I originally posted this to the Sketch-aneering thread, http://www.supertopo.com/climbers-forum/40308/Sketch-aneering . It proceeded---I hope not from the weight of this tale---to sink like a rock. So I thought I'd give it one more chance in the TR format.


It looked plenty solid, but a little thump just in case. Whacking the chockstone with the heel of my hand was a reflexive, almost mindless gesture, a routine test of the general solidity of an obstacle blocking my path. Grumblecrunch! The block, the size of a very large microwave oven, immediately dropped into my lap. Into my lap, because I was back-and-foot chimneying just below the chockstone, and so my lap was the next and only possible resting place once the boulder had parted company with the chimney walls.

My situation was less than ideal. Who puts in any pro for a back-and-foot chimney? I was twenty or so feet directly above my belayer, Barbara Thacher, with nothing in, on what had been a moderate pitch of the Jackson-Johnson Route on Hallet's Peak in RMNP. An enormous effort, fueled by an extreme adrenaline surge, had prevented me from falling out of the chimney with the block, but now I was the subject of a lap dance from a few hundred pounds of Rocky Mountain granite. In the midst of the ensuing struggle, my evil brain, which surely had better things to attend to, saw fit to mock my predicament with the lullaby "Rock-a-bye Baby," a tune which was quickly banished to the unconscious sewer of irony from which it had sprung unbidden.

Really, this was no damn joke. I was losing the battle of restraining that rock. Barbara was tied in short directly underneath and had no chance of surviving when---not if---I eventually couldn't hold out any longer. Displaying all the calm expected from heroes in dire straits, I shrieked hysterically for her to untie from the anchor and traverse out of the fall line. She fumbled with nicely tightened clove hitches as the block, in spite of every effort I could muster, oozed slowly out of my lap.

The knots weren't the only problem. The ledge gods had not smiled on us. Other than the very small platform on which she was standing, the rock to either side was slabby and sloping, without positive hand- or footholds. Making haste slowly, interminably slowly from my perspective but recklessly fast from hers, Barbara teetered right, climbing solo, on 5.7ish friction.

And so it was that we found ourselves in full mountain tourist mode, me fighting a losing battle with a lethal projectile, her balancing insecurely on slopers, and the climbing rope stretched between us without a single anchor of any type between us. How the hell would they explain this when they found us at the bottom?

The block was ready to take flight. I was terrified that it would catch the rope and take us down with it, but I was no longer in control of the situation. Over it went, annihilating the ledge where Barbara had been standing, and then plunging into the valley below, shattering into pieces, sending up dust clouds of pulverized rock, and generally putting on a textbook display of the effects of a large-scale release of potential energy.

Thank god there was no one anywhere below. (You rarely met another party on the North Face of Hallets in those days). The smell of broken rock wafted up, but everything was silent, except for the distant rattle of a few shards still rolling down the boulder field below. Nature had already turned its attention elsewhere, perhaps plotting some new catastrophe, or maybe just working out the details of the next few eons of erosion. Whatever the case, we were left alone, in silence, perched on the precipice, joined to each other by a rope but otherwise attached only by our vivid interest in not cashing in our own potential energy stores.

Barbara regained what was left of the ledge. The anchor had somehow been spared, so she clipped back in. Compact clouds frolicked in the blue Colorado sky, showing no signs of yielding to the pervasive afternoon thunderstorms. The recent struggle seemed, already, like a dream. We had come to climb. And so we did, making our way to the top up for several difficult but uneventful pitches, pulling into the sunshine on the warm and suddenly level summit plateau.