Learning to Fly

by Steph Davis

  I put my back to the start of the North Face route, leaning against the smooth, skinlike sandstone of Castleton while I taped my hands with white athletic tape, as I always did when climbing cracks. It would be a while before I reached the top. The wind and clouds might pass. Walking down seemed like a terrible option. I was here. I’d thought about this moment for days. I was 110 percent ready, and if I rested for another day or two, I would lose that readiness. Especially if I came down with a cold. I didn’t feel as energetic as I wanted to feel, but when had I ever felt perfect before starting up a climb like this? I smoothed down each layer of the tape, making sure it was stuck perfectly to my skin with no wrinkles, not binding too tightly on my wrists. I pulled the tabs on the backs of my rock shoes to get my heels in and stood up, reaching to remove my earbuds, then stopped. I liked the relaxing vibe of the music, the way it kept my thoughts from wandering to places they didn’t belong. A crutch, maybe, but I would use it. I had a stick of gum in my pocket too. Along with lip balm, it was my lightweight alternative to carrying water. I put the gum in my mouth and started chewing, feeling nonchalant, teenaged.

  I put my hands in the crack, watching the bright white tape slide into the dark sandstone. I flexed my fists and felt the familiar catch of the flat planes against the backs of my hands. I slotted my foot in high and stood. My other foot left the ground.

  Free soloing the North Face route, Castleton Tower Damon Johnston

  I climbed rhythmically up the long corner, making sure that each hand and each foot was solid and buried in the crack. At the top of the crack, the white calcite flake hung down, sealing off the crack. I grabbed the sharp underside of the flake with one hand and buried my other deep in the back of it and stepped my feet out onto textureless calcite lumps below it, leaving the security of the crack. As I crossed my left foot over my right leg, walking my body to the right, my right foot stepped on my loose pant leg. I’d forgotten to roll up my pants before I started climbing. My shoe skated on the fabric, and both hands instinctively clamped down with an adrenalized death grip as I quickly replaced my foot on a smooth knob of calcite, nudging my loose pant leg aside with my toe. I climbed quickly across the flake and into the security of the steep, thin crack above it, locking down hard with my arms as I topped out onto the big, flat ledge. Immediately I sat down and rolled up my pants. I felt drained. Two more hard sections awaited me, one on each pitch above. I couldn’t afford to make any more mistakes like that. I sat for a long time, with my back to the wall, looking out at the desert towers and walls out in the distance. The sky seemed to be clearing slightly. I stood up and put my hands into the crack, stepped my feet off the ledge, and started up the second pitch.

  I sat on another good ledge below the third pitch for a while. I’d run this section over in my mind all night last night, the moves where I had to leave the crack and climb over the bulge before getting back in, the section where falling off seemed the most possible. I sat until I felt sure I was completely relaxed, mind clear. I knew I could climb this. There was nothing to fear. I stood up slowly and started to breathe deeply. I crossed over a few loose blocks at the end of the ledge and stepped into the wide crack. I hung off my flexed hands in the bulge and then committed, pushing my body out and up with my legs, reaching high for the small, right handhold, getting my left foot levered up into the crack. I pulled myself in with my leg as I pulled hard with my right hand, felt the flow of relief as I buried my hands in the rock, and wriggled in as the crack got wider and wider. Now I would definitely never fall. Pleasure filled my body as my hands reached the flat edge of the top.

  On the summit, I felt a mix between relief and satisfaction, a good feeling. The clouds had cleared and the wind had gone quiet. I’d been right to press on, through the doubt and uncertainty down below. I pulled my rig out from its crevice and put on my windbreaker. I zipped my climbing shoes and chalk bag into the front and stepped into the base rig, cinching the straps down as I walked toward the southwest arête.

  I knelt at the exit point and spat to make sure there was no wind down the tower. The clouds were preventing even the updrafts I’d felt on sunny days. It was perfect. I could just make out my red-and-yellow flag far down below on the trail, lifting lightly from right to left. It was time. I stood at the pointed edge, head high and shoulders back, took a deep breath, and stepped off the edge, shoving hard with my left foot. The arête rushed below me and the big square boulders grew fast. I threw out my pilot chute, the canopy banged open, and Castleton receded behind me. I landed softly, gathered up my parachute, and walked out to my truck. I had done it.

  Of all the climbs I’d done and would still do in my life, all the first ascents, big walls, and alpine routes, this climb of Castleton seemed certain to remain my favorite. No one had free soloed the North Face before, but that wasn’t what made it stand out to me, the cachet of being the first to do something. That had never been a big motivator for me. I had also never liked stunts, or anything that struck me as contrived. Free soloing a spire that can be ascended only through technical climbing and descending by parachute, completely eliminating the rope, seemed to me like the most practical and elegant thing possible. I loved what I had done on the North Face of Castleton, this “free solo base climb” if it had to be named, because to me it seemed to be a combination of the perfect climb, the perfect jump, and the perfect tower. From beginning to end, it was perfectly beautiful and perfectly practical.

  The experiences on Castleton with Mario had been perfect too. He made me feel grounded yet filled with energy, with his warm smile and candid blue eyes that sometimes were gray. I liked the way he saw the world as an endlessly enjoyable place filled with puzzles to be solved, and the way he gave his full attention to whatever he was doing and free rein to his imagination at all times. He was an unusual blend of engineer, adventurer, and dreamer, both passionate and meticulous. Above all, Mario struck me as simply a good person, the kind of person who makes others want to be better just by being himself. I didn’t feel recovered at all from the sorrow of my failed marriage and hadn’t even yet figured out how people organized divorces. But I couldn’t help but notice that being around Mario felt wonderful.

  The first thing Mario said when I told him I’d made it was that he’d had an idea for Pete’s footage, to make it even better. He suggested that I go up Castleton again, by the easy North Chimney, which I could scamper up quickly, and jump it again for an aerial shot. He would fly the jump plane past the exit point at the precise moment I was ready to jump, with the cargo door open for the video camera to stick out. I’d clip a radio to my chest so he could talk to me as he approached. It would have to be perfectly choreographed by all of us, with just one chance to line everything up perfectly in a single second to get the shot. We all loved the idea. I hiked up the next morning and quickly climbed the North Chimney to the top, tugging my base rig up behind me on the thin rope. As I stood on the summit, cinching the straps on my rig, I heard the buzz of the 182 approaching from the west. I stood on top of the southwest corner, watching the plane come near, waiting for the exact moment it would pass by as Mario’s voice came over the radio giving me a countdown. I pushed off the edge just as the Cessna shot past me, shockingly close. I tossed my pilot chute out, and my canopy banged open. The plane banked and headed back, looping back and forth around me, so close that I could see the big video camera lens pointing out of the open cargo door on each pass. I didn’t have to see Mario’s face to know that he was enjoying this immensely.

  I turned toward my flag, over the runway that now seemed like an enormous and easy landing area, and touched down gently in the slight headwind. The engine grew loud as the plane buzzed low, whooshing dramatically right over my head, then swooping up steeply and heading off to the west, growing quieter as I laughed and waved. It was silent again. I stood there, looking into the sky, and smiled. I felt so happy, so light.

  Pushing myself in my activities was part of me, so I never questioned my motivation to
do “extreme things.” But I could see the different emotional states my climbs expressed. I could admit to myself now that free soloing the Diamond was born in large part of despair and grief, though it had ultimately lifted me free of them. Free soloing and jumping Castleton was completely different. It felt like a celebration of a new life. It was hard to believe that just a year ago I was at the lowest point I’d ever been. Things will always change—it’s the one thing we can count on. I knew this deeply now because I’d lived it, and that seemed to be the only way for me to truly understand a thing. The world was opening like clear sky all around.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Hit Me One More Time

  Jumping the Roan Plateau, Rifle, Colorado Mario Richard

  Time had returned to its normal, mercurial rhythm as spring flowed into summer, shifting and swirling like water. Jumping drank me in completely. I traveled around Utah, Colorado, California, and Arizona, flying my wingsuit off cliffs both legal and illegal, antennae, and airplanes, or jumping without it if the cliffs were short. The more I jumped, the more I wanted to jump, with an insatiable thirst that only intensified with each deep draft. Perhaps jumping is an addiction, but it seemed no different from the first ten years of climbing, when climbing is all you want to do all the time.

  The biggest problem with the States is our general lack of limestone. America’s limestone cliffs tend to be both rare and hard to get at. Italy, Switzerland, Norway, Austria, and France are basically dripping with walls and mountains of the stuff, like a countess covered in diamonds. For both rock climbers and base jumpers, limestone is just as coveted. America has a few pockets, mostly in remote parts of Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and Nevada, and mostly shortish and of mediocre quality or else hard to access. Climbers have to be motivated to venture out into the wilds, sniff out the usually disappointingly small cliffs, pry off the loose chunks of rock, and drill in bolts for protection. Base jumpers have to be equally motivated to orienteer to the top of the few tall cliffs that can be found way out in the desert, and to be either skilled or optimistic enough to maneuver down to the rugged, rocky landing spots below them. No cable cars, paint-marked hiking trails, or cow pastures frame these faces. So the geology around Rifle, Colorado, is nothing short of a miracle, an unexpected trove of limestone that is fully accessible, good for climbing, and good for jumping.

  I’d driven along I-70 between Rifle and Moab countless times, looking at the looming limestone ridgeline beside the highway. The Roan Plateau, sixty-seven thousand acres of wilderness around the town of Rifle, is controlled by the Bureau of Land Management, which means no restrictions against climbing or base jumping, or anything really. Thanks to hunters and outdoorspeople, and to the oil and gas drilling all over the plateau, dirt roads wind up and around seemingly everywhere. For climbing, the Roan cliffs are worthless since the outer skin of limestone is crumbling off the steep faces. For jumping, they are ideal—six hundred vertical feet of overhanging, crumbling limestone situated atop another thousand-plus feet of steep terrain below them.

  Just off highway I-70, at the West Rifle exit, the road leads past the one-street town of Rifle with its handful of motels, cafés, and liquor stores. It continues past a few small ranches, an unexpected golf course, a reservoir dam, then curves and climbs along green pastures of white-faced black cows and palominos. Scrubby ridges line the valley as the incline steepens. The road narrows, past rows of cement water troughs at the trout hatchery, then takes an abrupt left curve so sharp you could miss it and launch straight out into the creek valley. The road suddenly turns to dirt, and things slow down. Green, leafy trees, cattails, and wild rosebushes line the creek and shelter the road. The cliffs form a continuous wall of rock on each side, bending and curving along the canyon, steep and undulating, pale orange streaked with gray.

  Climbing at Rifle, Colorado Jimmy Chin

  In this quiet canyon, rock climbers have discovered a lifetime’s worth of difficult, technical limestone climbing, and many Rifle climbers have devoted their entire lives to climbing only on these walls, with astonishing results. Even a long sport route is usually no more than a hundred feet in length, so the cliffs are more than doubly as tall as they need to be. The quantity, variety, and difficulty of the short, bolted climbs here are impressive. Even more impressive is the ease of access to the routes. Several main climbing sectors have been developed in Rifle, and climbers park in small dirt areas in front of the sectors and are faced with about a twenty-second walk to the bottom of the routes. For me, Rifle had always been the ultimate rock-climbing paradise. I would never achieve greatness there, as the short, gymnastic face climbs were almost the polar opposite of my particular strength as a climber, and I invariably left almost as soon as I’d built the notorious Rifle-specific fitness base. But I loved it there, that small haven from the outside world, where life was simple and pure. When Moab started to lose the coolness of early spring, my thoughts always turned to Rifle.

  Rifle is a haven for dogs too, a place where almost every climber is accompanied by a canine. And it turned out to be perhaps the best place in the world for a retired dog. At Rifle, I could climb as much as I wanted, and even at her slowing pace, Fletch could handle the twenty-second walk to most of the climbs. Mornings and evenings at the campsite were relaxing, Fletch lying in the grass near the creek, occasionally getting up to sniff something nearby. I couldn’t ignore her growing arthritis, as her limp was becoming more pronounced.

  If climbing was woven into my DNA, Fletch was one of the helices. In the past, she had been almost a role model for me, a rare creature in being even more independent than I was. Now she seemed to need my presence, as well as a lot of help getting up the front steps and in and out of the truck. For years I’d firmly believed that since Fletcher was mostly cattle dog, she would surely break the longevity record supposedly set around the turn of the century by Bluey, a heeler who had herded cows up until his death at age twenty-nine and a half. Now I wasn’t so sure. Things had changed fast just in the last few months, and Fletch was only thirteen. Celebrating her thirtieth birthday was starting to look like a pipe dream. In the past I’d always wished I could spend more time climbing in Rifle. Now, with Fletch’s parameters having shrunk so dramatically, I completely dropped the idea of going anywhere else. In Rifle, we could be together, at the cliffs all day and camping all night. And then there was the Roan Plateau, an impressive and remote jump site, an hour’s drive away on the bumpy dirt roads but just a few miles as the crow flew.

  Mario was flying the jump plane in Moab most days, but managed to get two days off in a row as soon as I mentioned the Roan cliffs to him. He’d driven on that stretch of I-70 many times, and the cliffs were impossible not to notice. We drove out, following scribbled instructions I’d got over the phone from a friend who’d discovered the site. The truck bounced and rattled up dirt roads, gradually climbing higher over precipitous switchbacks. The scrubby sagebrush and pale dust gave way to aspen groves and yellow flowers as we gained altitude. The directions were precise yet still confusing, with several turns and loops at complicated junctures, causing us to backtrack several times. The forty-five-minute drive had become well over an hour by the time we crested the plateau and drove to the cliff’s edge. It would be easy to launch right off, Thelma and Louise style.

  The Roan Plateau

  Aspen leaves trembled in the slight breeze, and green fields of grass and flowers swept around us, the rock walls stretching down underneath, pale and sheer, to a long talus field. The place was completely deserted. It gave me chills to see the pale rock curving around us below. Fletch settled comfortably into the soft grass as we walked out along the edge of the cliff. Large, flat plates of rock were stacked on top of each other, held in place by a mortar of dried clay and littered with small, flat, shalelike fragments. They clinked and tinkled under my boots. It wasn’t hard to imagine an entire shelf suddenly giving way and hurtling off the edge into the air. We stood on a solid-looking ledge and looked down at the rug
ged, contoured landscape. The Roan Plateau stretched all around, scrubby sage and rock chips underfoot, with wildflowers and aspens blooming wildly. The exfoliating walls curved below, an enormous amphitheater of limestone perched atop a thousand feet of shifting talus. Jagged rock formations and scrubby trees made up the complicated landscape that fed into a ravine at the very bottom. Everything poured down to a dry, tight canyon, like a huge arena.

  I couldn’t see anywhere flat or open for landing and couldn’t spot the orange windsock that my friend said he’d set up in the single spot that was safe for landing. Mario pointed out one small place of a slightly different color that looked as if it might be the landing area. I’d made a practice of walking around the landing area before going up for a jump. Here, I couldn’t even see the landing area in the complicated terrain, a couple of thousand feet below. Only one of us could jump because the other person would have to drive back down the dirt road, out around to the front of the plateau to the highway, and then up more dirt roads to pick up the jumper. The jumper would have some scrambling to do in the meantime, picking a way down the tight, scruffy canyon until it opened out on the road. Overall, it was an extremely intimidating place, nothing at all like anywhere I’d jumped before. I was more than happy to take my turn as the driver.