Team Machine
Billy Westbay
"An alarm sounds at 2:00 a.m. Three bodies arise quickly and move, not with the usual dragging motions of an early rise, but with precise movements and an economy of action. They dress in costumes for the occasion, a la Jimi Hendrix. All sit to a breakfast of king-sized omelettes, followed by beans, to get the day moving. Quickly, their gear is checked and found to be in order. They shift to the base of the Nose, and go through the final rituals of putting on E.B.s, swamis, and tape."
It's 4:00 a.m. We take off on the initial pitches, rehearsed a few days before, but this time under the light of headlamps. Darkness still engulfs us as we hit Sickle Ledge, although the false dawn begins to lend a hint of light. John assumes the lead and tackles his section of the route. Our plan is to have each of us lead approximately the third of the climb best suited to our own capabilities. John, the most powerful climber to come to the Valley since Jim Madsen, has the important task of setting the pace to Boot Flake, where I'll take over and lead to Camp 5, with the anchor leg going to Bridwell. Sacrificing the usual amenities of climbing in the name of speed, we tie figure-eights and clip into them to locking 'biners for a quick rope-end exchange. As soon as John finishes a lead, Jim and I hit the jumars, racing to the next belay. In no time we are in the Stovelegs, where John, puffing under a full head of steam, blasts pitches off before we can smoke a cigarette.
Cramping hands quickly begin to affect us. We make a brief stop to pry them from the jumars and massage them open, then it's back to the vertical sprint; we can't afford to waste precious time. On Dolt Tower, we arouse another party from their dreams. Checking the clock, it's only a little past six. We're cookin'! The total commitment by each of us seems to bring the energy level to an unbelievable pitch. From an oblique corner of my mind, I perceive this energy flow to be seen and felt equally well by the others.
Standing on the toe of Boot Flake, I wait for John to finish hauling my pack and put me on belay. Time seems almost suspended for us this day. Our rhythmical upward motions are the ticks on our clock. When the call comes, I lean back, kicking into the King Swing. Pitches fly by, as we reach Camp 4 by 11:00 a.m. It feels like nothing will stop us. Sweaters and non-essential items that might make a bivouac possible are jettisoned. Watching the gear float through the air, an uneasiness moves me. A check for thin spots on our three nine-millimeter ropes shows them to be okay, yet this doesn't block out completely my memory of the guy who, last year, set the record for the fastest descent from the summit overhangs. But the bundle disappears, along with it mesmerizing effect, and I get back to pushing my leg to Camp 5, which we reach at 1:15 p.m. The furious pace we've set begins to have a tolling effect. Continuously vertical to overhanging pitches are draining Jim and John on the jumars. We're slowing down, and it's a struggle to gain a second wind.
After 2200 ft. of jumaring, the Bird finally takes the lead. He had been on a dawn-to-dusk rescue the day before. With plough-horse persistence, he begins hammering away to Camp 6, getting there at 3:30 p.m. Hoping to find many fixed pins in the upper third, Jim is disappointed to find few. It means a lot more work, and energy is scarce. The final pitches find us running short on large babies, 3/4" angles, and patience. All of us are overtired and edgy, which seems to create mistakes and problems. At one point the free rope hooks behind a large flake, and a rappel looks like the only way to free it. Working up a real frenzy, I manage to get it loose with much mad jerking, yanking and cursing. Another screaming curse from Jim soon follows. Looking up in time to see a mass of slings flying toward us, I instinctively reach out and grab Jim's ladder before it plummets into the abyss. Tempers flare, and communications are reduced to shouts and anger. These erupting emotions reflect our frustrations and anxiety to finish. Somehow, energy and luck sustain us on the final pitches. El Cap in a day!
"7:00 p.m. Three weary bodies stand on the summit of El Cap. Beginning an epic descent in E.B.s, they return to the Valley floor seventeen hours after leaving it. Dumping their gear, the three pass slowly beneath the trees of street-lit Yosemite. Still wired, they ramble on, oblivious to the surroundings, and adjourn to the bar to share the hospitality of friends."
Dangling in space at pre-dawn, I close my eyes to jumar past the scene of Rik's accident--an accident which left the rock haphazardly splattered with blood, resembling a painter's dropcloth. For almost two years, dreams and fantasies had brought me to this Pacific Ocean Wall. But doubt, that insidious creature of the mind, seeks to gain hold--five pitches fixed when a flake pulled. Rik was in the midst of a tension traverse and soon blood was everywhere. We lowered him unconscious to the ground, yet he managed to walk out. The next day when we learned it was a depressed skull fracture, Mike also freaked out, decided not to go on. There was last-minute panic. Jim and I needed extra hands for the hauling and belaying, unable to go for it alone, and luckily we recruited Jay and Fred. Eyes open, I force myself to face the confrontation between my vision of the past and the hard facts of the moment. (This mind warfare is all too familiar.) Moving quickly up the fixed lines and focusing on the next pitch to be done, my head clears of these extraneous thoughts. Once again, I feel dared to push myself to new limits.
Two tiny figures, dwarfed by this wall, Jay and I reach the top of the fixed lines and get ready to climb. Far down below, Jim and Fred are watching us through binoculars, while they lie in the meadows. Like observers peering through glass walls at ant colonies, they can watch the movements on El Cap with a certain detachment from the intensity of them. Starting my first A5 lead, I move into the thick of it. My rack is light, consisting of about 40 copperheads (mostly ones and twos), 15 rurps of all thicknesses, and a half dozen knife-blades. It also includes some extras we'd found necessary on big wall routes, a chisel for cleaning out incipient grooves, a drill handle for placing rurps in corners and, most important, gloves to protect the hands. Without gloves, hands quickly become battered and useless. All stalling tactics finished, I break the silence and begin the dance. Everything is geared to the miniscule. There is a narrowing of my field of vision and, within that range, a search for the unobvious. Preoccupation is immediate and consuming; the first placement is a No. 2 copperhead pasted into a two-inch corner. Clipping rope and ladder in, I gently begin to weight it. One second it seems to be holding, then I'm catching myself--a demanding way to be initiated to hard nailing. Resurveying the barely perceptable groove, weather-worn flakes are cleaned with the chisel for the next attempt. This time, I mould the copperhead into the shape of the placement, smashing it in place. Passing the weight test, some bouncing is added to the sequence, till finally I mutter: "Shit it's holding. Guess I'm gonna have to stand on it." This is the freakiest part of hard-aid climbing. I carefully rise on my leg and winch hand over hand up the rope, then I arrange my feet into a V-shape with toes against the wall and heels touching, clip off with a daisy chain and take a deep breath. "You know," Jim had said to me, "the thing that makes the P.O. different from other routes is that there are no corners to hide your ass in. Unless," he added with a Bridwell grin, "sticking your nose in a two-inch corner is hiding."
One copperhead placement follows another, as I inch my way up the wall. Absolute precision and finesse are the key, as any excess motion can bring about a long plummet. Seeking optimum placements in such a microscopic world, one's attention becomes extremely focused. Awareness of things external to my own immediate space ceases and exterior stillness contrasts sharply to the interior turmoil. For each placement is like a self-contained time bomb that can explode in your face at any second, and the pressure is intense. It can take hours to cover 30-40 ft. of rock, leaving plenty of time for thought about what will come next and how far you are strung out above the last real protection. Flights of fantasy that aren't always reassuring. Higher up, the tenseness of the situation begins to taking its toll on me. Balancing on two copperheads, repeatedly I try to stick something, anything, in a half-inch flake. Every time I test the piece, it pops, and my heart skips a beat. Feeling the situation getting out of hand, a bolt seems to be necessary, and all my attention centres on the tip of that drill. The hole is nearly complete when the drill breaks, and quickly fear wells inside me, threatening to take over. It becomes imperative to maintain what is left of my cool. Using the broken drill, I punch a dowel hole. After clipping in, the control I'd nearly lost return. I finally finish the lead after four mind-wrecking hours.
From a more secure vantage point, it's finally possible for me to appreciate the fantastic position we occupy. The Pacific Ocean* [*The climb takes the line to the left of North America Wall]: a name that brings up images of a desolate nature. And all about me lie hundreds of feet of smooth, shimmering granite, like so many waves in their sameness. A sense of our smallness and isolation mingles with the euphoria about the pitch and the climb. There's a profound silence, broken only by Jay calling out to ask how to clean the pitch. He is nearly up to the station, when my eye is caught by a party on the Nose. What a paradox that little more than a week ago we had covered 1500 ft. of that route in the same time it had taken me to do 100 ft. While I lead the second pitch of the Tectonic Plates, Jim and Fred finally come up to the bivouac, having watched from below for the better part of a day.
We push our way through this Pacific desert like a naval exploration, and the fantasy of the situation is my reality. Our team is a flotilla made up of a battleship, Jim Bridwell; a heavy cruiser, myself; and two cargo ships, Jay Fisk and Fred East. Next day, the others have day watch, while I pass the time cruising in the rear, listening to tapes, reading, and occasionally peering through our binoculars at the people in the meadows below. They, in turn, are watching the El Cap constituency. It takes about four hours for the Bird to navigate safely through the Nothing Atolls. One of the finest pitches on the climb, it finishes with a big pendulum off a string of knife-blades, rurps, copper-heads, and two dowels. Our philosophy on this route is to utilize the features to the maximum, rather than just placing bolts to connect them. Tapping all afternoon on the difficult Pacific Crest, Jim makes it to the Continental Shelf early in the evening.
In the days ahead, we move through the waves and across the Central Latitudes. The nature of the climb--raw nerves along with Fred's and Jay's lack of wall experience--nearly results in a mutiny. Considering they agreed to come along to help with just the hard work of hauling and belaying, they are doing a hell of a job coping with the situation. Captain Bridwell quiets any such intentions, silkily cooing, "There'll be no mutiny aboard this ship, and anyone who tries will walk the plank," while he points to the edge. By the time we sail through the Bering Straits, everyone is thoroughly enjoying themselves. Sun-bathing on Island in the Sky is fantastic, clouded only by thoughts that our tape deck batteries may not last. Traveling over stormy seas, exploring the Illusion Chain in our final days, at last we discover our North-West Passage to freedom and escape self-imposed exile.
All of us are leaner than we've been for years. The physical and mental strain have reduced me to skin and bones in nine days. And our sea legs promise to be of little help humping 250 pitons, 300 karabiners, nine ropes, bivi gear, and assorted paraphernalia back to camp. Exhaustion consumes all of us. But luckily three camp brothers are waiting on top to help celebrate with champagne, beer and strawberry cream cheese cake, and to give a hand with the final hauling to the summit. That party and the ensuing descent, as I recollect, were smashing.
Back in Camp 4, with $20 in my pocket, I wanted to go home. The next day a ride was heading my way, and I left the Valley. Fitter than I'd ever been before, I was wasted and burned out, needing a break from such an intense spell of climbing. Back home in Estes, working and hanging out, I can't even remember the climbing that followed that year nor does it really matter.
It's 4:00 a.m. We take off on the initial pitches, rehearsed a few days before, but this time under the light of headlamps. Darkness still engulfs us as we hit Sickle Ledge, although the false dawn begins to lend a hint of light. John assumes the lead and tackles his section of the route. Our plan is to have each of us lead approximately the third of the climb best suited to our own capabilities. John, the most powerful climber to come to the Valley since Jim Madsen, has the important task of setting the pace to Boot Flake, where I'll take over and lead to Camp 5, with the anchor leg going to Bridwell. Sacrificing the usual amenities of climbing in the name of speed, we tie figure-eights and clip into them to locking 'biners for a quick rope-end exchange. As soon as John finishes a lead, Jim and I hit the jumars, racing to the next belay. In no time we are in the Stovelegs, where John, puffing under a full head of steam, blasts pitches off before we can smoke a cigarette.
Cramping hands quickly begin to affect us. We make a brief stop to pry them from the jumars and massage them open, then it's back to the vertical sprint; we can't afford to waste precious time. On Dolt Tower, we arouse another party from their dreams. Checking the clock, it's only a little past six. We're cookin'! The total commitment by each of us seems to bring the energy level to an unbelievable pitch. From an oblique corner of my mind, I perceive this energy flow to be seen and felt equally well by the others.
Standing on the toe of Boot Flake, I wait for John to finish hauling my pack and put me on belay. Time seems almost suspended for us this day. Our rhythmical upward motions are the ticks on our clock. When the call comes, I lean back, kicking into the King Swing. Pitches fly by, as we reach Camp 4 by 11:00 a.m. It feels like nothing will stop us. Sweaters and non-essential items that might make a bivouac possible are jettisoned. Watching the gear float through the air, an uneasiness moves me. A check for thin spots on our three nine-millimeter ropes shows them to be okay, yet this doesn't block out completely my memory of the guy who, last year, set the record for the fastest descent from the summit overhangs. But the bundle disappears, along with it mesmerizing effect, and I get back to pushing my leg to Camp 5, which we reach at 1:15 p.m. The furious pace we've set begins to have a tolling effect. Continuously vertical to overhanging pitches are draining Jim and John on the jumars. We're slowing down, and it's a struggle to gain a second wind.
After 2200 ft. of jumaring, the Bird finally takes the lead. He had been on a dawn-to-dusk rescue the day before. With plough-horse persistence, he begins hammering away to Camp 6, getting there at 3:30 p.m. Hoping to find many fixed pins in the upper third, Jim is disappointed to find few. It means a lot more work, and energy is scarce. The final pitches find us running short on large babies, 3/4" angles, and patience. All of us are overtired and edgy, which seems to create mistakes and problems. At one point the free rope hooks behind a large flake, and a rappel looks like the only way to free it. Working up a real frenzy, I manage to get it loose with much mad jerking, yanking and cursing. Another screaming curse from Jim soon follows. Looking up in time to see a mass of slings flying toward us, I instinctively reach out and grab Jim's ladder before it plummets into the abyss. Tempers flare, and communications are reduced to shouts and anger. These erupting emotions reflect our frustrations and anxiety to finish. Somehow, energy and luck sustain us on the final pitches. El Cap in a day!
"7:00 p.m. Three weary bodies stand on the summit of El Cap. Beginning an epic descent in E.B.s, they return to the Valley floor seventeen hours after leaving it. Dumping their gear, the three pass slowly beneath the trees of street-lit Yosemite. Still wired, they ramble on, oblivious to the surroundings, and adjourn to the bar to share the hospitality of friends."
Dangling in space at pre-dawn, I close my eyes to jumar past the scene of Rik's accident--an accident which left the rock haphazardly splattered with blood, resembling a painter's dropcloth. For almost two years, dreams and fantasies had brought me to this Pacific Ocean Wall. But doubt, that insidious creature of the mind, seeks to gain hold--five pitches fixed when a flake pulled. Rik was in the midst of a tension traverse and soon blood was everywhere. We lowered him unconscious to the ground, yet he managed to walk out. The next day when we learned it was a depressed skull fracture, Mike also freaked out, decided not to go on. There was last-minute panic. Jim and I needed extra hands for the hauling and belaying, unable to go for it alone, and luckily we recruited Jay and Fred. Eyes open, I force myself to face the confrontation between my vision of the past and the hard facts of the moment. (This mind warfare is all too familiar.) Moving quickly up the fixed lines and focusing on the next pitch to be done, my head clears of these extraneous thoughts. Once again, I feel dared to push myself to new limits.
Two tiny figures, dwarfed by this wall, Jay and I reach the top of the fixed lines and get ready to climb. Far down below, Jim and Fred are watching us through binoculars, while they lie in the meadows. Like observers peering through glass walls at ant colonies, they can watch the movements on El Cap with a certain detachment from the intensity of them. Starting my first A5 lead, I move into the thick of it. My rack is light, consisting of about 40 copperheads (mostly ones and twos), 15 rurps of all thicknesses, and a half dozen knife-blades. It also includes some extras we'd found necessary on big wall routes, a chisel for cleaning out incipient grooves, a drill handle for placing rurps in corners and, most important, gloves to protect the hands. Without gloves, hands quickly become battered and useless. All stalling tactics finished, I break the silence and begin the dance. Everything is geared to the miniscule. There is a narrowing of my field of vision and, within that range, a search for the unobvious. Preoccupation is immediate and consuming; the first placement is a No. 2 copperhead pasted into a two-inch corner. Clipping rope and ladder in, I gently begin to weight it. One second it seems to be holding, then I'm catching myself--a demanding way to be initiated to hard nailing. Resurveying the barely perceptable groove, weather-worn flakes are cleaned with the chisel for the next attempt. This time, I mould the copperhead into the shape of the placement, smashing it in place. Passing the weight test, some bouncing is added to the sequence, till finally I mutter: "Shit it's holding. Guess I'm gonna have to stand on it." This is the freakiest part of hard-aid climbing. I carefully rise on my leg and winch hand over hand up the rope, then I arrange my feet into a V-shape with toes against the wall and heels touching, clip off with a daisy chain and take a deep breath. "You know," Jim had said to me, "the thing that makes the P.O. different from other routes is that there are no corners to hide your ass in. Unless," he added with a Bridwell grin, "sticking your nose in a two-inch corner is hiding."
One copperhead placement follows another, as I inch my way up the wall. Absolute precision and finesse are the key, as any excess motion can bring about a long plummet. Seeking optimum placements in such a microscopic world, one's attention becomes extremely focused. Awareness of things external to my own immediate space ceases and exterior stillness contrasts sharply to the interior turmoil. For each placement is like a self-contained time bomb that can explode in your face at any second, and the pressure is intense. It can take hours to cover 30-40 ft. of rock, leaving plenty of time for thought about what will come next and how far you are strung out above the last real protection. Flights of fantasy that aren't always reassuring. Higher up, the tenseness of the situation begins to taking its toll on me. Balancing on two copperheads, repeatedly I try to stick something, anything, in a half-inch flake. Every time I test the piece, it pops, and my heart skips a beat. Feeling the situation getting out of hand, a bolt seems to be necessary, and all my attention centres on the tip of that drill. The hole is nearly complete when the drill breaks, and quickly fear wells inside me, threatening to take over. It becomes imperative to maintain what is left of my cool. Using the broken drill, I punch a dowel hole. After clipping in, the control I'd nearly lost return. I finally finish the lead after four mind-wrecking hours.
From a more secure vantage point, it's finally possible for me to appreciate the fantastic position we occupy. The Pacific Ocean* [*The climb takes the line to the left of North America Wall]: a name that brings up images of a desolate nature. And all about me lie hundreds of feet of smooth, shimmering granite, like so many waves in their sameness. A sense of our smallness and isolation mingles with the euphoria about the pitch and the climb. There's a profound silence, broken only by Jay calling out to ask how to clean the pitch. He is nearly up to the station, when my eye is caught by a party on the Nose. What a paradox that little more than a week ago we had covered 1500 ft. of that route in the same time it had taken me to do 100 ft. While I lead the second pitch of the Tectonic Plates, Jim and Fred finally come up to the bivouac, having watched from below for the better part of a day.
We push our way through this Pacific desert like a naval exploration, and the fantasy of the situation is my reality. Our team is a flotilla made up of a battleship, Jim Bridwell; a heavy cruiser, myself; and two cargo ships, Jay Fisk and Fred East. Next day, the others have day watch, while I pass the time cruising in the rear, listening to tapes, reading, and occasionally peering through our binoculars at the people in the meadows below. They, in turn, are watching the El Cap constituency. It takes about four hours for the Bird to navigate safely through the Nothing Atolls. One of the finest pitches on the climb, it finishes with a big pendulum off a string of knife-blades, rurps, copper-heads, and two dowels. Our philosophy on this route is to utilize the features to the maximum, rather than just placing bolts to connect them. Tapping all afternoon on the difficult Pacific Crest, Jim makes it to the Continental Shelf early in the evening.
In the days ahead, we move through the waves and across the Central Latitudes. The nature of the climb--raw nerves along with Fred's and Jay's lack of wall experience--nearly results in a mutiny. Considering they agreed to come along to help with just the hard work of hauling and belaying, they are doing a hell of a job coping with the situation. Captain Bridwell quiets any such intentions, silkily cooing, "There'll be no mutiny aboard this ship, and anyone who tries will walk the plank," while he points to the edge. By the time we sail through the Bering Straits, everyone is thoroughly enjoying themselves. Sun-bathing on Island in the Sky is fantastic, clouded only by thoughts that our tape deck batteries may not last. Traveling over stormy seas, exploring the Illusion Chain in our final days, at last we discover our North-West Passage to freedom and escape self-imposed exile.
All of us are leaner than we've been for years. The physical and mental strain have reduced me to skin and bones in nine days. And our sea legs promise to be of little help humping 250 pitons, 300 karabiners, nine ropes, bivi gear, and assorted paraphernalia back to camp. Exhaustion consumes all of us. But luckily three camp brothers are waiting on top to help celebrate with champagne, beer and strawberry cream cheese cake, and to give a hand with the final hauling to the summit. That party and the ensuing descent, as I recollect, were smashing.
Back in Camp 4, with $20 in my pocket, I wanted to go home. The next day a ride was heading my way, and I left the Valley. Fitter than I'd ever been before, I was wasted and burned out, needing a break from such an intense spell of climbing. Back home in Estes, working and hanging out, I can't even remember the climbing that followed that year nor does it really matter.