The moments that make a climb.
2016. My uncle Rod gives me a pair of Koflach plastic mountaineering boots, some old Black Diamond steel crampons, a heavy ice axe, and a helmet. "I used this stuff once on Rainier and never again," he says. "Hope it gets you started."
2017. At the invite of my new friend Meg, I take the full kit up the Bell Cord in Colorado, my first ever snow climb. The snow seems impossibly steep, the line dangerous. The boots are so bulky, and I am so inexperienced, I put them on the wrong feet. I am terrified, and relieved when we turn around early into the climb.
2018. The boots disintegrate on an easy snow climb in Colorado. I fall into a posthole, and pull out half a boot. "You couldn't duct tape them back together?" my uncle asks. "No," I say. "I tried." I buy a pair of boots from the current century, although the crampons and axe still seem good to me.
2019. I am unemployed this winter, as is Meg. We climb a ton of ice. I learn the craft from her.
2020. I buy my first vertical-frontpoint ice climbing crampons before my first trip to Ouray. I do my first leads in these crampons, and Rod's hand-me-down horizontal points are demoted to a loaner pair for friends.
2021-2022. I climb 100+ days of waterfall ice in Colorado. I turn 30. I remember Rod saying to us, years ago: "I tried ice climbing once on my 30th birthday. Too scary for me." By my 30th birthday ice climbing is perhaps not scary enough to me.
2023. Meg and I put in an awesome ice season. She helps me accomplish some goals and I help her towards a few of hers. Come April, she says: "I've never been on a glacier, and I'd like to do that."
2023. I dangle upside-down from a rope on St. Mary's Glacier, a popular Colorado tourist attraction. The slope is moderate; I am not free-hanging. But my harness digs into my hips and if not for the rope, I would be sliding down. I stare upwards. The sky is bright blue, and the clouds are astonishing. Maybe because of all the blood gathering in my head, it feels like a gentle LSD trip. Above me, our friend Matt instructs Meg in crevasse-rescue techniques. I am playing the victim. From far below, a hiker yells up: "Are you guys ok?!" All three of us break out in irrepressible laughter. I spin myself upright, stand on the slope, and give the guy an exaggerated thumbs-up.
2023. Meg and I fly to Seattle for Memorial Day weekend. We will climb the North Ridge of Mount Baker, a route selected by Meg, with a team organized by her. Me, she, and two Seattle guys I don't know. It will be my first glacier climb, too, and the unknown composition of the team leaves me a little apprehensive.
A man I do not know picks us up from the airport in a top-of-the-line Tesla Model S. We drive to Mexican food, meet another man I do not know, who offers me his couch to sleep on. The next morning the four of us meet to double-check our packing. The Seattle guys will guide us across the glacier, "as long as you can get us up the ice climbing," they say to me. All three other party members are packing aggressive ice climbing crampons, while I am rocking Rod's 30-year-old glacier 'pons.
"Dan can get us up the ice," Meg says assuredly.
We go, do the mountain, and indeed she is right. The ice climbing poses no problem. The glacier too, for our PNW friends, goes easily. It is early season, and the crevasses are covered. The Colorado kids learn a bit about glaciers and the Seattle boys learn something of ice climbing. Another successful outing; another exchange of expertise, and a safe return home. This is climbing.
There is beauty in the process.
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