“Give’r hell”. Andy and I were at the base of an ice climb called Hully Gully, outside of Colorado Springs, CO. The route traces water’s path of least resistance down a steep drainage off Old Stage Road, a mountainous track that once-upon-a-time carried people to and from the Cripple Creek mining camps. Dawn hadn’t yet broken when we met at the trailhead, which descends sharply through a forest of scree-filled slopes. In true Front Range fashion, the trail was marked with an abandoned porcelain toilet, upon which “HULLY” was Sharpied to the cracked tank.
I was there early in search of solace, of the quiet needed to focus solely upon the task at hand. Hully Gully hadn’t formed in the past 6 years – its existence dependent upon aquifer levels, precipitation patterns, and ephemeral temperature shifts. Since Hully was “in”, as ice climbers say, the chance to climb the local legend couldn’t be missed. Our early morning start was for several reasons: the chance to have the route all to ourselves, the opportunity to climb while our wives and children still slept, and the satisfaction of sacrificing comfort at the altar of risk. As weekend warriors, the ability to “feed the rat” of climbing (as aptly stated by Al Alvarez in his seminal book about climber Mo Anthoine) without compromising too much on family time is cherished.
Figure 1: Hully Gully Trail Marker.I’d met Andy a few weeks earlier while on a trip to Lake City, CO, a hamlet whose winter claim to fame is a collection of farmed ice climbs in a narrow canyon a few minutes’ walk outside of town. I was stoked he was willing to meet at an obscenely early hour and in poor conditions. My goal for the day was to lead climb Hully Gully. “Leading” an ice climb means ascending the route using ice tools and crampons, while placing fall protection in the form of ice screws along the way. Lead climbing can be more mental than physical, with the mind occupied by thoughts such as: “how far above my last ice screw am I? When should I place another? Is this stretch of ice high enough quality to hold a screw? How pumped are my arms? Am I in a good stance to place a screw?” The physical technique of ice climbing is straightforward: raise your arms, swinging your ice tool from the elbow, test the placement, then kick your crampons into the ice and stand up, then repeat”. Swing, kick, stand, repeat. However simple the techniques, executing them can be anything but – the mental often impedes the physical.
In a way, water is the same. Transitioning from state of being to state of being as it does – solid, liquid, gas – the constant state of change reflects our mental states. Water’s properties follow suit. If it wasn’t frozen, then Andy and I wouldn’t be here. And yet, the chemical state and fluidity of water are dependent on external factors – temperature, weather, sunlight, solutes – just as our minds are dependent on external factors. With water, the medium truly is the message, to steal an idea from Marshall McLuhan’s book Understanding Media. How something is framed is how we understand it.
Dawn broke, the sleet turning to rain as our elevation decreased. Andy and I hiked down a rocky, snow-covered slope to the base of Hully Gully. “Think it’ll be safe to climb today?”, I asked. “Only one way to find out!”, answered Andy. “Gotta get down there to take a look”. If the ice was too wet due to rainfall and warmer temperatures, the risk of fracturing increased, making it unsafe to climb. This prospect was both exciting and defeating to me: if we couldn’t climb today, then I wouldn’t have to face following through on my stated goal of leading the route. But that goal is why we were here in the first place, so if we couldn’t climb, then the anxiety of “can I do this?” would be kicked further down the road, lingering in my psyche until released. I never sleep well the night before climbs where success isn’t certain; scenarios and situations stream through my mind like film rolling through an old-time movie camera. For me, that is the allure of climbing: do I have what it takes to do what I want to do? The only way to learn how we’ll respond in a given situation is to confront that situation. It isn’t easy, and it shouldn’t be. Climber and philosopher Mark Twight (https://www.marktwight.com/) calls this “confrontational philosophy”, for struggle is necessary: we have to confront ourselves to believe in ourselves. It’s become a mantra for me: Confrontation is understanding. Confront each problem; experience each problem. Confront each obstacle; experience each obstacle. Confront each moment; experience each moment. Boxer Mike Tyson phrases it more succinctly: “Everyone has a plan til they get punched in the face”.
I was here for a return to Hammurabi; to get punched in the face with violent retribution. To see what I’d do next. To see if I had what it took. And on the hike in, it sure seemed like I’d get my wish. Andy and I had ‘first tracks’ in the snow: no one had gone before us. “Benefits of getting up with the chickens while it’s precipitating”, I joked to Andy as we trudged downhill. The trail to Hully Gully descends roughly 600 feet in elevation from the trailhead to the base of the route, and the fresh snow crunched softly under our boots. Thoughts of humility and hubris floated through the canals of my mind. Humility (what am I doing here attempting this?) and hubris (I’ve climbed this before on a top-rope how many times, why am I scared?) are two sides of the same coin. Both are needed to maintain balance. Fear becomes an effective teacher when it creates humility. But if only humility exists, we’ll never pursue anything. We need that push of hubris in the form of self-belief to get us out there. But if there is only hubris, we’ll end up in over our heads in deep water. This paradox of cognitive dissonance illustrates the duality of existence for both humans and water.
The layer of fresh snow blanketed and muffled all around it, offering respite from my reflections. At the base of the route, we dropped our packs and began preparing to climb. Donning harness, helmet, and crampons was a familiar act, and brought reassurance. Before roping up, Andy and I scrambled upwards 10 feet or so, testing the ice. “Yeah man, it’s a little soft on the surface from the rain, but feels solid underneath. It’ll go”, said Andy as he scrambled down, crampons and ice tools thumpfing into the ice. That was that. Game on. As long as the bar is high or distant, there is no way but the hard way. How could it be any other way? I had “put [my] ass where [my] heart wanted to be”, according to author Steven Pressfield. Scanning the base area to ensure no Ute Culturally Modified trees are present, I watered a scrappy ponderosa. The symbolic blending of the higher and lower, juxtaposed as ascendant ice and descendent urine, is the genesis of an epiphany: the portal to the invisible must be visible. The way to learn what was inside my head was right before my eyes. Judging the length of the route, I racked ice screws and alpine draws on each side of my harness. The ice screws vary in length: 10 cm, 13 cm, and 16 cm, to be used based on the thickness and quality of the ice. Like onions, ice has layers. While the outer shell of an ice flow may be soft or wet or porous, deeper layers reveal the firm, dense ice needed to safely protect a climb. Ice tools are used to scrape away the manky surface layers, and then provide a source of stability to hold on to with one hand while the other hand winds in an ice screw. It’s a complex dance requiring physical strength, coordination, balance, and mental clarity. Equally needed is endurance, of the physical, mental, and emotional sorts. All this, and just to climb some frozen water – an ephemeral form.
So, why then? Why do I do it? I cannot answer for anyone else, but I can appropriate the words of one more eloquent than I: “…I am looking for the deep, scary water. I want to go where I don’t really want to go. Because wading can’t teach the lessons I seek. I need to be up against it: forced to express the concepts, to execute the actions as perfectly as possible or suffer grave consequences” (Mark Twight, Poison: Sermons on Suffering). I believe in the transcendent power of physicality: exhaust the body to refresh the soul, accessing the deep wells that are available to us all, IF we do the work. It’s all mental; it’s all heart. Rarely is it merely physical. In a way, breaking it down to the simple terms favored by the ancient Stoics reveals thinking of the first order: I am merely moving up frozen water. And in so doing, I am elevating my consciousness. Water is essential to life, to the function of the body. On the day of this climb, water is essential to my development as a person. Facing myself? Yes. Redefining limits? Yes. But like infomercials in the wee hours of the morning, there’s always more: I was also seeking flow.
It’s odd to think of how water flows, and how akin this is to the idea of a mental “flow state”. First described by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, “flow” is a state of complete absorption in the current experience. It’s also been described as a state of consciousness where we feel our best or perform our best, complete with rapt attention and total absorption in the moment. Steven Kotler’s book Stealing Fire examines this human phenomenon, but all I can aptly examine is myself. As it relates to the climb, The Tao of Jeet Kune Do captures it best: “all technique is to be forgotten and the unconscious is to be left alone to handle the situation. The technique will assert its wonders automatically or spontaneously. To float in totality, to have to technique, is to have all technique” (p 212).
I was racked, I had tied into the rope, I was outwardly ready. Inwardly, the dialogue persisted, humming along with my heartbeat: Go? No go? Go? No go? All at once, the decision was rendered with the finality of Gene Kranz directing Apollo 11: Go, m---------r!. And so I went. Swing the ice tool overhead. Test the placement of the pick. Kick the crampon front points into the ice. Stand up. Decide if an ice screw was needed, place one if so, continue upward if not. After I’ve started up a climb, all the outer darkness falls away. What’s left is simply the task at hand. What’s present is what exists only in that exact moment. Swing, kick, stand, assess. Rinse with the falling sleet, and repeat. Twenty to thirty feet up (the mental record is incomplete), I place the first ice screw. Flow state settles in: all I see, all I focus on, is the ice in front of me and the moves I need to make. There is no mental dialogue, just the fluidity of movement. There are no thoughts of career moves, work drama, mortgage payments, if my truck would get stuck on the drive home. All that I had in that moment is all that I was. A climber, moving on frozen water. I placed a second screw, moved upwards, then a third. Traversing to the right, I followed the flow of the ice, and the flow of my mind. Now I was 100 feet above the ground, but the exposure didn’t register. My last ice screw was 15 feet below me; not a time to lose focus and fall, though that never crossed my mind. A few more feet above me was a ledge. “Running it out”, or making a conscious decision to accept the risk of a longer fall rather than the risk of trying to place (or failing to place) an ice screw from a compromised position, didn’t even merit a split second decision. I continued upwards, doing each move before I thought about it. Forgetting each move before I completed it. Reaching the slowly tilting ledge, I exhale, and notice I’m doing so for the first time since starting to climb. The familiar sear of lactic acid in my forearms bubbles into my consciousness as I accept the certainty of less-than-vertical terrain. Twight says it best: “Sometimes you’ll suffer, which is what alpinism is all about anyway. Enjoy it, it’s what you signed up for” (Extreme Alpinism, p. 84) Holy shit, I think aloud, I’ve almost done it, as I place my penultimate ice screw. ALMOST done it, comes another voice. We’re not out of the woods yet. Don’t get cocky and f*** it up. As put by novelist Walker Percy, “the enduring is something which must be accounted for. You cannot simply shrug it off” (The Moviegoer, p80).
From somewhere below me in the mist I hear a familiar voice: “Damn, you motored up that! You one of them al-pine-ists or somethin?” But it’s not Andy: it’s Phil, a friend vastly experienced at climbing, and life. I’ve adopted Phil as an unofficial mentor whether he’s recognized it or not, and his jesting words release a surge of dopamine. “Nothin’ to it but to do it,”, I shout down to him before studying what’s to come next. Before I can reach the top of this pitch, I need to move off the ledge, upwards and to the right. This move involves stepping out into the oblivion of air, sinking 2” of cold steel crampon points into the ice, and trusting them to hold my weight. Simple to describe in pixelated words, harder to overcome one’s self and execute. I swing my right tool into the ice. It sticks with a resounding, confidence-inspiring THUNK. Trusting the tool placement implicitly (as there is no other option), I step out rightwards, kick in my crampon, and stand up. It holds. My left tool swings as if on autopilot into the final bulge of ice. Satisfied in the tool’s solidity, I place my final ice screw to protect the exposed move to the belay ledge. Suddenly, I’m on the ledge building an anchor from slings and carabiners so I can belay Andy up as he climbs. “SECURE!” I yell down to Andy once I’m tied in to the anchor. I have no recollection of the moves I made to top out onto the ledge. The memory is a casualty of flow state. Rigging a redirect through a carabiner to ease the strain of the hanging rope on my arms, I pull up the slack in the rope that links Andy and I together. “BELAY ON!” I shout to Andy, and his response of “CLIMBING” reverberates off the canyon walls.
Another short pitch of climbing separates us from the top of the route. It’s a section that starts on an ice pillar and ends with some mixed climbing, where you use your ice tools and crampons on rock. If that sounds like strapping knives to your hands and feet and using them to hook small edges, groveling and scraping up rocks, you’ve got the right idea. Andy and I top out on the route amidst softly falling snow. It blankets the landscape, offering serenity. Our breath mists the air as we stuff harnesses, wet jackets, helmets, and other paraphernalia into our packs. What goes in the pack so elegantly at home is always re-packed without ceremony. “Nice work, man”, says Andy. “Stoked I could help you out today”. I thank him, and we make small talk on our hike out to the road, swapping stories of kids, spouses, and breakfast foods. I drive off alone. My truck slides towards the precipice of the road through fresh snow before I regain control. This sudden brush with mortality reminds me how “real consequence always flattens arrogance. So I came to value consequence and the lessons I learned from it. It is imperative to DO something real. In real world terms, according to real world rules. No matter how hard I go or how scared I get in a controlled environment, it is still a controlled environment. The safety net changes everything.” (Raze Anthology, p70. Italics and underlining mine.) Risk is the cost to learn these lessons; action is our relationship to everything. Success is found in the practice.
And so it is. The visible water of Hully Gully unlocked the invisible knowledge of my experience, linking the divine with the profane. Your mileage may vary, but you won’t know unless you try, unless you confront your own obstacles to see what lies within. But remember: “You cannot always stay on the summits. You have to come down again…so what’s the point? Only this: what is above knows what is below, what is below does not know what is above…there is an art to finding your way in the lower regions by the memory of what you have seen when you were higher up. When you can no longer see, you can at least still know”. (Daumal, Mt Analogue, p 105). This knowledge will always remain with you: a lagniappe of the ice.
Story + Images Provided By Joseph Kalis - @lummoxalpine
Bibliography
Daumal, Rene: Mount Analogue
Kotler, Steven (with Jamie Wheal): Stealing Fire
Lee, Bruce: The Tao of Jeet Kune Do
Twight, Mark: Poison: Sermons on Suffering
Twight, Mark: Kiss or Kill
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly: Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
Percy, Walker – The Moviegoer
Pressfield, Steven – Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants To Be
NonProphet Collective: RAZE Anthology
Soundtrack
Elephant Tree – Open Car
Boil – The Fall
Crippled Black Phoenix – In Bad Dreams
Vast – You Should Have Known I Would Leave
Alcest – Sapphire
Eminem – Brainless
