The Beckoning Silence (13 page)

Lowe and Weiss made their extraordinary ascent of Bridalveil in 1974 using old bamboo-shafted Chouinard axes and ice screws that were notoriously difficult to use and not very reliable, yet they made a free ascent of the brittle bulges, insubstantial pillars and numerous overhangs. They graded the route WI 6+. Twenty-five years later it remains a serious undertaking. In 1996 Jeff Lowe wrote, ‘… there are still very few climbs of greater difficulty, the top end of the scale is now only just WI 7 on pure ice.’

There is a certain limitation on how hard pure ice can get from a technical point of view. Bridalveil Falls was originally graded as 6+. Today modern tools and techniques have lowered the grade to WI 5+ but in lean conditions it can easily be grade 6.

It was undoubtedly spectacular. Four hundred feet of narrow ice pillars, shrouds of cauliflower ice and delicate fringes of chandelier icicles draped in a huge white veil down a rock face at the head of a box canyon. Great blossoms of icicles hung down like talons and billowing plumes of layered ice sprayed out in a spattered lacy filigree. In summer the waterfall thunders down in a continuous explosive roaring force and it is hard to imagine anything strong enough to still this awesome giant. A Telluride winter, however, is said to be cold enough to freeze hell over. To-Hell-u-ride, as the old miners used to say of the place.

The technical ice climbing grades rate the single hardest pitch of a climb as well as factoring in its seriousness and the general nature of the ice – rock solid or honeycombed, rotten or hoar-frost. The medium is infinitely variable. Waterfall ice grades are designated by the acronym WI which stands for ‘water ice’ and generally goes from the easiest grade WI 1 – easy walking on ice, almost impossible to fall on unless shot – to grade WI 6 – unimaginably steep, exhausting and frightening.

Some guide-books include a grade WI 7 for pure ice and this involves climbing at the extreme limit of present-day difficulty, requiring immense physical prowess and a Kamikaze-like sense of self-preservation that not many people possess. Only a handful of these routes exist and few have ever been repeated. If you find yourself on this stuff you are either irremediably stupid, have no imagination whatsoever, or are just very unlucky and probably soon to be communing with the angels.

Although a reasonably accurate grading system has been devised, ice is such a fickle medium and so dependent on seasonal and daily weather conditions that the climber cannot take them as read and the grade has to be assumed to be a consensus of opinion of what the climb is normally like. It might be more constructive to grade routes on the likely gamut of emotions the prospective climber is going to experience starting at the easiest grade and upwards – bored, intrigued, absorbed, alarmed, horrified, mentally certified and dead.

A climb can be a grade easier than its given standard when it is in full, fat conditions or it can be a full grade harder in thin, lean conditions. Free-standing pillars of ice, often called ‘cigars’, are notable for their unreliability. They can form in as short a period as a week and fall down without warning a few days later. If you happened to be attached to them at the time this can be very distressing. A certain degree of experience is needed to judge these variations. It can make the difference between enjoying yourself in a frightened sort of way or dying in a painful sort of way.

I’ve seen the waterfall ice grade 5 described as ‘… strenuous, sustained climbing on good ice, mostly vertical, with some resting places. Ice can be very thin and delicate. Protection may be reliable but require effort and ingenuity to create. There may be long run-outs between protection and belays may be exposed to ice fall.’

The next stage up, WI 6, I have seen variously described in guide-books as ‘… very steep, strenuous ice pitches that may be vertical the entire way, with overhanging sections, and very few resting places. Ice may not be of the best quality, can be rotten, cauliflowered or chandeliered. Often thin and not protectable, or the protection may be very dubious. It can involve poorly welded pencil icicles and fractured chandelier-hung mushrooms requiring an open-minded exploratory attitude. It often entails hanging ice belays and a very high skill level is mandatory, as are a cool head for leading and following, and efficient and excellent climbing technique. Don’t even think of falling off at this grade!’ it adds helpfully.

Bridalveil Falls is about seven hours’ drive away from Boulder, hanging above the town of Telluride in the San Juan mountains, Colorado. I had been to the Mountain Film festival in the town as a guest speaker a few years earlier and remembered it as a lively, picturesque, if somewhat expensive ski resort. It nestled at the end of a stunning box canyon and was overlooked by the peaks of the Mount Sneffels and the Silverton West range of the San Juans. As Clyde enthused about the ice potential in Colorado he mentioned another famous route. The Ames Ice Hose was if anything technically harder and more committing than Bridalveil Falls and the two climbs were rightly regarded as mega-classic hard American ice routes.

As the evening drew to an end I decided that Bridalveil Falls would be our next winter adventure. Eric Coomer, a prolific climber of big walls happiest nailing his way up overhanging test-pieces in his hunting ground of Yosemite, asked whether I fancied trying a big wall with him. Emboldened by an excess of alcohol, I forgot my long-held horror of jumaring up silk-thin ropes hanging over thousands of feet of emptiness and enthusiastically agreed that an adventure with Eric was just what I needed.

In truth I had always secretly harboured a desire to climb one of the classic big wall routes on the granite of El Capitan. The Nose, Salathe Wall and the north-west face of Half Dome had always sung a siren call to me but to date I had never known anyone keen to join me. By the time I boarded the plane to Newark I had agreed to throw myself at two more classic climbs. I had thought long and hard about Tat’s decision to quit mountaineering and, although tempted, I still felt there were a few climbs I needed to do. I was finding it very hard to let go. Privately I had been forming a tick list of classic routes in my mind. I knew I had to stop some time – my legs gave me no choice – so rather than just cut and run I felt it better to wind down slowly with some memorable and very special routes.

Shortly after arriving home, I rang Ray in his climbing shop, ‘Kathmandu’, in Utrecht, Holland.

‘Listen, Ray,’ I said cheerfully. ‘I have this cunning plan …’

‘Ah,’ he said warily.

‘You’ll love it.’

‘I’ve heard that before.’ He sighed. ‘Go on, what is it?’

‘Bridalveil Falls,’ I said. ‘Colorado, next winter. What about it?’

‘Bridalveil? I’ve heard of that. Didn’t Jeff Lowe do it years ago?’

‘Yeah, with Mike Weiss,’ I agreed. ‘They did it in 1974, for God’s sake! Can you imagine climbing grade 6+ ice in those days with that sort of gear?’

‘Six plus!’ Ray yelped. ‘We can’t climb six bloody plus. Are you mad?’

‘Of course we can,’ I said trying to hide my doubts. ‘Anyway, it won’t be that hard. Not today with modern gear and not if it’s in good nick.’

‘So, how hard is it in good nick?’

‘Oh, 5+, maybe a little bit of 6 …’

‘A little bit of 6! I don’t want any 6. Six is overhanging. Six is frightening. Six is …’

‘It looks bloody amazing! There’s a photo of it in your copy of Jeff Lowe’s
Ice World
. You’ve got it in the shop. Go take a look. It’s on page 212.’ There was a prolonged silence and then the sound of pages being turned and the sudden hissing intake of breath.

‘It looks good, doesn’t it?’ I guessed he was staring at the picture.

‘I’m not sure good is the adjective I was looking for,’ Ray muttered darkly. ‘It gives it WI 6 here, you know?’

‘Ah, well, yes, that’s true, but it doesn’t really mean anything …’

‘It means it’s grade 6 …’

‘Yes, but it’s a classic line. I mean, look at it. Just imagine being on that.’ I had the same book open on my desk and was staring at the stepped pillars of blue water ice and cauliflower mushrooms. ‘We’ve got to do it. Next winter. OK?’

‘Where is it?’ Ray asked and I knew the hook had been set. He was tempted.

‘Telluride,’ I answered. ‘Lovely place. We’ll fly to Denver, hire a car, drive for seven hours and throw ourselves at Bridalveil. If we do that we can try the Ames Ice Hose.’

‘What’s that?’ Ray asked suspiciously. ‘Another classic, I suppose.’

‘Well, yes it is, actually. It looks amazing. You’ll love it.’

‘And how hard is that, then?’

‘Well, grade 5 with a bit of 6, about the same as Bridalveil,’ I said and tried to hurry on and change the subject.

‘You’re kidding?’

‘If we can climb Bridalveil we should be able to do Ames if it’s the same grade.’

‘You don’t sound so certain?’ Ray said accusingly.

‘It’s more serious …’

‘Dangerous, you mean?’

‘Sort of.’ I felt he was wavering. ‘But it’s a mega-classic.’

‘They tend to be mega-classics because they are mega-desperate,’ Ray pointed out succinctly. ‘What does the guide-book say?’

‘Right, well it grades it WI 5/6, 200 metres high and it says … “bring along Spectres, ice screws and slings. Better to bring mostly skill, courage and cunning rather than thinking that any gear placed on the first pitch could possibly be substantial enough to hold a fall. Usually the first pitch cannot be protected and screws are only useful for the last two …”’ I stopped reading as Ray was snorting with laughter. ‘Come on,’ I coaxed him. ‘It’ll be great fun and it’ll be a change from La Grave.’

‘Yes, that’s a point,’ Ray agreed.

‘OK, in principle I take it that you are keen on the idea?’

‘Sort of,’ Ray said cautiously. ‘I’m just not sure we’re up to that sort of climbing. I mean it looks horrifying.’

‘Of course we are,’ I said airily. ‘It’s just an ice climb. We just do what we know and that’s it. No problems. Anyway, we can always run away.’

‘Yes, we’re good at that,’ Ray laughed.

One year later, in January 1999, Ray and I found ourselves standing beneath Bridalveil Falls peering up with cricks in our necks and wondering whether we might not have bitten off more than we could chew. We had walked up to the foot of the route to check on the condition of the ice. Secretly I think we were both hoping that it would be falling down, thus giving us an honourable excuse for running away. Unfortunately it looked in perfect nick and we had no excuses.

We had hoped to have Tat with us but sadly our plans to avoid scaring ourselves rigid on Bridalveil Falls by relying on Tat’s renowned prowess had gone by the wayside. Tat had died three months earlier. We stood beneath the ice cascade feeling a little stupid and rather alarmed at our ambition. We made a few half-hearted jokes about Tat’s final cunning plan to avoid having to climb it and then trooped wearily down towards the lights of Telluride.

Waterfall ice climbing is a strangely addictive pastime. It arouses in me a host of conflicting emotions giving rise to questions to which I have no answer. The most prominent of these is ‘
What are you doing, you idiot?
’

This panicked thought normally howls through my mind as I reach a horrifying point of no return on some monstrous icy crumbling edifice. Unfortunately, having survived such an experience, the mind seems to be able to perform a bizarre sort of memory dump and as you sit in the bar supping a much-needed beer the nightmare climb gradually becomes a memory of ecstatic delight, an ascent of such aesthetic beauty it will live with you for ever, an experience so deeply life-enhancing that from then on you are a changed person. Hence, the moment your climbing partner thrusts a guide-book under your nose and points excitedly at an even bigger and more perilous icicle you do not leap to your feet and rush screaming from the bar. No, you grin with measured insanity and say, ‘Hey, that looks brilliant. Let’s do it.’ If you are wise and experienced you then head to the bar and order a large whisky chaser, just to ensure that your dementia remains pleasantly stable.

Climbing frozen waterfalls appears to the uninformed observer to be a complicated if somewhat novel form of suicide. Quite often this very same thought is worming uneasily through the mind of the hapless climber.

Modern ice tools now come branded with fiendishly exciting and aggressive names. Rambos, Footfangs and Terminators are, in fact, crampons. Black Prophets, Aliens and Cobras are ice axes, previously known as alpenstocks. These are names to conjure up visions of mythic battles to be won fearlessly against all the odds. They also happen to appeal to the helplessly gullible and slightly desperate ice climbers looking for an edge in their war with icy wet verticality. If you don’t feel brave waving these things around then you never will. I strap on a pair of Terminator crampons and leash my wrists to Cobra ice axes and I know I could whip Dante’s demons if I so chose – until, that is, I leave the ground. Then I just feel scared and a little silly.

When previously the only protection came from hammering smooth iron spikes into the ice or screwing in glorified corkscrews that had as much chance of holding your fall as a wet cigarette, today we have super-sharp ice screws that cut into hard ice with ease. Unlike their predecessors they can hold quite substantial falls, if the ice is good, and they no longer require enough energy expenditure to light up a small city when you place them.

One would have thought that these welcome developments would have made the sport considerably safer. Unfortunately climbers now throw themselves onto ice climbs that would have been unheard-of only a decade ago.

My first car, a rustbucket of a Mini, could, if pushed, go alarmingly fast and seemed to stick to corners like glue. It also had appalling brakes, the steering wheel vibrated like a washing machine on full spin cycle, and the size of the vehicle left you with no illusions as to what a small cube of twisted metal it could instantly become if you hit anything. Consequently I drove with a modicum of caution.

A recent report from the Automobile Association revealed that an alarming number of fatalities were being caused by the fact that the modern car with its near silent running, smooth suspension, anti-lock brakes, side impact bars, air bags, and deceptively powerful acceleration lulled drivers into a false sense of security. Quite frequently it lulled the drivers into a sleep from which they never awoke.