Between a Rock and a Hard Place - Aron Ralston [20]
I climbed my first fourteener, Longs Peak—one of the fifty-nine mountains in Colorado higher than the magic line of 14,000 feet—in July 1994, with my best friend, Jon Heinrich. Longs dominates the northern half of Colorado’s Front Range, northwest of Boulder. At 14,255 feet, the mountain is the sixteenth-highest peak in the state, and one of the most renowned. While its spectacular East Face, known as the Diamond, draws world-class technical climbers to its sheer granite lines, the relatively easy standard hike through the Keyhole allows thousands of scrambling hikers to make the summit each summer. Jon and I gathered advice from Dick Rigo, our friend Brandon’s dad, who had been a Boy Scout leader and who had himself climbed several dozen of the fourteeners. Mr. Rigo told us some basic tenets of hiking high peaks—start early, take water and food, rain gear, a map, and be off the summit by noon to avoid lightning from the almost daily afternoon thunderstorms—most of which we subsequently ignored.
Jon carried a gallon jug of water in his grip; our packs were stuffed with sandwiches, candy bars, and our ski jackets. By the time we reached treeline, the elevation above which trees no longer grow (about 11,000 feet on Longs Peak), we had stripped off our shirts and slathered sunscreen on our chests. We noted our progress compared to the photocopied trail map we’d picked up at the ranger station that morning, marking down the time we reached each landmark. We were going to be a long way behind the record ascent time, but we would easily get back before dark. A broad trail ascended to Granite Pass near 12,000 feet, and in a set of a half-dozen long switchbacks, the route turned back above itself several times to reach the Boulderfield, a half square mile of couch-sized boulders piled over one another. We ate a snack under the clear sky at the Keyhole, a steeply sided, jagged notch in the northern ridge of the mountain. Then I climbed up the rocks on the north side of the Keyhole and crawled out onto the overhanging pinnacle some thirty feet above Jon. With my legs dangling over the drop, he took my picture. I came down, Jon climbed up, and I returned the favor.
Even though we were well above 13,000 feet, the most difficult climbing of the day was still to come, with first a treacherous traverse across the granite slabs that slope down the west side of the north ridge, then a steep climb up the Trough Couloir, a five-hundred-foot-high rocky gully, where we encountered a dozen other hikers who were having increasing difficulty breathing under the exertion of scrambling up the couloir (the air near 14,000 feet is about half the density of air at sea level, so the available oxygen is significantly reduced). Jon suggested we race to the top of the couloir, one at a time, and see how many people we could pass. He went first and eventually passed everyone else in the couloir. While Jon was nearing the halfway point, I started up. Trying to pace myself to overtake a couple before the gully narrowed at a four-foot-high rock step, I felt my breathing escalate, but since I was unacclimated to the altitude, my chest could heave only so much until the fiery sensation in my lungs won and I had to pause at the rock step. Though I still passed all the other hikers, I was several minutes slower than Jon. It was significant to me that it could feel so good to make my body hurt by pushing so hard.
Approaching 14,000 feet under our own power for the first time, Jon and I felt giddy with the promise of making it to the top. But first we rounded an outside corner and were looking up at the Homestretch, a three-hundred-foot-high open dihedral formed at the crease where two sections of the summit walls create an inside corner, like an open book.
The last task before we would