Lessons Learned on Anthill Direct

Below is the complete text of an email I sent to Nate Goldstein on Monday, October 18^th, 2004.  In it I describe an experience I had on a route called Anthill Direct (5.9S) in Eldorado Canyon on Friday, October 15^th, 2004.  On Thursday, October 21^st, 2004, less than a week after my attempt on it, a 39-year-old Littleton man was killed on Anthill Direct when he strayed off route and into difficult terrain, from which he apparently slipped and fell some sixty feet.

 

In climbing one has few, if any, opportunities to learn first hand from hard experiences—it is far wiser to learn from the hard experiences of others.  Herein I share one of my own hard experiences, and a few of the lessons I learned from it.

The Email

Nate, had a near-epic on Anthill Direct last Friday. Got off route mid-P3. Went too far left and into virgin territory on the South Buttress (I’ve finally concluded Rossiter’s guide is worthless). Had to pull hard, balancy moves 40 feet or so from my last pro, which was more right of me than below me—I had no choice, I was painted into a corner. I did my best to slot a #4 stopper a little closer than that, but shortly afterwards I heard it go tinkle, tinkle, tinkle. Got to a THIN, steep ledge and spent 20 minutes building an anchor consisting of two RPs and a red Tricam.[*] Meanwhile, behind my partner I see what looks like a giant wind tunnel blowing sleet and snow up canyon at high velocity (hey, the freakin’ weather forecast I checked before leaving home said 65 and sunny and, get this, a 0% chance of precipitation! Guess I should have brought my transistor radio to keep abreast of the very latest—jackass weather forecasters!).

It only got worse—a LOT worse—from there.

I belayed my partner John (not Fields) up, praying like hell he wouldn’t fall (didn’t want to test the anchor on a hang, let alone the massive pendulum that would have ensued had he fallen any farther than 20 feet from me). When he got to the crux about 10 feet from me he pondered the moves and, before committing, asked me how solid the anchor was (recalling how long it took me to construct it over audible cursing). I told him, “fine”. He pulled the moves and took over the lead up an obtuse corner to a ramp. By now the rain/snow mix was swirling all around us, reducing visibility to maybe 50 feet. The temperature had dropped a good 20 degrees in the last half hour or so. My partner, having climbed Anthill Direct 20 years ago, assured me he knew the fastest way off the buttress—“Up and left”, he kept saying, “up and left”. Unfortunately, we weren’t on AD anymore and up and left meant winging it about two full rope lengths into God-knows-what between us and somewhere between Tower Two and the summit of the South Buttress. In one of the day’s fortunate “accidents”, I insisted that John take a radio with him—just in case—after completing P1 (Touch and Go) since communication had been such a challenge on that pitch. John is old school and pooh-poohed the suggestion that we use radios, but thank God I insisted. On P4 of “never-never land” John radioed alternately—and incessantly—for slack and up-rope, obviously trying to find some way up and out of our predicament on high-angle and, by now, cold wet rock. After maybe 30 minutes he radioed me to take him off belay. By now my fingers and toes were completely numb, having been sitting on that lousy ledge in the cold wet snow for the last hour. I climbed eagerly up hard, wet terrain, knowing the exertion would warm me. I was so freakin’ cold, and the weather was deteriorating so fast, that I considered leaving welded gear in the cracks rather than trying to work it free with the nut tool, but thought better of it knowing we might need it later.

John had slung a largish tree at the bottom of a ramp and insisted on continuing to lead because now *he* was cold. This made more sense anyway since it allowed neither of us too much time sitting around “on ice”. Two more slippery pitches, a long and a short, got us to the saddle—hallelujah! Except the fun was just beginning, Nate. The only descent route from Redguard—the route from which we had *actually* topped out—is the East Slabs, a descent I had never done and John had last done some 20 years ago (as you know, several climbers have been killed over the years downclimbing the East Slabs in *ideal* conditions). Add to this the fact that visibility was maybe 50 feet and the slabs were completely drenched. We studied the beta—both from Rossiter and printouts from climbingboulder.com—in a swirling shit storm and could not for the life of us figure out which way to go. There was no frame of reference in the low visibility except for up and down. So, like rats in a maze, we went this direction and that, each time running into the edge of a precipice or ever steepening terrain—mind you, this was solo on wet, low 5th class terrain with numb hands and feet. Finally I said, “John, we have to go down”. So down we climbed face forward, slowly, carefully. After maybe 20 minutes of this we reached a giant pine tree. We said f*ck it, ran the rope around the tree and rapped into the fog, not having a clue what lay beneath us. When we reached the end of the rope there was another tree—praise God! The endless string of bad events had ended and now we had two positive ones in a row—the tide was turning. The next tree had slings on it! As I arrived at the slung tree the fog cleared just long enough to reveal the hulking mass of Wind Tower, off to the east and still considerably below us. I looked at John and said, “Look, there’s Wind Tower!” When I turned back there was nothing but white where Wind Tower had been. But at least now we knew we were heading in the right direction. About three more raps interleaved with some precarious downclimbing got us to the base of Wind Tower at about 5:25pm, eight hours after we had left the car that morning!

When we got back to the car the thermometer read 37 degrees. I figure, top of South Buttress being some 600 feet higher than the Eldo parking lot, the temperature was a good two to three degrees cooler up there, not including wind chill—and we were dressed for 65 and sunny (that’s not entirely accurate—we both had rain jackets). The ring finger on my right hand still hasn’t recovered all feeling.

Like I said, John is old school. He used to climb in Yosemite back in the 70s and 80s. One time he and his partner got benighted about six pitches up some wall in Yosemite. After Friday’s adventure he pointed out that at least the weather was clear for his Yosemite epic, suggesting ours would be just as memorable.

Hope all is well with you, Nate. Say hi to Linda.

Dave

Aftermath

So, having survived the experience, what have I learned?

Know the Route

This requirement is so obvious it seems almost ridiculous to state.  However, ask yourself, how many times have I been on a multi-pitch climb and wondered where the next pitch starts, or whether I’m still leading the current pitch?  Each time I climb a route that neither my partner nor I has climbed before it seems there is always a spot or two where I have to stop and scratch my head.  Knowing the way down is no less important—the descent can become more harrowing than the climb itself if you’re unsure how to get down.

 

What about a guidebook?  There’s no denying a good guidebook is an essential tool on any climb.  But pick up a copy of Richard Rossiter’s Rock Climbing Eldorado Canyon—one of the most thorough of its kind available—open to a random page and read a route description there.  More to the point, read the description of a single pitch on that route.  Often the one, maybe two, sentences there do not provide enough information to discern unambiguously which way to go, especially when hugging a steep rock face half way up a cliff.  You can’t always see the “lichen streak” to which the text refers, or don’t know which “shallow corner” to pick, the one on the right or the left.  Things get dicey when you stray off route into territory from which it is difficult or impossible to retreat, turns into more difficult climbing, and/or is hard to protect.

 

There are several effective ways to ensure you don’t get lost on a route.  Perhaps the surest is to climb a new route with a partner who has climbed it before and knows the way.  If that isn’t possible, find a detailed photograph of the route (climbingboulder.com is an excellent source for route photos), print it, and take it with you!  Better still, go to the crag and do some recon—study the route from a distance, follow every pitch with your eyes, and take notes if your memory is not so good.  The bottom line:  do whatever you must to make sure there’s no confusion while you’re on the route.  Of course, the same goes for the descent.

Protect Well

This requirement is obvious too but, nevertheless, it’s surprising how few climbers truly heed it.  When you slot a nut or jam a cam, make absolutely sure it’ll hold a fall at least as long as the distance to your next placement.  If you’re not sure it’ll hold then back it up with a second placement.  If protecting a hard crux, do the same.  Your life literally depends on placing solid gear throughout the pitch—gear that’ll withstand not only the enormous downward force produced by a fall, but also the outward force generated by rope play as you climb above the gear.

 

It really boils down to this:  If you fall on lead and your last piece rips—either from too faulty or too distant a placement—you will likely die.  Pick up a copy of Accidents in North American Mountaineering and it won’t take long to discover that the majority of rock climbing accidents and, by extension, fatalities, are caused by gear pulling.  Or read the accident statistics tableau outside the Eldo outhouse—same story.  The legendary Swedish mountaineer, Goran Kropp, was killed climbing moderate terrain (5.10a) because his last piece ripped.

Listen to the Little Voice

This requirement is a bit harder to practice but a crucial one to be aware of.  If intuition has ever steered you right you should have no difficulty understanding it.

 

The morning of October 15^th intuition tried to intervene, but I chose to ignore it.  I awoke with a feeling of foreboding that didn’t let up—not in the car on the way to the crag, not on the hike approaching the climb, not on the climb itself.  What I now know is that if I had been with a partner with whom I had climbed before I would have backed out of the climb.  I would have simply said, “Partner, I don’t have a good feeling about this.  Let’s save it for another day.”  But ego got the better of me.  My partner that day was a colleague from work with whom I had never climbed, and with whom I had been trying to schedule a trip all summer long.  Finally, on this day, our paths merged in Eldorado Canyon.  There was NO WAY I was going to back out of the climb, not without appearing to be a wimp in the eyes of my partner.  The question I must ask myself is this:  Would my appearing to be a wimp in the eyes of my partner have been worse than both of us getting killed that day?  The answer is stupidly obvious.

 

So, if you get a bad feeling before committing to a multi-pitch climb, or even an afternoon of sport cragging, go do something else.  Don’t try to understand your apprehension and conclude that, lacking a logical explanation, it must be groundless.  Intuition works in mysterious ways, ways we may never understand, but over the course of a lifetime of climbing heeding its mysterious warning may save your life.

Climbing is Fun

Sometimes the thrill of climbing overshadows its dangers and, to a degree, this is good—it allows us to focus on the rewards of climbing, not dwell on its possible consequences.  But if we go too far in ignoring the consequences we invite sudden and unexpected disaster.