Learning to Fly

by Steph Davis

  I crossed over the top of the Bastille and scuttled my way down the backside onto the well-built trail that led me back to the base by the road where I’d left my shoes. I slung my chalk bag and rock shoes over my shoulder and strolled home to the cabin, where Fletch was still in bed.

  That day, as I slipped from the jump plane and flew toward Longs Peak, a thought sprang into my mind, seemingly out of nowhere. As I stood packing my parachute in the hangar, the idea grew more tangible, more urgent, repeating in my mind. I wondered if it had been there all along, from the moment I’d let the truck keep driving toward Colorado in June. In some ways it seemed so obvious as to be inevitable. I would free solo the Diamond. For years, the Diamond had floated in my thoughts, an apparition in the sky as I’d first seen it. Now it floated before me every day as I soared in the air, again a breathless beginner in a high place. It was time to go back.

  The next morning I woke at 2:00 a.m. Fletch woke for breakfast in the dark and curled back into bed. I drove up to the Longs Peak parking lot under bright stars, thinking about Kieners, the easy alpine route that ascends snow gullies and rock ledges up the left side of the Diamond. While hanging on the wall at belay stances, waiting for my partner to climb, I’d often watched parties kicking steps up the Lamb Slide, the first snowfield of Kieners. It looked pretty fun. But I just never got around to climbing it, always pulled away by the sheer rock face of the Diamond itself.

  I kept a pair of light, strap-on crampons and a small ice tool in my truck, since you never know when you might need them. I could strap the crampons to my running shoes, and one ice tool would surely be enough for the moderate angle of the snow gullies. Today I would scramble up Kieners as a scouting day, a training mission to get back up to higher elevation, and a prelude to my bigger plans. I wanted to get up there, to get a look at the Diamond, and start thinking about what it would actually take for me to climb such a big, forbidding face alone, without a rope. Memories of all those past Diamond days came rushing at me as I drove up the winding roads through through the darkness. I couldn’t believe I’d waited so long.

  I parked in the dark among the other handful of cars in the lot—hikers who were prudently getting an alpine start to avoid the consistent afternoon thunderstorms on the Keyhole Route. My tiny pack held only the crampons and the short tool, a liter of water, and a couple of Clif bars. I slipped into the dark forest.

  It was funny how much shorter and less strenuous the trail seemed now, more than a decade since the last time I’d hiked its sharp switchbacks. The crisp smell of pine and the sounds of rushing water over rocks followed me as I walked. I recognized certain wizened trees and lichen-painted rocks as they came into the circle of my headlamp. I emerged from the forest at 5:00 a.m., dawn light just illuminating the east face of Longs. It was a moment I remembered as viscerally as a scent, the face-to-face confrontation with that stunning vertical wall. It was every bit as beautiful as I remembered, the giant kitelike face, blended with pale green, gray, beige, and pink, set into a valley of snow, boulders, and clear water. I wondered what had taken me so long. Being here felt more right than it ever had before. I fought back waves of emotion but let the tears roll down my cheeks as I stepped rhythmically up the granite blocks of the trail, watching the Diamond grow before me, just as it always did in my mind’s eye.

  By 6:00 a.m. I was sitting below the Lamb Slide snow gully, strapping the crampons onto my sneakers, much to the surprise of two young Russians who had come properly prepared with boots, ice tools, and a rope. I wished them a good climb and set off up the snow, light and quick with my empty little daypack. The snow was just right, firm but grippy, and I zigzagged comfortably up the long tongue until it met a rocky ledge system high up on the peak. I followed the ledge, scrambling at times, and reached another snow gully. I was on the left edge of the Diamond’s face, and I could see the rock well. It looked fairly dry, without any snow on the small shelves, in perfect condition for climbing, as far as I could see. I marched up the snow and took the crampons off at the Staircase, the final few hundred feet of rocky steps I’d gone up so many times before to the top of the Diamond. I skirted over the high face on shifting talus to descend the opposite side. I passed another surprised party who were climbing up the North Face with a full kit of ropes and climbing gear as I scooted down past them to Chasm View.

  Climbers starting up the Kieners Route, Longs Peak

  From Chasm View, I descended boulders and talus to the main hiking trail, feeling light and energized, completely in my element for the first time in months. I’d be at the parking lot in an hour. It had been thirteen years since I’d first climbed the Diamond. To free solo it now would somehow be coming full circle for me. In a vague way, I had the sense that being able to climb that forbidding face alone, with no one to help me or keep me safe, would somehow free me from the past, or at least free me to live my present. I felt strongly that I needed to do it. I needed to live that experience.

  Climbers on the North Face, descent route

  With the what and why of my destiny suddenly settled, my mind snapped into analytical mode, as it had done so many times before when I’d dreamed up a climbing project. Though I’d scanned the face of the Diamond from my distant view on Kieners today, I needed to make sure the cracks were dry and free of snow. I also needed to see how I felt on the crux section of the Casual Route, which I remembered as being strenuous and rather insecure. I needed to climb the route with someone else, using a rope, before I committed to this idea of free soloing the climb. The pieces quickly fell into place. My seemingly random appearance in Boulder suddenly appeared so inevitable and so clear. I felt the familiar, though long-damped, fire inside. I had a project.

  I got back to Eldorado before noon, so Fletch and I headed out to the drop zone. I walked in to see a lanky fun jumper stepping into his gear. Jacob was young, a photography student at the University of Colorado, who had been in the military for a few years and decided that freedom was more appealing. He had started skydiving about a year before and was anxious to start base jumping. He looked like a climber, with a tall, extremely thin frame, and as I chatted with him, I discovered that he indeed had some experience climbing.

  “You should let me know if you want to go out and climb something,” he said. “I’d like to start getting back into it.”

  “Do you feel like going up to the Diamond? I’d really like to go climb the Casual Route soon,” I said.

  “Definitely! I’ve never been up there. When do you want to go?”

  “How about the day after tomorrow? We’d have to get a super-alpine start.”

  “Absolutely,” Jacob said, “I’m up for anything.”

  At 1:00 a.m. we met in the dark parking lot of Vic’s in Boulder. We took two cars up the winding roads to Estes Park because I was planning to stay up there after we climbed. I’d told Jacob about my ultimate intentions, and he looked surprised but made no comment, obviously having learned in the military to keep his thoughts to himself.

  We walked up the familiar trail with light packs. The Casual Route was no longer as daunting a climb as it had been for me at age twenty-two, so I had packed the barest minimum of climbing gear and a thin rope. I’d also brought a small sleeping bag, a camp stove, and a little food to spend the night in the rock cave. We reached the base of the North Chimney, below the Diamond, at 6:00 a.m. under clear blue skies. There had been a light snow, and the Diamond was gorgeous with little white patches on the face. Chasm Lake sparkled in the high valley of talus and snow behind us as we scrambled over the cold granite together, ropes and gear on our backs. I savored the feeling of clean, thin air in my lungs, and the slightly giddy mind state of higher altitude.

  Jacob and I clicked, even more than I had expected. As a climber, he proved to be easygoing and competent. He had downplayed his skill and speed, which were considerable, and I was delighted by his artless blend of razor-sharp humor and candid sweetness.

  We cruised up the rock smoothly, enjoying
the positive granite edges and the vertical cracks. Though climbing the Diamond was strenuous, most of the climb now felt fairly straightforward, thirteen years after my first trip up the route with Craig. I had brought the minimum of protection devices, partly because that was my custom nowadays on long routes, but partly because I wanted to intentionally test myself for a free solo by relying on as little gear as possible to reduce the fall, should I slip off. Climbing with the rope stretching far below me, leaving myself open to a big fall if I slipped, was obviously much less dangerous and scary than climbing with no rope at all. But it was a controlled way to taste the feeling of being more exposed to danger, withholding the safety of placing gear as I climbed, but knowing I could lean back on the crutch of gear if I needed it.

  I took my time in the crux section at the top, memorizing which holds to grab and the most secure body movements. I resisted the precaution of setting a piece of gear to protect the hardest moves. I lingered in the middle of the crux, looking down to fully register the impressive exposure below me, training my eyes, brain, and emotions for when the security of the rope was gone.

  We climbed quickly and efficiently and reached the top of the Diamond before 10:00 a.m. We made our way down the shifting, boulder-filled slopes with gear and rock shoes hanging from our harnesses, chatting and laughing. We slid down the final snow gully and ended up in front of the granite cave where I’d left my camping things. We dropped the gear and rope in a small pile, then had nothing else to do.

  We both got a little quiet and I said, “Thanks so much for climbing.” Jacob looked uncertain. All at once, his tall, lanky frame and tousled, sandy hair made him seem young, a little vulnerable. I knew we were both thinking of the slight possibility of not seeing each other again, but at the same time not really believing in it. He stood there for a minute and finally just gave me a quick, firm hug and turned to walk down the trail alone. I felt a little pang as I watched him go.

  “I’ll call you tomorrow,” I shouted after him.

  Alone in the bivy cave, I went about my usual evening and morning bivy routines: prepacking my espresso maker and putting it next to the stove, the lighter, and my headlamp, all within reach, where they’d be easy to find in the dark, stuffing a Clif bar inside each of my climbing shoes and placing them next to my chalk bag and my windbreaker. I ate some miso soup and listened to music for a while and set my alarm. I put the watch on a small rock near my ear so I wouldn’t miss the sound if I burrowed too deeply into my sleeping bag hood. I was tired from the climb, but a little wired, and it was only four o’clock. It was like trying to go to bed before Christmas. I wanted to sleep, but I mostly just wished it would be morning already. I gazed out at the rocky ridgelines in the distance, thinking of the hours I’d spent lying in this cave beside my estranged husband, talking softly about the shapes in the rock outcroppings against the skyline—the little polar bear walking uphill, the kicking feet, the bent old man. This was the first cave we’d shared together, and then there’d been so many nights and days in caves like this, on top of El Capitan and Mount Watkins, below Half Dome, Cerro Torre, and Fitz Roy, pressed shoulder to shoulder.

  At 2:59 a.m. I woke and checked my watch. Twenty seconds later the alarm rang. I lit the stove, propped up in my bag, and drank coffee in the dark, then set off for the first snow tongue to the stretch of talus below North Chimney. In the circle of my headlamp, I grabbed the first familiar holds, pressing my climbing shoes against granite slabs, and started to climb. It was still dark as I reached Broadway Ledge. I was way too early. I huddled on the ledge alone in an alcove, feeling small and cold. I watched the glow of sunrise in the sky, out in the distance to the east. Time passed. I was getting too cold. I needed to move. I paced around the high ledge in my snug rock shoes and my thin windbreaker with the hood cinched tight around my face, trying to generate heat. Finally the weak dawn light leaked onto the ledge. I blew on my hands and rubbed my feet. The light gathered a little strength.

  I stood below the first pitch of the Casual Route and looked up at the thousand feet of granite that stretched above me. I closed my eyes and breathed deeply, entering my climber’s mind. Nothing else mattered except for the here and now on this clean dawn wall in the half-light. It was time. I grasped the chilled granite edges and stepped up onto the first footholds, leaving the safety of Broadway Ledge behind. My feet were numb and cold, making it hard to feel the smaller edges under my shoes. I struggled to relax as I climbed. The muscles in my back and arms felt a little sore from climbing the route the day before and doing all the rope work of belaying on each pitch. The sun gathered strength as I climbed, starting to create warmth finally. My muscles relaxed and everything felt better.

  I climbed slowly, making sure every move was solid and secure, and gradually warmed up, the climbing becoming easier and more fluid. After the long traverse pitch, climbing almost straight left for fifty feet, I stopped at a big ledge to pull off my shoes. I rubbed my feet and got the feeling back. The long dihedral pitch of hand jams and finger locks was as enjoyable as climbing can be, and I started to become more aware of the sensations, and to open my focus to take in where I was. I noticed other parties around, climbers to my right on Chasm Wall, to my left on the Diamond, and small dots walking on the snow below. It was a perfect Diamond day, with crisp air, blue sky, and the first puffy clouds moving in already.

  High up on the Casual Route, Longs Peak Diamond

  The cirque fell away beneath me until I reached the stemmed-out stance below the bulging crux of the climb. I stood with my shoulders tipped back slightly, one hand buried in a crack, feet stemmed out a little, the wall dropping away a thousand feet below my rock shoes. I started to reach high for a side pull with the other hand, making sure the other was still securely jammed into the crack before I let go to take it. I hesitated. I heard the beat of my heart pounding, loud inside my ears. With no warning, my mind instantly cartwheeled into images of my body falling down the wall, impacting Broadway, and tumbling for another thousand feet to talus and snow on Mills Glacier. Like an onslaught of invading enemies, tension, paralysis, and weakness rushed into my limbs. I froze in position, like a rabbit in the headlights of a truck. I knew that I had to move, immediately, before my panic took over completely, but I had to move with control or I would definitely fall and die. Shaking, yet clamping down on the holds through sheer instinct to survive, I fought through the panic and climbed to the safer, vertical terrain. Physically, I’d just exerted twice as much effort as I needed and I was drained, but I still had more climbing to do.

  The holds became large and positive again. Lactic acid flowed out of my muscles. Energy flooded back into my body as the adrenaline flooded out, making me feel almost euphoric. I breathed out and kept climbing to the final traverse, and then to Table Ledge. I’d made it. It was seven forty-five.

  I retrieved the running shoes I had tied in a grocery bag and wedged in a crevice the day before and headed up the south ridge over the top of the Diamond. I sat for a few minutes, empty, looking out at Chasm Lake and at the mountains spreading into the distance into somber grays, greens, and blues. It had happened so fast. I had just lived one of my greatest dreams and just tasted my greatest nightmare. I felt sated and a little staggered. More than that, I was confused. I didn’t understand how fear could have hijacked me, when I’d been almost immune to it for so long. A stream of thoughts, emotions, and memories washed through me as I walked slowly across the top of the Diamond to the North Face.

  For the first time, I saw what I’d been doing for the last four months, though it had probably been simple to see from the outside all along. I had always had a healthy respect for fear, as a climber and as an alpinist. I saw it as something necessary, something that could keep me alive. I believed I had come to understand it and had developed my own methods to use it as a tool, rather than being controlled by it. As events in my life had suddenly spiraled out of my control, my fears had seemingly inevitably come to pass one by one and I had becom
e hopeless, expecting the worst to happen from here on out. I’d allowed myself to become ruled by fear and anxiety, something that came as a real shock to acknowledge. I could almost understand how my husband had shied away from my infectious anxiety, as he struggled with the same fears himself. For me, the disintegration of my marriage had been a tipping point. It had left me immune to fear in a way I had never been. Perhaps this strange imperviousness had come from a surrender because I finally gave up, something I’d never done before. I’d studied and tried to practice Buddhist teachings and Sufi principles, but now I was starting to live the liberation that had eluded me before. When death holds no more fear and when you’ve lost the things most precious to you, there’s nothing more to be afraid of.

  So getting scared on the short crux of the Casual Route was confusing. It did show me that I wasn’t free soloing from some death wish. And it also showed me that my immunity to fear was not impenetrable. Maybe I hadn’t turned fearless. Maybe I’d just turned numb with the self-preservation instinct of locking out all emotions. Maybe being numb was fearlessness. I wasn’t sure about any of it. But I saw now what I was doing here in Colorado. I suddenly saw my life in the most elemental terms. Freedom had always been my greatest priority in life, and fear was the only thing that could keep me from it—the thing that had almost seduced me into giving up on life completely. I needed to get control of fear, completely, and figure out what was going on with it. It had progressively, insidiously been destroying my life and destroying me, and I wasn’t going to be a slave to it any longer. Fear and I were done.