I once learned that a cockroach can live for nine days without its head before it starves to death, which always seemed to be a bit pointless. It was even odder than the male praying mantis which cannot copulate while its head is attached to its body. The female initiates sex by ripping his head off. It seemed nastily familiar. I made a mental note to troll back through some of my past relationships. What the hell! If I die in this plane I’m definitely coming back as a pig. I kept furiously thinking about pigs in the hope that it would favour my chances of reincarnation.
I breathed deeply and continued clutching the arm rests in a vice-like grip, waiting for the wheels to touch down. I glanced down the aisle and counted the seats to the nearest emergency exit. Three rows down there was the red exit sign above the oval door. The three seats beside this left hand over-wing exit were unoccupied. I wished I had thought of it earlier and changed position. At least I knew what I was going to do if anything went wrong. Get to that exit fast. I had the strength and agility to open the door without any problems. I pulled out the emergency exits brochure from the seat back and tried to study it.
Then we were down with barely a bump and racing down the runway and slowing and the fire engines were catching us up and drawing alongside and I heard the relieved laughter in the cabin. It had all been for nothing. As I put the brochure back in its place and vowed to read them more often, I realised that my hangover had entirely disappeared.
One week later my slides of the Colorado trip arrived and I flipped through them on the projection monitor in my office. Despite having only four days to spare I had enjoyed the chance to climb ice with Jack Roberts, Clyde Soles and Eric Coomer. The thrill of steep ice and sun-baked rock climbs still draws me back into the hills. It was mountaineering that I was abandoning. The attrition on the peaks had killed off my desire to climb them.
On the last day we had climbed a few minor ice lines in Vail and then top-roped Rigid Designator, a spectacular free-standing 150-foot pillar of ice. I felt a bit guilty about not leading it but owing to an urgent medical condition called cowardice I had been unable to resist the proffered rope.
Earlier Jack had demonstrated the fiendish art of ‘dry tooling’. This mainly involved climbing mixed ice and rock using crampon and ice axe points to maintain adhesion on tiny edges and cracks. Mixed climbing was so called because although ice was generally present in some form on the route it was not in enough quantity to resemble a pure continuous waterfall type of ice climb. Sometimes it was dry rock, sometimes rock with a skim of ice covering the surface. Hooking the tips of ice axe picks delicately into wafer-thin ice, torquing the picks or even the shafts of axes in cracks, and teetering with mono-point crampons on fractional rock edges was the generally accepted form of progress. It was a lot harder than it looked, as Clyde and I found out by repeatedly falling off the bottom 10 feet of rock that Jack had just danced effortlessly up. His skill enabled him to cross otherwise blank sections of rock and reach the tenuous sanctuary of millimetre-thick ice weeps. Hopefully these led to a thickening ice formation and back onto good old plain ice climbing. It was strenuous, delicate, difficult to protect and downright nerve-racking.
I had given a slide show to a packed audience in Gary Neptune’s climbing shop in Boulder one evening. While waiting for people to arrive I had been flicking through books and magazines and had seen a stunning black and white photograph of Bridalveil Falls. I had heard of the route and the remarkable history of its first ascent but had no idea where it was. The photograph left an indelible mark on my mind. I had to climb it.
As always in climbing, some routes tend to capture my imagination in an immediate and distinctive way. It may simply be the aesthetic beauty of the line or its magnificent position; it may have a reputation as a classic hard and intimidating climb or it may simply have history. By which I mean the manner of its first ascent made it stand out as a famous landmark piece of climbing for its era. For that alone it would be coveted.
I remember as a young aspirant climber dreaming about routes such as Cenotaph Corner and Left Wall on the Cromlech, Point Five and Zero Gully on Ben Nevis, Right Unconquerable and Valkyrie on Derbyshire gritstone and the great Alpine classics such as the Walker Spur on the Grandes Jorasses and the Central Pillar of Freney on the south side of Mont Blanc. In the end I had climbed them all, turning dreams into reality. What inspired me to try them was the fascinating history attached to the climbs as much as the technical difficulty and specific beauty of the routes. The true classic climbs combined all these elements and Bridalveil Falls was high on my list of eligible classics.
Climbing Bridalveil Falls had all of these attributes – beauty, legend, class, menace, and that essential ingredient, uncertainty. Its first ascent was way beyond its time. At a time when Point Five gully was regarded as an ambitious climber’s dream, Jeff Lowe and Mike Weiss succeeded in climbing something that few people would have thought possible. Point Five has about 30 feet of seriously hard climbing in its entire length. Bridalveil Falls had 350 feet of sustained vertical and overhanging ice and was a good two grades harder. The hardest section of Point Five would be a short section of the easiest climbing on Bridalveil. When I had climbed Point Five I really had been naive enough to think I had succeeded on a classic hard route, and that was in the 1980s.
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 cer
tified 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.