(also known as Sand Creek Sphinx, & Sitting Camel)
22 February, 1998
I’ve always wanted to visit Chimney Rock, situated on the Colorado/Wyoming border. It’s in Orrin
Bonney’s old book, and has a climbing history that can be exactly traced to the first ascent on 2 August,
1937, by a fellow named Merle Sticker, who nailed his way up the 250-foot sandstone formation using long,
iron spikes. He drove them directly into the rock itself. At the saddle of the Camel, he scratched his name and the date into the rock, where it remains to this day, more than sixty years later. I do not believe that he went to either of the two summits (the head or the tail), but after having been there myself, I can easily see
why...
I hadn’t seen Jeb for almost six months, and neither one of us had been climbing in nearly five
months, so when he asked me if I could meet him in Laramie to go investigate Chimney Rock, I jumped at
the chance. I packed my stuff and was off the next morning.
We rendezvoused at his daughter’s apartment, loading his gear into my truck, and motoring south
on U.S. Highway 287. At Mile Marker 216, within sight of Tie Siding, Wyoming, we headed west on a dirt
road into the fabled hinterland.
We talked along the way. I had stories of child-rearing, including this morning’s kitchen clean-up
after the boys had tossed sugar all over the floor (again). Jeb talked about his invitation to climb the
fourteenth highest mountain on Earth, Xixabangma, in Tibet this year. I was so excited for him, and
viciously, openly envious. He had many issues to deal with if he was to go, the most significant being family
harmony. I only wished that I could be in a position to go too, but I am lucky to get away for a day to go
climbing as it is. Five years before, I had gone to Ecuador, ascending four mountains and summiting but one,
even though I’d reached an altitude of 20,500 feet on Chimborazo. I’d had my taste of high altitude a month
before embarking on my greatest voyage, Marriage and Parenthood. Though I still have dreams of someday
returning to lofty heights, I know they are but dreams for now. Jeb summed up his dilemmas, which all
seemed to have simple solutions, in my eyes anyway.
"Karen wants to do things together," he said. "She’s not hip to my being gone for six weeks, and
that would be all of my vacation time for the year."
"Hmm. Ask Artur if she can go with you."
"That’s unlikely."
"Yeah, but you could ask, can’t you?"
"Mm-hm."
The Xixabangma conversation was coming to a pause when suddenly we saw Chimney Rock, red
and proud, standing high on a talus cone, opposite a mile-long escarpment of equally red sandstone to its
west. From this initial view, looking head-on into the Camel’s face, it looks more like a monolith than an animal. It looks steep. We investigated a place to park, settling on the red dirt shoulder of the road.
In a brisk wind, we loaded gear in to our packs and bushwacked across Sand Creek, huffing and puffing our way up the talus and scree. Snow still lay protected from the sun and the wind on any north-facing cliff band, though the ground was dry everywhere else. Above us, cold grey clouds swirled wickedly, heralding a new
front of winter weather.
"Wow, look at the wind whipping the spindrift on that hill," I commented.
"The wind is my friend, the wind is my friend," chanted Jeb, steeling himself for the cold with his
usual winter mantra.
We avoided the initial cliff band by circling north, and circumnavigated the Camel in clockwise
fashion, scoping out possible lines of ascent. A 'good crack' which Jeb saw from the road turned out to be
an ugly chimney beneath the Camel’s 'neck.' On the east side, a thin, discontinuous crack went up a
dihedral for about a hundred feet, which we thought might be a good option.
"But it’s in the sun, Jeb, and out of the wind."
"Well, that’s okay."
"But I thought the wind is your friend?"
"Yeah, that’s right. But I don’t mind the sun."
We continued around to the tail-end of the Camel, where another route had been established in
1958. There did not appear to be a start to this face; while there were a few promising crack lines higher up,
they were effectively guarded by unprotectable, overhanging and essentially featureless blobs of
conglomerated sand.
"Things sure have changed in forty years, eh?"
We finally dropped our packs to the ground beneath the west face, where Sticker’s nails were
plainly visible high up on the main wall. There was also an array of fixed gear present, including a ladder of
worthless star-dryven bolts leading up to a jumble of boulders which themselves clung to the vertical wall, defying gravity. Close to Sticker’s nails, we spotted an old ring angle piton, a wafer piton, and a modern quickdraw which dangled from an angle piton at half-height.
"Booty!" I shouted, jumping up and down, pointing at the 'quick' and its shiny aluminum
carabiners.
"I can’t understand why anybody would leave something that low on the face," Jeb shook his head.
"Why, it’s practically a scramble up to there!"
"Well, maybe whoever left it there was running from a lightning storm," I offered.
"Whose lead is it?"
"I can’t remember. Why don’t I lead this side, and when we’re done, you can lead that dihedral on
the other side?"
"You think we can climb two routes today?"
"Sure!" I said, naively. "Look at it! It’s not that big. It can’t be that hard."
"Well, get going, or we won’t have time."
I racked our gear and started up an outward-sloping ramp. I had to constantly wipe my soles on my pants legs as every step gave my shoes a new coat of sand grains. I was faced with an exposed move up a
groove, unprotectable, to the next ramp. I balked.
"I’m gonna start a little further to the left, Jeb."
Reversing my moves, I tiptoed over to the next, longer ramp to the left. It was no better. My
fingers and feet left deep impressions in the sugary sandstone. I found I could actually manufacture
momentary finger holds in the wall above the ramp by simply squeezing the rock into the shape of a knob. A
seam in the corner of the ramp, covered with snow, held promise, and I painstakingly brushed aside the
white stuff with one hand while hanging on to my man-made hand holds with the other. I was making poor
progress, and Jeb was starting to withdraw inside himself. I could only hope his blood was boiling so he
wouldn’t get cold!
I was developing a pattern now: stay in balance, reach down, brush snow from seam, inspect mud
thusly revealed, stand up, look at hand hold, warm fingers with breath, comment to Jeb, repeat. It took me
twenty minutes to get to the first of many caprock pedestals. My first piece of protection was between this
feature and the loose, sandy stuff I was holding on to. I knew it wouldn’t hold a fall, but I had no other
options up until now. I found, after committing myself and moving all of my weight on to this caprock,
which was about the size of a bar stool, that I could move components of the entire west face by just
pushing on them a tiny bit!
I moved onto another caprock, and another, like a frog moves on lily pads. Then I was back onto
the sugary sandstone again, and just beyond my reach, there appeared to be solid crack. Carefully I crunched
my way up it, sinking a perfect hand jam. I placed three pieces of protection, and quit holding my breath.
Now I was able to identify three kinds of rock:
Sugar
A conglomerate of sand grains, highly unstable and
very soft;
Capstone
Just some harder sandstone, red-colored, which lay atop the conglomerate of the
Sugar; and
Good Stuff
Grey in color, hardest yet, but still just some soft, funky sandstone.
The crack I was now securely attached to was the good stuff. Above me was a ledge of the grey rock, and I
stemmed my way up this short open book to gingerly crawl onto the compact, horizontal space. The booty
dangled beside me. I unclipped the carabiner and easily pulled out the piton by hand.
"Heads up, Jeb!"
I tossed the piton into space, watching it tumble end-over-end. Jeb eased to one side out of harm’s way. I placed a camming device in the piton scar, of
which one side was the Good Stuff, the other the Sugar. Shuffling out from under the little roof, I was faced with
a bulge of the conglomerate, which appeared to lead up to a section of the Good Stuff. I placed several poor
pieces, equalizing them with slings, and worked out the moves to get past this sugar. Actually, I just thought
about doing the moves, for quite some time. Finally I committed, clawing, pedaling, balancing, and reached
an ancient ring-angle piton, clipping into it because I was at my mental limit. For a moment, it really didn’t
matter how substantial the piton was! The conglomerate beneath my feet was flexing, and as I would move
off of each foothold, it would crumble and fall away. Breathing hard, I pumped in several pieces, unable to
obtain a secure hand or finger jam of any kind. Falling was not an option here: I couldn’t even bring myself
to trust the good stuff.
Meanwhile down below, Jeb was getting impatient.
"It’s taken you one hour to get where you are."
"I’m sorry. You wouldn’t believe how precarious this is."
I needed to cross a blank section to my right. A rusting, half-inch-thick lag bolt (that's right, a lag bolt!) protruded from the
featureless, vertical slab before me. I tested it by hooking a finger over it, and it flexed like a butter knife in a birthday cake. Couldn’t use that! I reached out at full stretch to my right and clipped a quickdraw into the
old wafer piton beyond the lag bolt. It too flexed under finger weight, but I had nothing else to protect this
next traverse with. I thought about how the tiny piton would probably lever away the rock around it if I
suddenly shock-loaded it by taking a fall. All of my protection was so marginal that I could easily see
slamming into the ground if I did actually fall. I could not afford any free climbing ethics right now. Aid
climbing would apply a slow, measurable force on this fixed gear. Aid climbing could save my butt. Aid
climbing is my friend, aid climbing is my friend...
"I’m gonna aid this move, Jeb!"
"It’s okay if you call it," he said.
I grabbed the carabiner that I'd clipped to the wafer piton and
swung my legs across the wall. Made it! Yes!... Made it right into a shaky stance with only one minuscule edge to curl two fingers over. Oh, no. No, no, no. Not a mantle!
"Ohhh, man!!..."
I was faced with a mantle. This type of rock climbing maneuver is terribly insecure for me, executed by pushing down on a small ledge with the hands while raising a foot onto the same ledge. Typically, there are
no handholds available above the climber’s head, demanding a keen sense of balance while rising to stand.
My forearms were starting to cramp from the cold and exertion, and again I balked. The soles of my boots
somehow stuck to tiny dimples on the vertical rock. I managed to place a tiny brass nut into a shallow crack
in case my feet slipped while I was resting one arm at a time. Finally, I pressed the mantle through, and the
nut fell out of its crack, slithering uselessly down the rope. I stood up to encounter a pair of vertical cracks,
and I monkeyed in a cam and a nut, equalizing them in hopes that they would be adequate to stop a fall.
"It’s been an hour and a half."
I said nothing, but silently I hoped that Jeb would find this route as desperate. I moved right
along the ledge until a low overhang blocked my way. The zigzagging nature of this route now translated
into a horrendous rope drag, and I had to pull up slack with all my might to even move a few feet. Move,
tug, move, tug. I sounded like a power lifter.
"Maybe you should just set up a belay right where you are," Jeb said, trying to be helpful, and
ready to get a move on.
This was no place to belay.
I couldn’t crawl under the overhang because the ledge was too narrow. I let my feet down and
passed beneath the obstacle using an ape-like motion, flopping back onto the ledge beneath a bulging,
vertical hand crack. I pumped in three pieces and stood up, pushed out beyond the vertical. I was so
snugged up by the rope drag now that I jammed the crack until my knuckles were dripping blood. This
crack was mostly the good stuff, so I decided to belay Jeb up. He followed alot faster than I had led, and he
paused after the mantle. He placed a few extra pieces, which he considered marginal (and they probably
weren’t even that good!), then put me back on belay so I could climb the last thirty feet of easier ground
after the handcrack.
"You don’t think you’ll fall off, do you? I’m not too... uh... I feel kind of insecure here," Jeb said.
"I know, it’s rotten stuff. I’ve never been this scared on a rock in all my life," I said, moving aside
loose capstones.
As I had been watching Jeb follow the pitch, I’d become acutely aware that all it would
take to kill us would be one small earth tremor. I could visualize the Camel spontaneously collapsing in a
heap, and us with it.
I balanced up the steps of capstone to the debris-strewn saddle, searching for a belay anchor. The
best I could do was to place a hexentric nut in a sugary constriction, which I knew would never hold. I
found a small breach between two loose boulders, each about the size of a toaster, and slid two stopper nuts
between them, thinking what the hell. Then I braced myself behind a coffee table-sized rock, perched on the
incline toward the abyss.
"On belay, Jeb!"
The sun had finally worked its way around to the west side of the Camel, but now at 5 P.M. its rays
carried no warmth. Luckily, the wind had died down. I sat in the cobbles of the saddle, my pants soaking up
the moisture from the snow. I stared down at my truck beside the road, far below. I could not quite make
myself actually say that this had been a bad idea. It had worked out okay, so far. I just hoped we could get
down!
We lucked out. Jeb didn’t fall, and together we searched for a rappel anchor, but we found nothing.
We were looking for more of Sticker’s nails. We saw a bolt ladder leading up to the head of the camel, but
with only an hour of daylight left, it was out of the question. Besides, most of the rock above us was sugary.
I couldn’t see the point in getting another sixty or seventy feet in over our heads, and neither could Jeb.
In searching for natural anchors, we found the upper part of the good-looking crack we’d seen on
the east face. It would have been a nightmare: it ended in a groove of loose blocks, far above what would
have probably been marginal protection. In fact, the crack itself was made of the caprock sandstone.
"Hey, look at this groove in this B.F.R.," said Jeb.
"B.F.R.? What's a B.F.R.?"
A boulder, perched at the spine of the camel about thirty feet from the edge, bore a nick that
resembled the sheath of a rope. We’d found our rappel anchor. But could we reach the ground?
Jeb went first, and I backed up the rope with a camming device. He was just able to reach the ramp
where our climb had started. His rope was 180 feet long, which meant that this rappel was in excess of 90
feet. Now, usually, I go first on these rappels, with a back-up anchor, citing all of my children as rating me
an extra margin of safety, but this time, I didn’t want to be a whiner, since I took so long to lead the route.
Before I followed, Jeb tried to pull the rope to see if we’d be able to retrieve it after we were both down. It
wouldn’t budge.
"Want me to send up the slings?" his voice echoed up to me.
"No, send up my spare rope! Or cut off a piece of it for me!"
We’d discussed this scenario before. Jeb tied a 25-foot piece of my rope to his and then I hoisted it
up. I tied the piece of my eight-year-old, 8 millimeters-thick rope around the boulder, rethreaded Jeb’s rope
through it and tossed the free ends down. They just touched the ledge where we’d dumped our packs. I hate
rappelling, I hate it, I hate it! I arrived safely at the bottom, and we retrieved Jeb’s rope effortlessly.
"What did you think of that route? What do you think of the Camel?"
"Well," he said quietly, smiling a smile of reprieve, "I feel like we’re just lucky to have escaped
with our lives."
We descended in the dark, crossing Sand Creek on a beaver dam and plodding back to the truck.
There we downed slice after slice of Alissa’s triple berry pound cake.
We drove back to Laramie in the dark, where we parted ways until our next meeting.
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