Ice, Avalanches and Sandstone

This was the first winter of my life where skiing wasn’t at the forefront of my thoughts. After last year’s record snowfall and a 100+ day ski season, this winter’s lackluster snowfall and fickle avalanche conditions felt especially uninspiring to me. This, combined with all-time ice conditions and my desire to drastically improve my ice climbing abilities meant that I spent far more time swinging tools in Hyalite than I did sliding on snow. I did have several great days of skiing though, and my commitment to winter climbing paid off. I think that having greatly improved my rock climbing abilities the previous summer and simply putting in more days in one season as many people do in three or four allowed me to progress much faster than I had anticipated. After climbing ice for the first time ever in 2017, I managed to tick a bunch of Hyalite classics such as Cleopatra’s Needle and Black Magic, both of which I would never have considered leading just a few months ago. While I still have a long way to go to bring my ice and mixed climbing to the level I want it to be at, the progress I made this winter provided enough of a confidence boost for Tim and I to book tickets to Alaska in May to finally dip our toes in the water of alpine climbing in the big mountains.

While I didn't make as many turns, I still spent plenty of time in the snow. In December I completed my AIARE Pro 1 course in Togwotee Pass, WY. It was a five-day firehose of information and also my first experience being formally examined on some of the skills I’ve been working to develop in the mountains for the past several years. Everything gets a little harder when someone is standing right next to you with a notebook and a stopwatch! In March, I flew into the Ymir Lodge outside of Nelson, BC where my uncle Rob and Colin Zacharias were teaching a recreational Level II course. I took a Rec II a year or two ago, so the main reason I came on the trip was to watch two IFMGA guides work and to learn as much as I could from Colin, who has worked in the guiding and avalanche industries twice as long as I’ve been alive. Every morning around 5 a.m. Rob, Sean and I would skin up to a ridge behind the lodge where we could get a cell signal to download the avalanche advisory and weather forecast. Then I’d often stay up past 11 p.m. listening to Colin tell stories from his long career in the mountains.

The lack of sleep and long days outside took its toll and by Friday I found myself fighting a fever and a pounding headache as I broke trail on the way up to our last run of the trip. The next day we flew out and I drove back to Bozeman. By the time I woke up the next morning I was the sickest I remember being in quite some time. Over the next several days I slowly got better while I tried to rest and gradually lost my mind due to boredom and lack of exercise. Eventually I caved and drove up to Hyalite, powered by DayQuil and mania. I initially charged up the trail intent on soloing the Dribbles, but reconsidered when I found that moving too fast made me dizzy. Instead I shuffled around slowly and climbed a few pitches of easy ice then went home, knowing I’d made a questionable choice for my body but the right one for my mental health.

I had made plans to go climb in the desert with Quinn over spring break, but with a job interview looming at the end of the week I considered bailing to make sure I was 100% healthy by then. But my health continued to improve the day after my desperate Hyalite exploits, and I figured that I’d be completely healthy at some point during spring break and I might as well be with my friends in the desert when that happened. So Quinn and I drove south and rolled into Zion to find that we had brought winter with us. The shadier upper corners of many of the walls still held snow and a recent rain storm had left the entire park wet. We were desperate to climb, and immediately pulled a U-turn and kept heading south towards Red Rock. About 45 minutes outside of Zion we began to reconsider since Quinn was generally un-psyched on climbing in Vegas and I had gone there three times in the past year. So we pulled over and camped a few miles up a random dirt road outside St. George and the next day we found a dry sport crag to occupy us until Zion was dried out. I was pleasantly surprised when I clawed my way up a 5.12, proving that my winter training regime of ice climbing and the occasional bouldering session hadn’t been completely ineffective. The next day we returned to Zion and climbed Monkeyfinger, a classic crack climb near the Temple of Sinawava. The climbing was hard and we were not, so there was plenty of falling, hangdogging and the occasional A0 move on my part. By the time the sun started to set we were still two pitches from the top and feeling pretty thrashed, so we rapped to save some energy for the rest of the week and not risk missing the shuttle out of the park. I drank less than two liters all day and only ate a few handfuls of trail mix, so I was reminded the hard way that I was in the desert and my cold weather fueling habits wouldn’t cut it anymore. We both woke up feeling battered and sore, partly from several pitches of sandy, grunty off width climbing but I think also largely from a lack of sodium and fluids. We took a rest day, and hiked up Angel’s Landing with a few thousand of our best friends. The next day we set our sights on Shune’s Buttress. My still-sore muscles screamed for mercy as I followed Quinn up the burly layback pitch right off the ground (because fuck warm ups, amiright?), and I considered resigning myself to just supporting Quinn and jugging the rest of the pitches. But with some encouragement and mockery I grabbed the rack and started up the next pitch, which I found to be a much more forgiving 5.10 hand crack. By the time I cloved into the anchor my motivation had returned and we kept charging. Several stellar pitches later we topped out, tired and pumped and glad that all we had to do was rap down and get on the bus. Our relaxed attitude came back to bite us though as we proceeded to have a minor epic on the way down which culminated in me cutting Quinn’s rope when it got stuck behind a chockstone deep in a wide crack. As my feet finally touched the ground I turned to see the last bus pulling away and we realized that we’d be walking back to our car at the park entrance. We made the best of our situation and enjoyed a full moon night hike out of Zion.

The next day we drove to Vegas and met our friends who had been there for the whole week. With more rain in the forecast, we realized that the next day would probably be our only chance to actually climb in Red Rock before the storms arrived in the afternoon. In a moment of desperation and brazen overconfidence I tried to convince Quinn to get up at midnight and head up Mount Wilson, but he was able to talk some sense into me and convince me that trying to bang out 20+ pitches in the dead of night wasn’t the best idea. Instead we slept until 6:30 and then all but ran up to the Ginger Buttress to climb Unimpeachable Groping, which is essentially a fully-bolted 800-foot sport climb. It was quite the style change after the cracks of Zion, and I spent much of the first pitch trying to remember how to crimp and unsuccessfully looking for cracks to jam in. After I belayed Quinn up he bitched at me for climbing too slow and blasted off on the next pitch. “It’s just a ladder dude, just grab some shit and climb fast.” I heeded his advice and we picked up the pace, banging out 20-minute pitches and topping out with perfect timing just as it started to rain.

Two days later I flew out of Vegas to Seattle for my job interview at RMI. I’d been lugging around a suitcase with my boots, ice axe and crampons the whole week, an ominous reminder of what I had coming on Saturday. My friend Matias went through the same hiring process last year, and he was nice enough to write me a recommendation and help me prepare for the interview in the weeks leading up to it. I felt confident in my technical skills and fitness and knew that I could deal with the pressure of the group interview, but I was still anxious going in as I knew that there were over 40 people competing for as few as 10 jobs. I’ve wanted to be a professional mountain guide for a few years by now, and this was finally my chance to start the career I’ve been working towards. I was excited by the opportunity but I hated the stress and uncertainty about what the next six months of my life would be like. I didn’t have much of a back up plan if I didn’t get hired and had to spend the summer in Bozeman, so I knew that all I could do was show up and crush and then hope for the best. I managed to win the running race/fitness test/hill slog part of the interview, and I felt like I was able to demonstrate that my skills and knowledge of technical systems were solid. The group interview was intimidating and made me feel like I was back in high school trying to wing a presentation in front of the whole class. But I was always good at winging it, and Matias had given me an idea of what to expect, so I came away from the day feeling happy with the effort I’d put forth. The next day I flew home to Bozeman. I was expecting to spend Monday anxiously checking my email under the table during class, but I woke up at 7 a.m. to an email telling me I’d been hired. With a much clearer idea of what my summer looks like, I’ve since been focusing on organizing the logistics for our Alaska trip in May while also finishing up school for the semester and trying to squeeze out the last few days of ice season.

Lucas enjoying nice conditions in the Absarokas. Photo by Henry Coppolillo.

Exceeding expectations on Black Magic. Photo by Seth Bassetti.

Shaking out the crazies with some mid-illness ice pitches. Photo by Henry Coppolillo.

Following a wide pitch on Monkeyfinger. Photo by Quinn Harper.

We didn't top out but the stoke was high nonetheless. Photo by Henry Coppolillo.

Quinn on the first pitch of Shune's. Photo by Henry Coppolillo.

Psyched after topping out Shune's. Photo by Quinn Harper.