The Climb -- Part II

My hands gripped the rock. My right climbing shoe barely rested on the hold while my left struggled to find some purchase. To my right, I could see a spot for my hand, but when I tried to reach it, the strain was too much. I withdrew my hand back, my feet pushing against the rock in an attempt to relieve some of the weight of my body from my hands.

“You have to move over the arete. Hang off the hold with your hands. Put your foot on the hold on the right. There’s a hold for your hand. Move your weight to the right.” Cliff showered me with directions from above.

“Shut up,” I hollered, “I’m already trying it.”

I concentrated on the rock before me, moved my right leg and foot back to the holds, and, spread-eagled, pushed off with my left foot, and suddenly I was there, on the other side, safe and sound, both my legs stable.

“Did you see me?” I screamed. “I totally did it. Did you see me? Did you see?” I scrambled up the remaining rock to Cliff’s anchor.

Now was the time for the climb to yield some of its difficulty, become easier, more enjoyable. But no. The Matterhorn was not done with us yet. We continued up a chimney, a corner, up sheer faces, over rocks that seemed placed there especially in order to block our way, until finally, I just knew: one more pitch and we’re there. The summit plateau.

“I don’t need to go to the summit,” I told Cliff. “I just want to get down.”

“I know exactly what you mean," Cliff answered, “but I think we have to get over the summit in order to go down.”

The summit plateau was not flat

The summit plateau looked like a badly-built dry wall of single-placed mismatched boulders. Cliff waited behind as I slid down one boulder into a hole created by rocks on the other side. Then he, watching his step, joined me. We repeated this pattern, moving one after the other, tied with the rope, till finally, above us, we could see the summit.

Inside a crack on the summit sits a metal box, and inside the box lies a book, the summit journal. Inside the book, in my handwriting, are written a few words: “Long day. Harder than we expected. Glad to be done. Sigal T and Cliff A. June 13th 2012.”

View from below the summit

We had finished most of our water. It had taken us three hours to get to the base of the climb and nearly six to climb the mountain. The time was 4pm, Dar was expecting us back at 5, and we still had the fearsome descent to face: the nearly vertical scree leading down to the base of the Matterhorn and the steep glacier. We sat down below the summit and finally had our lunch while trying to identify our favorite Yosemite landmarks: the Unicorn, Cathedral Peak, Mount Conness, Hetch Hetchy, maybe even Clouds Rest in the distance.

At last, back in hiking shoes, we headed down the slope. “Slowly and carefully,” I reminded myself. Cliff is experienced and safe. I was in good hands.

Later, as the sun set behind the mountains, painting them red, Dar and I sat on the rocks by Tarn Lake. Mosquitos buzzed everywhere around us, and Dar leaned toward me and gave me a kiss. “Happy year-and-a-half winkaversary, honey,” he said.

Safe and sound

I had made it. I had climbed the Matterhorn and came back alive, just in time to celebrate the eighteen-months anniversary of sending that wink on match.com to the man I love.

The Climb, Part I

Now that I’m here, my story falls apart, the words jumbled in my mind like the fragile piling of rocks that is the Matterhorn. “Rock!” I want to cry as my stumbling hands pull out yet another detail from my memory and drop it. I watch it fall down, all the way to the far-off ground, and I know there is no one there to warn. No one else is climbing the mountain today. We’re alone, Cliff and I, tied together in his green rope.

Still hopeful

After the first pitch there was no way to go but up. Retreating required leaving gear, and anyways, we were both of us expecting the climbing to get easy any moment now. Cliff kept the pitches short, wanting to stay within calling-out distance from me. I sat on one ledge and then another. Belaying him and avoiding mouse droppings as much as I could, I tried to attribute the tremblings in my body to the coolness in the shade.

On one ledge ice stalactites grew in a cave. On another ledge I watched Cliff trying to climb first one side and then another of a large, column-shaped boulder. Often he disappeared behind rock formations, pulling the rope behind him off to the side and only then above. “Is it getting easier?” I kept asking. “Is it getting easier now?”

Cliff tackling the column

On one pitch, as he climbed, Cliff told me: “You won’t be climbing the way I did.” He had raised his long, 6-foot-frame legs to the left of a crack way above his head, stretched for a hold and pulled himself up. “Ok,” I shivered below, keeping my mind on the belay, refusing to think about what I’ll do when it’s my turn next. All too soon, Cliff called, “Sigal, you’re on belay,” and it was me who had to struggle with the slippery face of the rock, me who had to scramble up the overhang, and then, in shock, me crying on the ledge above as Cliff tied me in to the anchor.

Stalactites in the cave

And then, “Sigal, you’re on belay.” Cliff’s voice came from directly above me, so close I could swear he was just behind the sheer rock that climbed up over my perch. “I won’t lie to you,” Cliff continued, “it’s really exposed. But after the first move it gets easier.” I peeked behind the arete where the rope stretched, tight, waiting for me. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I muttered. There was nowhere to go. The rock dropped down behind the arete in a straight line all the way to the ground. I was sitting on a thin sliver of a boulder on the razor-sharp nose of the arete, and Cliff expected me to leave even that farfetched feeling of safety behind, to hang off of my hands over nothing, stretch my right leg somehow to reach a hold too far for my short body, promising no hold for my left.

I swallowed, ignoring his shouted directions. I sent a prayer that the anchor is safe, and without thinking, for thinking in this case would have been too much even for my over-active brain, I swung myself across the abyss and stretched out, as far as it would go, my right leg.

To be continued....

How I Climbed the Matterhorn and Came Back Alive -- Last Chance

Evening in the High Sierra. After a surprisingly delicious dinner of gluten-free pasta, smoked salmon and steamed green beans, Dar and I lay on a boulder by the lake and watched the sun paint the Matterhorn in pink hues.

“We’ll go to sleep,” Dar said, “and you can make up your mind about climbing in the morning.”

“Cliff will be disappointed if I don’t climb,” I said, tracing in my mind the line of the north arete on the Matterhorn, certain that I will never set foot up there.

My head hurt with the heat of the day, not enough water, and the effect of the elevation. I took two advil and got into my sleeping bag, falling into a restless sleep from which I awoke frequently. The wind howled, shaking our tent and the trees outside as though trying to uproot and carry us back down to the Twin Lakes valley. All through the night, whenever I awoke, I could feel the soreness and exhaustion of my body and my mind, and I knew with certainty that I would not be climbing.

Heading out. Find my shadow

The morning dawned bright and sunny. Cliff woke us with a steaming cup of green tea and crackers and hummus for breakfast. I stretched, checking my body for signs of fatigue, but my tiredness had flown away with the night’s wind. My headache gone, I realized I wanted my adventure. The Matterhorn had been my dream for over three years, and here it stood, at my tent’s doorstep, beckoning.

“I might only walk as far as the beginning of the climb and decide to walk back,” I warned Cliff.

Cliff smiled.

The lake reflected back to me the faces of the mountains as we set out. Watching us from the lake, Dar grew smaller as we hiked farther up the steep uphill. There was no trail, just the rocks and the trees and the ridge top, and the two of us making our way through. I could feel no trace of the previous day’s exhaustion. I was strong and fit and ready for anything.

My only moment of joy

At the bottom of the glacier we strapped on our crampons and headed out. I loved every minute of it, the feeling of the snow crunching under my feet, the glow of it around me. Up and up and up we walked, making a staircase in the snow, till we reached the bottom of the Matterhorn and another slippery scree slope. There, we took off our crampons and hiked farther up, gaining more elevation, heading toward the beginning of the climb.

I looked back, searching for Tarn Lake, and wondered how we would ever get down. The glacier and the scree seemed so steep, the ridge so far. Tarn lake had disappeared as though it had never existed, and my heart quacked at the thought of all that ground.

High Sierra Climbing described the route as “not too difficult,” and rated the climb well within my abilities. I turned my attention up instead of down, tied on my climbing shoes, double-backed my harness, put Cliff on belay, and got ready for a few hours of fun.

The terror of the way down

I couldn’t have been more wrong about that.

To be continued....

How I Climbed the Matterhorn and Came Back Alive -- Bear Musings

I love sleeping on the ground, listening to the night noises, and imagining the stars overhead even when they are obscured by tree canopies, clouds, or my own myopia. My sleeping bag feels softer and warmer than any down comforter, and my make-shift pillow, made of clothes stuffed into a bag, gives me immense satisfaction. Whenever I sleep in motels or hotels, I dislike how closed and airless the room is and the negative energy from all the electrical appliances that cannot be turned off. I long for the open air, for the feeling of the ground under me, for the sound of the wind in the trees overhead.

On Monday, we arrived at Mono Resort near Twin Lakes at 9pm, and I was appalled at the number of RVs parked side by side in long neat rows that filled up the campground. We drove after Cliff’s car, searching for a campsite as far away from these large metal monsters as we could, surprised to see some that featured fences, directv antennas and potted plants. Cliff pulled into an open campsite with two picnic tables, and we set up our tent on a flat stretch of dirt. When we turned around to look for bear lockers in which to protect our food, we were in for a surprise. There were none.

Within the borders of Yosemite, visitors are warned to be ultra-careful with their food, to pack it inside bear canisters (the approved method for carrying food in the wilderness) or bear-proof lockers, and to leave none in their cars. But perhaps at Mono Resort, though just a few miles outside the borders of Yosemite, the bears did not present a problem. As we put as much food as we could inside our bear canisters and placed them as far away from ourselves as we could, I wondered, what are a few miles for a bear? Do bears care for park boundaries, or do Yosemite-Valley bears ever hop over to Mono Resort to get a midnight snack from these unprotected stacks of food before returning to the valley?

Cliff slept near the picnic table -- his tactic for protecting against bears. He told us he had an entirely different strategy for mountain lions. He kept Dar’s bear spray nearby and said he would bang on a pot if bears came by. The night passed without incident, but in the morning we heard about two climbers whose climb of The Incredible Hulk, was cut short because bears broke into their food. They had no bear canisters.

Twin Lakes from the trail

At 10am, the bear canisters at the bottom of our packs, we started plodding uphill, toward the Matterhorn. Twin Lakes stretched below us, boats dotting the emerald water, sunlight blinking on the gentle waves. The bear spray lay forgotten in the car. Bears were the least of my worries. My back ached under the heavy pack, and all I could think of was what the next three days will bring and whether I would make it back all right.

To be continued....

How I Climbed the Matterhorn and Came Back Alive -- Part II

Carrying an over 40lbs pack on Mt Olympus

In Hebrew, we say about restless children that they have thorns in their rear end. An apt metaphor, I always thought. As a child, I did not have this particular problem. I sat for hours, engulfed in a book. But how long can I read about adventure before I wish to experience one for my self?

Every few years, I’d dip my feet in the sea of adventure, only to pull them back quickly in dismay. In the IDF, after enlisting with idealistic hopes and fervor, I found myself buried in boring offices with a boring job. Later, at Stanford, I decided to stay living at home. I  avoided interactions with my fellow students, becoming perhaps the only student in the world who had never been to a college party.

I came to have these beliefs about myself: I believed in my own physical weakness, my need for comfort, my inability to handle physical hardship. I believed that while hiking (a favorite activity in which I limited myself to no more than 5 or so miles) I could not possibly carry a bag. I believed that I was a hermit, hiding from the world within the pages of books, unable truly to experience life.

Boy, was I wrong about that!

On Muir Snow Field, Mt Rainier

I suppose after years of yearning for adventure I should not be surprised when adventures catch up to me and flash-flood my life, but the me who lacks confidence in my survival skills still freezes with fright when an adventure arrives. As the Matterhorn trip came closer, I began to freak out, unconsciously knowing, perhaps, that this adventure was planning on breaking all the rules and leaving no easy way out.

I stressed. I reread the chapter on the Matterhorn in the book. I looked at trip reports on the web. I studied the map. Cliff sent an email with details. You’ll need boots and crampons, he said. I read about the glacier in the book, but somehow did not expect to cross it. Weight accumulated. I feared I would not be able to carry my pack. I worried about what Dar and I would eat for lunch, for snacks. I worried about not having a bathroom. I worried about the climb. I worried about my fitness level. I worried that I would not come back alive.

Solo campsite on Bear Mtn, Coe SP

At the same time, with all my heart, I believed that this trip would not come to pass. And why worry about something that is not going to happen? I tried to put the Matterhorn, Cliff, backpacks, crampons and glaciers out of my mind. I found other, more important stuff to worry about.

But the clock, persistent as ever, kept ticking. Days rolled by. And before I knew it, Monday was here, the car was packed, and the road was beckoning Dar and I toward the High Sierra, the Matterhorn, and an adventure out of this life.

To be continued.....

How I Climbed the Matterhorn and Came Back Alive -- Part I

Behind me is Mount Starr King

My adored Yosemite Climbing Guide, Nate Kerr, was always suggesting adventurous climbs for me. He had early on realized that my rock climbing ambition did not apply to climbing more technically-difficult routes but rather to getting to out-of-the-way, wild places, where hardly anyone ever comes. Thus, he carried me on a glorious day to Mount Starr King, frightened me out of my wits on three or four pitches on the rarely-climbed Arrowhead Spire, and told me stories about Bear Creek Spire, Mount Russell, and the Matterhorn.

The dreaded Arrowhead Spire

Of all his stories, I fell in love with the Matterhorn. I studied the map, tracing my finger over Matterhorn Canyon, the Sawtooth Range, the excitingly-named Incredible Hulk, and a scattering of lakes and creeks which drew from my imagination the unstoppable desire of going there. After checking with the Mountaineering School in Yosemite, however, Nate came back with bad news. The Matterhorn was located in Toiyabe National Forest, outside the boundaries of Yosemite, and he couldn’t take me there.

The Matterhorn remained a dream, a place I wanted to visit. I read and reread the description of the route in Chris McNamara’s High Sierra Climbing. It seemed perfect, and I am quoting from the book: “It is not the best climbing in the Sierra, but appeals because it is not too difficult, and ascends a striking arete on a big and aesthetic peak. It’s one of the easier climbs that gives a complete alpine experience: a glacier, a striking summit, incredible views.” Trip reports on the web and their photos only strengthened in me the desire one day to climb this fabulous peak.

The Matterhorn serenely waiting for unsuspecting climbers

Fortunately for me, Nate is not the only rock climbing guide I know. A few years ago, crying at the bottom of Mount Rainier instead of the summit (as I did the year after), I told Cliff Agocs, representative of Bay Area Wilderness Training, that I will not be climbing Mount Rainier with the Climbing for Kids group. I felt I was not ready to handle the climb at that time. Though I did not climb the mountain that year, my involvement with BAWT remained stable, and my friendship with Cliff slowly grew.

Some time later Cliff left BAWT and began to guide climbers on Mount Hood, another mountain I had wanted to climb ever since I first saw it. We reconnected and began to talk about where we want to go, and when I mentioned my dream of climbing the Matterhorn, Cliff enthusiastically announced that he had also always wanted to climb it and can take me there. Dates and plans were swiftly put in place. The stage was set for the most unbelievable adventure of my life, and I didn’t even know it yet.

To be continued.....