Castle Valley
Castleton Tower & The Indelible Mark
We were sniffing our way back to our backpacks, at the base of the Kor-Ingalls route. The darkness of night had closed us into private worlds of trail sleuthing. Jeb was somewhere ahead of me. We'd found the right path this time, but I was slow and methodical about walking now, poised above a cliff band's edge. It was a little bit like the climax of Silence of the Lambs, knowing the killer precipice was right there all the time, but invisible. I had looked forward to descending the massive talus cone that supports Castleton Tower in the daylight, but as I crawled up the final slope to our packs, stumbling again, and knew that the way down would be too much like work.
Loading the gear in to my rucksack, I was numb to the epic we had just embraced. Jeb handed me a tiny flashlight since I'd left my headlamp below. Then we started down.
Yesterday, when I'd picked him up in Rulison, Jeb was wearing his full-dress ranch-hand non-uniform: black cowboy hat (well-trained, ofcourse), black scarf, black boots, black jeans, checkerboard button-down shirt with the long sleeves rolled up... he even walked like a guy who'd been riding a horse for a couple of weeks. Actually, he had been chasing strays on horseback, he later told me.
Anyhow, I looked at him, and knowing the Jeb inside the skin and the clothes, I thought to myself, Uh-oh... what does this mean?...
We'd driven like crazy to get to Canyon Country, and we'd neglected to stop and call our wives before rocketing out of Colorado. Bummer, because I'd promised to call before I got on the rocks.
We set up our tents in a dry wash, along with what would turn out to be a dozen other cars, all from Colorado, in an otherwise quiet place.
"This is the first time I've been to an established area in nine months," Jeb stated proudly. "Look at all these people!"
I'm not a gregarious type either, which is one of the reasons I live in Wyoming. Like most of the people I know, folks say "There's nothing to do here!" For the most part, these people are correct. There is not much here in the way of nightlife. You're kind of limited to the sort of mess you can get yourself in to. Outdoor activity, on the other hand, abounds. There's nothing quite as convenient as never needing to find a rest stop to piddle at, for example. But I live in Cheyenne, just about 9 miles from the border of the most populated state on the Great Plains, Colorado. Still, I couldn't help bristling a little bit at Jeb's self-righteous proclamation. He didn't mean to bug me. He's just proud that way. I can't help it if I live in the biggest city in Wyoming. I can't help it if I have to be close to home most of the time. I can't help it if I am forced to spend "quality time" at the nearest crags, i.e. Vedauwoo. That's just the way it is these days. If you go to the cragging areas near big population centers, though, you will be part of a large social scene. There are no getaways anymore.
The babble of the Colorado Contingent all but died as the frigid night suddenly arrived, and the two of us adjourned to our tents. I wrote a note in my journal, then donned a walkman to fall asleep to the local news.
Morning: A few climbers had obviously gotten away very early, as no one stirred from the few tents and the numerous vehicles. We resigned ourselves to lining up in an orderly fashion to climb the Tower. This relaxed attitude allowed us a few extra cups of coffee, a little more time to sort gear, and further consideration of our chosen route. I still seemed to be in the company of the spirit of Edward Abbey... I think maybe Jeb was merely possessed by the "evil" leanings of the decedent. Not that Abbey was evil, per se, but there was something that my partner seemed to be embodying, and I couldn't really understand it. He came off as intolerably upstanding... it made me want to protest with the diesel blast of a Caterpillar D-9, or the Allis Chalmers HD-41, anything that would drown out the enviro-speak, the intolerance for Man's Conquest of Nature...
It wasn't that I didn't care about cryptobiotic soil conservation. I just wanted to get on Castleton Tower. You just don't come roarin' down the interstate in to Utah and leave without tackling atleast one of the classic routes of the desert.
As we made ready, people were driving away, instead of hiking up the talus cone to the tower. My spirit, like Edward's, began to soar!
Eventually, we lumbered out of camp, following the sinuous wave of damp sand which passed through a picturesque breach, with two small hillocks framing Castleton Tower perfectly.
"Jeez, I hope we can get back down this stuff before dark."
Base of the Tower proper:
I smoked as many cigarettes as I could while we were getting roped up. Jeb took the first lead. As I was belaying him, several other parties appeared, most of them waiting in line to climb the North Chimney route, around the corner. Our rack was enormous, which made leading most troublesome.
Jeb's lead was fun to follow. Here we were, lightyears from home, on funky sandstone, and here was Jeb, putting in only the occasional piece in some of the longest, most continuous cracks I had ever seen. A pleasure to follow, as I only had to clean four or five pieces in one-hundred-and-fifty feet, but I just couldn't lead that way. Never could. I likes to sew things up!
We talked about the next pitch, and Edward--- I mean Jeb said that we needed to try to avoid the 5.9+ variation... but we couldn't agree which way that be. I thought the 5.8-looking groove with the circa 1960's bolt was a dead give-away; but Jeb thought that the shallow, holdless dihedral with the off-fist-sized crack was the way Kor would have gone. Go figure. At any rate I went the way Jeb thought we should go, and wound up being lowered back down to the belay in shameful defeat. I needed a few more extremely large camming devices to protect the crack to my liking. Jeb, ofcourse, is not afraid to die, and was able to lead through my shortcoming. Luckily, the next lead was still his, a famous crux, Kor-sized.
Picture a man so tall that his head is in the clouds: that's Kor. Imagine the wingspan of a man that tall: enormous. Kor led this pitch. It was wide for him. Here are Jeb and Ben, both of average height, trying to master one of Kor's historical signatures. It was something to see Jeb up there, back to the left wall, arms fully extended, wiggling up that fissure to the derelict bolts that "protect" the third pitch...
Never inspired by a top rope, I followed as though I was leading. When I joined Jeb at the belay, we marvelled at the properties of the rock.
"Just when I start getting used to the sandstone, along comes that snotty calcite..." he began. I didn't hear the rest of his words... I was too busy laughing at the visual image that he'd just inspired.
I divided the last pitch into two segments, since it made more sense to me that Jeb be able to see me while he belayed me. It was fantastic. There was another party racing us for the last fifty feet of the tower, shared by both the Kor/Ingalls and the North Chimney. We were basically in First Place. I belayed Jeb up, and he scrambled the last few feet onto the summit.
There on the summit sat a young couple, Bill and Megan. They'd dropped their second rope, without which they could not make the rappels to descend the tower. They were lucky however, because the party coming up behind us had recovered Bill's rope.
I looked around at the stark emptiness of the canyon country, not even a cloud in the sky to lend substance to space.
I found the register and signed our names. Jeb had located the rappel anchor at the top of the North Face, and started threading our ropes for the descent.
"Would you mind carrying half of the rack?" I asked without shame. "It's unbelievably heavy."
The descent was about to be epic. We didn't know it yet. Back at the start of the climb, Jeb had declared that he had no confidence in making the top, but here we were, with daylight to spare.
The sight of a rappel rope uncoiling in freefall can be a beautiful sight. It's the stuff that wanderlust is made of. It's indescribable. Both ends of our skinny ropes hung free from the tower ever-so-slightly, fifty meters below us. Somewhere down there was another rappel anchor of some sort, presumably another set of reliable bolts. Jeb headed down first. I watched him as long as I could, but the emptiness yawning beneath him made me a bit giddy, so I sat up and made small talk with Bill and Megan. Jeb's voice sounded so far away when he called to me that he was off rappel. Carefully I threaded the rope through my rappel device as I'd done hundreds of times before, but at times like this, it seemed to have more gravity... I also wrapped a prusik knot loosely around the ropes, as a back-up.
About halfway down the ropes - eighty feet - the halfway marks on the ropes passed through my tuber (rappel device) but became locked securely on my prusik knot, which stopped me cold. Oh well, I thought, dangling there, atleast the back-up system worked, albeit at the wrong time! Using a strenuous rope manuever, I was able to free the stuck prusik and continue my descent.
The thing about those smaller diameter ropes is that the closer you get to the end of the rope, the faster you go. Which is what I did. Which is when I remembered that we hadn't tied the rope ends together, which would prevent either of us from rappelling off the ends of the skinny ropes. But Jeb was there, as I approached his stance rather quickly, to offer me some assistance. It was a single-skid landing, basically, with Jeb giving me a little grab.
"I forgot we should have tied the rope ends together," he smiled.
"Me, too."
We pulled the ropes down, threading them through the next set of bolts. I had high hopes that we only had one more rappel instead of two, but when the ropes were tossed, we could feel that the ends still hung free, instead of touching the ground.
The ledge we were on was quite spacious for this massive, vertical wall, even though as time separates me from the experience of being there, the ledge gets smaller and smaller in my memory. Jeb backed off slowly and rappelled over the brink as I stood there, fiercely holding onto the anchor chains, leaning out to look over the edge. It's a good thing to be clipped in, I thought. I looked up to the top of the tower, and could see Bill's distant face peering down. He had to wait until I left this station before he tossed their ropes down. Common courtesy.
It seemed ages since Jeb had left the ledge, (pardon me, I mean desperately miniscule stance), and the sun was gone from the tops of the few other towers I could see. Definitely getting near dusk, I thought. The rope was still taught, so Jeb was still on it. We'd tied the ends of the rope together this time, so I knew he couldn't rappel off the rope altogether. Then he started yelling in that Pavarotti Tenor of his, the one he uses when things don't always go as planned.
I couldn't make out what he was saying, except that at the end of one string of verbal wailings, I thought I heard him say,"...and it's our own fault!"
I looked up at Bill's head, which was cocked to one side, as if he was straining to hear Jeb's "song." I thought for a minute that maybe Jeb was hung up on the rappel somehow, but, no! No way that could happen. He's an expert caver.
Finally I heard him holler "Off rappel," and I threaded the ropes through my tuber, and wrapped the prusik around the ropes. I was fifty feet down , well into the verticality, when I heard Jeb's voice call my name.
"Be-e-e-n!"
"What?!" I answered.
"Stop," he told me.
"Why?!!" I countered.
I sounded annoyed! I was hanging on skinny ropes, two-hundred-fifty feet off the ground, staring a massive curtain of that snotty calcite right in the face. To my left, to my right, as far as the eye could see, calcite, calcite everywhere... and a hundred feet below me, there was Jeb's red helmet, just barely visible, peeking out from under a roof. What the hell was he thinking? Did he want me to take a picture or something? I was about to remind him that we didn't have a camera with us...
"Do you see an anchor anywhere up there?" he asked me. This gave me pause.
"Jeb, aren't you at the next anchor?"
"No. I didn't see one."
"What are you hanging on? Is there a ledge there?"
"No. I have a couple of friends in a crack here. I had to untie the ends of the rope so I could reach it. That's what took me so long."
"Jeb, does the rope reach you now?"
"No."
Great, I thought, scanning to each side for an anchor. Way out to the right, I could see bolts and chains. I swung over to them... or nearly. Luckily there was a crack beside them which I was able to jam a hand in. I tensioned over to the bolts and clipped in.
Jeb kept yelling for updates. I was pulling on the ropes so I could rig the next rappel, and I figured I could probably swing the rope over to him once I was on the ground...
That was when the ropes became stuck. Four hundred and fifty feet of sheer verticality, and our rope was jammed in the only obstruction around!
Meanwhile, Bill and Megan were rappelling to the stance above. Their big, fat 11-millimeter ropes hung down the wall to my left. Pulling on our stuck 9 millimeter ropes, I was envious of the security of their extra 2 millimeters of woven nylon. All I wanted to do was to be able to swing about on our ropes with impunity, with mad abandon, the way Bill and Megan could. Instead I had to be very calculating and careful on our skinny ropes.
There was an entirely personal drama going on at every level of this descent: Jeb hung there in his solitude; the stance I occupied seemed a lonely place; Bill & Megan above, rappelling. Jeb was obviously in first place for dramatic content. I was running a close second, as I realized I had unclipped myself while trying to communicate with both Jeb and the party above at the same time. This gave me a sharp wake-up call. I reclipped and prepared for a rope-retrieving diagonal rappel. Just then, Bill came zinging down their ropes, and stopped momentarily to speak:
"Do you want me to go down and unstick your rope?"
"No," I answered, already beginning my funky rope trick. "I'm on it..."
Just then, Jeb's voice wafted up.
"Ben," he yelled. He sounded just a little forlorn.
"What?"
"Let them help us!"
Bill joined me at the anchors, hauling Megan in across the traverse. It really was quite a long ways to one side. Why hadn't the guide books pointed this out?
Bill set off down first. He'd done exactly the same thing as Jeb had done, the year before. After pausing to flick our stuck rope out of its cleft, He rappelled 160 feet to the ground, and swung their ropes over to Jeb, who followed. Mega followed Bill and Jeb, and in the waning light, I checked and re-checked my own ropes before making that final abseil.
I reached the ground. Sweet Terre Firma. Always better when one can gently alight on it, rather than slam in to it. It was getting dark fast now.
Jeb was impatient to get moving, being, as he was, stuck to the slowest human being on the face of the Earth (me). A downclimb to the talus cone, which would have been trivial in the daylight, tested my faith in the rock and in my shoes. We scoured the dark scree for the telltale signs of a trail. Bill and Megan returned to the ridgetop of where we stood squinting in to the pitch blackness, bickering between themselves. No wonder: we were all weary.
After some scree-glissading, we found a track that seemed to circle Castleton Tower, as nearly as we could tell. Above us, I could hear voices, those of climbers still negotiating the descent. It sounded to me like their ropes too were stuck. Their voices conveyed no urgency, no panic, only blase resignation. If they weren't already Eexperienced climbers, no doubt they would be when this night came to an end.
Jeb was soon far ahead of me. As it turned out we were on the right track.
I was a little surprised that we were moving the campsite the next day. I suppose we had discussed it, but I was forgetful, simply happy to have come down from Castleton Tower in one piece. The descent had unnerved me, and I could only owe it to the sensation of limitless space that I got from climbing here. We broke camp after breakfast and headed to Potash Road to do some sport climbing.
One thing about that breakfast coversation: it was where I had 'fessed up to leaving our names in the summit register on Castleton Tower. This sort of behavior is anathema to Jeb, although the practice is generally accepted as well as being widespread. I guess he felt he should have been consulted beforehand:
"Why didn't you just spray-paint my name up there?" he huffed. I paused, staring at him, granola in my mouth, more than slightly surprised. I was certain that I had just heard the voice of Edward Abbey slicing words out of my partner's mouth...
On to Potash Road:
Here was a place where Jeb had climbed before, a place I had heard of but never had visited. I was looking forward to some well-protected, none-too-serious cragging. Jeb said it was great. We climbed the first route one comes to in the little canyon. It was a 5.8, with two or three drilled angle pitons in the lower section, and a promising crack in the upper. It was a starred route, but I found the holds to be sandy, rounded... in short, of dubious quality, for someone accustomed to climbing granite. I did not enjoy the route. I quaked as I worked the gritty foot holds, blowing and brushing away the free detritus before moving onto the slopers. Again, Jeb was impatient, but this time, the words were more than I could bear:
"I thought you could climb this," he said curtly. "It's only 5.8. I guess you're not up to leading 5.8."
I was speechless. Even before he'd said those words, I had been jabbed. Having reached the anchors, I asked him he wanted me to stay up top and belay him. The rope ran through a rack's worth of gear for eighty feet between Jeb and myself.
"No," he answered,"Come on down and pull the gear. I would rather climb the route than clean it."
Coupled with the statement about the abilities I was obviously lacking today, I decided that the day was over for me. I wasn't going to put him through another of my "sewing sessions," and I told him as much.
I could not figure out what was happening to our relationship. He was turning into one trail-tough shit kicker, and I was being dragged behind his horse. Atleast, that was how it felt at the time.
"Your lead."
"Thirty Seconds Over Potash, then."
He did his usual excellent job of leading the route. My sole objection was that he trusted the rock to hold each camming device he placed. Since he didn't fall, he didn't actually need to worry about testing said cams.
Meanwhile, my self esteem dipped to an all-time low. I was still in shock about the comment that signing the register on Castleton was sacreligious.
I was even starting to get a little defensive about the entire matter.
