Realizing a Dream A Winter Ascent of the Diamond, D7, Longs Peak

Complete photos here.

I don’t know how often the Diamond gets climbed in winter, but I don’t think it is a common occurrence, even with all the uber-alpinists that live around here. It was something that I had had on my list for years. I never even attempted it, though, because it was like having Cerro Torre on your list. Frankly, I feared that I just wasn’t tough enough or fast enough to pull this off in a winter day. Actually, I didn’t fear that so much as I knew that I wasn't tough enough. I don’t do particularly well in the cold. I have bad circulation in both my hands and feet. So, it remained on my list and I did nothing about it. Each winter season would come and I’d think “It would be so cool to have a winter ascent of the Diamond on my resume, but actually doing it would be so miserable that I’ll just keep it safely there on my to-do list and not put it on the scheduled list.

At least that was the case until this winter, when I brought up this idea with Phil Gruber and he was game. He had been dreaming of it for ten years. Climbing with Phil is like climbing the Nose with Hans Florine. It’s cheating. World-class alpinst Josh Wharton, a frequent partner of Phil’s, called Phil “the best climber you’ve never heard of.” Phil’s a modest, 60-hour-a-week, IBM family man. Underneath his casual demeanor lurks an incredible athlete. His list of climbing accomplishments are too numerous to list and I’m just referring to the ones I know about.

Phil isn’t one to spray about his feats, but I can’t resist listing a few. He was the first person (and one of only two including Leo Houlding) to onsight Half Dome’s Regular Northwest Face. Though “only” 5.12c, this route has spit off Dean Potter and Yuji Hirayama. I remember Micah Dash calling this route “Boulder Canyon 5.13” in an American Alpine Club article. Free ascents of this route are extremely rare.  He’s also done Free Rider on El Capitan and a number of 5.13 sport climbs. To me, one of his most impressive feats was when he decided he wanted to do the three classic north faces of the Alps: Eiger, Matterhorn, and Grande Jorasse. With hardly any alpine experience, though a strong rock climber and a good ice climber, he flew to Europe and three days after landing, on his first trip to the Alps, he stood on the summit of the Eiger, having just climbed the North Face! People spend a lifetime trying to climb this route, taking multiple trips and waiting a month never to see the face come into condition. A few days later he did a one-day ascent of the North Face of the Matterhorn. He didn’t complete the trilogy, though, getting weathered off the Jorasse halfway up, but, dang, this guy gets things done! Oh, he also linked Half Dome to the Nose of El Cap in under 24 hours with Josh Wharton.

At this point, you’ve got to be wondering why Phil would agree to climb the Diamond with me in winter? Were we good friends? No, not really. We didn’t really know each other very well. Was I a climber of similar ability? Not by the farthest stretch of any imagination. Had we climbed together before and hit it off? No, this would be our first climb together. When I told my wife Sheri the plan, I said, “Phil isn’t the type of guy to fail. Going with him means really doing it. So if I’m going to back out, it needs to be before we set a date.” After agreeing in principle to the idea, we didn’t talk much about it until winter actually arrived. Winter came in like a lion this year and we received storm after storm after storm. Our original idea was to try the Diamond early in winter, before much snow had fallen and made the approach much more grueling. When the snows came early, we changed to as late as possible when the days were longer and warmer.

As March wore on, I wondered if Phil was really serious about climbing with me and that maybe he just said that to be nice at the time. I was thinking about asking a regular partner in the attempt. Since we were such an unlikely team, I didn’t want to put Phil on the spot with a “you said you’d climb it” email. Hence, I was thrilled when a week ago, he pinged me with an email saying:

The weather looked stellar for Sunday with highs in Boulder of 70 degrees. Our plan all along was for Phil to lead the entire thing, simul-climbing and short-fixing the entire way. He was obviously the stronger climber and we felt this strategy was necessary in order to keep both climbers moving as much as possible so that we wouldn’t freeze. We packed a fairly small rack of cams and stoppers, trying to go light, and left the pitons and screws behind. We took one ice axe each, crampons, two liters of water, one 9.1mm 60-meter lead rope and a 70-foot tag line. Retreat wasn’t going to be an easy option, but heck, it was only the Diamond in winter. The whole attitude is different with Phil. Since this climb would be so much at my limit with an equal partner, I’d surely have brought a second full-length rope and been looking for a valid reason to retreat and avoid a life-threatening epic on the Diamond. Phil was completely casual about the upcoming ascent, like a Flatiron scramble for me.

We chose to climb D7 because it had continuous crack systems up the entire route and considered to be the easiest route on the Diamond in winter, when you’d likely have to aid nearly every move. Phil had rope-soloed D7 in the summer, freeing the route twice – while leading and cleaning – for “a good workout.” I’d done D7 once before, on aid of course, as it goes free at 5.11d. The winter speed record was on D7 as well. It is held by Jonny Copp and Josh Wharton 14h17m. Phil joked about us breaking the record and I allowed myself to fantasy about this until well into our climbing day, when reality finally set in.

My alarm went off at 2:15 a.m. on Sunday morning. My car and pack were ready to go and after a cup of coffee, I drove over to Phil’s house by 3 a.m. We drove up to Longs Peak Trailhead parking lot. In the summer, if you arrive at 4 a.m. like we did, you’d find the lot completely full. On this morning we were a little surprised to see 3 or 4 other cars. I checked the registry at the trailhead and only one party had signed in (headed for the Cables Route on the north face, our descent route), though as it turns out another party was up there as well. After dressing and booting up, we started the watch at 4:22 a.m.

The trail was rock solid snow, nearly ice, and slippery. I knew we were in for a long day and set what I thought was a reasonable pace. It wasn’t. At least not by Phil’s standards. He went by and led the way, just like he’d do for the rest of the day. I struggled to keep up, just like I’d do for the rest of the day. This day was reminiscent of my climbs with Hans Florine in Yosemite. I’m just not used to being the weakest link in all aspects of the day: approach, climbing, descent, fitness, competence, etc. But with Hans and Phil that was exactly the case and I strove to be lightest anchor I could be.

I noticed in the log that a team had tried to do Kiener’s Route (a route that ascends just to the south of the Diamond) the day before, but high winds had turned them back. Once we hit treeline the winds started to hit us as well and I put on my shell to keep it at bay. Silently I wondered if the winds would turn us back and if that was a good thing or not. When we got to the ranger cabin below Chasm Lake, we met a party of three headed for Kiener’s Route. As we pulled on our bibs to keep warm, we chatted with one of the climbers. In the dark, we couldn’t see any faces, but something struck me about this guy. I recognized him. When he asked our names, I asked his. It was Ralph Burns. It turns out that I had climbed with him once, around 1990.

My brother in-law Kraig Koski had set me up to climb with him and we climbed the Serpent in Eldo. I mentioned it to him, but he didn’t remember me. I’d met him a couple of other times throughout the years and he didn’t remember either time. He’s a bit of a strange guy and once was enough as far as climbing with him. One of his partners recognized my name though and asked, “Are you the speed climber guy?” Ralph then said, “Are you going for speed today? Oh, I guess not since you’re stopping.” This is the type of things Ralph says. I don’t know him well enough to attribute this line to complete ignorance of speed climbing (does he think climbers go 14 hours without stopping to pee or put on different layers?) or just trying to be annoying. Once he knew our route intention he said, “Well the North Chimney is the crux.” This from a guy whose never climbed the Diamond in winter, having failed four times (he told us) to reach Broadway. Others have said similar comments so it isn’t outrageous, but 800 feet of vertical rock lies above Broadway and more tiring climbing above that. Getting to Broadway doesn’t guarantee success and I’d guess that most parties that get that far still fail. Then Ralph did yet another strange thing. As his partners headed up towards Kieners, he headed down! He yelled up something about this gear to his partners, who responded, “What? I thought you were coming with us?” He wasn’t feeling well and decided to just hike out, though not being very clear with his climbing partners. Shortly afterwards Phil and I headed up in the same direction and soon passed these other two climbers. I doubt they climbed Kieners because I never saw them climb up Lambs Slide.

The one nice aspect of climbing the east face of Longs in winter is that you don’t have to do the tiring and annoying talus walk around Chasm Lake. In the winter it is frozen solid and you can walk directly across it. On the other side we found the snow in perfect condition – hard. There would be no post-holing for us until the very end of the day (more on that later). Above Chasm Lake we ran across a team camped in a tent. They planning on climbing the Flying Dutchman, a snow couloir left of Lambs Slide that led to the Loft, the col between Meeker and Longs. They remarked about the high winds during the night and also told us about a team that attempted the Diamond the day before, but bailed from part ways up, probably because they were moving too slowly.

At the last semi-flat spot we stopped to gear up. Here we strapped on the crampons for the mixed climbing up the North Chimney (a 4-pitch, 5.5 rock climb in the summer) that would lead us to Broadway, the sloping ledge at the base of the Diamond. Phil kicked nice steps up the snowfield to the base of the gully. The North Chimney route is a misnomer; there really isn’t any chimney climbing involved or even a chimney to be found. It is just a weakness in the wall that consists mostly of slab climbing in the summer.

We stuck to snow gullies with short, tricky rock steps, simul-climbing all the way to the base of the final hard section. Here I belayed Phil as he worked his way up the nearly vertical wall on the left. The climbing was steep and complicated, through lots of big blocks with tricky, sparse gear. We had been cruising along, on pace to reach Broadway in four hours from the trailhead, but now things moved very slowly as Phil searched for safe passage to the ledge. I started to get cold standing in the snow in the shaded couloir. Eventually Phil anchored the rope on Broadway and recommended that I jug instead of climb. I’m not sure if this was the right decision, mainly because I proceeded to completely make a complete cluster f*&^ of things while ascending. I first couldn’t get my cramponed boot into the aiders and then crampons and my axe would catch on everything and the loop of trailing rope would get stuck and… It was a complete and utter (any Paul Sherwin bike racing fans out there?) disaster. Phil made every effort to make things easier on me, but the rope went directly sideways a couple of times and that made cleaning the gear much tougher. One time the rope jogged directly sideways to the left and into a sharp-looking crack. I feared a swing to the left might cut the rope as is grated across the edge, so I desperately climbed leftwards instead of jugging, further dorking things up. By the time I arrived on Broadway, I was spent and so tangled in the rope I could barely move. I wondered what Phil thought when he looked down and saw me practically strangling myself with rope. It was our first climb together and I wanted to make a good impression.

Phil then led across Broadway, which was completely covered in snow. Below this ledge is the Diagonal Wall and it’s a drop of nearly a thousand feet in places. The snow was good, though, and the traverse wasn’t bad until the final rock slab that led directly to the first anchor at the base of D7. After I followed, we switched out of snow/ice mode and into rock climbing mode. This meant stowing both axes and crampons and digging out the aiders for Phil. I carried most of the weight in my pack while Phil led with his mostly empty pack. Phil started up the first pitch and moved steadily. Around 50-60 feet up, Phil short-fixed the rope. This was our strategy to stay warm and keep both of us moving. Ideally, we’d have short-fixed every 100 feet – often enough to keep Phil well supplied with gear, but not so often that he was forced to self-belay too long. In practice Phil usually went longer than one hundred feet, with a couple of exceptions. He wanted to use the existing fixed anchors, to save gear and speed up the building of anchors.

I jugged up the line at a fast pace, knowing that my job was to get to the top of the rope and put Phil on a regular belay as soon as possible. Then he could pull the gear I cleaned on the tag line and he wouldn’t have to bother with the complicated task of self-belaying. This speed-jugging did a great job of warming me up, for by the time I got to jug I was quite cold. In order to be dexterous enough to handle all the gear, knots, and ropes involved with climbing, I wore a light pair of gloves. To avoid freezing my hands, I put chemical heaters into the gloves. I feared they wouldn’t work very well above 13,000 feet, but these kept my hands functional the entire day.

We continued this strategy and inched up the face. Phil would occasional do a couple of free moves, either out of necessity or because he felt they were safe. We both had on light alpine boots from Sportiva. In fact, Phil had just picked up a pair of these directly from Sportiva in Boulder two days before our climb. They are a great compromise of warmth, ice climbing compatibility and rock climbing ability. Still, they are a long way from a traditional climbing shoe and with Phil climbing with gloves on, free climbing is not a very enticing option on the Diamond in winter. For this reason D7, at 5.11d, is the route of choice over the much easier Casual Route (5.10a).

On one of the pitches, a short ways above the belay, Phil encountered an ice blob that completely filled the crack. He wasn’t sure he could get by it and as he pondered the situation I wondered if I’d be sending him up the ice axe so that he could chop the block away. I didn’t much like that idea since this was a substantial piece of ice and I was directly below it. He eventually found a creative placement was able to move by it.

The weather was beautiful for the entire day. I could hear the wind howling some of the time, but we were mostly shielded from the wind on the Diamond. While we weren’t in the sun because of the orientation of the face, few clouds were in the sky. Phil did a great job of continually moving up the face. He always short-fixed and we were never together once we started up the face. Phil started up D7 proper around 9:40 a.m. We had about 800 vertical feet to climb and it took us about six and a half hours. During the entire time on the wall, I didn’t drink anything. This was dumb, but I didn’t want to bother with removing my pack to fish out my water bottle. There are no ledges on this route bigger than six inches, so I was always hanging in my harness, at least to some extent. By the time I drank on the summit of Longs, it had been eight hours since my last sip. I was completely bonked. Stupid.

As I jugged the penultimate pitch on D7 to Almost Table Ledge, Phil self-belayed himself up the last twenty feet to Table Ledge. This was some bold climbing, as he had to free climb above his last piece into a completely snow-covered Table Ledge. He called it the scariest lead of the day.

When I arrived on Table Ledge around 4:20 p.m. we took a look at the disconcerting traverse to our left. In the summer, this is just a walk and eventually gets into the 4^th class scrambling of Kiener’s Route, but now the ledge was completely covered with steep snow and the prospects of it all avalanching off, us with it, weren’t enticing. Phil briefly contemplated rappelling, but with a single 60-meter rope I didn’t like that option. I wanted off this wall and I knew the easier climbing of upper Kiener’s was only a hundred feet to our left. We strapped on our crampons and pulled out our axes. Phil led out as I stowed the aiders, ascenders, and tag line. Phil found a number of placements for protection and the traverse wasn’t that bad, in retrospect.

Once across the traverse, we stayed roped and Phil led up Kiener’s Route. I was incredibly tired at this point and would have to stop for ten breaths after moving just ten steps. We were simul-climbing and I was dragging along about a hundred feet of slack behind my Gri-Gri belay device. I gradually had to play out this rope because Phil was moving faster than I could go. Eventually, just after the step-around move of Kiener’s Route, I ran out of slack and now Phil was pulling me up the route. The climbing at this point is trivial – 4^th class at best and probably 3^rd class, even in winter. I didn’t need the rope, but Phil still placed some gear. I stayed tied in until just a few yards from the summit when I was finally close enough to Phil that he could say, “Hey, idiot, untie from the dang rope so that I can coil it.” He didn’t actually say this, but that’s what I’d have been thinking, if I could have thought. My brain wasn’t working so well, along with my body. I could barely move.

We hit the summit of Longs Peak a bit before 6 p.m. after 13.5 hours of effort. I was so tired that I hardly acknowledged our feat. I forgot to take a summit photo and as it was now colder my camera stopped working, just like it wouldn’t work in the early morning cold. We did shake hands, but it was a short-lived celebration. We knew it was a long way down. We both wanted to make sure we were down the north face before it got dark, but I knew we had time for that.

I immediately downed half of my remaining liter of liquid and started feeling better. We packed up the gear, touched the summit marker, and started down. Phil carried more than his share of the weight to try and equalize our speeds a bit. I knew the way down the north face very well, so I led the way. Not having to fight gravity did wonders for my energy level and I moved quickly down this section. A hundred meters before the Cable Route rappel the snow became bullet-proof and we put our crampons back on and pulled out the axes one last time.

After the rappel, we downclimbed steep snow until reaching low-angled terrain. Here we stopped to strip off crampons and harnesses, and to stow our axes. It was all over now except for a couple hours of hiking. We finished off all our remaining liquids and started the trudge back toward the car. At Chasm Cutoff we had to turn on the headlamps and here we stripped off some clothing as well. We lost the trail from here down to Jim’s Grove cutoff, but it didn’t matter much. We found it just above the trail junction and continued down into the trees.

The last hour of hiking was endless. My knees were killing me. I was so sleepy and so tired. I fantasized about hot tubs, beds, French fries, and Gatorade. The most annoying part of this descent was the surprise postholing. Apparently it had warmed enough that in select locations, we’d go from walking on rock-hard snow to plunging a single foot clear down to our knee, bashing our shins in the process and falling painful forward. This happened to both of us five or six times and always unexpectedly.

We hit the end of the trail 16 hours, 46 minutes, 6 seconds after we started. I was as tired as I’d ever been. The combination of lack of fuel (food and water) and a brutally long day had taken a heavy toll on me. I was almost glad to hear that Phil’s thigh was cramping up on him. At least he was semi-human. I drove his car back to Boulder as he feared he’d cramp up on the drive. It was my biggest contribution of the day.

Even though I only followed behind Phil, this ranks as one of my proudest climbing accomplishments. I think it is on par with climbing the Nose of El Capitan in a day. The key to an audacious venture like this is your partner. In that respect I struck gold, pure gold. We of limited ability must seek out these supermen and convince them to team up. Here I succeeded wildly.

This was my sixth ascent of the Diamond, on my sixth attempt. I know I shouldn’t acknowledge that. I'm due to be weathered off and now it will be hell to find a partner. My luck has to run out and who wants to be along when that happens. I’ve now climbed the Casual Route twice (once as part of the Longs Peak Triathlon), D7 twice (now in winter!), Pervertical Sanctuary, and the Yellow Wall. This wall has never been easier for me and never failed to intimidate. Nothing changed with this ascent. I’ll be back, but I’ll wait until warmer weather, longer days, and easier conditions.

Location	Time of Day	Elapsed Time
My Driveway	2:45 a.m.	n/a
Trailhead	4:21 a.m.	0:00:00
Jim’s Grove Junction	5:22 a.m.	1:01:46
Chasm Cutoff	5:44 a.m.	1:23:20
Chasm Lake	6:57 a.m.	2:36:09
Base of the East Face	7:42 a.m.	3:21:09
Broadway	9:00 a.m. ?	4:39:??
Starting up D7	9:40 a.m.	5:20:??
Table Ledge	4:21 p.m.	12:00
Summit	5:50 p.m.	13:29:00
Boulder Field	7:00 p.m.	~14:40
Chasm Cutoff	7:57 p.m.	15:33:??
Jim’s Grove Junction	8:17 p.m.	15:56:??
Trailhead	9:07 p.m.	16:46:06 trailhead-to-trailhead
My Driveway	10:40 p.m.	n/a – but 20 hours house-to-house

Figure 1 : Timetable, as best I can figure from an altitude profile and a bunch of spurious split times on my watch.