Fear in the desert

I woke early and decided to shake off the morning drowse by taking a short walk. The western rim of Monument Canyon was very close and from there I watched the sun rise. To the north clouds had settled into the vastness of the great Colorado Valley, blanketing Grand Junction completely. As the sun came up they slowly lifted and began flooding inot the canyons below me. Incredible view and I managed to take a couple of really dramatic photos too.

For breakfast we each had three-quarters of a bagel and some tea. The sky was piercingly blue at first, but then the rising clouds flooded over the canyon walls and we were plunged into an eerie mist for ten or twenty minutes. After that there were just some thinly scattered clouds. The weather was gorgeous and it stayed that way. Eventually the tent dried enough for us to pack it away and we drove along the northern boundary of the Monument. We had considered doing either Terra Tower or the Granite Cliffs immediately below them, but they looked pretty uninviting so we settled on the Devil's Kitchen instead.

The Devil's Kitchen is a tight circular grouping of relatively small formations near the east entrance to the Monument. Leon argued that they might provide good test climbs before we ventured onto our planned target, Independence Monument.

Hiking in along a rocky wash we found the formation pretty easily. It was Leon's turn to lead and he had picked out a route called "Bat Guano". Rated at 5.5 it follows an obvious crack system on the northeast corner of the outer face of the Devil's Kitchen formation, and that is exactly everything the guide book has to say about it.

Well, there were indeed a couple of cracks there, these led up to a space in between the main stone and a second big boulder. The climb presumably went up from there to the top of the main form. I liked the look of a small right curving one and, for a while, Leon was going to use it. But he changed his mind for a more direct off-width under the secondary boulder.

This climb was … uh … scary. Desert sandstone is soft. Lots of placements that are bomber in harder stuff can't be easily trusted with this. You can gouge it with your finger nail! Leon got up the off-width start with some difficulty, grouching about the crappy protection all the way up. I couldn't see the next bit. Leon seemed a bit unsure about it, he said that for a 5.5 it looked pretty hard. The poor quality of the rock was messing with his lead head a little too.

We talked a little and decided that he should belay me up to his stance and we could then make a decision. Climbing up the off-width I thought that, on the face of it, the climbing itself was fairly rated at 5.5 although the rock quality issue was significant. Up beside Leon I had a chance to look at the next pitch.

It started as an off-width just too small to be considered a chimney. How the heck are we going to protect this? We broke out John Peterson's big stuff and preplaced, as high as Leon could reach, the large tube chock into a narrowing of the crack. It looked ok. Leon got ready John's big bro and stemmed up using the boulder behind us before committing to the crack. One delicate swing across from there to a crumbling little edge and he was on his way, an arm jammed into the offwidth while he fooled with the big bro.

In the gap over the top of us I saw a plane leave its vapor trail across the sky.

"This is shit!" Leon exclaimed. "Man, this is bad." The sandstone was so soft that the pressure of his weight was crumbling the edge under his foot into nothing, he had to move on or lose purchase. He got further up the off-width and it finally flared out large enough to squeeze himself in. At the same time it was overhanging. Deep in the crack things tightened enough for him to place John's big #4 camalot, he clipped his rope into this without using a runner (a sure sign that he was feeling a little desperate).

Above the overhanging flare there was a narrow sloping ledge, and the crack continued up beyond this as well. Leon looked up, sucked in some air, and then cast himself up and over onto the ledge. Cursing all the time about the sandy smooth nature of this so-called stone. To hold on he had to jam a leg or a foot into the crack while he searched his rack for workable pro. He placed a big smiley nut into the crack. He knew that so far he had really only being placing pro for psychological purposes only. We couldn't be sure if they would hold if he took a fall.

Down below I paid out rope and dodged the occasional shower of dust and small stones. Suddenly Leon uttered a very loud imprecation. The mixing harmonics of fear and frustration were abundantly clear.

"Keith!" He called down.
"Yeah? What?" I yelled back. What the hell? I felt helpless.
"There's a very big flake up here which is loose." He said. "I tried to put a cam behind it but the whole thing moves!"

It sounded like he was unsure of what to do. I couldn't see anything, he had disappeared from sight after going over the flare. All I could think was that we were pretty much committed to finishing this climb now, so I offered up the only advice I could. It was obvious stuff, it was likely that his choices were severly reduced.

"Look for something else. Look around you. Is there anywhere else you can place some pro." Often a stressed climber will over-focus on too small a zone and miss useable features in the wall.

"There's nothing!" He yelled down. His voice didn't exactly sound like someone on the brink of terror, but he was heading there.

"Well, can you down climb a bit?" I asked. Looking back up I saw a pretty horrible thing. The nut he had placed above the flare had popped out of the crack and was now resting against John's camalot in the flare.

Leon said that if he tried to back down he might tear off the big flake, right now he was trying to move it as little as possible. He was standing on some of it.

Shit, it must be big. I thought. I looked around at my stance. I was wedged into a gap between two very big rocks, but I could move around a bit. My central concern was what a significant rockfall might do to Leon's placements, for myself I was figuring that I could jump out of the way if it did come down.

"Well … if you can't come down then you have to go up." I shouted. "Not much choice is there?" I tried to sound as positive and upbeat as possible. Leon's got enough on his mind as it is, I didn't want him worrying about his belayer's concentration level.

"Yeah." He said, finally. More dust and pebbles showered down. "Ok, there's a ledge just above me, it looks good, I'm going to try for that."
"You can do it mate." I yelled.
"I'm going to try and not kick off this flake." He said.

Bloody hell mate. "Hey, don't worry about me. Plenty of room for me to dance about down here … I can look after myself. You just concentrate on reaching the ledge." I shouted back.

After some scrabbling and cursing he shouted down that he had made it. It was definitely a good ledge and he wanted to sit there and rest for a while. Thank god-all-bloody-mighty, I thought to myself and recommenced breathing operations.

So we took a break. A long one. The sun, which had been pouring a warming light down into my stance, was moving on. There was one last diminishing pocket of light left and I stood in that as much as possible, for it was very cool in the shadows.

Soon, the sunlight was gone and I was beginning to feel a chill.

"Come on mate." I encouraged. Let's get on with it! Man it's getting cold. "Ok, enough smoko … back to work." I muttered.

He called down that he was ready to continue, the top was very close. He said something about wanting to place a directional anchor with nuts. Fine, fine, I thought, just hurry the hell up!

Soon I heard two blessed syllables, "I'm safe!"

"Most excellent!" I bellowed back. "Blinkin' marvelous and well-bloody-done old son!"

Now hurry up and set a bleedin' anchor so I can crawl up into the light. I'm freezing my nads off down here! These latter sentiments I kept to myself. Although I was sorely tempted to vocalize them as Leon was spending a while setting for himself what must be a billion-point belay anchor.

Eventually he was ready for me and I greatfully scrambled upwards. At the overhanging flare I shook my head at the Mexican's fortitude and determination, and when I found that loose flake higher up I could scarcely believe it.

I'm climbing with a complete nutter.

The flake was a huge death-block ten times bigger than I had imagined, it was taller than a man and horribly loose. It moved about like a refridgerator on ice. If this thing had come down it would have filled my belay stance with broken rock, and I would have had nowhere to go. Gut wrenching realizations rarely bother knocking before barging on in.

Leon must have balls of steel. I appreciate that his only option here was to continue climbing, but still. Gingerly I stepped onto the flake, there wasn't anywhere else to go, and moved further upward. There was a little slack in the rope, so I moved extremely carefully. Leon hadn't placed any pro here at all until he reached the ledge.

Up on the ledge the line was protected with a single wired nut. Unseen and to my left, Leon had placed two other nuts but hadn't used them and for some reason left them there. I missed them too and we ended up losing them. Following his runout to the top was an exposed traverse on the lip, but at least the stone seemed harder up here.

I found leon sitting in the middle of the top, in a little fox-hole and enwebbed by at least five different anchor points. He was grinning that same mad grin you find with cocky fighter pilots who manage to walk away from having just ridden their jets into the ground. It was a sort of Ha-I'm-Bloody-Invincible expression. At least that's what I thought it was.

Casually I asked him. "So, how was it."

"F***. It was the scariest f***ing climb I have ever f***ing done in my whole f***ing life!" And he had calmed down a bit by this stage. Now I was imagining a Please-Help-Me-I'm-Clearly-Insane look in his eyes.

"Amazing lead mate." I said, shaking his hand. "Bloody incredible."

We still had to get off this rock. There was no walk down trail from up here. John's guide, which was about 12 years old, said there were some bolts at the far end of this formation, about 40 yards away. Leon switched me from the gi-gi to an ATC and kept me on belay while I wandered off to go look for them. Halfway across I jammed a cam into a big crack running across the top. It would be pretty stupid if I fell off here with so much rope out. I felt better with the rope clipped in to this piece though.

I quickly located the bolts. They looked ok. So anchored myself and belayed for Leon as he walked over. We set up and rapped down. Once on the ground we were both taken with that familiar rush. It's a feeling of having just survived something scary and now we were safe again. So we whooped it up a bit, put away our gear and wandered about looking at the rest of the Devil's Kitchen formations. Hiking back to the car we both whinged bitterly to each other about the general crumbly nature of the rock we had encountered, so we decided to adjourn to the nearest beer-plus-food establisment that we could find.

But, over beer and burgers, we talked through the climb just a little bit too much. Thoroughly spooked we decided to hike Monument Canyon and go have a close look at Independence Monument, as opposed to try and climb it. Which we did, it was a very nice hike and we were in and out after two and a half hours. We spotted many climbing walls and Independence itself looked stupendous from the ground.

Apparently, a fellow named John Otto was the first to climb to the top of this 350-foot tall monstrosity in 1911, he did it solo and without ropes. Surely he was a complete madman.

We drove west on the I-70 into Utah. Turning toward Moab we rejoined the Colorado River and entered the Fisher Towers area. This is a gathering of formations so tall that it's just silly. The biggest, aptly named the Titan, is 900 feet high. Yes, before you ask, people do climb it. But probably not us. They looked like they were made of dried mud. On top of most of the formations wind and water erosion has carved the strangest shapes.

Off in the distance we could see Castleton Tower and the other members of the Castle Rock group. The last rays of a setting sun were reflecting in brilliant purples and deep oranges, awesome.

Reaching Moab in darkness we found a motel and crashed there.