By: Nick Venechuk

I came to slowly, something warm dripping down my forehead into the black headband on my brow. Must be sweat, although I don’t feel hot. My vision slowly returns and I look up to see the glacier below, dazzlingly white in the early afternoon sun, a great cloud of ice and rock, two thousand feet down, above my head. Something’s wrong here. I blinked –

-POP-

– and everything flipped around right-side-up. I was hanging  upside-down. Minutes before, I had been nearing the top of Longs Peak – at 14,255 feet, the highest point in Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park – and now, pain.

Let me back up a bit.

Certain climbing partnerships live in legend. Hillary and Norgay, Hornbein and Unsoeld, Bob Barker and the lederhosen-clad climber in the ‘Cliffhangers’ game. Other partnerships are known less for their successes than for their spectacular failures. And some partnerships…some climbing partnerships exist by way of enthusiasm,  bull-headedness, and the sheer, blinding luck that allows children and the infirm to survive. When Aaron and I set our minds to climbing the Notch Couloir, on Longs Peak, we imagined ourselves the former – bold mountain men setting off for adventure – but we were about to learn a hard lesson about what adventure can mean.

Alpine climbing requires an early start; the “alpine start,” it’s even called. The surreal feeling one experiences when driving through Boulder, Colorado at 1am, starting one’s day before the night’s revelers have gone to bed, never goes away, no matter how many early starts have come before. Aaron and I reflected that on another night it might have been us wandering the streets and crowding the food carts on Pearl Street. Flirting with the university coeds, enjoying $5 pitchers of PBR at the Sundown Saloon. But the truly  committed alpinist cares little for these silly distractions.

I still say the car slowed on its own  accord.

One drink at the Sundowner surely couldn’t take that long, could it?  Soft-shell pants aren’t that out of  character in Boulder. I felt myself pulled by the siren song of Boulder, by the cultured and talented community members milling around. The ship, as I sometimes call my trail-weary Grand Prix, was heading for the rocks and all hope seemed lost. Just in time, Aaron’s hand reached out and turned the radio to NPR. With BBC World Service acting as cotton in my ears, I navigated through the straits of Boulder. Aaron, a Brit, heard the dulcet tones of his countrymen and remembered the round hips and crooked teeth of the ladies of his youth and the spell was broken. Soon we were at the Longs Peak trailhead, lacing our boots and shouldering our packs for the long walk in.

No amount of enthusiasm can shorten the 4.5 mile approach to Longs Peak. The way is well-travelled, but with only our wits to distract us, the hike seemed to take forever. However, we soon found ourselves equipping crampons and ice axes for the climb up Lamb’s Slide, a 1,000-foot couloir, which provides access to Longs’ classic summit routes. Before long we had reached the top of Lamb’s Slide and were facing the first  technical challenge of the day: the  Broadway Ledges.

On the best, driest days of summer, Broadway is a narrow grass ledge perched 1,000 feet above talus fields. The steep, loose snow ahead of us posed a significantly different challenge than the relatively safe, albeit exposed,  Summer route. Loose snow, the  consistency of powdered sugar, covered every non-vertical surface. One misstep here, a miscalculation of the strength of the snow, could mean disaster.

I let Aaron go first.

He led the way with typical English reserve and, mercifully, we reached the Notch Couloir proper. The reader may note that the entirety of the story so far has simply been describing the APPROACH to our intended climb. This is intentional: alpine climbing is often a long walk to a short climb. Sometimes it’s a long walk and a long climb to another, shorter and harder, climb. I’ve tried to  explain to my non-climber friends that this is part of the fun – indeed; sometimes it’s MOST of the fun! Somehow those who have never struggled through gale-force winds and thigh-deep snow just for the privilege of climbing a few hundred feet of icy rock fail to see the  appeal. Also, remember, one has to wake up exceedingly early.

Taking into account his responsibility as leader, Aaron judiciously placed  protection in the sides and snow pickets in the belly of the couloir. From the safety and casual position of the second, I took photographs and complained that Aaron was placing too much protection and moving too slowly. The climbing was not difficult, and we took our time, enjoying the movement and the knowledge that we were learning our craft on one of the classic climbs of the Rockies.

The character of the climb immediately changed upon leaving the snow. What had been a clear path softly paved in white was now a mystery. We had  discussed a route trending generally up and right, around a blind corner; I now took the lead and hoped to find the way up and out past this corner. My criticism of Aaron’s abundant protection ringing in my ears, and the purposefully sparse selection of cams and nuts weighing light on my harness, I tried to  maintain the alpine nature of the route by maintaining a healthy distance between placements. I moved on,  cursing the stiff mountain boots on my feet, cursing the melting snow which slicked the rock, and soon found myself around the blind corner, at a broad arête facing a shallow gully.

I began to feel uneasy.

My feet insecure, handholds nonexistent, last piece of protection 25 feet away, I looked with increasing apprehension for a likely-looking fissure. When nothing presented itself immediately I began to scrape away the once blessed and now cursed snow, soon finding a flared crack which was certainly not suited for any known rock protection conceived by man. Fortunately Black Diamond C4s are Heaven-sent. A red #1 looked like it might just absorb enough force before  pulling that a falling climber would only be maimed, rather than killed outright.

I moved into the gully and immediately struggled to find good purchase. My boots would not smear on the wet, slabby footholds, and my handholds were marginal. I was able to move up, slowly, 10 feet, 20 feet; above my head, one or two moves away, I saw the exit hold that would allow me to get to easier terrain. Moving toward this hold is when a foot finally lost purchase. My marginal  handholds were not enough to  compensate and I began to slide down the 65-degree rock. For one split  second my momentum was slowed and I thought I might be able to stop, but it wasn’t enough and I accelerated down the slope, 20 feet, parallel with my “not even bodyweight” cam, and over an edge into free-fall. At some point my foot hit a rock, or the rope, and I was flipped upside-down. I bounced off the walls of the gully; shoulders, knees, elbows, pack and helmet all taking impacts, the last thing I saw before blackness was a fin of rock flying toward (or was it the other way around?) my eye.

From miles away, I heard Aaron calling, “NICK! Are you injured?!” Who was he talking to, I wondered? He’s so far away, where is he? Why can’t I stand up?

I came to slowly. I called back to tell him I was okay, so far as I could tell, and I needed him to lower me to a safe ledge. I assessed the damage: pain in my leg, ribs feeling more flexible than usual, and more blood than I expected  flowing from my eye. Seems to have soaked through my headband. My pack in tatters, hanging off my shoulders. Looking upward, I saw that,  miraculously, the cam had held, saving me from a swinging, 80-foot fall. Even so, I had fallen nearly 50 feet. I was now further down the gully I had been  climbing out of, and the hunger for  adventure that had inspired this climb was completely sated. All I wanted was to go home. I didn’t want to climb any more. I didn’t want to hike the five miles back to the car. I wanted someone to pick me up and take me home right NOW.

Finally I’ve come to the point. The reason why we climbers endure wind, snow, cold, early starts, time away from our loved ones, accepting and indeed embracing the danger and exposure. In that moment, I truly desired not just to GO home, but to BE home; however in the mountains no one was there to pick me up. Aaron was 150 feet away, on the other end of the rope. I was faced with the one decision, the only true decision that ever really confronts mountaineers: up or down? Do I climb back up over the rocks still shining with drops of my own blood, or build an anchor with what little gear I had left, and ask Aaron to come rescue me?  The reason we climb is not only for the sights, in most cases those can be gained simply by hiking; not only to test our technical skill, for these can be tested much more at a gym or a local crag. We climb in order to discover, when things go wrong, how we will answer the  question?

Up or down?