dhochwender-blog

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One of the many sites we visited on Nick’s introduction to the Mesa.

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Dust to Life

While it was my son Nick who told me I should write this blog, I know he was hoping for wild stories of drug induced teen years and tales of his father unleashed and wild.  If my memory went that far back, there would undoubtedly be a few of those.   Unfortunately, those folds in my brain have since been filled with new memories and loves.  Nick has watched firsthand as my love of climbing, mountaineering and skiing slowly changed to a love of mountain biking and hiking in the desert southwest.   Nick has even joined me on a number of trips to ride the slickrock of Utah or to hike the trails of Arches.  As he grew up, like so many of us, he got busy with work, a home and the life that comes with it.

 I continued to travel farther south, away from crowds, deep into the canyons, exploring Anasazi ruins, artifacts, pictographs and petroglyphs. Over the years it has become an obsession.  So much so that when I’m not working, I’m planning my next trip.  Over the years I’ve asked my son and daughter both to join me, always with the same answer.  “Cat’s in the Cradle” comes to mind.

 Last October, in the depths of the pandemic, when I asked Nick to join me, he said yes. He was only able to come for a week instead of my usual two. Wanting him to enjoy the area as much as I do, I made sure to pack as many highlights into one week as possible, revisiting many of my favorite spots.  Three days into our whirlwind explorations, Nick asked if we could have an easy day.  Evidently, I was working so hard to fit in all my incredible finds, I forgot, just being there is a treat.

 2020 weather had been very dry, with fires burning out of control across most western states.  Thankfully, this part of the world was free from the smoke we had become accustomed to on the front range of Colorado. Our evenings were crisp and clear. The night skies were thick with stars, planets and constellations and painted with broad brush strokes of the Milky Way. The days were warm and dry, and the hiking miles went by easily.   At the end of the week, as I dropped Nick off at his car, he christened the trip a success and told me he would love to join me again.  

 Two days into my second week on the mesa, I was able to witness one of those lightning fast changes of weather that a lucky few get to experience in the desert.  It wasn’t my first time and certainly not the most dramatic.   While the storm was short lived, only hours, the results lasted the rest of my time there.  I only shared that experience with one friend.  Then stored it away with all the other amazing experiences I’ve had, until just recently. The writings that follow are about that squall, what happens with water in the desert and how long the effects can last.  

                                         Dust to Life

Blowing, tumbling sand in a vast landscape of wind worn stone

The dry wash aches for moisture, all life is scorched and gasping in the heat

Gusting winds, carrying change from the vivid blue skies of yesterday

Blossoming clouds form and hang over the canyons like vindictive angels

Their purple bloated bellies a sure sign of riches to be shared         

The air grows heavy, humidity pressing down, so thick it’s almost suffocating

Then a scent of rain, thick and heady; a stillness falls over the landscape

And just for a moment, everything stops, even the wind holds its breath

A jagged bolt of hot silver split the sky, signaling the clouds to release their cargo

Rain attacks in diagonal sheets, the landscape a sponge, until saturation is complete

Then the runoffs rushing miracle, quickly fills every arroyo, wash and gully

Coursing down to the canyons edge, the thick muddy fluid launches into the abyss

Firehose columns crashing to the stones below, excavating rocks as old as time

Showing them the light of day, if only for a moment, before they vanish again

Broad tarns of water bubbling up, overflowing the gorges, ravines and valleys

A tumbling wall of water, roiling and swollen, sweeping up stones and dead brushwood

Pulling everything loose from its home and relocating it miles downstream

While the torrents swell and charge, the canyons are carved and rearranged

The liquid, scrubbing the valley floor clean and bringing with it, newness and life. 

With time, the sun rises higher in the sky, the sand settles and dries

Streams once sucked of their nourishing liquids now stir with aquatic activity

Sandstone tanks, full to the brim, shimmer with their reflective bounty

Every low spot and delta, rich with moisture, now home to mayflies and lace wings

Springs swell, giving the coyote, the cougar and grey fox, a quenching drink

And offer easy hunting of the kangaroo rat, black tailed jackrabbit and desert hare

All looking for enough fuel to hold them over until the rains come again

The red spotted toad, delighting in the moisture, breaks its nocturnal habits

To enjoy the party atmosphere and share its musical trill with family

The rock wren joins the broad tailed hummingbird, returning home

To Juniper, Pinyon and Rabbit Brush, now on fire with vivid yellow buds

A multitude of blossoms, like mother nature’s fireworks, adding spark to the prickly pear

Yucca stretching for the cobalt skies, the spicy smell of wet cedar filling the air

Bright red Indian paintbrush springs to life, alongside deep green hues of desert sage            

The exploding yellow on white of the cliff rose, splashing up the jade limbs

Flowers of vivid blues, purples and fire red, adding contrast to the silt floor

Old man tortoise escapes his burrow just long enough to munch on cacti bloom

And enjoy the richness of life!

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From Champagne to Concrete

Just after Gene jumped over the edge and started making turns, the entire slope broke loose.  AVALANCHE!  No matter how loud I yelled, he couldn’t hear me.  The bowl he was in was about half the size of a football field and just steep enough that, once it fractured, the resulting avalanche wouldn’t stop until it reached the upturned lip at the bottom.  If the slide went over that lip it would plunge another 100 feet into the trees below and most likely take Gene with it. 

It had been snowing for three days straight when Gene and I decided to head to Berthoud Pass for some deep powder runs in the back bowls.  We had been watching the weather and listening to the avalanche forecasts for the previous few days.  The danger wasn’t at an all time high but the powder was.  The headlights of Gene's Honda punched through the steadily falling snow in the early morning darkness. We drove west on I-70, taking the exit for highway 40, up through the little towns of Empire and Berthoud Falls before following the switchbacks to the top of the divide and Berthoud Pass.

On our arrival, the parking lot was deserted and the surrounding peaks were just starting to warm with the glow of early morning light.  We locked the car, skinned up our skis, and headed up the ski run just west of the highway.  With our hats pulled tightly down on our heads, we set out at a brisk pace trying to ward off the chill.  The fresh blanket of powder muffled all sound except the occasional squeak of our bindings and our steady, labored breathing.  For the first couple hundred yards, we took the line of least resistance following the open ski slopes.  Years ago, Berthoud Pass had been a vibrant ski area with 65 runs and over 1200 acres of skiing.  Now the snow covered lift cables, like fading ghosts, directed us up through the trees and disappeared in the falling snow.  After gaining 800 feet of elevation, we bore left and cut across the forested hill side that would lead us to Pumphouse Basin and some of the best backcountry skiing in Colorado.

We traversed across and up the mountainside for the better part of an hour, trying to get to a point where we could see the numerous bowls that were our destination.  Cross country skiing across a steep slope is never fun. In no time you feel like your downhill leg has been lengthened and your uphill leg has been stuffed into your hip.  You are always a little out of balance trying to keep your edges evenly weighted so your skis stay flat and headed in the right direction.  So far we hadn’t seen any slide activity and the snow was perfect champagne powder.

 Once we arrived at the top of the bowls, we dug a pit to check the quality of the snowpack and to insure the slopes weren’t ready to slide.  So far so good, the slope was consolidated and holding together.  To ensure safety, we had brought along our avalanche poles and shovels but weren't able to afford the new avalanche beacons that were on the market.  As it was, we were hoping the probes and shovels would just be unnecessary weight.  We chose our first run. Gene jumped and started making turns. I waited and watched the gracefulness with which he made his turns, anxious to follow.  Once Gene reached the bottom and moved far enough off to the side, I would go.  We watched each other carefully to make sure we knew exactly where one another were in case the slope decided to drag us along with it on a rocket ride to the bottom.  Making my own tracks, I was happy I had put on my goggles.  Each time I dropped into a telemark turn, the powder would roll right over my head. The depth of snow and the pressure of it against my body made it easy to make turn after turn as if they were in slow motion.  In all my skiing I had never experienced powder this good.  Berthoud Pass was my new favorite spot!  The hardest part of the run was making sure I kept my smile tight so my mouth didn't fill with snow.  Reaching the bottom of the run, I skied over to where Gene was waiting.  We laughed and giggled over our incredible luck to be here on such a stunning day.  Anxious to do it again, we skinned up and zigzagged our way back up the slope.

We spent the better part of three hours making run after run, looking for fresh powder each time.  Having these slopes to ourselves with this kind of powder made no sense. On a spectacular day like this I would have expected at least a few other skiers.  We took a break about noon and refueled.  It was still snowing lightly but the wind was calm and the temperature was still in the twenties.  We could just barely see the sun, still unable to burn through the clouds.  After a thirty minute lunch break and another twenty or thirty minutes just relaxing, we skied across the top of the bowl looking for more untracked slopes.  Skiing west three hundred feet put us at the top of another flawless bowl.  By now the winds had picked up and were blowing horizontally across the slopes.  We decided to make another run or two before heading back to the car.  I led the way down this time, looking for that sweet powder we had experienced earlier.  The consistency had been changing all morning and the powder was settling.  This run was still a lot of fun but we had been spoiled the first few hours of the day.  Once you’ve had the best snow of your life, good snow just wasn’t the same.  After skiing the bowl two more times, we called it a day and headed back towards the pass.  We were hoping some of the slopes on the north east side would still be blissful powder. 

Sunset in January happens by five and we had to push ourselves to avoid skiing the last run in the flat light of dusk.  The ridgeline was much easier than the route we had taken in and we made good time.  The wind continued to pick up and was blowing at 20 to 30 knots by the time we headed over the top and down the other side.  Our new route took us into an area known as the Current Creek bowls.  During the ski area’s hay day, these were their back bowls.  As we approached the first bowl, I understood the attraction.  The slopes were a perfect 35 to 40 degree angle cupped out at the bottom.  Just steep enough to get up some good speed but angled low enough that most people could ski it. They were broad clear slopes that drew you in like a magnet.  Unfortunately it was also the perfect angle for slab avalanches. 

By now, the wind was blowing hard enough to form a spindrift tail several feet long off the top edge of the slope.  If it had been doing that very long, the slope would be heavily loaded.  After a good day of skiing, I didn’t want to risk it. Gene on the other hand was drawn to the beautiful lines that lay in wait.  I pointed out the dangers and told him my fear that it was an avalanche waiting to happen.  “In all my years in the backcountry, I’ve never seen an avalanche”, said Gene.  I tried to reason that not seeing avalanches was because he was smart enough to avoid slopes like this one.  Gene told me he was going to ski it.  He waited a minute as I skied down along the outer edge of the slope looking for the best spot to watch his entire descent.  After I signaled my readiness, Gene jumped over the lip and made several turns.  I heard the slope collapse before I saw the fracture line.   The fissure was eighteen inches deep most of the way across the slope.  I started yelling immediately but between the wind and the moving snow, Gene couldn’t hear me.  Not that it would have done any good.  He was skiing in the middle of the slope and wouldn’t be able to reach the outer edge.  Our worst fears had materialized.  Watching Gene, my eyes never left the slope.  If he went under, I wanted to memorize exactly where to start digging. 

The snow gathered momentum but somehow, Gene managed to ski with it and stay above it.  As it neared the lip ready for its final rush down the steeper slope below it came to an immediate stop.  Gene stopped with it but the slope quickly settled around him like concrete.  He was standing but was buried to his waist.  While I wanted to help, I wasn’t going to ski out onto the slope in fear that I would break it loose and he would be washed over the edge.  Gene was pretty freaked out but worked hard to free himself.  He managed to release his bindings and break free of his skis but refused to leave them behind.  I kept telling him to forget about his skis and get off the slope but he was determined to bring them with him.  Eventually he managed to get both skis out and hiked across the slope toward me with them over his shoulder.  Once he reached me, he realized that he had left one of his poles behind.  He dropped his skis and turned to go back for his pole.  I grabbed him by the arm and did my best to convince him to leave it.  I think he may have been in shock because he was so focused on that pole that he wasn’t thinking about the potential for another slide.  I finally told him that I would buy him another pair of poles if he would leave it behind and that seemed to bring him back to reality.    

Gene was a little shaky after his brush with the avalanche but we managed to ski down through the trees and back up the road to where the car was parked.  By the time we reached the car, the light had faded and darkness had settled in. We loaded our skis and odd number of poles on the roof rack and started the two hour drive home.  Listening to the radio on the return trip, we tuned in the local news only to find out that over a hundred and fifty back-country avalanches had been reported in the general vicinity we were skiing in.  Not having company in those back bowls now made a little more sense.  

The following Monday, Gene stopped in at Mountain Sports and picked out a new pair of ski poles.  We talked about his close call and he told me that he didn’t tell Mary Beth, his girl friend, about his incident and asked me to keep it a secret.  He was afraid she would worry and possibly try to curtail his adventures. Even after all these years, she still hasn't found out.  

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Misguided Youth

Even though it was past two in the morning the temperatures were still hovering in the mid nineties and the heat trapped in the asphalt shingles was searing our hands and knees.  To pull this off we needed to take our time being careful not to be seen. We had been hunkered down on this ridgeline overlooking our objective for ten minutes and so far there had been no movement from the enemy.  We'd had multiple run-ins with him and decided to finally take things into our own hands.   It was our hope to catch him unaware and possibly even sleeping.  We were both dressed in dark clothing and moved as silently and carefully as possible.  We carried our weapons close to the body to keep them quiet but ready at a moment’s notice.   We didn’t want to open fire until we could guarantee a hit.  In small town Iowa, parking takes place not only diagonally on each side but also parallel in the middle of the street.  Our target was sitting right in the middle of the street next to the main intersection facing west.  We were fifty yards to his north and twenty feet above him.   The engine on his vehicle was off and all his windows were down. To shoot a rocket directly through the lowered window and hit him seemed an easy task.  With two of us firing at the same time, he didn’t stand a chance.  We had spent hours perfecting our skills and the likelihood that we could take him out tonight was high. 

School had been out for a couple of weeks now and the harassment started almost immediately.  In a Midwest town of two thousand people, night life for adults revolves around the local bars.  Drinks, pool, and sometimes live music was the draw for the adults.  There were four bars downtown and all seemed to be doing a brisk business. As kids we didn’t have the luxury of having four bars to hang out in.  For us, milling about downtown connecting with our friends was a big deal.  Our local policeman decided it was loitering and therefore against the law.  Several times he roughed up different friends of ours for no reason.  I was always the quiet one never voicing opposition and because of that he took me to be timid.  Anyone questioning his reasoning or challenging his right to push us around would be unduly harassed.  We had all talked about getting even but until now no one had taken any action.  We were happy to be the first and wanted to make sure we did so without anyone knowing who we were. 

That night we were armed with 25 bottle rockets multiple packs of firecrackers, a few M80’s as well as two Bic lighters heavily loaded with fluid.  We were going to start with the bottle rockets hoping to fire right into the open window.  With luck, once in they would rattle around the inside of the car and make him lose control of his bowels.  If that didn’t do it, we planned on switching to the big guns, the M80’s.  Their explosion was loud enough that they would scare anyone in a half block radius.  The key would be to move a quickly as possible, launching one after another until he came to his senses.  Then we needed to disappear into the night before he realized where it was coming from. 

Our position on the roof of the bank gave us a view of the entire down town area as well as Highway 140 leading south out of town towards Moville.  Other than the eerie yellow glow of the sodium vapor lights on the main streets, town was dark.  The bars had closed down and all was quiet.  Our target, the constable, was asleep, drunk or just good at sitting for long periods of time without moving at all.   After waiting another 5 minutes, we decided to make our move.  We started as planned with the bottle rockets.  The first one missed by a long distance and blew up 30 feet behind the car.  We followed it with several more rockets and the third one went right in the front passenger window.  Without waiting, we started to light up the M80s lobbing them over our heads like hand grenades. 

We were only two bombs into our barrage when I noticed flashing red lights screaming towards town from the south.  It didn’t make sense.  We had just started our shelling seconds earlier.  Another cop couldn’t have responded that quickly. Then we realized it wasn’t one police car but three, all with lights flashing and sirens screaming.  And they were moving fast, chewing up the mile of road between us in a hurry. About that time, the town cop came to his senses.  He climbed out of the car and started yelling at us.  

 I would guess he was a little like Barney Fife in that the town board wouldn’t let him carry a loaded gun.  I’m not sure he even had the bullet in his left shirt pocket or he would have certainly racked it into the chamber and shot us.  He was no doubt aware of the oncoming reinforcements and had to be conflicted. Should he wait for them to show up or follow us as we beat a hasty retreat.  I’m sure looking like a hero and being able to tell the highway patrolmen all about us won out. 

We stuffed the remaining ammo into our pockets and ran up and over the peak of the roof and down the back side.  There was a light pole close to the building on the low side that we had used to scramble up on the roof.  Once we reached the edge of the roof, we leaned into the pole and jumped to the alley running as fast as we could.  Rather than running directly back to my house where we were both supposed to be asleep, we cut between two buildings coming out on the street a block east of the scene.  Then we ran directly across the street and into a yard diving into bushes to regroup and figure out our next move.  By this time the three cars had arrived on the scene.  We could hear their sirens less than a block away.  After a quick discussion of our options we decided to take a back alley up the hill toward my house keeping a close watch over our shoulders.  If we saw headlights following us we were going to cut straight across the closest yard and hide again.  What we didn’t want to do was lead them directly to our house.  My dad was out of town and there was no reason to get my mother involved in this. 

Even though we could hear the sirens all the way home, we made the three and a half blocks without being seen.  We stepped inside the porch and closed the door behind us quietly.  We stood there for a minute catching our breath and looking out the screen door waiting.  There was no reason they should follow us at this point.  We had kept our faces covered and as far a we knew the only person to even get close enough to determine who we were was the town cop.  We didn’t think he was quick enough to make that connection based on our size and our speed.  

Satisfied we were safe, we headed quietly upstairs to my bedroom and got quickly into bed. In minutes the knocking began.  It started loud and just got louder.  Soon my mother’s light came on and she worked her way down the back stairs to confront whoever was waking us in the middle of the night.  After a few minutes of quiet, my mother came back up the stairs hollering for me to come down.  I put on my best sleepy eyed, rumpled just woke up look and headed down to the back porch.  There stood the town cop and a highway patrolman.  Two more sat in their cars in the driveway with the lights on.  After playing dumb and pretending I didn’t know what they were talking about, giving them my best, “Gee no, I’ve been in bed all night”, routine, the police retreated and left us alone.  My mother just gave me the look and asked me where my friend was.  I told her that he was upstairs still sleeping but there was something in her face that made me believe she knew otherwise.

As it turned out, the bank was equipped with a silent alarm and we had set it off when we walked across the roof on our way to set up our lookout.  The town cop was sleeping when the call came in and the highway patrol, who assumed it was a bank robbery, came running.  We were on the roof planning our attack unaware that trouble was on its way.

I wondered how many other doors got knocked on that night or if he knew it was us.  Either way, we were on our best behavior for the next few days, happy to have dodged the bullet and stayed out of jail.  Like pain, near misses quickly fade and we were out trying to right wrongs again in no time at all.   

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Misguided Youth

I decided to leave my friend's name out of this next post.  Not knowing what his children might think of his past behavior, I'll let them hear it from his lips instead of learning about it on the internet.  

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Words of wisdom from a wise man (my father)

I was telling my father about the blog for my children and how I was trying to tell stories by sticking to a timeline, from my beginning to my end (not yet).  He suggested I just write what ever I could remember and not worry about the timeline. Good ideas and memories, come to us on their schedule not ours.  Thank you dad.  These next posts will be in a random order as I remember them.  

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The Notch Couloir

All my memories of climbing with Gene Francis revolve around coffee.  Gene made one of the best cups of coffee I’ve ever had.  I’ve been drinking it since I was 8 years old and am a bit of an addict.  Not that I need it all day long but there is nothing like a good strong cup of Joe to get the day started.   Gene’s coffee was always the cup you wished would never end.  He could make it at the trailhead as easily as he could make it at his home in Boulder.  Never using a coffee maker, he always started with Vail Blend beans, freshly ground, four scoops per cup, made in a filtropa.  For those of you that aren’t bean snobs, a filtropa is a cone shaped holder that sits perfectly on top of the cup.  You load it with a paper filter, then fill it with grounds and pour the water over it. Four scoops may sound a little excessive but what one scoop could do, four could do ten times better.  A filter full only made one cup then the grounds were discarded and he started fresh. Gene always made sure the water was as hot as humanly possible before he started the process.  At the trailhead or when camping that was done with an MSR expedition stove that knew only one setting, full on.  The bottom of the pan he boiled water in was pitted from the heat of the flame.  Once the water was at least 220 degrees Fahrenheit, he would pour it as slowly as possible over the mound of grounds to insure he got every molecule of caffeine out of the grounds.  Trail coffee was always black.  Even though I like cream in my coffee, Gene’s brew was perfect black or with cream.  One cup always put an extra spring in your step for long approaches and gave you a little more confidence before attempting a difficult climb.  A day in the mountains wasn’t the same without it.

This day was no different.  We met at Gene’s house at 3am for a cup of his special brew.  No reason to dash out of the house with it in a to-go mug.  We would easily make up the time once we finished it.  We took our time and enjoyed it thoroughly.  When I arrived the water was already boiling and by 3:15 am we were loading our gear in the car and heading for Rocky Mountain National Park.

We had been talking to a person at the park the last few weeks looking for the perfect window to climb the Notch Couloir.  It had been a snowy January and the entire East Face had been buried in snow for weeks.  We were hoping for a little sun so the east facing couloir, which lay just south of the Diamond, would melt enough that it would turn to ice or at least hard pack.  It’s always faster and safer climbing on solid neve.  Finally we got word that the snow had stopped, the sun was shining and the Notch was in great shape.  We readied ourselves to leave first thing the next morning.

We were at the trailhead by 4:30 am, ready to start the approach to the base of the Diamond, where the climbing would begin.  The last thing we did was to dump out our packs and reevaluate everything we had loaded in them.  After some discussion, we decided to leave out our bivouac sacs and some of the extra clothes and food.  As Yvonne Chouinard always said, if you go prepared to bivouac, you will.  The thought process was, extra weight slows you down enough that you would have to spend the night on the route.  Lighter is always faster.  We reasoned that if the Notch was in perfect shape we would be up and off before the sun went down.  Standing at the trailhead next to the car, it all made good sense.

              We signed in at the register and started the 14 mile round trip with that extra spring in our steps from the coffee and from the lack of extra weight.  For the first three miles, the trail switchbacked through the woods and the snow was much deeper than we had hoped to find.  We reasoned that since word had just gotten out that the face was in good shape again that very few had used the trail and we would have to be the ones to pack it down.  Even though we were struggling through snow as deep as our knees, it only took us a little over an hour to make it to tree-line.  The miracles of a good cup of coffee!  As we approached the turn off for Chasm Lake the sun peaked over the horizon and lit up the Diamond.   There is not a more beautiful sight than the east face of Longs Peak at first light.  The 2500 feet of sheer granite turns to gold and the dusted snow lights up like a Christmas display.  We stood in awe for a moment or two before we headed right into the wind and towards our goal.  Once we made the turn off for Chasm Lake, we had to put on our crampons and get out an ice axe to traverse the snow slope that had built up on the trail.  All the previous snow and wind had made the trail impassable without it.  Before we made it across the slope, we were blasted by spindrift.  It was hard to tell if it was actually snowing or if it was just snow being blown off the walls around us.

            Chasm Lake was frozen solid and we hiked straight across it and Mills Glacier to Lamb Slide.  Lamb Slide, so-named because of the Reverend Elkanah J. Lamb's nearly fatal tumble down it in 1871,  is a low angled 800 foot slope that leads far left of the face up to Broadway. Broadway is the broken ledge that dissects the face and leads over to the base of the Notch.  The top of the Notch is the obvious V in the skyline.  Below that lies a narrow gully that leads 800 feet from Broadway right to its apex. 

The snow on Lamb Slide was in good shape and made for quick work cramponing up to Broadway.   Even though Broadway isn’t a difficult traverse, in the winter, it isn’t a cake walk as its name describes.  There are a couple places when the snow is deep, that pushed us right to the edge, exposing us to the 1000 foot drop down the face.  At this point we pulled out the rope and looked for some protection to get us past the thin spots.  Luckily I found enough bare rock to slot in a nut giving us the psychological protection we needed to continue.  

   TRAVERSING BROADWAY IN FULL WINTER CONDITIONS

Shortly after that we arrived at the bottom of the Notch Couloir.  At this point, we took a quick break; refueling our bodies.  We used some of the hot lemonade I brought with me to wash down enough food to carry us up the 800 feet of 50 to 55 degree snow and ice. 

Gene led off first and found very little ice for purchase with his crampons.  Instead of climbing, going up the gully was more like shoveling two feet of snow up a 50 degree slope with icy rocks underneath.   The snow would build up in front of his legs and every so often push him back down the incline.  We could only hope that higher up, the snow would have sloughed off and the ice would be exposed.  As I stood at the base of the Notch waiting for Gene to finish the first lead, it started snowing again and the temperature dropped.  Gene and I had both done all of our winter mountaineering in single leather boots.  They were much lighter than double boots and had more flexibility in the ankles for French technique.  The only trick with single boots was to keep moving so your feet didn’t get cold.  As I belayed Gene, I kept marching in place, wiggling my toes and stamping my feet to keep the circulation going.  Even though I was paying out the rope, I kept my fingers balled up in the palms of my wool Dachstein mittens to insure they still worked when it was time for me to climb. 

By the time I heard Gene yell, “Off belay”, followed by “Ready to belay” I was ready to get moving so I could warm up.  I took out the two pieces of protection anchoring us to the wall and yelled back, “Climbing”.  When you stand still watching your partner climb, you often wonder what is taking him so long.  Once you get into the thick of it, it usually becomes obvious.   Even though Gene had broken a trail of sorts up the first 150 feet of the couloir, it was still slow going and continually felt like the snow build up was going to push me back down the gully. We swapped leads several times, each pitch taking much longer than we had expected.  As we struggled upward through the deep snow, hoping it wouldn’t break loose and avalanche us right out of the notch, we watched as the sun ticked its way across the sky like the minute hand on a clock, taking the daylight hours with it.   

Even though we got an early start, day time hours in the winter never seemed to match our aspirations.  Before we reached the top of the notch the sun had set.  With one pitch left, we discussed our options.  As loose as the gully was, retreating down the way we had come was out of the question.  We could work our way up and over to the summit of Longs where we would probably have to spend the night or we could drop down the back side of the Notch Couloir in hopes of getting out of the wind.  In inclement weather, the summit of Longs can have some of the worst winds on the entire Front Range and spending the night there without extra clothes and our bivouac sacs sounded like Russian roulette.   Even though neither of us had explored the back side of Longs, we reasoned that losing altitude and looking for shelter was our best hope of a comfortable night. 

The last pitch to the top of the Notch was the quickest of the lot. The fear of having to find our way down an unknown slope in the dark, gave us extra energy.  The backside slope angle was low enough that we coiled our rope and headed down as quickly as possible.   As the twilight turned into dark, we stumbled as low as we could go looking for shelter from the wind and blowing snow, all the time wondering what the nighttime hours would bring. 

This was before the days of the cell phone so there was no calling home to let our loved ones know that we weren’t going to make it back that night.  My wife, Leslie had been through some pretty late returns and had handled it well but so far hadn’t had to weather an all-nighter.   

We found a couple of large boulders propped against each other with a relatively flat area in front of them. Nothing is really flat when you are in a 40 degree gully but we weren’t complaining.  Since we had left our bivouac sacs behind, we flattened the area at the base of the boulders until we could sit with our backs against the stone giving shelter from the wind.  We then fed the rope back and forth under us for a little extra insulation, emptied out our packs, loosened our boot laces and put our feet into the packs in hopes of keeping them warm.  We pulled our balaclavas down low, drank the last of our water and ate a little of what was left of our food  settling in for the night.  We had high hopes of actually getting a little sleep but after a half hour of sitting, the cold had seeped into our bones and we had to get up to move around to warm ourselves.

Between the efforts we exerted that day and wanting to sleep but being too cold to manage it, the night passed slower than any I can remember.  We huddled together most of the night trying to conserve our body heat.  Every 10 to 15 minutes we would get up, do some jumping jacks, swing our feet trying to drive the circulation back into our toes, anything that would keep our blood from turning to slush.  If it wasn't our feet being cold, it was our backside was from sitting on the rope and the uneven ground.  Luckily the weather settled over night, the snow stopped and the wind eased.  Considering we left so much behind at the trailhead, things could have been much worse. Gene and I spent part of the night talking about our plans for hiking back out in the morning.  We would have to head back the gully we were currently lounging in and either head to the top of Longs Peak or go south towards the top of Mount Meeker.   The northeast face of Mount Meeker was lower angled than Longs Peak but neither of us had taken that route before.  After much discussion, we decided to go south to Mount Meeker.   We probably wouldn’t be at our peak performance level by first light and didn’t want to take a chance of slipping so close to the east face of Longs Peak.  Long before morning, we ate the last of our food, chased by a mouthful of snow.  Eating snow is not the best means of rehydrating.  It takes a lot of snow to amount to much moisture and the cold of the snow cools down your core.  We sucked on it anyway, just to keep our mouths moist.  More jumping jacks, a little singing, and more discussion of our early morning retreat.  Gene was hoping a helicopter would drop in to pick us at first light.  I doubted there was much chance of that.  Even though we hadn’t returned home, I didn't think anyone would even be concerned until halfway through the next day.  I wasn't sure I would survive the embarrassment that would come with a helicopter rescue anyway. 

When the sky finally started to brighten, Gene and I packed up our bags and stretched, trying to work out the kinks from a long night on the ground.  Working our way back up the gully wasn’t nearly as straight forward as it had been going down.  Our energy level was low and we couldn’t take more than 10 steps without stopping to catch our breath.  As we warmed up, movement became more fluid but it was obvious we needed a cup of Gene’s coffee to make this trek easier.  By the time the sun came over the horizon, we were on the ridgeline just north of Mount Meeker trying to pick our way down the face.  The heat of the sun warmed our bodies considerably but both of us were still having difficulties feeling our feet.  We left the rope in the pack and carefully picked our way down the face taking care not to stumble.  Once we got down far enough we found a snow slope that we could glissade down to save us time.  Getting back to the base of Meeker was only half the problem.  Now we had to slog our way out to the trailhead.  We were both pretty tired and our feet felt like wooden blocks but knew we would make it eventually.  As we crossed the bowl at the base of Meeker towards the trail, we noticed four climbers some distance off, heading our way.  Hopefully they would have better luck than we did.  Thirty minutes later we met the climbers on the trail. The first climber in the line was my fried Stu.  Stu had spent his summer as a ranger in the park.

“Stu, what are you doing here”, I asked.  “Looking for you” was his response.  Evidently my wife had called my boss at Mountain Sports in the early morning hours.   He told her not to worry; we were experienced mountaineers and would be prepared with everything we needed to spend the night. He was sure we would be home soon.  He then called the Park Service and alerted them of our situation.  Stu heard my name and gathered up a couple of ranger friends and headed in to find us.  He had spent an unexpected night on Longs Peak just the weekend before and knew the kind of conditions we would encounter.    Luckily they had packed some hot tea and some power bars to help us reenergize.  With hot drink and some food in us, we sat on a rock and laughed with Stu comparing our stories of our nights on Longs Peak.  Evidently if we had ventured over to the Longs Peak cabin before leaving the trail-head, we would have seen a sign on the door stating that all climbs of Longs Peak were taking at least two days.   The person who gave us the recommendation for the Notch was unknown to Stu and his friends but she was obviously out of the loop. 

Two hours later we were back at the trailhead and digging through the warm clothes and equipment we had left behind.  We thanked Stu and our new friends and made the drive home. 

As I sat thawing my feet in a tub of warm water, my wife Leslie told me she was happy to have me home.  That being said, her anger at me for putting her through a long night of worry seemed greater than her relief.  I promised I would take care not to put her through that again.  Sadly, I wasn't able to keep my promise.     

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Another Post

Not finding sleep here in Nashville tonight so I decided to work on another blog post.  It's funny, I started this project for my kids and yet I don't think they have read a one.  They are too busy, but hopefully some day when I'm not around they will check it out.  

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The Pink House, 1961 to 1962

In 1961, I was in the 3rd Grade with Mrs. Crom as my teacher.  She seemed ancient to me then but was much younger than I am now.  Viet Nam was in the headlines a lot that year.  My mom and dad talked about it a constantly. It still didn’t mean that much to me but would before I knew it.

The Soviets built the Berlin Wall that summer, complete with guard towers to prevent the massive defection that had marked Germany during the post WWII period. Tensions were high not only there but here at home.  The president, John F. Kennedy advised all Americans to have a bomb Shelter.  We didn’t practice crawling under our desks in school this time but I often wondered if the fruit cellar in the front yard would suffice.

The Space Race was on and the world was watching. The Soviets were ahead with the first man in space.  Yuri Gagarin, entered orbit and returned safely to earth a couple of weeks before my birthday in 1961. The Russians followed this by having the first full day in orbit.   We were able to get Alan Shepard into space briefly but not into orbit.  We all watched with rapt fascination on our little black and white TV’s every time there was a launch.  There were many failures before we managed to get John Glen into orbit for 5 hours in February of 1962. Even as children, we were worried that the Soviets would be the first to the moon and would rule our world from the skies.

Elvis was still shaking his hips in 1961.   When he walked on stage, women screamed, fainted, cried, shrieked and wet their pants.  The results were often so hysterical that the National Guard, State Police nor the City Police could contain those involved.  On a number of occasions Elvis had to stop the show! He was regarded by some as the blame for juvenile delinquency and the corruption of youth. I wasn’t being corrupted yet but I think my mother may have been.  She listened to his music often and was a big fan.

That summer Great Grandpa Charlie took me out to the timber north of the Pink House.  Today it’s called Haggerman’s Timber.  He walked me around the timber telling me the story of his arrival in Iowa and his first winter there. Charlie and his family moved west to Iowa in the late 1800’s in a covered wagon.  Once they arrived, they set up a tent in the timber and spent their first Iowa winter there.  They drew water from the creek until it froze solid, then melted snow for water.  Charlie cut and hauled wood into town in the wagon. He sold it and they used the money to buy food, supplementing their diet of deer meat, rabbit and squirrel.  They built a fire along the creek to do all the cooking as well as to heat themselves.  When the winter turned cold and the snow got deep, they would heat rocks in the fire and then move them into the tent to keep them warm at night.  As Charlie walked me around the timber showing me where they set up the tent and telling me about that first winter, I thought it sounded like a grand adventure and envied his luck at being born at a time that allowed an entire family to live in the woods in a tent.  It wasn’t until I was much older that I realized just how difficult their life must have been.  After their long first winter, the family moved to town into their house on Barre Street where they spent the rest of their days.  Charlie went from cutting wood for a living to owning the local hardware store and then building the manufacturing shop where my father and I now worked. 

I rode my old Schwinn B6 down the gravel roads and back over to the timber numerous times to wander the woods and imagine how fun it would have been to have lived under the canopy hunting for food and living in a tent. My path to the woods, took me over the local river.  It was small enough to remain unnamed but big enough to be home to much larger fish than the ponds I had been fishing.  Once I discovered how big the fish were there versus the gravel pit, I switched to being a river fisherman.  River fishing didn’t give me the immediate gratification that the small always hungry crappie and sunfish at the gravel pit did but when fish did bite the pay off was a lot more satisfying.  On good days, I usually came home with a fat golden carp, which weren’t as good eating as the sunfish but made me feel like a real fisherman.  I also learned how to fish for the catfish that fed on the bottom of the river.  It took really stinky bait and a lot of patience. Quite often I would leave my pole anchored with the line in the water over night and hope to have a fish on when I got back the next morning.  I’ll never forget that first catfish.  It was a real lunker and felt like I was pulling a small pig off the bottom of the river.  While it was the biggest catch of my short career, the surprise I got when I tried to keep it from flopping back to the water was one I’ll never forget.  I guess you have to learn the hard way to really appreciate the jolt of pain they can deliver with their horns.  I managed to get that fish home but cried all the way and was scared to touch it again until my dad showed me what had happened and how to avoid it. 

August of 1961 our baseball practice was interrupted by a thunderstorm.  It was not unusual for that time of year but this one seems a bit more ominous than normal.  You could see it roll in over the plains.  The clouds piled up into massive thunderheads and blocked the sun, turning the day into twilight. As I rode home on my trusty steed, the wind picked up and peppered me with gravel from the road.  The entire ride, probably only 8 to 10 minutes, was spent fighting the cross wind and seemed like it took hours.  I made the turn south onto Quarn Road and had to ride directly into the wind.  I wasn’t sure I would make that last 150 yards.  It was a little scary but there was also an element of thrill involved that I didn’t want to end.  Once I arrived home, mom corralled the lot of us in the house to keep us under her watchful eye.  My dad and my aunt Ronnie were still in town but were supposed to be returning soon.  We watched the weather out the window as the winds picked up and the rain came down in buckets.  The sky turned green and it started to hail.  The wind was so strong that everything was blowing sideways and it was a wonder that the trees and bushes could stay rooted.  Mom moved us to the northeast corner of the living room where we hunkered down behind the couch to wait for Dad’s return. Looking wide eyed over the couch, the house seemed alive.  The walls looked like they were taking a huge breath as they bent out like a set of lungs bringing in air.  It didn’t seem possible and I just knew that any minute it would just explode.  The noise of the storm increased to the point that it hurt to listen.  All of a sudden we felt the house rock and heard a loud crash!  Mom held us down keeping us out of harm’s way until the wind abated and the storm settled some.  About that time, Dad and Aunt Ronnie came bursting through the front door into the house.  When my mom asked him where he had been, he explained that they had made it as far as the drive in front of the house when they saw a tornado approaching.  Ronnie was so scared that she wouldn’t leave the car.  While we were crowded behind the couch, they were huddled in the car with a front row seat to the tornado.  While they were watching it broke the top out of the old cottonwood tree in the front yard and threw it through the upstairs of the house into the bedroom where we as children were supposed to sleep.  There was a huge gaping hole in the wall and shards of glass from the window were stuck like arrows in the bed that my sister Karen slept in.  Dad got to work cleaning up the mess and used tarps to put a temporary patch on the front of the house to keep the rain out. 

When we ventured outside the next day, it was obvious that the tornado had done a fair amount of damage to the woods along the edge of the property.  We even found pieces of straw driven into a telephone pole. One of the neighbors said he had a cow that was impaled with a fence post but was still grazing like nothing had happened.  Here we had weathered our first tornado and didn’t’ even make it out to the fruit cellar that was supposed to protect us.  I guess we were very lucky that the tornado didn’t make a direct hit on the house.  The experience did give me a new respect for tornados but this was the first of many that I would weather over my years in the Midwest. 

When I went back to school that August, I was in Mrs. Sager’s 4th grade class. Even though ours wasn’t a working farm, living in the country classified me as a farm kid and most of my friends were the same.  Even though our class was relatively small and we were all friends, there seemed to be a division of sorts between farm kids and town kids.  Looking back, I would guess most of us were quite poor but at the time, it seemed like the kids in town were still in a different economic class than those of us in the country, at least in our minds. 

One of the girls in my class, Sue Harrison, developed a dislike for me.  I always thought she was cute but don’t remember ever voicing that feeling or doing anything else to deserve her hatred.  One day while we were all out on the school grounds at recess, I was chasing one of my friends around the corner of the building when out of nowhere Susan jumped me, knocking me to the ground.   I had been in fights before but once I realized I was being attacked by a girl, I quit fighting all together.  My mother had drilled it into my head that you never hit a girl.  Susan was no ordinary girl; she was very strong and knew how to deliver a blow.  In getting knocked down, I skinned both knees.  Sue made sure that my knees were the least of my worries.  She delivered a few punches to my face and back before I even thought of protecting myself.  It took all my strength to shake her and run fast enough to put distance between us.  By the time I put 6 feet between us; Sue dropped her arms and walked away. Evidently just kicking my butt in front of the other kids was enough to give her the satisfaction that was needed to give up the very one sided fight.  Had it gone on much longer I have no doubt I would have fared much worse.   As it was I tore my pants and my shirt.   I was wearing multiple angry red marks all over my face and back and both knees were bleeding.  While half the kids on the play ground saw me taking the lumps, not one teacher was there to witness it.  I think the embarrassment of getting beat up by a girl hurt every bit as much as the blows she had delivered.  Lucky for me that was the last time Susan felt the need to make me pay for my transgressions.   

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Work wins over autobiography

With the busy season upon me, putting energy into this blog has taken a back seat.  While there is lots of airplane time I could use, the motivation to do so has been lacking.  I do have a couple of things in the works and will try to be more diligent.  

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Longs Peak 14,259 feet high

As the intense light flashed around our heads making Gene and I question our decision to spend the night here, I tried to make myself as small as possible in hopes of not getting hit by lightning.  Hiking in yesterday, late in the afternoon, it seemed like such a simple plan.  Spend the night on the col between Mt. Lady Washington and Longs Peak, ready to jump up at first light, slide down three repels onto Broadway and climb up and off the face early in the day.  I had made several attempts at climbing the east face of Longs with a variety of partners and had been foiled by the weather every time.

As we left the parking lot for the Longs Peak trailhead that afternoon, the weather seemed to be in our favor and the forecast looked good.  As too often happens on Longs Peak, you are lured in by the sun and blue sky but once you commit, the clouds roll in and all hell breaks loose.  We chose this spot for our bivouac for its ease of access to the face and for its spectacular view of the Diamond.  We were right on the edge of the face at 13,800 feet with the perfect view of what was to come.  

The Diamond from Chasm View Overlook.  Broadway is covered in snow

Between thunder claps, Gene and I yelled at each other trying to communicate over the sound of the pouring rain.  Should we try to get  off this spot now or is it too dangerous to stand up with all the lightning strikes. We had already moved all of our gear as far away from our sleeping bags as possible to avoid becoming lightning rods.  The part of us that wanted to wait it out in hopes of completing the climb tomorrow won out.  Our bivouac sacs were still holding out the rain and if this cleared we may even be able to get some sleep.  Two hours later, we questioned our reasoning but were too far into the night to make the change.  We hunkered down hoping for the best.

At five the next morning it was still raining lightly but Zeus had given up throwing lightning bolts at us a few hours earlier.   Worn out, cold and hungry, we packed it in and hoped for better luck next time. 

Saturday July 14th, two weeks before my son was born.

Looking back, my reasoning was definitely flawed but at the time, the fear of never being able to climb again had driven me to the mountains.  Leslie was nine months pregnant and could be delivering any time.  I had already spent every possible day all spring and summer trying to pull off as many climbs as possible and here I was hiking in to give the Diamond on Longs Peak another try.  Leslie told me she felt fine and to go.  I don’t know if she knew how worried I was about being a father and losing my time to climb or if she just knew Nick wasn’t coming soon.  Either way I didn’t have to be told twice.

Quinn and I left the Longs Peak Parking lot (9400 ft) at 5am heading up to the base of our climb.  It was four miles and three thousand feet of elevation gain to the turn off for Chasm Lake and another ¾ of a mile into the face from there.  I had climbed Longs Peak by many different routes in summer as well as winter and could make the hike in with my eyes closed.  Today we were headed in to hopefully do the Casual Route.  The Casual Route goes right up the middle of what is known in the climbing world as the Diamond or the East face of Long Peak. It is just over 1500 feet from Mills Glacier to the summit.  The face is dissected horizontally 500feet up by a fairly wide ledge called Broadway.  While the rock on the Diamond is beautiful solid granite, the hard climbing all happens above 13,000 feet.  The air, if you aren’t used to it, is a little rare. The face overhangs slightly but while climbing you don’t notice unless you drop something.  A rock dropped from the top of the Diamond will land 30 feet out from the base on Mills Glacier below.  Long’s Peak is the highest peak on this part of the divide and creates its own weather.  Most afternoons the summit will be shrouded in clouds while all around it can be clear. To get up the face before the afternoon storms roll in, you need to bivouac as we did earlier or get a very early start.   For this climb, Quinn and I each had a light pack with two 9 mm ropes, a fairly light rack of gear, plenty of snacks, our rock shoes  and of course rainwear just in case.  The early morning temperatures were brisk so we left the parking lot in fleece sweaters and long pants. 

We stopped at the Chasm Lake turn off to enjoy what I consider to be, the most beautiful outhouse in Colorado.  We ate, drank and then found a good hiding spot, not far away, to stash everything but our climbing gear and our rock shoes.  The weather looked good and if we were going to go fast, the less we carried the better. We could clip our hiking shoes to the back of our harness as we climbed but any more than that would just slow us down.  As we made the hike to the face, we passed several parties of climbers camped out in the boulders.  They were just beginning to stir.  Having bivouacked there myself on earlier attempts I knew what a poor night sleep they must have had.  Quinn and I were at the base of the wall before 6:30am and ahead of all other parties.   

The first part of the route follows the North Chimney up 500 feet of climbing to Broadway.  Broadway is a horizontal ledge that dissects the face and is the start of the really hard climbing.  Getting up the North Chimney is relatively easy (5.4) compared to the climbing above Broadway but it is full of loose rocks and requires care to not get hit by falling stones from your partner.  To save time, we free soloed up the chimney as quickly as we could, staying close together to keep the rock fall danger to a minimum.  We put the first 500 feet behind us in just under an hour.  Once we reached Broadway, we moved slightly left to the base of the D1 pillar.  The D1 Pillar is a 150 foot high A shaped rock that points the way up the face.  From here, Quinn lead the first pitch up a short left facing corner and a thin crack in the center of the pillar and belayed right at its apex. 

I had heard all about the second pitch and was anxious to have a go at it.  It isn’t the hardest pitch on this route but was supposed to have a lot of exposure and a fairly unprotected traverse.  Many previous summiteers had talked of this as the most difficult pitch mentally.  As it turned out it was much ado about nothing.  I started by working up a 5.9 finger crack past a really old piton and then went left across the traverse. By using small stoppers and RP’s, it was fairly easy to protect.  The pitch ended in a right facing corner with an amazing view across the face.   Quinn enjoyed the traverse as much as I did and made short work of it joining me at the belay stance. 

After passing the climbing rack to Quinn and reorganizing, he headed up slabs above to a big alcove where he set up our next belay stance.  The climbing here was very straight forward but by the time I joined him, we were both feeling the chill of the morning and it took us several minutes to warm our hands up enough to continue.

 My next lead took us up a sustained corner via hand and finger cracks with occasional layback to a small ledge.  Once again having my hands and fingers wedged inside the cold granite cracks for a short twenty minutes turned them into unfeeling blocks.  I shoved them deep into my arm pits to get the circulation going enough to bring Quinn up to my high spot.  All in all we were making good time and the weather was clear. 

Quinn led the next pitch which was surprisingly easy for being so high up on the Diamond.  The only sketchy move was climbing around a huge detached flake.  His lead ended on the Yellow Wall Bivy Ledge.  It’s a ledge just big enough to spend the night on if needed and many have done just that.  While we had no intention of dallying any longer than necessary it did make for a luxurious belay stance.  The sun was now hitting us full on and warming the rock around us.  Our view from here was spectacular.  We could see all the way to the curve of the earth and every lake between us and the horizon was lit up by the sun.   

One more rope length of climbing would take us to Table Ledge, a much narrower ledge that leads one off the face.  I headed up the shallow slot, stemming the gap past a couple of old fixed pitons and working through a small squeeze chimney.  The protection here was a little sparse but the rock was solid.  The last difficult move on this section was working past a (5.10) bulge that had a fixed pin just underneath it.  I clipped the pin and pulled myself over the top and continued up to the ledge.  The ledge at this point is only about 4 inches wide.  After working hand over hand you reach a point where you can pull up onto the ledge and walk off the steep part of the face. 

 Quinn McCleod working his way across Table Ledge 

After reaching the left end of the ledge we were only 450 feet from the summit.  Here the Casual Route merges with the Mountaineers Route.  Lower class climbing leads through cracks and chimneys in a series of short walls, then up to the scree slopes that lead to the summit.  We had both done the Mountaineers route before and took this opportunity to coil the rope and solo the rest of the way to the summit. We were standing on top by eleven thirty in full sun.   We signed the summit register once more and headed over to the North Face route to descend. 

I had climbed the North Face the previous winter with Freddie a good friend from Great Britain.  In the winter the iced up slabs give you some technical climbing but down climbing it in late June doesn’t present a high level of difficulty.  We skirted the right edge of the Diamond down climbing the easier slabs to a point several hundred feet above the Chasm View Overlook, where Gene and I had spent the night on our failed attempt.  At this point we uncoiled the rope and did two short repels from the old iron eyebolts that were left from the early Cables Route, landing on the col that overlooks the Diamond.  Looking across the diamond, we could see the climbers that had spent the night at the base, still working their way up the face. 

Quinn, Chasm View Overlook after our ascent of the Diamond.  Table Ledge is just above his head.

Two weeks later my son Nick was born and I had to laugh at myself.  My desperation to climb, my fear of fatherhood and how it would change my life seemed so meaningless compared to this. 

  Nick just a few days old in his mothers arms

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The Pink House 1960 to 1961

In the fall of 1960, John Fitzgerald Kennedy was elected president.  He was the second youngest president ever and the world was excited to see what his presidency would bring.  The Vietnam Conflict had been going on for five years and students across the US were protesting against it. Dad, having served in World War II, opposed anyone protesting against the government.  At 9 years of age, I wasn't sure how I felt yet.  The cost of a gallon of gas was 31 cents and with gas wars you could get five gallons of gas for just a buck. When my mom filled up the car, not only did they check her oil and clean the windshield but they gave her coupons for free silver wear. Floyd Patterson was the heavyweight boxing champion of the world.  Yes Friday night at the fights was still the sport to watch.  The Yo-Yo craze was on and Ray Krock opened 200 McDonalds in Southern California.  The highlight for me in 1960 was baseball.  The New York Yankees were in the World Series again.  Sadly they lost in game seven to the Pittsburgh Pirates.  They were still my favorite team and would be for many years to come. 

In the fall of 1960 we moved into a new home a scant mile from the edge of town.  It was bigger than the previous “White House” and situated on two acres of perfectly flat farm land.  It was surrounded by a farmer’s fields on three sides and a gravel road out front.  The lane that led from the road to the house was fifty yards long and covered in crushed pale white rock.  The lane was bordered on the north side with gooseberry bushes that were loaded with sweet purple berries.  The four foot high grassy mound in the middle of the front yard covered a fruit cellar that doubled as a tornado bunker.  I had watched the Wizard of Oz at my grandma’s house in San Diego but was having a hard time imagining that tornados, like the one that swept Dorothy and Todo away, really existed.  To the north of the house was an acre of ground that dad envisioned as a garden next spring.  For the immediate future it would be a training ground for two young lawn care experts, Mark and me.  Behind the house were several big trees with nice hefty horizontal branches perfect for a tree house. There was also a huge weeping willow tree that hung all the way to the ground, giving us the perfect spot for a cool afternoon fort. The outside edge of the property was delineated from the farmer’s field by a three foot high galvanized wire fence supported by wooden posts.  The most prominent feature of our new home was its color.  The previous owner must have had a yearning for warmer weather and had painted the house a pale flamingo pink.  We referred to it as “The Pink House”.

One of the first things my father did after getting us settled was to build a two tiered chin up bar in the front yard.  He welded it together at the shop from inch and a half diameter steel pipe and planted it in concrete alongside the fruit cellar.  While Jack LaLanne was on the TV trying to get all Americans fit, Dad, Mark and I were in the front yard doing chin ups and hanging sit ups.  Dad made it a daily ritual to see who could do the most of each exercise.  We thought we were just having fun and he was trying to get us in shape.  No doubt so we could continue pushing that mower up and down the side yard.   

Living in Iowa in the 1960’s we did things a little differently than we do today.  In those days, everyone had a burning barrel.  The burning barrel was where you took all your trash and lit it on fire to reduce the size of the refuse pile.  Air quality be damned.  It was probably my favorite chore.  One afternoon that fall while taking out the trash, I spent some extra time lighting different pieces of paper and watching them burn.  You would have thought I would have learned from my earlier experience in California but it just seemed so safe, burning trash in a barrel.  What could go wrong?  As most days in Iowa are, that day was windy.  One of the little pieces of paper I was burning rode an updraft of air, floated up and over the fence and landed in the neighbors soon to be harvested wheat field.  I raced after it trying to stomp it out before it could start a bigger fire. The second it landed I heard a whoosh similar to the sound a gas fireplace makes when you flip the on switch.   I felt the immediate warmth on my face and the fire rushed out of control.  I ran to the house as fast as I could, yelling for my parents the entire way.  They heard my screams and responded quickly.  When mom saw what I had done, she ran back into the house to grab blankets, wetted them down and dashed back out to help my father. Between the two of them, they chased the burning wheat for what seemed like hours.  Luckily they managed to get it under control before it reached the neighbors out buildings.  Mom sent me in to get more water for wetting the blankets so they could insure every last ember was out.   By the time Mom and Dad were finished with their fire duty, they were black with ash and soot and exhausted.  Before we could go in to clean up however, they marched me over to the neighbor’s house so I could tell him what I had done.  Of course, I told no one that I was playing with fire, just that I was burning the trash.  I think my parents knew full well how it happened and after that, garbage patrol was no longer my job. 

December of that year, my brother Joel was born.  Initially he slept downstairs with Mom and Dad. On those rare occasions when they wanted to go out, they hired Sandy Ruba to babysit the four of us.  While Karen and Joel were relatively easy to baby sit, Mark and I didn’t think we needed to be taken care of.  When it came time for bed and for Sandy to have some sanity, she would send us upstairs for the night.  Mark and I loved to jump out the second story window, play outside for a while and then knock on the front door to get back in. I suppose we could have tried to sneak back in but I think we actually enjoyed the response we got when Sandy saw us and was trying to piece it together in her mind.  In anger, she would spank us and march us back up to our beds, closing the accordion door at the bottom of the stairs.  Several times, we took my sisters life sized doll and perched it at the top of the stairs dressed in my little sister's clothes.  Then one of us would make enough noise to get Sandy to open the accordion door.  As she peered around the door, we would push the doll down the stairs.  More than once, Sandy screamed racing to catch what she thought was my sister falling down the stairs. Why she kept coming back for more punishment was beyond me.  Even though we tortured her, we really did like her as a baby sitter.

January of 1961 brought weather that Mark and I had never seen.  It started on Friday afternoon before we got out of school.  Riding the bus home we were excited to see the flakes in the air.  By Saturday morning it was snowing sideways and you couldn’t see down the lane.  Before nightfall we had a good foot of fresh snow on the flats and the wind had pushed it into four and five foot drifts all over the yard.  By Sunday morning we had over two feet of snow and it was still coming.  Monday morning, school was cancelled and we got another day off.  Unfortunately my dad used that day to make sure we got the lane shoveled. 

If we had kept at it, it might have only taken four or five hours but as kids do, we kept getting distracted.  We spent a fair amount of our time digging tunnels where the snow had drifted over the road ditches.  Dad managed to get us back on task and helped to finish the job.  Now it was time to play.  The drifts were so big off the back side of our food cellar that we would carry our sleds up and sled down.  It probably wasn’t more than a 12 foot run but we thought it was a blast.  As the snow continued that winter, Dad and Mom took us out to the old golf course which was a mile or so farther down the road.  The golf course had some much steeper hills where we could climb onto the new toboggan and jet down at breakneck speeds.  We frequented that old golf course a lot that winter. 

Our great grandpa Charlie took us out to the gravel pit half way between Kingsley and Moville that winter to share one of his favorite pastimes.  He showed us how to skate with snow shovels to clean off a patch of ice large enough for a rink and then taught us the art of  ice skating.  Even though Charlie was in his early nineties, he was a great ice skater.  He could skate backwards and spin like a top.   Mark and I were quick studies and really took to skating, joining Charlie many times that winter. 

The summer of 1961 was my great reintroduction to fishing. The gravel road in front of our house led west to several quarry pits surrounded by trees.  Steve Henry and his brother Bill used to ride by our house on their bicycles, fishing poles across the handle bars, on their way to the pits to fish. I watched them ride by several different times before I got up the nerve to ask if I could join them.  Steve was happy to have me along and even came up to the house to ask my mother if it was ok.  She gave us the go ahead and I loaded my tackle box and pole onto my old cruiser and rode the half mile down the road with them to the fishing hole.  That summer, I spent a good percentage of my days on the banks of those ponds, fishing pole in hand and bobber in the water just waiting for those sunfish, crappies and bluegills to bite. There was something about that red and white bobber getting pulled under the water that gave me a rush that was hard to duplicate.  Steve would build a small fire on the bank and we would clean the fish and eat them right there.  For me that was a perfect summer day.

On Saturday nights, we would all go to the go cart track.  It was just outside of town on a piece of land that is the Brookside Golf Club today.  The track was a 50 yard circle banked by bales of hay with bleachers behind them.  Go carting in Kingsley in the 60’s was much like NASCAR is today.  People would ring the track watching and cheering on the drivers.  Their favorite part was the crashes.  There were adult races and races for the kids.  As I sat in the bleachers watching carts skid out on the corners, crashing into the bales of hay, I could only imagine how exciting it would be to careen around that track at full speed. Mike Behrens’ dad, Lefty had built a cart that he and Mike both drove.  After several weeks of watching the carts go around in circles, Lefty Behrens came over and talked to my dad. He asked him if Mark or I were interested in giving it a try.  While it looked easy from the sidelines, once I was behind the wheel, I was a lot more timid than I had been in my mind.  I only drove it a couple of times but I had to be the slowest driver on the track. Even though I managed to keep it out of the hay bales, most other carts would pass me several times during the race.  It didn’t matter, driving that cart was as close to flying as I had ever experienced. Thank you Lefty.

Denny Ruba was my best friend and he often came out to the farm to play.  We spent our time exploring the perimeter of the farm or working on a tree fort.  One night quite late, we were playing hide and seek in the yard.  Mark had joined us and we were taking turns hiding.  When it came time for Denny and me to hide, we jumped the back fence and hid in the field behind it.  After Mark looked for some time, he heard one of us in the field and followed us over the fence.  When he landed on the other side, he started screaming that he was hurt.  Denny and I knew him well enough to know he was just trying to get us to come out from our hiding spots.  We didn’t move.  Mark didn’t stop yelling.  Finally we decided to give it up and check on him.  When we walked over to where he was, he kept saying he had hurt his leg and couldn’t stand.  Still not believing him, we told him we would be happy to carry him back to the house.

We picked him up, me at the feet, Denny at the head and lifted him over the fence making sure to drop him over the other side.  As he yelled at us, we jumped the 3 foot fence and started to carry him in the same fashion towards the house.  We made sure to drop him multiple times on the way back, trying to teach him a lesson for being such a baby.  Once at the house, mom heard Mark’s yelling and came out to investigate.  The next thing we knew, Mom and Mark were in the car headed for town. He came home from the doctor’s late that night with a cast from his ankle to his hip.  Evidently when he jumped the fence, he landed on a sharp stick driving it through and breaking his knee cap. He had to spend the next six months in that cast. 

While Mark was hobbling around on crutches, I tried out for the Wee Wee baseball league.  Lefty Behrens was the coach and the only requirement he had was that you had to come to practice.  Thankfully for me I qualified for that but not much else.  I loved playing the game but since I wouldn’t wear my glasses, it was difficult to see the ball as it came hurtling towards me at the plate and it was rare that I ever got a hit. Denny Ruba on the other hand was a god on the ball field.  He was our pitcher and could throw a fast ball that most batters couldn’t see.  At the plate it was rare that he didn't get a hit.  Just having a star like Denny as a friend made me feel like a baseball player.  When our team took the field, like my hero Roger Maris, I was an outfielder.  I can only imagine it was a position where I could do the least amount of damage.  Late in the season, one of the opponent’s batters hit a pop fly right to me. Somehow with my myopic eyesight, I lost the ball about 50 feet from my glove.  I was trying hard to find it again when it came down and instead of landing in my glove, hit me right in the eye.  Needless to say the runner was safe and I was out of the game.  The upside was those that hadn't seen my abysmal performance, were quite impressed with the shiner I wore for well over a week. 

When we weren't on the field, we were collecting and trading baseball cards.  The Yankees had won the World Series that fall beating the Cincinnati Reds.  Roger Maris broke Babe Ruth’s home run record by one.   Denny and I spent every penny we could get our hands on, buying bubble gum packs with trading cards, trying to collect the likes of Roger Maris, Whitey Ford, Yogi Berra and Mickey Mantle.  They were our hero’s and once we got their cards we would never trade them.

[dhochwender-blog]

South Arête of the Painted Wall

The Black Canyon of the Gunnison is a rarity in the world of climbing.  The Black as it’s known to the locals is a narrow cut canyon in Western Colorado.  Its walls are less than 1200 feet apart in their narrowest spots and 1800 to 2700 feet deep.  The sun only sees the bottom of the canyon for several hours each day.  In the world of climbing, most routes are approached by hiking to the base of steep faces and climbing up to a point high above the rest of the world, the broad sweeping views from the summit making the difficulties of the climb fade into existence.  The Black is just the reverse of that.    One doesn’t notice The Black Canyon as you approach it until the edge of the earth falls away.  Looking down from its perimeter, you are drawn into a narrow dark gash bordered by vertical to overhanging black granite walls.  The Gunnison River paints the bottom of the canyon with a winding snakelike line dotted with occasional white where the fast moving water crashes over the boulders that have tumbled loose from the walls above.  Even from the flat top edge, 2000 feet above the river, the nonstop roar of water is always with you. Unlike lofty climbs with inspirational summits, the Black Canyon climbs are approached by either rappelling down steep broken gullies to the base of a climb or by bush whacking down broad tumbling expanses of scree overgrown with poison ivy the size of small trees. Usually in the warmer months the poisonous vegetation is infested with a immense amounts of blood sucking rocky mountain ticks that always manage to hitch a ride from their home to yours.  Overcoming the difficulties of the descent, you find yourself standing in the depths of the canyon with no direction to go but up.   In the early summer months, the fast flowing run off squeezes you up against the rock walls making it difficult to see the chosen route above.      The rock in the canyon is some of the oldest exposed rock in the world, consisting of two billion year old Granite, Gneiss, and bands of what is referred to in the Black Canyon as pegmatite.  Pegmatite is a very coarse-grained igneous rock composed of quartz, feldspar and mica.  These white pegmatite bands are brush stroked across the black walls and are the source of The Painted Wall’s namesake. Unfortunately in contrast to the solid granite, the pegmatite bands are loose, bulging, crumbling swathes of unprotectable climbing.  The pegmatite bands add character to the walls and instill fear in the hearts of climbers. Climbing through the protruding bands is an experience you don’t soon forget. 

I first discovered the Black Canyon while I was living in Montrose.  During that time, I took to riding my bike the 11 miles up the road to the rim of the canyon on a regular basis, just to look at those walls and dream.  I read every account of climbing in the Black I could find.   In the spring of 1980 I made the ride up to the rim almost every day for several weeks, to watch Bryan Becker, Ed Webster, Bruce Lella, and Jimmy Newberry put up what was at that time, one of the hardest climbs in the world, the Hallucinogen Wall. The four of them lived on portaledges for 14 days trying to piece together the moves to tie the multiple pitches that would give them a clean line from the canyon floor to the rim.  

After moving to Boulder and immersing myself in climbing, thoughts of the Black Canyon kept creeping into my head.  One winter while my favorite climbing partner, Gene Francis and I were planning what to do with the warmer months, I mentioned the Black Canyon.   My descriptions of the walls of the Black were all it took to convince Gene we were meant to climb there.   

That first trip to the Black Canyon, we had to borrow a car from a friend since neither of us had the money to invest in such major acquisitions.  Evidently neither did our friend.  The ancient Oldsmobile he drove was a rattletrap that had almost everything imaginable wrong with it.   The shocks were worn out, and the power steering pump whined every time you turned the wheel.  We had to stop often to replace the oil that easily slipped past the rings and blew out the tailpipe. The drive to the Black Canyon in that Oldsmobile made driving to the canyon almost as exciting as climbing the walls themselves. Since Gene had never been to the Black Canyon, he wanted to scope out our intended route before we headed down into the canyon. To do that, we pointed the old boat past Gunnison towards Montrose on Highway 50.  We both had to work the day of departure so our first trip to the Black started at 7 pm and landed us on the south rim of the Canyon at almost 1am.  Rather than pay the fee to camp in the campground, we pulled the car off the road at the Chasm View overlook and threw our sleeping bags down in the dirt as close to the edge as we could.   Chasm View Overlook is one of the narrowest and steepest sections of the Black Canyon.  We sat for an hour looking out into the darkness talking about our upcoming climbs.  As exhaustion got the better of us, we settled in with visions of solid climbing and beautiful expanses of rock dancing in our heads.

I woke at first light, stuffed my bag quickly knowing that it was illegal to camp in the pull out and waited for Gene to join the living.  When he came to and remembered where we were, he anxiously approached the railing and stood staring across the chasm, speechless.  After several hours on the south rim, comparing notes of the climb and looking at other opportunities, we made the 80 mile drive from our south rim overlook to the campground on the North Rim to start our first adventure at the Black.  After two seasons of climbing in the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, Gene and I found that our success rate on the 2000+ foot walls went up dramatically when we unburdened ourselves from the trappings usually associated with comfort and safety.  By leaving behind the haul sack or pack that afforded plenty of food, water and warm clothes, we could successfully climb most routes in a single day.  We came up with a system of attaching a stuff sack slightly larger than size of a quart nalgene bottle to the back of one of our harnesses.  In this we would put a couple of pemmican bars, some gorp and a quart bottle of water. Several times we would get up the intended route only to get benighted at the top.  In the dark, it’s too dangerous to negotiate the way back to the campground.  The edge of the canyon zig zags back and forth and falling off the rim in the dark was a definite prospect. With our new system, we didn’t carry any gear for a bivouac. To give us an edge, we would put a couple of matches into the bottom of our food bags. If benighted, this would allow us to have a fire for extra warmth as we waited for dawn.

In early May of 1983, hoping the cool spring like weather would hold, we once again made our sojourn to the Canyon. Arriving by mid afternoon, we settled in at the North Rim Campground. After a good meal, we hiked the distance over to the top of our intended route and left a gallon of water where we could find it once we topped out.  A gallon was plenty to help with the thirst we would undoubtedly work up on our climb.

The next morning at the crack of dawn, we hiked down the SOB gully from the north rim to the bottom of the canyon working our way over to the base of the Painted Wall.  Our intended route was the South Arête of the Painted Wall.  Because of the expected difficulties, this time we carried with us a small pack with 3 quarts of water, a couple of potatoes, our version of apples but more durable, a few snacks and a warm jacket apiece.  

 By 10 am we had chased each other up the first four hundred feet of the wall to the top of a broken pillar and were feeling great.  From this vantage point, we took a quick break to refuel and rehydrate and scope out the route ahead of us.  We still hadn’t climbed high enough to meet the approaching sun as it made its way down the south facing wall but we could feel the heat that was accompanying it.  Three pitches above us would be our first encounter on this route with the pegmatite bands.  No matter how strong you are feeling when you are climbing in the Black the pegmatite bands make you reevaluate your moxie.  

By the time we reached the twenty foot stretch of bulging pegmatite, the sun was full on us. Unlike the previous days there was no sign of clouds and the temperatures were climbing fast. Each pitch (150 feet) that we climbed up the wall angled a little steeper than the last and took just a little longer than the preceding pitch.  We climbed as quickly as we could muster in hopes of making the rim by nightfall.  At the half way mark, we estimated the temperatures to be almost 100 degrees.  Our equipment, aluminum carabineers and stoppers had absorbed the heat of the sun and were almost too hot to handle. Our thirst was quickly outpacing the amount of water we brought with us and our energy level was dropping fast.  Hoping to recharge, we briefly hid under a small overhang to take advantage of what shade we could squeeze from it.  While it felt good to get out of the direct sun, the temperature was still dehydrating and it was everything we could do to not drain our water bottles dry.   After a short rest, we were climbing again but our pace had slowed considerably.  

 Knowing we wouldn’t complete the climb that day, we were hoping to get within striking distance of the top and finish it off early the next morning.  Climbing as quickly as our heat muddled brains would allow, we kept on the lookout for a ledge that would afford us a relatively comfortable night.  Several times in the late of the day we lost the route and spent a lot of time trying to regain upward momentum.  By the time all light was gone, the only hotel we could find was a horizontal edge about 6 inches wide and 10 feet long with nearby vertical cracks to anchor ourselves and our near empty pack for the night.  While a six inch ledge isn’t enough to lie down on, it was enough to allow us to lean back in our harnesses with our feet on the ledge.

Once we fixed the anchors and secured the pack, we allowed our exhaustion to pull us into fitful moments of sleep.  While the sleep felt wonderful, the dreams were hell.  As my body fell into deep sleep, my subconscious mind separated from my body, floating in space somewhere out from the wall, taking in the view of our bivouac from a distance.  I could see the entire area from a 20 foot distance as if a spotlight was shining on us. It was a strange feeling almost as if I had a mind melded twin watching out for me.   Every 20 minutes or so, I would have reoccurring dreams of falling off the ledge and would jerk upright, wide awake.  When the terror subsided and my heartbeat slowed, I would recheck my anchors to insure I was still safe; reposition myself to ease the pain in my feet.  The dread faded as quickly as it arrived and I would fall back into a dazed and disassociated sleep.  As the night wore on and the dream repeated itself over and over, I found it easier to stay awake than to drift off into the void. 

As the dark of night rounded the corner into day, we were anxious to get away from our bivouac and start moving again.  We still had 500 feet of climbing left and were out of water with only a few almonds and raisins left over to sustain us for the rest of climb.   

Our coordination and determination wasn’t what it had been before spending the long night on the wall.  Route finding was getting more difficult and a couple pitches up I wandered off route and wasted precious time trying to find my way.  I came back down and let Gene give it a try.  We were within a few hundred feet of the rim when the sun crested the opposite wall and hit us like a hammer. Gene took the lead and led left around a corner and up a left facing dihedral and back onto the face above.  I fed the rope out hoping Gene would find the key to the easier pitches above. After what seemed like an eternity all upward movement stopped and Gene yelled down that he was off route and was going to have to down climb.  By the time he made it back to our belay stance, we had spent all morning and a few of the early afternoon hours, trying to break through the last few problems that prevented us from making our way to the top.  Dehydration had our progressed to the point that our mental acuity had slipped a few notches and movement felt like we were pushing through thick cement.  It was time to make a decision, keep blundering around hoping to find the route to the top or let the call of the river draw us back down the wall.  Whichever one we chose, we needed to move quickly to avoid yet another dry night on the wall.  One look at Gene made the decision for me.  I have no doubt his view of me was every bit as shocking as mine of him.  Gene had a thick layer of white saliva around his mouth and his lips were so dry he could hardly talk without using his tongue to pry them apart.  His skin was ashen and the whites of his eyes were red.  We needed to head down. 

  Having a defined direction, adrenaline kicked in and we set about rigging our first repel anchor. Gene being the larger of the two of us, made sure we had at least two solid anchors to repel from and threw the double rope down the wall abseiling right behind it. At our high point we were a good 1800 to 1900 feet up the wall.  With perfectly placed repel stances on the way down, that meant we had to rig at least 12 repel stances using at least 24 pieces of protection.  Gene led first on each downward pitch.  Our thought process, however flawed it might have been, was that if he weighted the double anchors and they held, being 40 pounds lighter, they would definitely hold me.  After almost two days on the wall, we didn’t want to end up taking the fast route down because of one bad anchor.  After two or three repels, I began to do the simple math, the amount of repels left times 2 pieces of protection plus slings at each stance equaled a questionable outcome.  We started the climb with a very light rack of gear and unless we had the perfect cracks to accommodate the left over protection, we would not make it to the bottom of the wall.  I talked to Gene about trimming the anchors to one at each repel stance but he was adamantly opposed.  Out of fear of being stranded several hundred feet above the floor of the canyon without repel anchors, I began setting two anchors, letting Gene test them and make the descent.  Once I heard him yell, “Off Repel”, I would remove the smaller of the two anchors and follow on just one.  10 repels later we were 220 feet off the valley floor with one piece of protection left.  The sun had set and darkness was approaching fast.  We were out of our heads with thirst and the beckoning roar of the river below only made it worse.  We used our one last anchor to repel another 150 feet down the wall.  At that moment, all we wanted was to reach the river below and drink.  When Gene found a stance near the end of the rope, he had to let the rope slide through his figure eight and position himself near the rope with no anchor to hold him to the rock.  When I arrived next to him, I pulled the loose end of the rope through the anchor above until it came snaking down the face.  As the upper end of the rope whizzed through the air towards us, we held on to the rock will all our strength hoping the falling rope wouldn’t knock us off our unanchored stances. Trying to find a way to loop the rope over a protrusion, I remembered that I had sewn four Fastex buckles on the sides of my old Kelty leather bottom rucksack to compress the load when it was light.  The two straps I had fed through those buckles were each eighteen inches long.  We had long ago left all our climbing slings behind trying to extend the repel points to make it easier to pull down the rope.  I removed the compression straps from the pack, tied them together and looped them over a chicken head sized rock that protruded from the wall, then threaded our rope through the loop for one last repel to the valley floor.  Gene eased onto the rope trying to keep it as close to the rock as possible while I kept my hand over it to insure it stayed in place. By then, it was full night with no moon.  Once we got off the wall we would have to spend yet another night out.

As I followed on repel, Gene stood at the bottom of the wall waiting for me to join him on the level ground.  We left the rope hanging from the final anchor and moved like drunkards, hobbling over bowling ball sized rocks, as we moved towards the river. We discussed the chance of picking up Guardia from the unfiltered water we were about to drink as we made our way to the water’s edge.  In the end, the thought of a long drink beat out the fear of a bad case of diarrhea. We had spent the last 40 hours with only three quarts of water, two potatoes, 2 pemmican bars and a small bag of gorp. We both waded into the water and drank until our bellies hurt from the pressure. 

At that point, we discussed trying to find our way back up the gully in the dark but knew the poison ivy and ticks would get the better of us.  Luckily, in the bottom of my pack I had stashed a small $2 space blanket.  We pulled the rope down from the final anchor and finding the flattest spot we could, wove it back and forth like a bed of spaghetti to pad us from the hard rock underneath.  We built a small fire, put on our jackets and using the pack for a pillow and the space blanket to hold in the warmth fell into a bottomless sleep. The coolness of the night brought a brisk wind blowing up the canyon.  At one point in the night I awoke to find the space blanket hovering perfectly flat 4 feet above us, like a UFO.  When I looked over at Gene, he was still in a deep sleep. Looking back, I couldn’t determine if the floating blanket was a dream or reality. After puzzling over it for a brief moment, I gave up and went quickly back to sleep.

The hike back up the gully the next morning, through the poison ivy and tick infested bushes took a herculean effort but reaching the rim, and our food stash made it all worthwhile.  A few friends who also frequented the Black were there to greet us and laughed with us at our poor performance. 

Several years later a knock on the front door brought Jim Nigro into Leslie and my home.  Jim had been on the rim of the Black when Gene and I had retreated from this climb.  In Jim’s hand was my rack of gear that he had pulled off the South Arête of the Painted Wall when he successfully made his ascent. It amazed me that two years had passed and other than Jim and Phil, no one had climbed the route again.  Once you leave gear behind, it becomes the property of the next person to find it.  I told Jim thanks but he should keep it since he was now the rightful owner.  He wouldn’t hear of it.  I think he knew the memories those old friends would bring back every time I used them again.   

[dhochwender-blog]

Repost of Black Canyon Memories

I thought I would post this before leaving for Asia since they don't allow social media in mainland China and I won't be back until the 18th.  This is a repost from my first blog that didn't turn out very well.  It's been rewritten with the timeline cleaned up.  

[dhochwender-blog]

"The White House"

June 1960

My memories of the drive from our ranch in Southern California to Iowa are hidden in the mist of the years.  Even shining a bright light in all the corners has failed to illuminate any gems.  Suffice it to say, that riding in the back of a VW van, without air conditioning, sprawled out on a mattress close to the headliner, going across the desert of Nevada in June doesn’t stand out as one of my all time highlights.  Wyoming and Nebraska didn’t move much higher up the charts.

I do remember asking, “How far is it now”, a thousand times.  It had to make my parents question the sanity of bringing me along at all.  As we drove over the Missouri River into Iowa, mom and dad seemed to get reenergized and started telling us stories about everything we went by. As we crossed the bridge from Nebraska to Iowa, I remember hearing how the divers working on that bridge saw catfish in the Missouri River as big as they were.  I made a mental note not to swim in Iowa rivers.  Once we reached Sioux City, Dad drove up to the top of the bluff where Sgt. Charles Floyd was buried.  The hundred-foot-high sandstone obelisk was quite impressive and Mark and I both tried in vain to climb it.  We were now less than 30 miles from our new home and we were all quite excited and eager to reach our final destination.

Rolling into Kingsley the sign that greeted us said, “Kingsley, some bigger none better.”  The population was 1100 people.  Coming from a small town in California, the size didn’t bother me.  The topography was another thing.  Kingsley is built on a small rise in the ground 1200 feet above sea level.  There was not a rock or a peak to be seen.  While there were a lot of elm trees, the town was only four blocks long and six blocks wide.  The countryside around the town was slightly undulating farm land.  And this is where I would spend the next 11 years of my life. 

Dad drove the van straight to our new home.  It was a two story, white house, half a block north of the main downtown area.  We bolted from the car and crashed through the front door, anxious to explore our new residence.  Compared to our tiny little ranch house, this one seemed palatial.  Mark and I would still share a bedroom but it was much bigger.  Karen; my new sister would get her own.  Dad and Mom wasted no time getting the van unloaded.  Mark and I watched Karen and played in the side yard until the job was done.  

Once we were settled, Dad took us all down to the shop, Knowles Manufacturing, to give us the tour.  It was only two blocks away from our house.  The work force consisted of Dad, my great grandpa Charlie and two other men.  Together they produced hog pans, waterers and feeders, product designed to help keep the live stock hydrated and fed.  Along with the machinery designed to produce these items there were several drill presses, two lathes, a band saw, a belt grinder, a table for bending sheet metal and a welder.  “The shop”, as we called it from there on out,  was where everyone in town came to have their lawn mower blades sharpened, a new cupola built for their house or a trailer hitch put onto their truck.  There wasn't much the guys at “The Shop” couldn’t do.  

Shortly after arriving in Kingsley this also became my place of employment.  The first couple of years my job was not the most glamorous but it put money in my pocket.  Since I wasn’t old enough to work with the machinery, I swept up behind those that could.  For this I was paid a handsome wage of 25 cents an hour. 

The first few weeks in Kingsley my brother and I explored the town trying to make friends and were happy to have each other.  Making friends in a small town sounds easy but didn’t prove to be the case.  I met numerous kids but most already had best friends and weren’t quite as willing to let me in.  A couple of weeks after moving into “The White House”,   I discovered an old leather bag that my father kept his coin collection in.  He had coins from countries he visited during the war, Indian head pennies and a lot of rare and valuable collector’s coins.  As an 8 year old all I saw was change.   I pocketed a few and offered them to a couple of the boys my age.  What I was hoping to do was to buy their friendship.  It worked quite well so I made another trip to the bag and made several other new friends.  Inside of a week I had made connections with almost a dozen kids and had some very good friends.  My new life was progressing quite well.  Unfortunately a father of one of my new friends recognized the value of the coin his son now possessed and asked of its origin.  Rather than returning the coin to me, he took it to my dad.   This would be the first ankle holding spanking I had in Iowa.  Unfortunately it would not to be the last. 

The neighbor across the alley from us liked to putter around his garage, taking old bicycles and refurbishing them.  While he was in his garage working on the collection, I would watch him with growing interest and ask a lot of questions.  I had never even ridden a bike before much less had one of my very own.  The idea of being able to increase the speed I could explore my new surroundings was intriguing.  He seemed to understand my interest and offered to sell me an old cruiser.  The frame of the bike was quite tall for me but the price was right in my range.  I don’t know if he took pity on my or if it was his normal price but we settled on three dollars.  While I was always quick to spend every quarter I earned, somehow I saved up the required twelve to make my new purchase.  Those two wheels were not only the first major purchase of my life but my ticket to freedom.  Once I had crashed 5 or 6 times trying to learn the technique of balance I found I could travel long distances fast enough that my parents had no idea how far from home I was roaming.  My favorite ride was to the small creek on the south edge of town.  There I could hide my bike under the bridge and spend hours building dams in the current.  I would float sticks down the river and follow them along the bank to see how far they would go.   July in Iowa even though it wasn’t any warmer than our old home had a certain stickiness about it that made you sweat profusely and it felt good to spend the heat of the day submersed in the cool water.

  Soon after mastering the art of riding my bike I found new friends that also spent their days pedaling from place to place.  Before long there were several of us under the bridge building bigger and better dams with deeper and wider pools behind them to swim in. Even though I kept a close eye out for them, I never saw the giant fish.

In the short year that we lived in, “The White House”, my parents also bought my brother and me roller skates.  These weren’t shoes with wheels attached to them as we have today but a steel carriage with metal wheels on the bottom and a clamping system on the top.  With your skate key, you could adjust the platform to the length of your shoe and then crank the clamping system tightly to the sides to keep them on.  There was a leather ankle strap whose only function was to keep the skates from rolling away when they fell off.  They usually only fell off when we were rolling downhill at a mach five and had to lift a foot to get over one of the bulges in the walk.  Planting that skateless foot back down on the concrete was the only braking system our new transportation had.  It was really a two part break, put your foot with the dangling skate back on the walk while your other foot rolls forward at a high rate of speed, do the splits and land on your other brake, your butt.  The White House sat midway up one of the only hills in town and had a sidewalk that paralleled the street about ten feet in from curb.  The ground between the sidewalk and the street was planted with large elm trees.  Over the years as the trees grew, the roots pushed under the walk and made the concrete bulge upwards from the pressure.  About every twenty five feet you would have to negotiate a 3 inch rise in the concrete. That gave us lots of opportunity to practice breaking.  Learning to skate was fraught with many crashes and falls.  Eventually our backsides were calloused and our technique was polished.  We could skate from the top of the hill all the way to the street, jumping every broken area of sidewalk and avoiding all the trees.  Once we reached the bottom of the hill where the street intersected our path, we had to perform a delicate maneuver.  If a car happened to be at the stop sign at the bottom of the hill we would dive into the last tree trying to hold on preventing us from crashing into the car.  If the street was open, we would try to quickly step off the curb, skate across the street and jump the next curb.  If we performed this correctly we could then skate all the way down the street to the center of town.  The sidewalk on that block was much smoother than ours and the speeds we could attain were much faster.  With the lack of a braking system, we had to make sure there weren’t a lot of people on the downtown sidewalk or there would be casualties.  

Since we had to leave our best friend Wolf behind when we moved, acquiring a new pet was at the top of my list.  I accomplished this by begging, pleading and probably quite a bit of whining.  Eventually when my mother couldn’t stand another minute of my obnoxious behavior, she acquiesced and allowed me to pick a kitten from a neighbor’s fresh litter.  It was the perfect pet!  She was multi colored and loved me as much as I loved her.  Because of her coloration, I called her Calico.  Calico followed me everywhere I went.  If I wanted to ride my bike, I had to close her in the house or she would run after me trying hard to keep up.  A couple of months after Calico and I fell in love, I was angrily chasing my brother Mark through the house with Calico right on my heels.  Mark pushed through the swinging screen door to the front yard with me right behind him.  As I rushed through the screen door and onto the porch, the spring on the door pulled it quickly closed behind me and Calico, who had just started her exit, got caught in the door.  The spring on the door was quite strong and the door was very heavy. The combination of my pushing it all the way open and its rapid return to the frame caught Calico and instantly broke her neck. When I realized what had happened, I was crushed. I immediately ran back to cradle her in my arms running to find my mother so she could help fix my beloved cats neck.  It was not to be.  I spent the next few days in bed crying my eyes out over the loss of Calico.   Of course I put the blame for the accident on my brother. If he hadn’t picked on me and made me chase him, Calico would still be following me around.  Mark being the older brother felt that it was his job to pick on me and irritate me to the point of my losing all control.  He had mastered this maneuver and performed it often.

Having arrived in Iowa in July, our summer was quickly over and it was time to start school.  After a few weeks of school, the teacher asked my mom to come to school to discuss an issue.  She shared with my mom her suspicion that my eyesight wasn’t what it should be.   I had noticed that without being in the front of the room, I couldn’t see what the teacher wrote on the board.  If she called on me while I was at the back of the room, I had no idea what she was pointing at and asking me to solve.  It was decided that I needed to have my eyes checked. A few days later, the optometrist confirmed that I needed glasses.  At that time, almost no kids were wearing glasses.  Either they couldn’t afford them or like me they were concerned about how they looked in them and what the other kids were going to say.  Being the new kid, what the other kids had to say about my new glasses had a huge impact on me.  Over the course of a couple of days, being called four eyes several times was enough to make me lose all self confidence.  Luckily, the problem corrected itself when someone pushed me from behind as I was going out the school door, knocking my glasses to the concrete just as I stepped forward right onto them.  The glasses landed lenses down and I slid several feet ruining what must have cost my parents a lot of money.  I was afraid to tell them what happened but I was also relieved not to have to wear them.  It took the optometrist a good week to be able to replicate the earlier glasses.  By that time, I had secured a desk at the front of the class where I didn’t need my glasses.  From that point on while at school, I kept my glasses hidden in my desk. 

Before my first year of school was out, we were moving again.  This time, my parents bought a house in the country, one mile from Kingsley.  

[dhochwender-blog]

The Cruise

May, 1981

The first of many forays into the Black Canyon of the Gunnison.

After alternating between shivering to get warm and finding moments of deep sleep, the indigo sky started to pale. I rolled over trying to find the small zippered opening I'd left in the bivouac sac to allow fresh air in and to help keep the condensation of my breath from getting too heavy. It is the same opening the rope runs through to secure me to the wall.  Once I readjusted the wet down bag to get to the zipper, I peered out the opening and saw nothing but white.  It was still snowing hard and the ledge we chose to spend the last two nights on had piled high with snow.  There was a small runnel of water working its way under my sleeping bag, through a narrow channel in the rock.  That meant it was at least warm enough to melt the snow.  I rolled back over, closed the opening and hoped for a few hours more sleep.

We started this climb two days ago on a beautiful blue sky day.  May in the Black Canyon is usually pleasant weather but as with the rest of Colorado, it can change quickly.  We had spent the last couple of months scanning a picture I had taken of this route, trying to determine where the difficulties would be and if there were any possible ledges to spend the night on.  This ledge was the only obvious weakness in the wall.   I had scaled a lot of big faces before but had only spent one night on a wall and that was a solo route to test out my gear and stamina.  Gene on the other hand was well practiced.  We were using his haul sac to drag our gear up this wall.  Even with a double pulley system to haul it up the wall the weight of it had slowed us to a crawl.  We referred to the haul sack as , “The white man’s burden.”  I don’t know where the name came from but it stuck.   In the haul sac we had enough food for three days, a small stove,fuel, a cooking pot, two down sleeping bags complete with water proof breathable bivouac sacs to hopefully keep the sleeping bags dry.  We added two light Ensolite pads for additional insulation from the hard rock, three gallons of water, down jackets, shell jackets and extra fleece tops and pants.  Looking at the beautiful weather from the rim, we almost pulled some of the food and warm weather gear out of the bag.  With the 80 degree weather we were having then, it seemed unlikely that we would need more than one night on the wall to find our way up it.  In the end our fear of the unknown prevailed.  Even though it had taken tremendous effort to haul the bag up the thousand feet of wall to this ledge, we were now glad to have its contents.

  At the end of the first day when we reached our current position we were excited to have such a plush hotel.  It was 6 feet wide and almost twice as long.  It had a slight downward slope but still allowed for great sleeping.  During the first night on the wall it had started to rain.  The rain didn’t bother us but as the temperatures dropped we started to be concerned.  By the next morning we had 3 inches of snow and the wall above us was plastered with ice.  At this point we contemplated giving up our climb and abseiling back down the face.  We watched the dark sky, evaluated our stores of food and decided to wait it out.  Surely this was just a quick spring storm and would leave as quickly as it had come.  Mid morning that second day the sun came out and the face started to melt.  Our ledge quickly became a dumping ground for the ice and snow falling from the face above.  Because of the slight overhang above us, we found safety by huddling close to the wall, letting the falling ice hit the rock a couple feet in front of us.

By 11 am we got the break we had hoped for. The sun came out and the clouds started to part.  I lead off the ledge free climbing up the face to the overhang above.  The overhang was thin climbing and required the use of direct aid. 

 Direct aid, a means of ascent where your weight is supported by slings attached to your protection in the rock, is used when the difficulty of climbing is above your level of expertise or when there are no holds for hands and feet.  In direct aid, you place protection in the rock as high above your head as possible.  You then clip your etriers (6 foot webbing loop ladders) into that protection and very gently work your way up the ladder while looking for another opportunity for your next piece of protection.  The farther apart you can place these pieces of gear the faster you can ascend. 

 A good friend had lent me a handful of old pitons and one of the ropes we were using.  I supplemented that with some new knife blade pitons and a few RURPs. RURP stands for Realized Ultimate Reality Piton.  They were really nothing more than thin chrome molly wafers, twice the size of a razor blade with a wire swaged to the bottom edge to clip into.  This allows you to tap the RURP into a small incipient crack and very gently step up on it to get to higher ground.   While this worked well, it isn’t the type of protection you want to fall on as it probably won’t hold more than a couple hundred pounds. 

Once I reached the bulge, I used a couple of well placed knife blade pitons and two RURPs in a row.  As I was standing on the second RURP reaching up for my next placement, it unexpectedly pulled out hitting me right in the face.  The pain of the blow was the least of my worries.  The three foot drop onto another RURP, not knowing if it would hold held my weight, was what had my attention.  Luckily, Gene stopped the fall and the next piece in the chain held.

Aid climbing with small protection is a very slow process.  As I was laboring up this pitch, the sky started clouding over again and began to spit.  We were climbing with two ropes; the one I was leading on that had just caught my fall and the other attached to the back of my harness to pull the haul sack up to our high point.  Pulling myself up onto a small stance, I reached down to haul in some extra rope to secure myself to my anchors.  Glancing at the rope I saw little tufts of white coming out of the sheath.  On closer review, it was obvious that the rope we had been leading on, had at one time been stepped on by someone with crampons.  I found out later that my friend had used this rope on her last winter outing with a couple of neophyte ice climbers. Realizing now that at least the last 20 feet of the rope had no strength at all, I quickly pulled it up and tied it off below the bad section.

It took me several minutes of deep breathing to get over the fact that I had just fallen on that very same section of rope.  As the weather continued to deteriorate I had to make a decision.  Repel back down from my high point or rig the pulleys and bring the haul sack up to me.  With nothing but hard climbing ahead and a much shorter rope that would now be the haul rope, the ledge seemed like the better choice.

 Leaving two good anchors up top I repelled back down doubled ropes cleaning the gear from the face.  When I got back to the ledge, I showed Gene the lead rope and told him what I suspected.  We pulled the ropes back down from the high point so we could thoroughly inspect our loaner for any other damages.  It looked like we would need to cut at least 25 feet off the end of the damaged rope. 

While we were shortening the rope, the weather continued to deteriorate.  Rather than repel the thousand feet to the ground in a snowstorm, Gene and I spent the remainder of the day in our sleeping bags.  We curled up at the back of the ledge trying to avoid avalanching snow and ice and discussing our upcoming retreat.  As the day turned into night we settled in once again, cinching ourselves to our anchors to hold us tight to the wall. 

As another morning approached,the pressing need to ease my bladder drove me out of my bag.   Gene was already up trying to ascertain what the weather gods were going to bring us today.  It was still snowing lightly from the dark nimbostratus clouds. Being the optimist, Gene determined that the cloud cover would thin soon.  We fired up the stove to make some hot chocolate and oatmeal in hopes of warming ourselves for the day ahead.  By now our down sleeping bags were pretty useless.  If it hadn’t been for the fleece garments we were wearing, we would would have been hypothermic.  Eating breakfast we considered our options. 

The shortened ropes decreased each repel length by almost 20 feet and increased the time it would take to get off the face.  Initially we had hoped we could repel with the haul sack on our backs but the weight and the questionable rope made that impossible.  Gene finally decided that since we were headed down, we should speed up the process by kicking the haul sack off the face and picking it up once we reached the bottom.   I had a hard time believing it could survive the fall but he assured me he had done the same thing off of Half Dome in Yosemite with no issue.  The thought of not having to deal with the “The white man’s burden” all the way down that face made the decision for us. 

We repacked the haul sack to make it as smooth sided as possible and carried it over to the edge of the wall.  Gene anchored himself to the back of the ledge so he could belay me, allowing me to lean out over the face in hopes of getting the haul sack all the way to the bottom.  We couldn't afford to have it hung up half way down the face with no way to retrieve it.  One the count of three, I heaved it as far out from the face as I could.  It fell like a stone for about 90 feet and then brushed against a protrusion on the face. Just that brief contact ripped the entire top off the bag.  Our gear that was so neatly packed flew out,  bags and clothes floating the 1000 feet to the canyon floor while the stove and left over food plummeted straight down.  Evidently the amazed look on my face alerted Gene that something had happened.  Returning to the security of the ledge I told him what had occurred and began to laugh uncontrollably. The exhaustion from the past few days coupled with the image of all our gear airborne on its way to the base of the climb really struck me as funny.  

As we worked our way back down the face, Gene's forecast came true.  The sun reappeared heating the wall like an oven.  Finishing the necessary repels, we started the hunt for all our gear.  It took a couple of hours to find everyhthing and bring it together in one spot.  During that process, Gene lay down on the rock to relax in the sun and fell fast asleep.  Even though it would take hours of scrambling and some lower class climbing to get us and our gear back to the campground above, I couldn't bear to wake him.

[dhochwender-blog]

Stories of my life

I know that these aren't necessarily the stories my son was wanting me to write. He's waiting for the wild stories of the late 60's and early 70's. Keeping him waiting for the good stuff is one way to get him to read the rest of the stories.