Mountaineering, like most disciplines of climbing, turns out to be a lot more about failing than success. The Mountaineering Fellowship Fund Grant offers opportunities for young mountaineers to cut their teeth on the extraordinary and bold limits of alpinism. But before the cutting edge can be tested, mountaineers have to come to terms with the immense amount of respect, strategy, grit, suffering, and failure that is central to this discipline. In 2013, Mountaineering Fellowship Fund Grant (MFFG) winners Zach Clanton, adventuring in the Alaska Range, and Amy Ness and Myles Moser, adventuring in Patagonia, each respectively took a long look at the “fine line of insanity” that is the flip side of the coin of adventure alpinism. On one side of the coin is the glory of exquisite rock, ice, and a clear summit. The other side is mortal danger. The cutting edge requires riding this fine line of insanity, and doing so with eyes wide open.
Ten-Day Storm of Fury: Zach Clanton and the Dragon’s Spine Traverse, Little Switzerland, Alaska Range
Zach Clanton had started eyeing up the Dragon’s Spine Traverse in 2012, drawn to the incredible untouched gendarmes and knife-edge ridges. On a reconnaissance mission on the last day of the 2012 trip, Zach and his partner James ran into numerous discontinuous crack systems, resulting in a bad fall and a dead end for that attempt.
The Dragon wasn’t going to easily give up its secrets.
In 2013, fully packed and ready to wrangle the Dragon once again, Zach was suddenly struck by a kidney stone, delaying the trip for 3 painful weeks. After his recovery, he was finally on the glacier looking up at the Dragon’s Spine Traverse once again. But Alaska had other plans.
“We chose the one seemingly flat piece of ice to set up our camp and agreed that we would look for a better spot in the morning. Ten minutes later, it started to rain and it didn’t stop for ten days. The classic Alaskan ten day storm of fury set in with a firm handshake and immediately threatened to blow our glorified umbrella away as we took turns gripping the single support pole.”
The storm continued.
“The glacier would creak and groan in protest, newly formed waterfalls raged on our proposed climb, and ice tumbled with rock, always sounding uncomfortably close by. What were merely puddles on the way in became the size of small lakes.”
The storm continued.
“Since neither of us brought nearly enough reading material, we would venture out for little walks when the storm seemed to briefly lose intensity. In this way, we were able to explore new aspects of the mountain that we had not noticed from the air or on our previous visit.”
“On the seventh day, we awoke to the blinding sight of sunshine but knew it wouldn’t last very long. We laid out the soaked contents of our tent on the surrounding boulders and rushed over to a new zone we deemed the Red Dragon Wall. We flew up four pitches of five star alpine rock climbing. Twin finger cracks, stem boxes, and perfect hands through roofs in clean dihedrals. Aside from the occasional chock stone that we plucked and threw over our shoulders, the rock and movement was immaculate. The climb is called Green Couch (5.10a).”
But the storm of fury returned, and Zach and James continued to wait out it’s wrath in their miniscule tent. Finally, the weather cleared, and their new objective was surviving the return to base camp.
“The glacier had made tremendous noise over the past ten days and our way back was a whole new ball game. Every few yards, there would be a new gaping hole and there was always this moment where I would be on one side of a crevasse and my seventy pound sled would be on the other. I would start running full speed towards the next crevasse so that my sled would clear the last one. Then I had to throw on the brakes before falling into the next one myself. All of these moves were perfectly choreographed with James because we were roped together and to our sleds.”
While the Dragon’s Spine Traverse had dashed their hopes once again, their FA of Green Couch had been enough of a tantalizing taste of flawless rock for Zach and James to come back again a year later. But the Dragon’s Spine Traverse remains unsent to this day and the Dragon holds onto its secrets, thanks to the humbling force that is Alaskan mountain weather.
Captives of the Giant: Amy Ness and Myles Moser on the Torres del Paine, Patagonia
In the same year, on the other end of the globe, Amy and Myles got caught in the worst storm of the season on a portaledge midway up The Shattered Pillar in the Torres del Paine in Patagonia. Their objective was to establish the second free route on the east face of Torre Central. Trapped in the cramped confines of a portaledge for days on end, buffeted by freezing winds and driving snow, Myles couldn’t help but consider if they had crossed that finest of lines between adventure and insanity.
“As I write this, snow falls onto our portaledge for the eighth straight day. The wind sounds like a locomotive as it rips over the crest and bends around the wall, relentless and bone-chilling. Snow flurries from hundreds of feet above break free from the four-thousand foot Goliath and slam upon our golden pyramid at all hours of the night. Our tiny capsule, which sits open and exposed on The Shattered Pillar, is slowly being buried by the snow, forcing an early rise each day to begin the excavation process. In these eight days of sitting and waiting for a break in the weather, we have seen the sun for just two hours. Each rise of temperature and glow of heat, we crack the frozen zipper of our tattered, taped and glued rainfly, shoving our heads out to check the sky, only to be disappointed. The upper dihedrals begin to thaw with the remaining light, dropping sheets of verglas which turn to daggers as they explode, whizzing past us to the left and right, somehow missing the one spot we chose to hang. The weather from the Central Tower attacks with a vengeance as it tries to rid us from its flanks.”
Amy and Myles were trapped in a vendetta with a giant force, and there was no guarantee the giant would loosen its grip.
“Our goal was to establish the second free route on the east face of Torre Central, or as we like to say, ‘go for a wander.’ Fully equipped with battered lines, twenty days of rations, seventy pounds of water, a full El Cap rack and a portaledge hanging on hope, we stormed the Tower. By the second day we had climbed five pitches of fantastic free climbing allowing 300 meters of rope to be strung up the wall. By the third day we were committed, moving capsule-style. On day 5, we awoke to a fire in the sky, the most impressive sunrise either of us had ever seen. We were itching to rope up for what looked to be the first crux... The pitch was wild! Clean cracks to an airy, flowing traverse brought me to an extremely strong stemming operation with a classic RP finish. The bolt was dropped in and the piton was slammed, we called it 5.11.”
But the temperature had dropped considerably, and by dark, the morning’s fiery skies had made good on their promise of turbulence and fury. A storm was brewing.
“Two, three, four days crept by, stuck on the portaledge in the storm. We would wait, we had the supplies and the excitement. By day six, we were captives of the Giant. We did the calculations and the rationing began. White-outs and blizzards all day and night were bombarding us. Several times the skies cleared and the stars were ablaze. We would tuck into our sleeping bags telling each other ‘Tomorrow we press on! It will be clear!’ Then, as if it knew what we were thinking, it would hit us even harder. Day seven, a week. We managed to keep our heads, but the six foot by three foot portaledge was twisting our spines and the lethargicness was making us weak. It was time to make a move, we could not afford another storm higher on the wall.
"Day eight of the storm and the twelfth day on the wall, we had our bags ready for the toss and watched as they flew to the glacier 1,500 feet below. We did a total of six rappels to escape the tower, four of which were 300 footers. Each time, we dodged the frozen, steel cable of a rope as it came flying past. Once on the ground we recovered both haulbags and easily fished the ledge from the ice. Hastily crossing the terrible, crevassed glacier covered with false snow bridges, we returned to our Base Camp at Campamento Torres in the dark.”
Having survived their vendetta with the Giant, Myles and Amy came away with a renewed respect for the warnings nature gives us, and the folk wisdom of our ancestors. "Red sky at night, sailors delight; red sky in morn, sailors take warn!" certainly rang with a new truth for them, and the contours of the finest of lines between adventure and insanity had sharpened and clarified.
