In winter 1985, a Bruce Springsteen song was on the radio all the time. So we called this ice climbing trip the Great "Born in the USA" Ice Tour.

Steve Landin and I went to the Adirondack Mountains in late winter 1985 to do some ice climbing and hoped that the North Face of Gothics Mountain would be in condition to climb. It is almost 1,000 feet of bare rock that sometimes ices up in later winter with good frozen snow. It is one of the great Adirondack winter classics.

The mountain is located up in the High Peaks region. Fast and light skiers can leave their car, ski up to the mountain's base, climb the north wall, retrieve their skis and return to the roadhead in one day. But for us, the trails were covered in hard ice, and it would be a three day expedition with two bivouacs: one day to the foot of the mountain, one to climb the face and one more to return.

Saving weight was imperative, so many things had to be left behind. We decided to leave the tent, the snowshoes and the rope. We would carry ice boots, crampons, two hand-tools apiece, sleeping bags and pads, and a cooker and pots.

Day One: We carried up to the foot of Gothics Mountain and bivouacked. I was horribly cold, because I had been too fanatical about light weight gear, and I took too light a sleeping bag. The few more pounds of a warmer bag would have been great. I was experimenting with a "vapor barrier liner" concept for a sleeping system. Somewhere between theory and reality I shivered all night.

Day Two: The climb. The first section of the North Face was terrifying verglas. This is hard water ice only a quarter of an inch thick over solid rock. It is too thin to get in a deep pick placement, but it is hard and slick. Only one of my picks was of the newer design that would hook in at all, leaving me one-handed. I momentarily thought of chickening out and climbing instead the tree-lined slope off to the side of the face. I was extremely scared climbing this section unroped but started up anyway behind Steve. He was a much stronger climber and had hooking capability for both his picks, so he found the route, led it and set an example for me. He gave me a constant "psychological belay." One scary spot was a traverse across a small gully. Steve was anchored only by one axe placement, but he swung over a sling for me to grab. This gave me the courage to make the move across.

The middle section of the face was beautiful. It was that deep re-consolidated frozen snow that you can run up. Crampon points and hand-tool picks sink in easily and hold. It was fun, and we made good time up this. By the time I had caught up to Steve near the top of this snow section, he had chopped two "buckets" in the snow for us to sit in and rest. In traditional alpine manner, he shared chocolate as we looked down the mountain. A snowstorm was heading straight for us from the northwest, so we did not stay long.

The top section of the face was more grim. It was mixed with a lot of bare rock, some powder snow and a little ice. Straight up was out of the question, for it was bare rock without weaknesses. We went up diagonally to the left through mixed ground. Steve did the route-finding.

One small traverse involved carefully placing the right crampon front-points into a small iced rock depression for a delicate temporary movement of weight-distribution. I moved like a phantom, barely breathing, with hundreds of feet of void beneath my heels. I remember thinking: The entire consciousness of the cosmos is focused on the placement of one-and-one-half crampon points on a tiny bit of crumbling ice.

Easier ground was eventually gained with the summit ridge in sight. As we gained the ridge, the snowstorm was swirling around us, almost a white-out. We got to the summit and took some photos. The void below that was the North Face was completely enveloped in blowing snow. These are the conditions that the Scots climbers love and know as "full conditions."

We blindly descended the West Ridge and got to the pass between Gothics and Mt. Saddleback (the same pass I had camped at with frozen toes in January 1976 – see blog entry "Frostbite Trip"). The snow was very heavy as we trekked down to our bivouac gear by dark. We hauled it to an ADK leanto on the trail below. We cooked a supper and tried to sleep as snow swirled around our noses.

Day Three: It was a hellish labor to haul our packs down through thigh-deep snow. We should have brought the snowshoes! Agony and discouragement, I wanted to just lay down and die. I thought of Albert Camus' discussion of the Myth of Sisyphus. The only thing that kept me going was Marine mentality and a dose of Ayn Rand. Perhaps it was also the pathos of Springsteen's lyrics, still going through my head, "Born in the USA, Born in the USA," that gave me some additional grit.

As we finally called an end to this climbing trip and started the drive back home, guess what song greeted us on the car radio? "Born in the USA... Born in the USA." It was a hell of an ice tour.

-Zenwind.

Mountaineering has been my life's great love. It can take the form of hiking forested trails in the hills, backpacking deep into the mountains to summits, bivouacking on airy perches high above the world, pure rock climbing on short walls and pure ice climbing on short frozen waterfalls, or the long desperate mixed climbing on the rock, snow and ice of high mountain walls – i.e., alpinism. It is the craft of movement through the mountains.

I want to honor and thank my first cousin for his influence on my mountaineering avocation. He gave me the focus to really start climbing. He introduced me to the world culture of mountaineering, and he made the dream of climbing real to me. To him I am eternally indebted.

I had always seen adventure and romance in mountain climbing, but it also represented some sort of unique twisted spiritual quest. The great French mountaineer, Lionel Terray, referred to himself and to all others with a similar calling to be "The Conquistadors of the Useless." If you haven't been addicted to the sport, you won't understand its lure.

As a young boy, I watched Lowell Thomas Adventures on TV. I remember seeing a documentary on the 1953 British Mt. Everest Expedition, the one that put Tenzing and Edmund Hillary on the top of the world. I saw men struggling under huge loads up immense mountains during horrendous storms. It was heroic in a crazy sort of way, and very fascinating.

But it was my cousin who introduced me to the world of real climbing. He was a world traveler – from a family of world travelers. (My uncle and aunt lived in many exotic and far-off places in the world, my cousins grew up in the world at large, and I learned a lot from all of them.) He had been to the Alps and the Andes. Although not a radical technical climber himself, he knew the culture and the spirit of the craft. He told me of alpine places and peoples that fired my imagination.

He would often stop at our farm on his way through the area, especially at the time when I returned home from Viet Nam. I was into Dharma bum things like hiking to hilltops and bivouacking under the Moon. He showed me the real gear for the first time: heavy European mountain boots, rucksack, down bag and jacket. He told me of Alpine culture when describing the places he had been. He was a man completely at home in cold, rocky, snowy environments.

Then, he gave me a book, which I still have: "The Sierra Club Guide to Ski Mountaineering," ca. 1950s. (This was when the Sierra Club actually still climbed mountains.) This gave me the technical knowledge to navigate safely in the winter environments of America. It also had a good explanation of the rope techniques of rock climbing and rappelling, and it was the first technical manual I ever had. This lit the fuse for me: I became a climbing fanatic.

Climbing was the greatest medicine I ever took. For sure, it is risky, but it was the healthiest activity I have ever done. Many personal demons were exorcized after I aggressively pursued my passion for mountaineering. It is a clean and pure enterprise, and it makes one really know oneself.

Thanks, Rex. You really lit a fire that has enriched my life.

-Zenwind.

I have done a lot of solo climbing, and find these moments to be among the most rewarding and memorable of my experiences on rock, snow or ice. But it was really not always my choice. In my earlier years of learning to lead big climbs, I could not find any climbing partners. Thus, I had to go it solo. When I pulled it off, it felt like a kind of instant satori.

There are two types of solo climbing: Free-Solo and Roped-Solo.

"Free solo" is climbing completely un-roped. (See my first entry on this blog, "Extreme Climbing and Breath Control," for a sample of this insane style.) No net to catch you. This is *fall-and-you-die* climbing, not for everyone.

(Do not confuse "free soloing" with "Free Climbing," the latter term simply meaning using only hands and feet for the means of going up. The Free Climber may, and usually does, use ropes for safety back-up just to catch a fall. Free soloing is a species of "free climbing," but it is a rare breed, as free climbers usually do use ropes.)

"Roped solo" climbing is a slightly safer variation of the solo climb. Roped solo climbing utilizes a rope and anchor system, not to help you ascend, but solely for safety, to shorten any fall. It, also, is a species of "free-climbing" but is more a type of free lead-climbing, with all anchors and ropes below you, except that you are in this case alone. It is still not as safe as having a living, thinking human on the other end of your rope, feeding out only as much rope as you need while you lead upward above all the anchors. Roped soloing uses trees, rocks and climbing anchors below you as a last-ditch means of keeping you on the mountain. If you fall, you may still fall way down past your highest anchor for a long way before the system stops you with a jolt. Maybe.

In more recent years, I acquired and use a piece of gear called "The Soloist," made by Rock Exotica, which makes the whole roped soloing thing much safer. It is a truly wonderful gadget. But there was no such gear when I was really pushing my limits and learning to lead climb. So I had to rely on written advice from climber Royal Robbins' books, *Basic Rockcraft* and *Advanced Rockcraft*, and, though it was state-of-the-art at the time, it was touch and go. A bit scary.

The technique was to tie one end of the rope to a tree or other anchor, then give yourself enough estimated slack rope-length to get to the next rest ledge above. You tie a loop in the rope at that point and clip it to your harness. As you go up, you place anchors (slings around trees or rocks, rock anchors, or ice-screws) and clip your rope so it runs through the anchor's carabiner. This is similar to the normal leading of a free-climb. If you fall, the distance fallen is at least twice the length of rope between you and that nearest anchor below you. You should not fall all the way down the mountain, but, if there is a ledge below you and you have a lot of rope out, you can hit it hard. The old mountaineering advice was always: "The leader must not fall."

One of the tricks is to find a rest spot before the slack runs out so you can tie another loop further along the rope's length to clip into. Then you must un-clip the old loop in order to give yourself enough slack rope to move further up. Often, the rest spot is only a place where you have one hand momentarily free, and you find yourself tying and untying knots with your teeth while hanging on for dear life with your other hand. These are some of the scariest times, in which you truly get to know yourself well.

Once you get to the top of the pitch, you tie the rope to a good anchor and rappel down the entire pitch, removing anchors, knots, slings, etc., and untying the bottom end of the rope. As you climb the pitch again, it is no big deal because you are tying and clipping into loops that are on a top-rope, anchored *above* you. Any falls now will be much shorter than they would have been on the first, leading, ascent. Essentially, you have to climb the pitch twice, so roped soloing can be slow work.

Once you have cleaned the pitch and retrieved all anchors and freed your rope, you start the next pitch, tying the bottom end of the rope to an anchor, giving yourself slack, clipping into a loop, and going up again into new territory above.

I have used this system countless times on rock and ice when I had no climbing partners, and it gave me that small extra margin of confidence that meant the difference between chickening out or going up.

Not only did I teach myself how to lead climbs on rock and ice this way, I also learned a lot about facing fear of death when I was totally alone -- without fellow Marines as back-up. On my solo climbs, it was just me, my fear, and the mountain. Mountains have no sympathy. They just sit there, soaring above you or gaping below you. The rest is up to you.

"Be still as a mountain,
Move like a great river."
~~Wu Yu-hsiang~~

Roped solo climbing has provided me with moments of deep meditative calm and bliss at the top of the climb, but of course these zen moments are sometimes preceded by moments of sheer terror on the journey upwards. I am a richer person for having ascended this path.

-Zenwind.

This is the third and last entry about my February 1979 ice climbing trip to the Adirondack Mountains when it was 40 degrees below Zero all week. On the last day, I climbed Chouinard's Gully, the ice climb I had most wanted to do.

This is an ice-filled gully named after the great Yvon Chouinard who first climbed it in the late sixties. It is at Chapel Pond Pass.

My two buddies from the day before did not show up, and it was too cold to wait around, so I decided to do a solo climb of Chouinard's Gully – roped solo.

The hardest parts of Chouinard's Gully are near the bottom. The easier upper sections go on through the trees for near 400 feet above the pond. I was armed with an ice axe and a short hammer, both with the classic curved "Alpine" style pick that shattered ice more than penetrated it, and which has been replaced since by more re-curved styles. The crampons on my boots were old-style, and my boots were non-insulated French guide boots.

The first crux near the bottom went alright, with only a few scares. I felt like a real mountain climber now.

Way up, on the second crux, I found myself on a vertical wall of hard, blue, brittle, shattering water ice, while I was running out of strength and starting to freak out. I had "sewing-machine legs," where my legs shook violently, threatening to pop my flimsy front-point crampon placements out. My arms were tiring out quickly and my hands were numb. For every one good axe placement, I had to hammer four times, breaking huge plates of ice off which almost knocked my foot placements out. I looked down at my last ice-screw placement, far, far below. I got really scared. I thought: "I'm going to fall." And I almost did.

The Zen of Fear.

I looked up to my right and to my left, and I decided to make one desperate attempt to climb up and to the left to escape off the wall. Crampons almost coming out, I loosened my left-hand hammer-pick and tried for a quick and adequate stick off to the left. As I was doing this, a lyric of poetry or song came to my mind from somewhere: "Don't stop me now...." I swung, and the pick stuck. Not a bomb-proof placement. Just marginal. But it stuck. So I kicked in my left crampon further to the left, and then the right. Then I loosened the right-hand ice axe and, as I was getting ready to plant it directly above my head, the lyrics repeated in my head: "Don't stop me now...." And, after three desperate swings, the axe grabbed a rather feeble hold. Now, with two marginal hand placements, I started to climb up with higher foot placements, and, while doing so, the rest of the lyrics came to me: "...‘cause I'm havin' such a good time." Then, wack in another, higher, left-hand placement, and then the right.

As I moved up, the lyrics kept cycling through my head. At one point, my axe was shattering the ice and not getting any kind of stick at all, and I got that old feeling of "I'm going to fall." The legs were crapping out, my left-hand hammer would never hold me by itself, and the fear was at my throat. "DON'T ... STOP ... ME ... NOW...." Swing, kick, kick, hammer, kick, kick, sweat, tremble ... "...'cause I'm havin' such a good time." "Don't stop me now...."

And I moved up and off the wall onto a gentler slope. That song saved my life – or at least saved me from a most grievous fall -- and I could not identify the singer at that point.

I finished the rest of the climb above, which was much easier. At 400 feet above Chapel Pond, I felt like a champion of the world. I rappelled down the entire climb in several sections, while fragments of that song was triumphantly running through my mind. "Two hundred degrees, that's why they call me Mr Fahrenheit. I'm traveling at the speed of light."

"I'm a shooting star, leaping through the sky." "Don't stop me now, ‘cause I'm havin' such a good time!"

As I rappelled the last pitch down to the pond, I noticed the two guys from the day before that were supposed to do this climb with me. They were quite damaged by the cold from yesterday's Chapel Pond Slab climb. They were badly frostbitten and were going home.

I had had enough of bivouacking and climbing in minus 40 temperatures for 6 days and nights, so the road sounded good to me also. As I fired up my car to head home, the radio played a song that had been on the air a lot in the last few weeks. I suddenly recognized it. It was my song: "Don't Stop Me Now," by Queen.

"I'm havin' such a good time."

-Zenwind.

My previous entry described the agony of bivouacking in the extreme temperature of minus 40 degrees F in the Adirondacks (February 1979). These next two entries will describe the ice climbing that week.

All the climbing was done in Chapel Pond Pass. Chapel Pond Slab is a 500 foot face with a long, high, steep direct line at the very top. There are a host of other, mostly shorter climbs nearby.

The great American climber, Yvon Chouinard, had just published his book, *Climbing Ice*, an incredible Bible of ice climbing. I had studied it diligently. Every climber was discussing the techniques and lore of this work, and they were eager to see what they could do.

One morning, I met two hardy North Carolina climbers who had never experienced an Adirondack winter. They were also relative novices at ice climbing like myself.

I was alone and really wanted another human on the other end of my rope, so I schemed to team up with these guys, since they seemed sensible and reliable. The problem is that a rope of three climbers is too cold in winter, because there is a lot of wait-time while only one climber moves at a time. A rope of two is faster and warmer.

I plotted to con them into roping up with me. I wandered up to the foot of the Slab area with them, giving them a guided tour. The entire lower section of the Slab is lower angle and was covered with extremely climbable firm frozen snow – very solid and very good for using the flat-footed French Technique, which is restful and really saves the leg muscles from the strain of Front-Pointing.

Front-Pointing is more instinctive, like climbing a ladder, but it tires you out quickly. It is the necessary technique on extremely steep ice. French Technique is awkward and hard to learn, but I had been practicing. So, I started "French-stepping" immediately up the face, un-roped, looking like a French guide, chattering away about climbing techniques and history.

It worked. They thought I was an accomplished ice climber, and, when I asked them if they wanted to rope up with me, they said yes. We worked our way up the lower part of the snowslope, me teaching them how to conserve energy by French-stepping. We got to the steep direct section of the Slab and decided it was too hard for any of us to lead, as it would require sustained Front-Pointing on steep brittle ice. So we opted for a shorter, less steep, leftward route up an icy gully that bypassed the harder section. I led up, Front-Pointing and placing several ice screws for protection, then anchored to a tree and belayed them both up to the top with me. We rappelled down another gully.

They camped that night near my bivouac on Chapel Pond, then they decided the next morning that it was too cold, and they headed home. I never even got their names. I now had to look for new climbing partners.

I ran into two climbers from southwestern Pennsylvania, Andy and another guy. We talked and decided to climb the direct steep Slab route tomorrow. These guys were great technical climbers with excellent knowledge of climbing and its history. They were safety minded and cool. But they were not prepared for Adirondack winter and were not dressed for it. They wore knickers and knee-socks, suitable for a summer climb in the Alps. Gloves instead of mittens. And, worst of all, they stayed the nights in motels, ate in restaurants, and drove in their pickup truck to the climbs. By being in heated environments, the shock of minus 40 degrees was too much, and they would become frostbitten.

We started up the Slab, me free soloing again up the snowy lower part French-style, while they were safely roped up but going too slow. By my being in constant but relaxed motion, I neither sweated nor got cold. We got to the steep ice wall at the top section of the Slab, and I roped up with them, tying on to the second man. Andy led, and I was third. He led boldly and decisively up and over the top. The second man climbed up next, while Andy belayed him.

I was all ready to follow on belay, when a voice from above asked: "Can you climb off the face on your own? We cannot bring you up." They could not belay me up to them, and my guess was that they were too cold in the brutal summit wind. I yelled back: "Okay, but untie my rope and let me retrieve it." My rope fell back down to my feet. I went off to the left and ascended the gully I had led with the Carolina guys, but I did it roped solo this time. Damn, it was cold up there on top in the wind.

I traversed over the top of the Slab to meet my two former rope-mates, only to see them slowly staggering up to me. From a distance, I assessed the situation immediately: these guys were severely hypothermic and in great danger in this frigid wind. When I reached them, their speech was slurred and eyes glazed. Their thinking was slow and indecisive, and all I could understand was that they were cold and their hands and feet hurt terribly. They asked: "How will we get down?" I started feeding them chocolate, nuts and other stuff, and giving them lots of water. I tied them to me and led them over to a wooded cliff with plenty of trees for rappel.

Their hands would not function well, so I tied all knots and rigged all rappels. After many rappels, we got down out of the wind and to the bottom of the cliff, then we trudged back to where their truck was parked. They headed back to town, while I settled in for a night's bivouac again as the Dharma Bum "Hobo of Chapel Pond."

We had planned to climb Chouinard's Gully together the next day, but they never showed up, and I had to climb it alone, roped solo. When I rappelled to the bottom of this climb, after completing it, my friends showed up, looking a bit beat. Andy's earlobe was frostbitten and his friend had badly frostbitten fingers. They were easily chilled all over, in pain, and on their way home.

I had decided that morning that this would be my last climbing day this week and that I would head home by dark. I could not bear to spend a 7th night in bivouac at minus 40 degrees. My fingers were cracked and bleeding from the cold, and it was painful to do anything with them.

I had honed my winter camping skills, avoided frostbite, had done some ice climbing at a higher level of boldness than anything I had ever experienced before, and I watched a cold Moon travel across the skies, lighting up a vast, frozen world. I had a great week's vacation.

-Zenwind.