Sunday, July 29, 2001
Sheri prodded me awake at 2 a.m. – an insane time to wake up. I was out the door by 2:15 a.m. and picking up Hardly at 2:30 a.m. I was amazed that, upon arriving at the Longs Peak Trailhead, we were the absolute last car in the parking lot and it was only 3:30 in the morning! Crazy!
I set the pace to Chasm Lake and here we encountered three girls coming towards us. It was curious to see someone coming this way so earlier in the morning. I asked them if they had already summitted (and was quite curious what route they did that would bring them back this way) and they responded that they had planned to climb the Keyhole route, but took a wrong turn at the Chasm Cut-off! What a huge mistake. To their great credit, I found out later that they backtracked and made the summit via the Keyhole. I found this out by the next group of climbers we passed.
Once we got to Chasm Lake and it became light enough to see, we noticed a group of four climbers ahead of us. Now not everyone going this way is climbing the Casual Route, but it is a popular route. As it turns out this next group wasn’t even heading for the Diamond, but doing Stettner’s Ledges to Kieners Route – a great combination that I had previously done with the Trashman. I found out later that one of these climbers was an acquaintance of mine: Brad Brandewie, who’d send me some unrelated email on Monday and mention that he did this route. He told me the girls made the summit.
Hardly took the lead at this point and just hammered up to the base of the wall. Whenever anyone asked us where we were headed we’d respond, “Spearhead!” Two guys bivying at the cave by Chasm Lake just laughed at this and said, “No, really, where are you headed.” When we told them it was Spearhead via the Diamond they were psyched, “Right on!” was their response.
At the snowfield at the foot of the wall, I stopped to gear up, while Hardly climbed up the snow to a rock ledge to switch shoes. I saw a guy just below me and he was alone and obviously not climbing. I asked, “What are you doing up here so early?” It turns out it was Mike Caldwell – Tommy’s dad and he had helped carry gear into the wall for Tommy and Beth Rodden. They were up working “The Honeymoon is Over”, an aid line that had yet to be freed. Mike said Tommy had been up there once before and had freed it through 5.13c so far. I later learned that Tommy did free the entire route, so 5.13 has finally come to the Diamond. This line follows D1 for the first two pitches and then goes independently to the top via a crack system just to the right. Roger Briggs replied to my email about this event:
“My good friend Eric Doub put the route up and he and I did the only previous ascent. I did it about 40% free, but was sure someone of Tommy's caliber could do it all free. It's a brilliant line. Tommy told Eric that he was the tiredest he's ever been when he finished.”
We were on Broadway at 7 a.m. after soloing the North Chimney route (5.5) for the fourth time and for the second time after I swore I’d never do it again. This time, however, things felt very solid, probably because I was carrying a very light pack. While Hardly had geared and gone on ahead, and I should have also, I climbed up this route with Steve Levin and his partner Matt. They were headed for King of Swords (5.12a) on the overhanging right side of the Diamond.
The weather was perfect and the rock looked dry and brilliant. Looking up from Broadway the Diamond appears so high and so steep. It seems much higher than 900 feet. It looks almost El Cap-like in dimensions, yet the Captain is well over three times as tall. The climbing on the Diamond, though, is considerably steeper than on the El Cap routes that I’ve done (Nose, Salathé, East Buttress, and West Face) and because of this angle even the 5.8 and 5.9 pitches are continuous, tiring, and burly.
There were three parties ahead of us on the Casual Route (8 pitches, 5.10a). A team of two slow climbers was first, then Caldwell and Rodden, but they were soon out of the way. The problem was the third party. They hadn’t even started yet, having belayed all of the North Chimney, and were clearly much slower than we were. Hardly tried to reason with Mike, but he apparently wasn’t even able to discuss it reasonably. Mike started up the 4th class pitch and slipped off once, then took 20 minutes to lead this pitch. We tried talking to Michele, Mike’s partner, about passing but she just said, “Can we just drop it?” People that get to a route first do have priority and can either let people pass or not, but it doesn’t seem right to force another team to lose hours while letting them pass would only cost the slow team a matter of minutes.
We sat down in disgust and pondered our options while eating some food. If we followed these slow-pokes up the route, it would be all we got down today. I’d later found out from Brad that these two were yelling commands back and forth and still ascending at 5 p.m. We only had one rope and even descending from Broadway would be a challenge. I thought about climbing up to Chasm View via the Horbein Crack. It’s a good thing we didn’t take this option as I found out later that the last pitch involves 50+ feet of a 5-6” crack. We thought about doing Pervertical Sanctuary (7 pitches, 5.11a), but didn’t have a single #4 cam with us and thought it was too hard for us with such a slim rack. The Yellow Wall (5.11a) had a party on it also and was unfamiliar to us both. It really came down to this: did we want to climb the Diamond or did we want to try and link formations?
We had both climbed the Casual Route before and hence just repeating that route wasn’t sufficient for us. We decided to traverse Broadway to Kiener’s Route (5.4) and use that to ascend Longs. We agreed to tack on the Petit Grepon after Spearhead to make up for the loss of the Diamond. Looking across Broadway towards Kiener’s things looked scary and dangerous. A steep, loose slope had to be ascended before we’d be able to traverse further. This is the exact location where local superstar Cameron Tague slipped and fell a thousand feet down the wall below. Yet, we couldn’t rope this section. The whole slope was loose and protection non-existent. We soloed, but caution and not speed was uppermost in our minds.
The slope wasn’t as bad as it looked. It was just as loose as it looked, but not as steep. Once above the initial loose slope, we moved horizontally over to the start of Kiener’s route, where we found four climbers getting ready to start up. This wasn’t Brad’s team, but another team that had climbed Lamb’s Slide. Dang, this face is getting popular… We said “Hello”, as we continued soloing up the route.
Once above the steep lower section, we elected to climb directly up along side the Notch Couloir. This seemed much more aesthetic than to follow the regular Kiener’s route up the loose, 3rd class ramps that hug the Diamond. I also wanted to check out the climbing from the top of the Notch to the summit, as Homie and Mark had done this earlier in the year. The climbing turned out to be solid and very enjoyable. It was mostly 4th class with maybe some easy 5th class moves occasionally. We topped Longs at 8:50 a.m.
Descended the Trough towards Spearhead, hiked up to a big flat rock and dumped all our gear save a small rack and a rope. We brought no food or water with us. We simul-climbed the North Ridge – an eight-pitch route – as two pitches, passing three parties along the way, including Judy and the two Indians (Neeraj and a visiting colleague of Hardly’s). As we left our gear cache they were halfway up the route. When we returned to our cache they were three-quarters of the way up the route; as we were nearing the Glacier Gorge parking lot, they summitted Spearhead.
We did the roundtrip from our cache in an hour and 45 minutes, climbing the route in about an hour. Unfortunately an accident occurred on the descent. As with most mountaineering accidents, a series of things had to go wrong for something bad to occur. First, we were pushing for speed and hence a bit more careless than usual. Second, Hardly dislodged a rather large rock. Third, I happened to be in the fall zone at the time. Fourth, when I looked up the 3rd class slope to locate the rock and dodge it, I was completely blinded by the sun. Fifth, in moving at an extremely frantic pace, across sharp rock, in an effort to get out of the way of serious injury and maybe death, I sliced open the heel of the left hand.
Immediately, I knew it wasn’t just a scratch. The two-inch gash was at least a quarter inch deep and bled profusely and started to throb. Hardly asked if I was okay and I said no. I put immediately pressure on the wound in an effort to stop the bleeding and the pain. In a flash Hardly was at my side. Like a magician, he produced a paper napkin from his pocket (what was this doing there?) and I pressed it against my wound. Hardly was wearing pants where the bottom half of the legs detach to convert into shorts. In an instant, he stripped off one leg and had it tied around my hand before I knew what was happening. He insisted upon carrying the gear down as we continued the descent. Truth be told, I don’t even know the size of the rock I was trying to avoid. I just heard Hardly yelling rock with urgency and heard a big crashing sound. I’d like to say it was a car-sized block and I was lucky to get away with a little cut, but I don’t know that.
Back at pack cache, my hand was feeling a lot better and we thought briefly about continuing our adventure and heading over to climb the Petit Grepon. Another look at the wound on my hand convinced us otherwise. It would definitely need stitches. We relaxed on the rock and drank the last of our water. This was a relatively minor accident and maybe it is overly dramatic to bring up such things, but I’ll take this opportunity once again to praise Hardly. There is no better climbing partner. When things go bad, and this was nothing, there is no better person to have with you. He will do whatever is necessary; shoulder any burden; solve any problem. I’ve seen it many times. He is so strong, so solid, and so tough, that there is virtually no chance that I’ll ever be able to return the favors he has done for me in the mountains.
Thinking myself fit and fast in the mountains, I struggled and failed to keep up with Hardly the entire day. He was on Broadway in time to do the Casual Route. I lagged behind and because of that we didn’t climb the Diamond. He led the way up Kieners and even gave me his climbing shoes when mine started to hurt. He had sticky rubber approach shoes for the rest of the ascent. We did the same in climbing Spearhead. He blazed down the Trough at high speed and I fell far behind. Whenever I’ve done big, long days with Hardly, I’m the anchor. Now he’s training for a marathon with his soon-to-be-wife Judy. The gap will only grow wider. (When Opie read this last line he sent me this response: “Come over to the dark side, Luke! Have a doughnut!” Yes, this is quite tempting. Keeping up with Hardly is too difficult.)
We got back to the Glacier Gorge trailhead and drove Judy’s car back to the Longs Peak trailhead to pick up my car. While Hardly headed back to meet Judy and his friends, I headed home and then to the hospital. After three painful shots to numb my hand, they scrubbed and stitched my wound. Nine stitches later, I was told there’d be no climbing for two weeks as I’d rip the wound open again if I did. Of course that is unacceptable as Mark Hudon will be in town in 11 days and I’ll be climbing with him and, in fact, we’ll be heading back to the Diamond. Only this time we’ll go even earlier!