousands of thundering hoofbeats had pounded into the West Buttress.
During a break on the Football Field, I told Scott I hadn't the will to resist Steve's desire to traverse, "and I couldn't let him take off alone. I can't think of a good reason for making that choice."
"I can think of 60."
"I don't understand."
"That you don't get it proves my point," Scott answered lucidly. "Sixty hours of climbing led to Steve's decision."
We drank the last of our water.
We got to 14k at the 63-hour mark. Our brains were mushy, and the offer of sandwiches and tea meant more than it would have any other time. We spent 24 hours being fed and nursed by friends in the Park Service Weather-Port then hiked to our cache and skied from there to 7k. After a rest we recovered the tents left behind in the East Fork. That same afternoon we flew the time warp between where we'd been and the rest of the world, between primordial and civilized man.
Steve left Talkeetna the following morning. Scott and I felt robbed. We wanted to hang out, to eat, drink and talk it over. Instead we hugged one another and put Steve on the shuttle. Each of us knew without having the language to say it that the Czech Direct had been one of the most powerful experiences of our lives.
The pendulum arcs between chest-puffing egotism and the sense that success resulted from fantastic luck. It's a difficult route to live with. We were transformed during those hours and recreating the "consciousness without exclusion" may be impossible. Visiting it in our memories is little consolation. I've tried to explain the crack we peeped through, but even close friends can't understand. What truth we learned is locked in our three hearts alone.
This is as simple as I can say it: We went north, we picked up Mug's tourch, and shined its bright light down the long corridor of potential. Who will take the next step?
Climbing 199, December 2000