Alone on the Wall: Alex Honnold and the Ultimate Limits of Adventure (21 page)

When the weather finally
cleared on February 12, with a forecast of a good window during the next few days, Tommy and I headed up. The big advantage we thought we had over previous
parties that had tried the Fitz Traverse was that instead of having the second jug every pitch, we’d simul-climb almost everything. That ought to mean less wear and tear on our rope.

Just as we had on the Triple in Yosemite, we each led huge blocks at a time, upwards of 800 feet. Part of what makes climbing with Tommy so great is that we can lead interchangeably, though on this traverse he would get all the ice and mixed pitches, since he had vastly more experience with that terrain. We got up the first tower, Aguja Guillaumet, in only two very long pitches, taking a mere two and a half hours to climb the thousand feet of the Brenner-Moschioni route.

It turns out that Rolo—Rolando Garibotti—and Colin Haley were trying the Fitz Traverse at the same time we were. Rolo’s the man when it comes to Patagonia—not only its tireless chronicler, but the guy who’s put up more routes on more different peaks than anyone else. He’s also become a kind of steward of the range, improving trails and assembling route guides. We met up with that pair on the summit of Guillaumet, since they’d climbed a different route. Rolo had had hip surgery the previous year, and now his hip was really bothering him, so, reluctantly, they abandoned their effort. Rolo was kind enough to lend me his aluminum strap-on crampons, which would turn out to be extremely helpful for the traverse.

We went really light, figuring speed would mean safety. Our rack was seventeen cams, a handful of nuts, and fourteen slings. No pitons. We were counting on finding fixed anchors and even fixed gear along the way, to supplement the pro we’d place as we led. The real question mark was whether we could find the rappel anchors left by other parties, so we could rap most of the big descents from each tower as we moved along the ridgeline.

We had one sixty-meter climbing rope, and a skinny eighty-meter tag line—a rope to use not for leading but for rappels. By
tying the tag line and the lead rope together end to end, and feeding it through the anchor sling, we could make a rappel on the doubled rope as long as sixty meters, then pull the ropes down to use on the next rappel. For the ice, only one ice screw and a single ice tool—a Black Diamond Cobra, a short metal axe with a curved shaft and a sharp, notched pick.

We did most of the climbing in approach shoes, or tennies, as we call them. Rock shoes only for the hardest pitches. No mountain boots. We strapped our crampons onto our tennies, which doesn’t make for the most stable configuration, because the soles and edges of the shoes are too soft and flexible.

One sleeping bag between us, and one big puffy (down jacket). A stove and three gas canisters. We originally planned not to bring a tent, but on one of our “training” days during the bad weather, we’d spent the night in our Black Diamond First Light tent and realized how comfortable it was. It’s a pretty amazing shelter, because it weighs only one pound. At the last minute, we decided to take it. It turned out to be a godsend.

We were determined to go light enough that all our gear, stove, fuel, and food could fit into one fifteen-pound pack (for the leader) and one twenty-five-pound pack (for the second). For a multiday alpine traverse, that’s pretty frickin’ light!

Afterward, some clueless journalist asked us if we’d had a film crew along. As if! But Tommy had been given a very light camera, so we tried to take video clips of each other as we moved along the traverse—footage that might eventually be spliced together into a film documenting the climb. We also had iPhones to shoot photos with. Actually, my iPhone was one of my most important pieces of gear, because I had about sixty topos of the various routes on the various towers loaded onto it.

From the summit of Guillaumet, we ridge-traversed over to the Aguja Mermoz, topping out at 5:00 p.m. Four hours later, we set
up the tent right on the crest of the ridge and settled in for our first night’s bivouac. I got the puffy that night, and slept nice and warm. It was only a few days later that Tommy confessed that he’d basically shivered through the night. In fact, I hogged the puffy for three nights, thinking that as a suburban California boy I needed it more than a Colorado hardman did. At last, Tommy’s reluctant admission of how cold he was made me stop being selfish and give him the puffy.

We got off at 8:30 a.m. on February 13. It took a long, long day to climb over the Aguja Val Biois and up the Goretta Pillar via the Casarotto route. There we found some of the finest rock climbing on the whole traverse, with free moves up to 5.11d. That stretch, which I led, was one of only a few passages on the whole traverse where we switched to rock shoes. We French freed whenever we could, either grabbing and pulling on fixed gear or popping in a cam or nut and pulling on that. Still, we did very little aid on the whole traverse, nothing that we’d rate harder than A1.

It wasn’t until 7:45 p.m. that we stood at the base of the final headwall on the north pillar of Fitz Roy itself. We were pretty darn tired after more than eleven continuous hours of climbing, but this was no place for a bivouac, so we decided to try to get up the headwall and camp on the summit. We also thought that the colder snow conditions of evening would be safer than waiting till morning, when sun on the wall might send all kinds of stuff falling down on us.

We could see at once that there was way more ice and snow on that headwall than we’d expected, thanks to one of the wettest summers in recent years. It was Tommy’s turn to lead. As he forged his way up into that mess of ice, snow, and rock, we faced what would turn out to be the crux of the whole traverse. And here the climbing got really scary.

•
•
•
•

Crusted up with rime ice, that headwall would have been tough enough to lead with a pair of ice tools, a good supply of screws, and crampons firmly strapped onto mountain boots. For Tommy, with only the one screw and the Cobra as his sole tool, and crampons wobbling on his tennies, it was a nightmare. As he worked his way up into the rime, he uncharacteristically shouted down, “I don’t know about this.”

I tried to encourage him. “Dude, you got this,” I shouted up. “You’re a total boss.” But I had my own doubts and fears.

A waterfall was springing out of the ice, as Tommy put it, “from a hole in the mountain that resemble[d] the mouth of a dragon.” He later captured that incredibly dicey lead in his
Alpinist
piece
:

For the next half hour, Tommy flailed around, as he described it, “like a hooked fish in a rapid.” Finally he leaned off his tool placement far to the side and got a tiny cam partly slotted in a
crack. He wasn’t sure it would hold, but he grabbed it with both hands and swung over. Soaked to the skin, he was shivering, on the verge of hypothermia, but at last he was on dry rock.

The sun had set a while before. Tommy switched on his headlamp and aided up the crack. At last he took off his crampons and free climbed beyond. As he later wrote,

All this time, I was wearing both of our jackets, the big puffy in addition to Tommy’s light puffy. He was leading in just his hoodie and hardshell. It was amazing because after he got soaked, he climbed a lot farther, then eventually dried out and got warm again. Since I was doing nothing but belay for forty-five minutes at a stretch, then jugging for fifteen minutes, I was getting kind of chilly. It was impressive that Tommy could keep it together in such cold temps. Total hardman.

Finally the angle of the headwall relented. But now, in the dark, Tommy led a 600-foot pitch of snow and mixed steps. You’re just scrambling, except that it was really snowy. Since we only had the one ice tool, he was leading with it, which meant that I wound up simul-climbing in strap-on crampons with no tool. Since the rope
just disappeared into the night and I didn’t know if he’d gotten in any pro, I was seconding with only Tommy’s pick marks to show me the route. And just generally clawing at the mountain with my hands. It was scary.

We didn’t get near the summit until 2:00 a.m. Just below the top, we found a nook shaped by a cornice that gave us a lee space to set up our tent. “What a day!” said Tommy.

We got ourselves inside the tent and shared our single sleeping bag. Once again, since I had the puffy, Tommy shivered through the night without complaining.

I’ll have to admit that, on that headwall, I was way outside my comfort zone. That was one of my hardest days of climbing ever.

After only three hours of fitful sleep, we packed up camp and hiked to the summit of Fitz Roy. We didn’t spend long there, shooting a few photos, still dog-tired. But from here on, we were pushing beyond the Care Bear Traverse that Freddie Wilkinson and Dana Drummond had established in 2008.

To get off Fitz Roy and down to the col between it and the Aguja Kakito, we had to make twenty rappels down the Franco-Argentine route. The route was like a waterfall. Three days of sunny weather on a south-facing wall had melted everything in sight. The ropes were like sponges and we got massively wet—not that that was a big problem, since it was sunny and nice out. An acquaintance of ours, Whit Margo, had just successfully guided a client up one of the ice routes on the other side of Fitz, and we ran into him near the summit. He gave us good beta for how to find the rap anchors, which was really helpful. But then, as we were rapping the face, his client’s ice axe came tomahawking past us at about a million miles an hour. He’d accidentally dropped it and it went the whole distance down the wall. It was kind of a weird encounter.

From the col between Fitz Roy and Kakito onward, though,
we were in largely uncharted terrain. We managed to weave our way over and around the various spiky summits of Kakito. But it was 6:00 p.m. before we stood at the base of the north face of Aguja Poincenot. Here we faced our second major rock climb, as we started up the route pioneered by Dean Potter and Steph Davis in 2001. It’s a serious, 1,000-foot route with some bad rock and poor protection on a few pitches. Dean and Steph rated it 5.11d A1.

Our three days of nonstop climbing were starting to take their toll. The skin on Tommy’s fingers was starting to be really painful, it was rubbed so raw. On Poincenot, I led the whole wall, but instead of simul-climbing, Tommy jugged up second to save his fingers. I short-fixed—tying off the middle of the rope to an anchor so he could jug while I soloed on—as often as I could to make it less arduous for him.

For one of the few times on the traverse, I switched to rock shoes. Then I managed to lead the whole thousand feet in only three and a quarter hours. There was only one pitch of truly bad rock, up at the top, but it was easy. And there was some semi-unprotected face climbing at the bottom that was spicy. But basically the route followed nice splitter cracks and I just charged along. I really felt like I was at home in the Valley. Really comfortable climbing.

Wasted as we were on the summit of Poincenot, we were still getting along great and climbing as efficiently as we knew how to. Throughout the traverse, we’d found time to take short breaks as we shot video clips on Tommy’s camera. For voice-over, we added commentary about the whole undertaking. At one point, for instance, Tommy said, “This has gotta be the most scenic thing in the universe.” On the summit of Fitz Roy, I’d seen other climbers maybe five hundred feet below us on a different route, and I couldn’t help blurting out, “There are humans down there! We’re going to go down and hug them!” Now, with the camera rolling, Tommy said, “Tell us where we are.” I dutifully answered, “We’re
on the summit of Poincenot!” Corny, maybe, but who knows what a good film editor could do with that stuff.

We pitched our tent again just below the summit of Poincenot on the south side and managed to get another few hours of sleep. That night, Tommy tried to build a little tent platform out of rocks so we’d have something level to sleep on while I cooked dinner. He finally gave up about halfway through because he couldn’t make it work. The ledge we were on was just too rocky and misshapen. So we wound up sleeping with our legs hanging over this big drop and a bunch of rocks sticking into our backs. There was always a junk show inside the tent. But we slept well enough. Fatigue does wonders. Still, I remember that bivy as the worst of the traverse.

By now we looked pretty haggard. We weren’t eating nearly enough food to match the calories we burned, and our meal breaks were pretty on-the-run. I remember at one point both of us eating polenta with Tommy’s broken sunglasses because we couldn’t find our spoon. We were able to stay hydrated, however, by using straws we’d brought along to suck the standing water out of little huecos (natural pockets) in the rock. Or we’d eat snow while we were belaying.