Addictions

I have an addiction, well actually, I have many addictions but this one is my most recent and involves alpine climbing. It’s the middle of June, the summer solstice is a week away and it’s 90 degrees in Salt Lake. The ice has long since melted, the rivers are full rage, and the hills are as green as another one of my addictions. Any alpine climbing that’s happening in Utah is going to be sitting in front of a television watching home videos of my recent trip to Alaska. Unfortunately this craving could not be subdued with a remote control in hand, I needed to swing an ice tool.
The Utah alpine buzz was a total downer so we packed the car and headed to Nevada. It almost seems fitting that in a state where people are entertained by blue men banging on empty oil drums, whiskey is cheaper than water, and people can loose their entire savings on a little red square, that one can also get their alpine climbing fix in June. Far from the perpetual glow of casino lights and obnoxious blingity-blink-blank-blink chime of slot machines is a sweet little alpine oasis that rises over 8000 feet above the stark Nevadan desert. Great Basin National Park is a mountainous island, it contains Nevada’s only glacier, and supports a spectacular grove of bristlecone pine trees that date to several thousand years. It’s desolate, it’s never busy, and rising to 13,063 Wheeler Peak would satiate our need for the alpine. We hoped.

Hope hadn’t gotten Erin and I too far on our first two attempts at the Northeast Face of Wheeler. Last New Years had been our best effort, making the nine-mile approach ski only to come within a mile of the snowy Canadianesk quartzite face. I remember standing amongst the ancient bristlecone, gnarled and brawny, their resilience to the approaching nighttime cold far superior to ours. It was close to 5p.m. we were worked and the face was far too committing for the level of suffering that we were willing to take on.
However in June the road is open, so we drove on up and made the short three mile approach on mostly dry ground. During every approach, just as the face of intention comes into view, I am reminded of why I climb. Like a child arriving to a new playground, my eyes widen and my pace quickens, I am suddenly less occupied with the trail ahead and fixated on the face looming above in the distance. I trip. My heart races and I am complete, life is simple, pure, exciting, and lovely. Climbing without a topo and a complete lack of route description, as we were, spices the package.
Standing under the face it became obvious our timing was a few weeks late. Sweating in T-shirts was also a good indicator. A large curtain of ice sat plastered to the top of the second pitch and bled downward soaking the first 300 feet of climbing. Maybe higher in the shaded gully/chimney system conditions would be good? And indeed they were… good and interesting.
For most the climb, our ice tools were holstered on our harnesses. Fun 5.10 climbing with crampons and on marginal rock was the norm. With very different climbing styles, I enjoy watching my cousin solve, for himself, the puzzle that is mixed climbing. Switching from free moves to dry tooling, I can observe the solidity and strength in Erin’s climbing, Alaska and a season of ice have taught him well, but we both have much to learn.

And Wheeler would not disappoint. Ice, albeit thin, was found. I overdrove both tools watching sparks smolder between rock and veneer, ahhhhh, reminiscent of the amazing ice season I had just experienced. We simul-climbed the final six hundred foot snow and ice gully and Erin lead the last pitch, whose rock quality resembled stacked potato chips.

Climber or not, everyone should visit Great Basin NP. The scenery, solitude, and incongruity of its surroundings are definitely something to experience. In my opinion, climbing in the park is an excellent outing with the best season being as soon as the road opens (May), or I suppose, anytime you need your fix.

Follow your feelings
Loving It
KD