Chal-ywood

(please note: you can now read this on The Climbing Zine.)

It was 2004 and Kelly Cordes and Josh Wharton had just climbed the Azeem Ridge on Great Trango Tower in Pakistan, which was the longest rock route yet climbed in the world, and a very impressive accomplishment. 

We were sitting around at my friend Jeff’s house talking about it. It must have been a Wednesday, because that is when we would sit around and talk shit.

I was aware that this was a very big accomplishment in the world of climbing, but I was confused.

“Wait,” I said, seeking clarification. “Is Josh Wharton Famous?”

“Um,” Started Jeff.  “I mean, yeah, I’ve heard of him. He’s done a lot of really hard… I guess he’s…. you know, Seth, this Famous/Not-Famous dichotomy is a weird thing you do.”

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Nine years later I’m in El Chaltén, Argentina, the take-off point for climbing in the Fitzroy Group.  High climbing season is coming, and the place is overrun with climbers.  I’ve just arrived and found my good friends Sarah and Colin (That Colin), and they’ve invited me to join them and their friends for dinner.  Their friends are Josh Wharton, Mikey Schaefer, and Bryan Gilmore. 

Colin is a very matter-of-fact guy, and direct questions always meet with direct answers. So as we walk to the restaurant, I ask for clarification:

“So is Josh Wharton a dick?”

“What? No,” says Colin. “Why would you say that?”

“Isn’t he just tall and serious?”

“Well he is tall, but he’s a perfectly…”

“Oh my god, Seth” Sarah cuts in.  “Please don’t be really awkward and embarrass us.”

“Yeah, don’t.” Says Colin.

Bryan boulders while Ben (l) and Colin (r) spot.

A few minutes later we’re sitting at dinner.  I’m mostly on my best behavior.  Josh, it turns out, is not a dick at all.  The five of them are talking about bouldering, while I have nothing to offer the conversation.  Josh was working on a problem that day, and he says it’s really hard and really fun.

“What was more important,” Colin asks, smiling, “the hard, or the fun?”

Josh pauses, looking trapped. Colin, amused with himself, interrupts Josh’s thoughts:

“Be true to yourself,” he admonishes.

Josh sits back, looking relieved. “The hard.” He says, happily.

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At some point, many years ago, Carl Tobin was the Realest climber I’d ever met (and actually, being fair, he should still probably rank high on the list). I was still a pretty new climber, trying to come to grips with how I would ever Be Like Him, a Real Hardperson climbing Big Routes in Big Mountains. I asked him something I was struggling to understand:

“But,” I started, almost as a complaint, “when you’re standing down there on the glacier - and everything is fine - and you look up at your route, and you know that up there resides fear and danger, how do you leave the glacier?”

“Well, that’s always the crux,” he said.

It was the most unsatisfying answer I could possibly have gotten.

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The truth is: I don’t really like hard climbing. I gradually get better at climbing, and slightly harder climbs are beginning to get easier for me, but my Bowl Full of Adventure still finds itself filled to overflowing pretty easily – I find that some adventures fit in a little better than they used to, but the capacity of the bowl has not changed. Sometimes, I just get worn out from being up there, and I grasp desperately to understand the people, like Josh Wharton, that love hard climbing just for its own integral hardness. Oddly, something that makes me reluctant to do hard multi-day climbs is that I get tired of being careful not to drop things. I don’t think that Josh or Carl would understand.

(l-r) Peter, Hazel, Josh and Bryan return from a day of bouldering.

In Chaltén, I’m surrounded by the world’s best climbers. Some are amazing and Not Famous, like Bryan Gilmore, but many, like Josh, Colin and many, many others, are Famous: I bouldered badly while Fred Nicole sat with his wife, watching passively and smoking cigarettes, power emanating from his forearms in waves.  I saw Ueli Steck at the ice cream shop, walking a pretty normal speed. Me and Rolando Garibotti have developed a fun rapport, spending most of our time verbally assaulting the other’s virility. I called Dave MacLeod a pussy to his face for no reason other than just to say that I did. It turns out that the almost-awkwardly kind Welsh guy in my hostel has done quite a number of climbs that someone thought fit to rate 5.14d. And the list goes on and on.

Perhaps unsurprising to everyone but me, I still haven’t gotten any amazing insight into what it requires to be a Hard Climber. But I heard Tommy Caldwell is getting here in a few weeks. Maybe I’ll ask him.

This is a popular Argentine cartoon that I found taped to the counter at a deli in El Chaltén. The main bubble says "we're not interested in what you're going to say because you're not famous."

Alas, I often feel like the dejected speaker when I see how many hits this blog gets compared to Colin's blog.

Getting Blown Off Of Cerro Grande

A shitty looking weather window was appearing in the forecast. High winds, precip and sub-freezing temperatures (as low as -10C) made it a dubious proposition, but with a week of festering behind us, and another week of festering in the forecast for the future, we decided to gear up.

It was obviously too cold for rock climbing. We didn't have good objectives in mind for ice climbing, and we aren't rad ice climbers (when it comes to the pointy things, I am placed in the awkward position of being the team's rope-gun, a situation I typically avoid).

We poured over the guide book and settled on Cerro Grande - the east ridge was described as aesthetic and fun, and a non-technical objective, which meant no belaying in the wind and cold. This sounded pretty reasonable. So after an almost respectable amount of sleep on New Year's Day (Neale actually went to bed around 9, but I was up somewhat later) we hiked into the Torre Valley.

(as an aside, I was convinced to start shooting in raw - apparently the colors are ho-hum until you do some minor tweaks to the photos in Lightroom. I can't get Lightroom until I have faster internet, so you'll have to live with possibly less exciting photos at first.)

Chalten has some cragging just outside of town.

Looking at the mountains from the top of the crag.

Mountains and town.

Now I'm just playing games with my Cool New Camera's different settings and modes.

There is a tyrolean traverse over the outlet to Laguna Torre, who's true purpose, I believe is to filter out which people should be allowed onto the other side of the lake.

Looking back at the lake.

Where the Torre Glacier hits the lake. It's a pretty spot, and you'll see lots more pictures of it.

Neale takes a short break from being a douchebag, in order to photograph some pretty flowers.

Angling for sponsorship.

Heading up in the morning. We had to walk back down to go around some crevasses, which is why Neale appears to be going in the wrong direction.

The technical crux is actually a part of the approach, as this lands you on the glacial plateau before the route. It was suggested to camp up here, which would have been terribly unpleasant.

Traversing the glacier.

A spot where we stopped to regroup.

The wind was strong all day, but it was becoming increasingly distracting.

Eventually I became concerned that the vague things that I could barely see to my right were crevasses, and that I couldn't see the ridge line to my left well enough to see if it was corniced. It was time to go down.

This is reversing the steep gully that is really part of the approach. Above is a glacial plateau that seemed to serve to funnel the wind to the lip of the plateau. I have no pictures from the lip, but the wind was howling,maybe as strong as I've ever experienced. Neale and I were downclimbing, front-pointing and swinging tools, prone on the nearly flat ground as we worked our way to the lip. When the gusts kicked up we would put our heads down and wait them out. After a bit, when the lulls between howling gusts became shorter and the gusts got longer, I realized that we had to change our assessment of the baseline, and keep climbing through the gusts. I thought that I should shout to Neale to say that we couldn't stop because of the wind, because it was just continuing to get worse. Shouting was obviously hopeless, since I don't think you could communicate with someone next to you, but when I looked up I saw that Neale had already come to the same conclusion, and was down climbing. Once we got into the steeper terrain below the lip, shown in the above photo, the wind let off a little.  

Nearly back onto the lower glacier, where we could just walk back to camp, I triggered this wind slab. I'd had enough. 

At some point I gave climbing in Patagonia the thumbs-down: you sit on your ass in town for days on end, then periodically slog 10 miles into the mountains with a heavy pack, get chased off of your objectives, and you might die. My disposition became sunnier once I was out of the wind, but for a time I was not-excited. 

And then, it never fucking fails, the weather got perfect once we got off the mountain (though I believe it stayed windy up high). Cerro Torre is poking up left of the valley center.

Cerro Grande. Just left of the obvious summit there is a small pyramid. I think we made it to just below that pyramid, but there is no way to be sure.

The baddest mountain in the world.

Obviously I can't get enough of the HDR painting mode on my camera.

"geez, enough photos, Seth?" you're probably thinking. But if you had been there, would you have taken fewer? And if this was your blog, would you not post them?

Finally back, wandering into El Chalten in the afternoon.

Spoiler: in a lot of ways, I didn't enjoy this outing. It wasn't bad by itself, but I felt out-of-control during the descent, being forced off the mountain by the wind. The next window had me walking into the mountains, all winces, concern, and lack of stoke. Stay tuned to hear all about it.

The Wind, The Snow, The Amy Couloir

A small window was appearing in the forecast for Christmas Eve.  It was the only break in the weather for the foreseeable future, so we decided we should do something with it.

We hiked in the previous afternoon up to Piedras Negras and collected the ropes that we cached last time.  Last time we socialized in the sun, but this time we set up the tent and dove in to get out of the cold wind and blowing snow.

Camp at Piedras Negras, looking at the leaning summit of Guillamet.

Neale laments the wind and blowing snow.

 In the morning (1am) we continued to push back our start time as the weather continued to be unpleasant. When we finally decided at about 3am to at least fail standing up instead of fail from within our sleeping bags, Colin Haley and Joel Kauffman walked through camp.  We followed Colin and Joel up through shitty blowing snow to Paso Guillamet where we put on crampons.  Colin and Joel have climbed a lot in Patagonia, so we were essentially looking to them for an assessment of whether or not this was climbing weather. Colin and Joel seemed to be going for it, and so we did, too.

Colin crampons up just below Paso Guillamet in the blowing snow. 

The sun rises and the snow blows at looking east (ish) fom Paso Guillamet.

Lago Viedmar and the rising sun as seen from Paso Guillamet.

The Amy Couloir is an easy and short couloir (gully) rising from near the Paso to the Comsaña Ridge on Guillamet.  I led the snowy couloir in one pitch.

Looking down the couloir from the belay at the top.  Neale was being closely followed by an Italian guided team. The couloir itself was mostly sheltered from the howling wind.

Neale just finishes the fun crux, a move pulling over a short steep and rocky step into the snow.

 Neale reported that the Italians were planning (perhaps saying they were hellbent would be more accurate) on going to the summit. It was super windy at the ridge, but the belay was reasonably sheltered, so we decided to let them pass and then see what they did.
The guide screamed "to the summit!! We all go to the summit!!" as he simul-climbed past. His enthusiasm was indeed infectious, and we decided to take a crack at it.  I led the short, steep rock step in my crampons a few minutes behind their second, and got on top of the rock step to find that the guide had set his belay in the full blast of the wind. He was again leading, slowly scratching his way up 5.9 rock climbing in full ice gear. His client was standing in the wind, belaying and shivering. I immediately down climbed and Neale and I began the rappels. The Italians retreated not too long later.

Back at camp - the sky was clear, but it was still quite windy. We were hit by some gusts of wind at the base of the couloir that nearly took us off of our feet.

Fauna.

Neale walks out.  It was still very windy.

Flora in the Rio Electrico valley. 

We were able to hitchhike back to Chaltén by mid-afternoon. I actually hadn't realized that it was in fact Christmas Eve, thinking that it was the 23rd, and most stores were closed and it was tough to find food. 

For those that want to know how the high-end alpine team of Colin and Joel fared, they made it a couple of pitches up their goal, an ice chimney on Val Bois, a peak a couple peaks further along the ridge line.  They bailed due to the wind and the hot sun melting their route. They instead climbed Cerro Madsen, a small peak above Lago de los Tres. Colin said it was the windiest summit he'd ever been on and they had to hold themselves down to avoid being blown off the mountain.