Eiger Dreams: Ventures Among Men and Mountains Read online

  Addiction, of course, is not the only hazard confronting the ice climber. The activity is so unmistakably dangerous, however, that it tends to scare away people who don't know what they're doing before they can get far enough off the ground to kill themselves. Thus far, at any rate, there have been surprisingly few ice-climbing accidents in Valdez, and none that were fatal. "Certainly," Andy Embick points out, "ice climbing is not a completely benign sport, but in Valdez, over the course of nine years of aggressive waterfall climbing, we've seen only eight or nine injuries, the most serious being a couple of broken legs."

  Dr. Embick-a manic, muscular, Harvard-educated family practitioner in his early forties who wears wire-rim glasses and an Abraham Lincoln beard-is so bullish on ice climbing that he has been known to prescribe it to patients as a form of preventive medicine. "Alaskans," he explains, "tend not to do well in the winter. Many are unemployed for the entire season, and the paucity of available activities, the short days, the lousy weather, all lead them to spend a lot of time cooped up indoors. One effect is that we have a big baby boom every October; the other is that people sit around, get unhappy, drink way too much, beat their husbands or wives. The darkness does evil things to the mind, resulting in one or two suicides every year. Anything that gets you out, that gets you physically active, is going to be good psychotherapy and stave off winter problems. And ice climbing is one of the few physical outlets available to people here in the winter."

  The fact that few of Embick's patients have actually been persuaded to take this particular cure seems to quell the good doctor's passion for his slippery pastime not a whit. It's a passion that is made manifest in many ways, not least of which is "The Book," a magnum opus Embick has been compiling for the past nine years, which, if ever published, will bear the title Blue Ice and Black Gold: An Ice Climber's Guide to the Frozen Waterfalls of Valdez, Alaska. In addition to describing each of the 164 waterfalls that have thus far been climbed, The Book lists the names of the first ascensionists (Embick's own name appears alongside fifty of the climbs) and grades the difficulty of every waterfall on a scale of I to VI.

  Although ice climbing is a game played without benefit of referees, official rules, or organized competitions, it's intensely competitive all the same. The best ice climbers, who train with the dedication of Olympic athletes, rely on The Book and similar guides not so much as Baedekers, but rather as a handy means for establishing a pecking order: A person who has climbed a waterfall rated Grade VI in The Book plainly has more bragging rights than a person who has climbed one rated Grade V+.

  Special prestige, obviously, is attached to making first ascents. Not only are those who first subdue a given waterfall immortalized in The Book, but they earn the right to name the cascade as they see fit. A quick glance through The Book's pages reveals that the local taste in waterfall names runs to such creative handles as Killer Death Fang Falls, Deo Gratias, Never Again, Necromancer, Thrash & Bash, Too Loose Lautrec, No Way Jose, Dire Straits, and Marginal Desperation. A number of the appellations, not fit to print, are inspired by bodily functions and adolescent sexual fixations, reflecting the arrested development of the typical ice climber.

  In the interest of promoting waterfall climbing in general and Valdez waterfall climbing in particular, in February, 1983, Embick staged the first annual Valdez Ice Climbing Festival, a loosely structured opportunity for local climbers to schmooze and drink beer and climb with their out-of-town brethren. The community has continued to host the event every February since. In past years, the festival has drawn ice climbers from places as far afield as Austria, New Zealand, Japan, and Kentucky.

  To ensure that out-of-town climbers have a memorable visit, the Valdez climbers like to point their guests toward the "really classic" waterfalls in town. In 1985, for instance, a local ace named Brian Teale guided Shomo Suzuki-perhaps Japan's finest ice climberup Wowie Zowie, which at the time was so classic that it had been climbed only once since its first ascent in 1981 by Embick and a brilliant Fairbanks climber named Carl Tobin. If Suzuki had had a chance to study The Book he would have found the waterfall described as "a striking, overhanging pillar," with ice of "very poor consistency," and a long section on which "the chance of stopping or retreating was impossible." After the climb, when asked how Wowie Zowie stacked up against the waterfalls on his home turf, Suzuki reportedly replied without hesitation, "No ice like this has ever been climbed in Japan, and I, for one, have no intention of ever climbing any again."

  In 1987 I came to Valdez for the Ice Festival and found sixtythree other climbers in attendance, forty of whom bivouacked each night, cheek by jowl, on Embick's floor. I also found that my hosts, with the same hospitality they extended toward Mr. Suzuki, went out of their way to see that I had a memorable stay. During the week I spent in Alaska I was taken to climb eight local classics, the most classic of all being a waterfall with the innocuous-sounding name of Love's Way.

  The 360-foot waterfall had first been climbed in 1980 by Embick and Tobin-Embick christened it Love's Way to commemorate his impending marriage-and had not seen a repeat ascent until two months before my arrival. After agreeing to accompany a brash young Fairbanks climber named Roman Dial on an attempt of the climb, I read in The Book with growing anxiety that Love's Way consists "of an overhanging, candle-sticked, free-hanging pillar separated from the rock ... As is typical of overhanging ice, placements for both tools and screws are poor at best." The passage then went on to warn that "pure power and endurance" would not be sufficient in themselves to bring about success; that in addition it would be necessary to execute "complex stemming, jamming, and laybacking on fragile icicles"-sophisticated techniques borrowed from the technical rock climber's repertoire.

  Climbers attacking a difficult ice climb will typically do so as a team of two. In keeping with the gregarious spirit of the Ice Festival, however, Roman and I were joined on Love's Way by Kate Bull, a twenty-seven-year-old geologist, and Brian Teale. Love's Way was intersected by two large ledges, breaking the climb into three logical pitches. Both Brian and Roman, like most hard-core climbers, are notorious "lead hogs": They regard climbing second or third on the rope with the protection of a belay from above to be as unfulfilling as playing poker without betting real money, and are consequently loath to relinquish the so-called sharp end of the rope.

  After a long discussion it was agreed that Brian would tie in to the sharp end for the first pitch. It proved to be of only moderate difficulty, and he front-pointed rapidly up to the ledge at its top, where he placed three ice screws, tied himself to these anchors, and proceeded to belay Kate, Roman, and me up to the ledge in turn. Directly above us, looming like Damocles's sword, was the crux second pitch of the climb: a twelve-story-high pillar, the first seven stories of it being a top-heavy free-standing bundle of fragilelooking icicles, the lot of them no bigger around at the pillar's base than the trunk of a small tree.

  At this point, following a close examination of the pillar, it seemed that much of the passion had gone out of the two lead hogs' protestations about who deserved the honor of leading the second pitch. In fact, when Brian unexpectedly offered, "Yeah, Roman, if you really want to lead it that bad, I guess I'll let you," for an instant I thought I detected a few cracks in Roman's usually fearless demeanor. His hesitation might have had something to do with an incident the month before, when he had watched a partner named Chuck Comstock come within inches of getting lunched on a disturbingly similar free-standing pillar in the nearby Wrangell Range.

  Comstock, a redheaded Iowa farm boy who had never heard of ice climbing until he joined the Coast Guard and was shipped off to Valdez, had been leading the pillar in question, the final pitch of a fifteen-hundred-foot waterfall, when the giant icicle he was front-pointing began to creak and groan ominously. When the creaking suddenly began to increase in volume, Comstock finally abandoned his lead and beat a panicked retreat. A few seconds after he reached the pillar's base and scurried aside, the pillar collapsed of its own imme
nse, ill-supported weight with a thunderous roar while Roman looked on in disbelief.

  With his friend's close shave no doubt still fresh in his mind, Roman swung his ice tools into the second pitch of Love's Way as gingerly as a gem cutter cleaving a priceless stone. Upward progress called for a paradoxical blend of power and great delicacy; the climbing was unrelentingly tenuous. The ice on the pillar was so brittle and insubstantial that Roman didn't waste his time trying to protect himself with any ice screws until he was a good forty feet above the belay ledge, and when he did finally place one the ice surrounding it was so poor that the vibration from his rope wiggled the screw right out of the ice as he climbed above the placement.

  Roman wasn't able to place a reliable ice screw until he was eighty feet above the belay ledge. Had he experienced a failing of strength or made a single mistake before placing that screwif his tools, for instance, had sheared out of the ice like Bob Shelton's had on Wowie Zowie-in all likelihood Roman would have fallen to his death. Most people in his shoes would have been quite literally paralyzed with fear, which only would have hastened their demise. In Roman's case, however, the seriousness of the situation simply served to sharpen his concentration and dull the fatigue in his arms, and he reached the ledge at the top of the second pitch without incident, albeit utterly spent both mentally and physically.

  It was my turn next. After the cramps in his arms had subsided, Roman pulled up the slack in the rope and yelled down, "You're on belay!" my cue to step up to the pillar and have at it. The well-anchored rope from above meant that I had nothing to worry about as long as I didn't inadvertently chop through my lifeline with an ice axe or knock down the pillar, so I aimed my ice axes with care, and swung them as lightly as possible. Even so, every time I planted an axe or kicked in a crampon the whole pillar resonated with a loud THUNK! and shook disconcertingly underfoot, making me feel as though I were up a tree that was being chopped down.

  I tried to steer clear of gray, funky, rotten ice, aiming my picks only at spots where the pillar was a deep blue-green, and hence relatively sturdy. But even the green ice was permeated with hidden voids and air pockets, making it impossible to get the tools to stick solidly. And no matter how carefully I swung my axes, every so often a shard of ice-some weighing twenty or thirty poundswould break off beneath my blows, brush past my head, accelerate earthward with a low whistle, and smash into the slope twenty stories below as I looked on, transfixed.

  Due to the lamentable diameter of the pillar, I was forced to plant my crampons close together in an awkward, pigeon-toed posture, making it difficult to remain in balance: Each time I'd pull, say, my left pick out of the ice to plant it higher, the left side of my body would swing crazily away from the overhanging pillar, like the door of a cupboard that's been installed out of plumb and won't stay shut.

  Because the ice was overhanging, my arms were called upon to support approximately eighty percent of my body weight for most of the thirty or forty minutes it took to ascend the pillar. The physical effort was roughly comparable to doing pull-ups from a chinning bar for half an hour straight, pausing at the top of each pull-up to hang from one arm and swing a two-pound hammer a couple of times with the other. By the time I was halfway up the second pitch of Love's Way my arms were quivering from the strain, I was gasping for air, and-despite the cold-the clothing beneath my wind suit was soaked with sweat; by the time I finally flopped down onto the ledge where Roman was belaying, my hands were cramping so badly I could barely squeeze open the gate of a carabiner.

  Kate came up next, then Brian, and just before sunset the four of us nervously turned our attention to the final pitch still above us. To everyone's relief, it turned out to be merely vertical as opposed to overhanging-it was a cruise compared to the pillarand as the evening's bitter chill settled on Valdez, our motley team shook hands beside the clump of stunted alders that marked the summit of Love's Way.

  There is no denying that waterfall climbing is usually scary, sometimes miserable, occasionally even genuinely life-threatening. Most nonclimbers, try as they might, have trouble fathoming the sport's appeal. Anyone who had heard Kate Bull's exultant whoops echo from the walls of Keystone Canyon as she pulled up onto the top of Love's Way would have had absolutely no trouble at all.

  THE NEXT TIME YOU'RE PLANNING A TRIP TO THE BACKCOUNTRY, YOUR enthusiasm sparked by some glossy coffee-table book picturing snowcapped peaks under perfect blue skies, you would do well to keep in mind whence that glorious snowpack came. It is the nature of mountains to wring from the winds what moisture they happen to be carrying. This you already know, of course, if not from high school science classes, then from sodden vacations in the Adirondacks and the North Cascades. But optimism is dangerously immune to simple facts and the hard lessons of experience. It can be difficult to admit that spending time in the unspoiled wilds, more often than not, means doing time within the walls of a dank nylon cell, tentbound.

  Some mountains and seasons, of course, produce nastier weather than others, and by steering clear of places like the Himalaya during the monsoon or Patagonia (where, as the locals say, "the wind sweeps the land like the broom of God") any time of the year, you are likely to occasionally encounter fair skies. But mosquitoes and blackflies can confine you to the tent under the brightest sun, as can desert sandstorms, so becoming tentbound is always a possibility, no matter what the weather report.

  It is true that when tent life gets old in the lesser ranges, at least in the summer, you can usually don clammy rain gear and venture outside in spite of the deluge to glean what pleasure you can from the misty hills. But if you're ever seduced by the wilder and more dramatic charms of some remote, glaciated, major league range, you risk finding yourself incarcerated in a tent, a hostage of the elements, for days and perhaps weeks at a time.

  Being tentbound isn't wholly an ordeal. The first few hours can pass in a dreamy euphoria while you lie peacefully in your sleeping bag, watching raindrops trickle down the outside of the translucent fly, or the snowdrifts slowly climb the walls. Wrapped snugly in down or the latest achievement of the chemical industry, with the daylight's cruel condition filtered by nylon into a soothing twilight, there is an atmosphere of guiltless relief. The tempest has blessed you with a sturdy alibi for not risking your life attempting the first free direttissima of that frightening pinnacle up the valley or laboring over yet another high pass as part of your partner's absurd plan to explore the next watershed to the east. Your life is secure for at least another day; needless toil has been averted; face has been saved-and all without anguish or pangs of conscience. There is nothing to be done but to drift back off to untroubled sleep.

  There can, however, be too much of a good thing. Even those with a gift for sloth must finally arrive at the point where sleeping further becomes impossible. I have known exceptionally talented alpinists who could remain unconscious for sixteen to twenty hours a day, repeatedly, but that still leaves a considerable slug of time to kill, and the less gifted, even with practice, can easily find themselves with ten or twelve waking hours to fill each day.

  Boredom presents a very real, if insidious, peril. To quote Blaine Harden from the Washington Post: "Boredom kills, and those it does not kill, it cripples, and those it does not cripple, it bleeds like a leech, leaving its victims pale, insipid, and brooding. Examples abound ... Rats kept in comfortable isolation quickly become jumpy, irritable, and aggressive. Their bodies twitch, their tails grow scaly." The backcountry traveler, then, in addition to developing such skills as the use of map and compass, or the prevention and treatment of blisters, must prepare mentally and materially to cope with boredom, lest his tail grow scaly.

  Social creatures that we are, it is primarily to our tentmates that we turn for relief from the dullness of the socked-in camp. It is impossible to use too much care in selecting your companions. A candidate's repertoire of amusing stories, a store of gossip, and a sense of humor that blossoms under duress should be weighed at least as heavily as
endurance on the trail or ice-climbing expertise.

  Even more important than an ability to entertain is a personality that does not annoy. Your buddy may do a great Frank Zappa rendition, but how is that Zappa going to move you after hearing it with infrequent letup for ninety-six hours in the tent? Survivors of grim wilderness trips overwhelmingly recommend avoiding hyperactive personalities. High-strung backcountry inmates, unable to grasp the importance of procrastination and deliberation, can easily upset the delicate, sluggish ambience of the camp and exacerbate the already serious deficit of activities for filling the leaden hours.

  The average mountain tent has scarcely more elbow room than a phone booth, with less floor space than a queen-size bed. When forced into such inescapable intimacy, nerves fray easily, and the pettiest irritation is quickly amplified into intolerable aggravation. Knuckle-cracking, nose-picking, snoring, and violating a tentmate's sovereign space with the soggy foot of a sleeping bag can sow the seeds of violence. During a storm-wracked trip to Mt. Deborah with his closest friend, David Roberts, one of the premier Alaskan climbers of the 1960s and 1970s, recalls:

  Our conversation either died insipidly or led to arguments. I felt so frustrated by the weather that I had to get angry at something; Don was the nearest object and the only one capable of response . . . I had got into the habit of reacting to Don's mannerisms-to the way he cleaned his knife, or held his book, or even breathed. The temptation was to invent rationalizations: I told myself that I got mad at his deliberate way of spooning up his breakfast cereal because it was indicative of his methodicalness, which was indicative of mental slowness, which is why he disliked and opposed my impatience ... I was becoming, in the stagnation of our situation, both aggressive and paranoid. So I would try to keep from thinking about it; instead I would daydream about the pleasure of warmer, easier living. But all the while I would be working myself into a silent rage over the sound of Don's chewing as he ate a candy bar.