How hard is the Diamond?

Chris Reveley:
And then, the first free ascent of the Obelisk, which was a transformative experience for me.

Interviewer:
How so?

Chris Reveley:
Well it’s the most scared I’ve ever been, except maybe on the south face of Aconcagua with Wayne Goss, later in life. George Hurley had done the first ascent. It’s a big white corner, so the Diamond comes across and then it goes into a big white, slightly overhanging inside corner. You can see it from 1-25 and it’s somewhat different rock than the rest of the Diamond. George Hurley and a friend had gone up and done the first ascent of it. It was odd that nobody had done that until then. It was kind of pretty late in the game. And they’d gone up there and somehow climbed this thing on aid. George would never divulge how much aid they used, [chuckles] He never mentioned the size of the cracks up there either, when I asked him if he thought it would be free climbable, all he said was, “Well, there’s some wide cracks up there.”

So I recruited another old acquaintance of mine from Eldorado Springs, a guy named Billy Roos. Cause I hadn’t seen Billy in a long time and we had some history and it was good to be up there with him. He was a guy with lots and lots of mountaineering experience, a good rock climber. I said, “Well I’ve got this thing I want to try and do on the Diamond, are you interested?” And he said, “Oh sure.” Without even asking me what it was. [chuckles] That was an epic day. We started off; I don’t remember whether we bivouacked or hiked in, I’m thinking we maybe hiked in. He could fill that in. You approach the base of the Obelisk across these rising set of ledges, not very hard, it’s like 5.6 or something to get right to the base. There are other more difficult approaches. So I was kind of leading out over this wet black stuff, the rock isn’t great. It’s right under the Window and climbs like that.

It was early enough in the season, so there were lots of big ice chunks lodged in these corners above us. I was, I don’t know, maybe 60’ from him and he’s on belay on this little spot on this tiny ledge. We are making our way to the base of the Obelisk, and all of a sudden we hear this kind or wrenching sound above us. And all I remember is him as saying “Hold.” So I held on and I looked over at him and this ice block had fallen out of the crack and I thought he was dead. I thought he was dead! [Chris Reveley speaking with great emotion.] But the ice block hit a ledge right above him and shattered into a million pieces. And I looked over and he was bathed in this light of a thousand chunks of ice. It just engulfed him. It was like the old transporter scenes in Star Trek where suddenly the sort of crinkly curtain falls around you and he just leaned down and he was just there to take the hit. I said, “Oh F*** here we go.”

And nothing. And I said, “You ok?” He goes, “yeah, fine.” Went on and did the climb, [laughter] So this day is full of moments like that. They are just burned in my memory. So we got over to the corner and I looked up at this thing and said, “God, no.” But Duncan had been up there and he came back to Kimoto’s house after this and I said, “What did you do today?” And he said, “Oh we went up,” I don’t know who he was with, but “Went up and took a look at the Obelisk.” I said, “Oh, what do you think?” He said, “Well, I think it’s important to leave something for the next generation.” I said, “Oh god.” But at that point I was just, when Duncan said something like that, I knew that it was serious business but I also knew that I had to go up there, [chuckles].

So we got over the base of the corner and I climbed up about 30’ and got a piece of gear in and down climbed that section and it’s just a big inside corner. It was just some sort of a little cam hexcentric underneath a little overlap. Didn’t look like it was worth anything at all, and I got down to a ledge and I looked at Roos_and I just thought, “Ok,” and I put my weight on this thing. If it pops out we’re done. I put my weight on it, more weight and it held. I said, “S***.” [laughter] Anyway, I went up and did the pitch which was probably the technical crux of the climb. It’s just grinding way, laybacking and I guess [people] subsequently have gone on the left wall and climbed a straight in crack that they claim is 5.11. A really classic just straight in hands route that peters out. Then they get back in the comer. I stayed right in the corner stemming out to the crack when I finally could, which was probably harder, or so they claim these days. And hanging on trying to put protection in.

And then we got up to the first belay where, I think it was first belay, where George Hurley had put in a bolt on his first ascent. Not only was it a bolt, it was a little quarter inch bolt with a Gerry death hanger on it. I don’t know if you know what those are, but it was a little tear shaped thing that; the physics of it are such that if you put weight on it, it preys the bolt out. [laughter] “Really, George?” So anyway, we had a good laugh about that. I really wasn’t laughing at that moment, because what was leaning out above me was a comer[?], in the main corner, and then stepped off from that was an off width crack that would prove to be sort of the, not the technical crux, but the psychological crux of the climb.

Another thing that just cracked me up, Bill Roos was a good rock climber but he knew his limits. So I finished that first pitch and I got up there and everything was in. I had the rope, I was anchored well. So he had watched me climb this pitch and he yelled up at me, he goes, “Those anchors any good?” I said, “Yeah, tie that rope off for a second.” “Ok” I thought he had to go to the bathroom or something. So I tied the rope off, [chuckling] I looked up and out of his pockets come two jumars already rigged with etriers, slaps them on and he’s coming up the rope. You know, this guy.

I needed to laugh and he made me laugh all day. [Again, speaking with emotion] That probably made the climb possible, cause when you’re so burdened down by fear and loathing of what’s above you, you really need a little relief. And I just laughed and he was the perfect partner. The next pitches went up the corner, of course we didn’t have camming devices of any kind, it was all nuts. Big nuts, little nuts, nuts, hexcentrics, and stoppers. The climb as I remember, or the crack on that second part as I remember the geometry, the crack comes in this way and then a crack comes out this way. And they kind of meet in these plains of rock and it was wet. And I kept putting in these nuts, end wise things that were just kind of swinging. It wasn’t great protection; I didn’t remember having a lot of confidence in anything I placed on that pitch getting up to the off width. So [when] I ultimately did get up there, it was a little wet in that crack.

So I was up there all splayed out, looking down this line of gear that, you know when you are nervous and you don’t know what to do, you kind of pull on the rope to make sure that it’s running ok. [chuckles] I’d pull on the rope and all of the nuts would swing like this, like the brooms in the Saucer’s Apprentice or something in the Disney animated film, [laughter] They all looked like they were about to fall out. I really didn’t have any confidence that the protection was good up to that point. So I was all spread out and at that point you have to make the move into the off width. I was really kind of paralyzed for a while. At that time we had no camming devices, so I had tube chocks. Did you ever see a tube chock? It’s basically a tube of metal about that big around and slightly beveled on the ends. They worked occasionally pretty well if you have an irregular crack. But that off width, that last hundred and so feet on the Obelisk is perfectly uniform. So I had a little bit of gear left. I had my three tube chocks over here and I knew I had nothing to protect the remainder of the climb with and it’s a long way. It starts out with very steep, I don’t think it’s quite overhanging and glassy. It’s very smooth on the inside and so you gotta get in and just use pure off width climbing technique. I was pretty good at that in those days, but I was terrified. Cause I had this idea in my mind that if I had fallen off it was going to be a 250’ fall and I was seeing the anchors ripped out where Billy was, and I remember just apologizing silently to him. Cause he may even have had a hip belay and that was going to cut him in half.

“Billy, I’m so sorry.” The other thing I did at that moment was to appeal to all the gods of climbing that I knew and every other god. I said, “Ok, try and breathe. What would Duncan Ferguson do here? What would Jim Erickson do here? What would Art Higby do here?” I went through all of them, “Erickson, Erickson, he would talk to himself, he always talked to himself when he was climbing. Ok, you’re ok. So, talk to yourself, it’s a off width, you’ve climbed that before, you know how to do this. What would Duncan do, well he would kind of do a sort of a yoga breathing and try and relax. Relax, ok, ok. What would Art Higby do? He would find a clever way to rest, that’s what he was really good at.” So I went through all this litany of people, my mentors really, and ultimately I don’t think any of that helped, [laughter].

So I finally said, “Well, I’ve done this before, probably climbed harder things, I can probably do this again.” It was so cool because there was this sort of cool breeze coming out of the crack; it’s like this look into a million years ago. It felt like the mountain had taken this air in three million years ago and it was breathing it out. I was anxious and sweating but I was getting bathed in this cool breeze. It was calming to the extent that I could be calmed at all at that moment. I was finally getting tired in this stemmed out position. I said, “Gotta do something here.” Again, the geometry of all that, I reached over and pulled sideways on the off width and stuck my left side in, stuck my knee in and it fit perfectly. My knee had tightened up and I could almost hang off of it. When I straightened up it could slide easily.

And that’s all I remember. At certain moments like that you don’t maybe form memories. I remember flopping on to the ledge at the top of that off width, looking at the rope running down through the crack. My tube chocks are clanging melodiously at my side. It reminded me of those bells the yaks wear in the Himalayas, [chuckles]. Maybe that was comforting too. I remember being so exhausted I couldn’t speak at the top and I knew I couldn’t speak because, Chip Salaun, who was a guy who hung out on Longs Peak at the time and did studies of the vegetation and the crack systems and what not. A lot of people knew who he was; he was an eccentric character, an endurance athlete, a climber. He would live up on those ledges at the top of the Diamond for weeks on end in this little hooch tarp. I was lying at the top of the crack and I looked up and Chip poked his head over the top and he said, “Did you do the Obelisk? Did you free climb it? Cause damn, I wanted to do that.” I couldn’t speak.

[This was a beautifully emotional and dramatic moment in the interview as Chris Reveley reflected upon the majesty of climbing]

Those kind of days, I think. In climbing when you are with the right person at this sweet spot, when everything works, there’s nothing like it. That’s why I went climbing.