Island in the Sky
A few years ago, I was soloing El Cap right beside another solo climber. We were neck and neck for a while, like a race between snails. I was on the Pacific Ocean Wall, and he was on the North American Wall. My advantage was having enough food and water for 20 days—I ended up being on the wall for 14! I also had sufficient gear to withstand a week-long winter storm. He, on the other hand, seemed to have only what he carried on his back. While I sought a guaranteed outcome, he aimed for a prize too heavy for any mantelpiece.
Carrying all your gear on your back allows you to cut many corners. You can forgo a portaledge, sleep on natural ledges or "in slings" (though sleeping while hanging from a harness with one bum cheek resting on your rucksack isn't ideal). You can ration to two power bars a day, opt for a warm jacket over a sleeping bag, and skip luxuries like red wine, cheese and crackers, and music. But there's one essential you can't sacrifice, especially beyond a day: water. And while gear has become much lighter during my lifetime, nobody has invented lightweight water.
The solo climber caught up with me after about a week on the wall, matching my pace as he tackled some of the steepest sections of the NA wall. At one point, we were so close that I inadvertently dropped the end of my rope, which whipped perilously near his head—or at least, he felt it did.
Our routes converged until we were nearly parallel. We both sensed the other's presence, reminiscent of two Cold War submarines silently sizing each other up in the ocean's vast expanse. It wasn't until our paths began to diverge that we finally locked eyes, separated by just one rope's length.
Reaching the 'Island in the Sky' ledge for the second time, I set up my station, brought out tortilla chips and salsa, and brewed a cup of tea. I waited for my climbing counterpart to appear. By the time he did, night had set in. I was drifting off with my Kindle when I detected his labored breathing and the shuffling of his movements as he concluded his pitch—a location unsuitable for sleep. Yet, he decided to settle there for the night. Discomfort on such nights may be fleeting in memory, but in the moment, it feels never-ending. It's like enduring an agonizing limbo instead of simply answering nature's call. On walls like these, your body becomes so exhausted that sleep can come anywhere, akin to a boxer being knocked out in the eighth round.
As dawn broke, I woke refreshed and ready for my next pitches. Glancing at my solo buddy, I found him still curled up, undoubtedly in that tormenting space where sleep eludes you for hours, only to crash into a profound slumber moments before sunrise. I thought about my hero, Ed Drummond, about getting stuck on the NA wall in a winter storm on a solo attempt, and wondered if it had been here.
As the sun's rays warmed his perch, I realized he must be nearly out of water. The summit remained another day's climb, provided he didn't dally.
I recalled similar instances from my past, times when any relief was coveted—even if the very pain we felt was what we had sought.
"Hey, do you want some water?" I called across the gap, which was probably about forty meters.
"Yeah," came his weary reply.
I swiftly geared up, packed four liters of water into a rope bag, and rappelled at a forty-five-degree angle. After an awkward tension traverse, he lowered a bag on a rope for me to attach the water.
"Thanks, man," he said, retrieving the precious cargo and ascending back to the Island in the Sky.
"No problem," I responded. Such acts, though generous, often serve one's own conscience, a way to reciprocate or prepay for the kindnesses once received or yet to be granted in times of need.
By the time I returned to the ledge, prepared my equipment, and got my ropes ready, he had vanished. Likely, by the time I reached the summit, he had been back in the "real world" for days, drinking all the water he wanted, sleeping laid flat, food enough to make him fat, but no doubt already longing for another night sleeping in slings.
The following is a letter written in 1984 by Ed Drummond about his rescue from North America Wall after days in a snowstorm, a pitch short of easy ground below the summit. Two other climbers died on the nearby route-Zodiac-in the same storm.
Dear John, Officer Murray and all SAR people...
It's now almost a month since — in a very I real sense — you all brought me back to life. The operation was difficult. After two weeks alone on the North American Wall, I had become a possibly terminal patient in the grip of a condition so overwhelming, as to render it almost impossible for a team to even get near me, let alone operate: ice on the brow of the captain, the sudden relapse of snow that forced even the most skilful and experienced climbers to inch their way for hours tied together, where in summer they could amble with their hands in their pockets. The first October snow in 20 years. It was like trying to get blood from a stone. And I was a long way down. Too far I had begun to think, sunken beneath great overhangs like some pitiful heretic, shivering, beginning to repent. I started to call out, almost embarrassed to be raising my voice: to a gap in the cloud, to a toy-red and white helicopter spiralling past, wondering if they a could lip-read but worried that they might think I was simply hailing them good-day and a not drowning in the bathtub that my porterledge had become. And to the drab valley floor with its sudden lichen of onlookers. I — and to the cloudy void where the wind was lurching like a drunk smashing bottle after bottle of distilled water at the wall and tearing a at my fly until that hymen of self-assurance, intact these forty years, had started to come apart... I, I,.... well I, at first shyly, then shamefully — suddenly — savagely — desperately — miraculously — screamed.. "Help! . . . Help!"
I had heard that there were two others in trouble on the Zodiac. And some haunted, hurt part of me knew, just knew, they'd go for double, rather than one on the NA. I in became my own dentist: 'get what I deserve',poking in childhood cavities I'd forgotten I had, living in California these past eight years after chilly Britain. Then I'd start grabbing the drill and imagine I heard voices right next to to my head, like the couple next door . . . to Nothing.
I'd listen again . . . Just footsteps in my a chest. The pipes kept running. Does hearing go first? An hour. Two. Three. The web of suspension straps inside the hanging tent had become chains of ice-water. My sleeping bag, like a shrunken mummy in some flooded museum, was oozing through my hands. I had eaten all my food. Is insolite edible? I imagined not, and given the rate of loss of my core heat, even the vomit would be cold. I envisaged the headlines in the National Enquirer: "Man Saves Life by Eating Bed". And the tawdry photograph of me with the ectoplasmic taco, grinning . . . But the bizarre scenario helped me stay awake for a minute and generate the idea of padding my back with insolite. Then a roll inside each trouser leg. Pretty soon I looked like some punk Galbraith with my hang dog face and bean pole limbs. Intellectually and emotionally I was a scarecrow — flash of a young man in Reagan country, sleeping beneath the freeway in San Francisco last winter, with a sheet of cardboard over him. Why do I do this?
Something fluttered in my trousers. Greasy, slow bubbles down my thigh, not at all my usual colourful fart. And cold too. Now that alarmed me .. . Suddenly sleepy I tried to curl up — like when the bullies, Ormerod, Evans or Jeremy Bentley would corner me. I felt nine years old, just lying there in the freezing water, like I used to in the bath at home a long time ago. And wait and wait and wait for my mother to come and get me out and pat me, and dry me and warm me .. . Deep, soft, sweet, Death was brushing my hair, running its reptilian fingers across my damp forehead, whispering in my grubby ears: "Relax, relax. Try to sleep." "He's here." Out of my mind, out of the flapping tent, hanging like a lynching as he swayed to fro, there he was: the other, thou, my not-me, the god-man with a radio, out in space at the end of a white and blue line, swimming in towards me, with the new moon on his shoulder. "How are you?"
Words stick in my throat. John: young, shy, quietly competent as a carpenter straddling the roof beams as he comes in, hand over hand down my tied-in haul line and plugs me back in. I touch him. "Can you jumar?" "What about all your gear?" The rest is history and this story. How you all came back to me, one by one. Walt — Cagney-tough at the last edge, snapping pits and talking down the great north american wall that hung under us; Werner: silent, reassuring, with a wink in his eye as I dredged myself upwards. And then, now, there, here, all of you: grinning, grubby as pirates, efficient as pilots, snow sticking to your ears and beards, eyes shining: Gary, Des, Mike, Livia handing me her head torch — the clan, the tribe, my family I never really believed in or knew I belonged to — reaching for me, clipping me in, guiding, slapping me quietly on the back "Too bad, so close" — my eyes tighten, glowing, liquid, making their faces wavery, dream-like as they peer in, pushing, pulling me across dark, slick slabs and shepherding me past the boney rope in its integument of ice, through bottomless brush, feet dying a bit now in tight Fires, eddying upwards on faint trodden tracks through the fourteen inches that had clubbed the Sierras, to Paradise: huge, orange tongues, crackling logs, melting the snow, illuminating the big tents, licking the night.
And two witches, with warm clothes, tending the fire, ladling from an ancient cauldron, dripping spaghetti over sourdough bread, passing dry socks, hot coffee and, unbelievably, when only the embers were glowing, large, flashy, red apples, under the stars, scattered like implacable dice. No matter — who can say whether for or against us? —I was home. Without all of you — from those in the office who made vital calls and kept the lines open; the drivers, the pilots, Jim and the camp people, those two women who'd downed tools from trail repair to go up in the snow and keep house in the night for total strangers, the climbers themselves; the anchor men, those at the edge, and John — you who all came in like surgeons, parting the dark blue void and the webs of red and blue knotted together, searching beneath the polypropylene clothing, inside the sodden sleeping bag and the funny reputation, for that unique, red flower, each carries from the cradle to the edge of cliff, fading and fountaining every second —without everyone of you, I would be dead. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. Edwin Drummond
Ed Drummond: January-1985
Andy brilliantly written. Thank you. Your writing of this story pulled me in. All the way in. It was like I was right there with ya on the wall. - Plaid