What's Alan up to?: First ascents

As the days fly by, the excitement for Nepal builds and I find myself doing a lot of self-reflection. Climbing is an easy thing to question yourself on, especially when your biggest stressor is planning an expedition you don’t have to go on. When I begin to think about the headaches, heartaches, and general malaise climbing has bestowed upon me at times, it doesn’t make much sense. Then I stop and think about those times that have changed my life. I am a product of many experiences, mentors, and arguably most of all time spent in the mountains. The most powerful of these experiences have been as part of first ascent parties. First ascents to many probably seem like the proudest exploits in the mountains. To some extent it is an ego elevating experience, to be the first. But what makes first ascents such a captivating experience (for me) is not the conquest, but the uncertainty. When you look at a face from a distance, you have an idea of what you are in for. The size of the cracks, the colors of the face, the steepness of the ice and snow, however, all it takes to shut down a pure, clean, ground up ascent is a body length of featureless rock. So when venturing up thousand plus foot faces there is much uncertainty. And the higher you get the bigger your commitment. It takes confidence, skill, and desire to succeed.

Alan soaked and frozen Photo: Mike Pond

Before I take off for this Nepal expedition which has the potential for a first peak ascent, and a new route to a 6900-meter summit, as well as countless new water ice and mixed cragging lines. I reflect on some of my previous first ascents.

Likely the most powerful climbing related experience I have had to date, was a route done with two friends a little over a year ago. This route is called Diggin’ for Dreams and was included in the 2012 American Alpine Journal. This 1,000 foot rock route traveled through many improbable looking features, and was remarkably sustained on high quality rock for the entire route. This route took a lot mentally out of me. It included 100 foot run outs on lichen covered slabs, sections of crumbly overhanging rock, and left us wondering after 400 feet up the route if there was a way to get back down. And as luck would have it the 8^th and 9^th pitches required the most focus. It was my first “large” (well for me at least) first ascent. The route was done without bolts, ground up in 8 hours. The mood was kept light, and it was a day of serious climbing kept in check by joking around with two good friends. My excitement about climbing and life immediately after this route had possibly not been matched before or since.

9th pitch D.F.D. Photo:Mike Pond

Spring came around after a winter of training, and with it came my first visit to Alaska. Here I traveled to the Ruth Gorge, and what an intro to Alaska it was. Reactive snow bridges, a new level of objective hazard, HUGE faces, and my first experiences tunneling through massive snow mushrooms (overhanging globs of snow that look like mushroom caps).

Mike Pond venturing to Mushroom land Photo: Alan Rousseau

I was part of a likely first ascent on this trip. It was actually quite casual in comparison to the rest of the trip. It featured 600 feet of beautiful blue ice, and a nice ridge walk to the summit. This route was also done ground up in clean style leaving no trace but footprints and holes in the ice. This route had some uncertainty as well, but was really just a fun day in the mountains with a good friend. One of the coolest things about this route in my mind, was how menacing it looked the first time we saw it. But we walked into it excited for whatever difficulties it could throw at us. Just like clockwork as we approached the route it began to look more and more reasonable, and turned out to be a beautiful flow with only a short 25’ vertical crux. We named the route Americans go walking, because this trip to the Ruth we spent way more time walking around looking at possible objectives than we did climbing them.

Alan Pitch 3 Americans go walking Photo: Mike Pond

Walking into the unknown Photo: Mike Pond

The last one of these adventures I’ll talk about today happened this past July with Tino who is onboard for the Nepal trip. This was another rock route on the same massif as Diggin for dreams, this was a direct line with minimal traversing to the summit of Halfmoon. This route traveled through interesting terrain. Many cracks on the route would close up, however one body length to the right or left would provide another crack. This occurred seven or eight times on the route. I started to find it comical at how predictable this unpredictable pattern seemed to be. We climbed a lot of crumbly sections on this route, mostly on crack climbing terrain, ranging from squeeze chimney to fingers. The culmination of uncertainty on this route was about 700 feet off the ground. After an impressive lead Tino managed to build a belay despite terrible rock, a six piece anchor equalized finally made him feel confident (enough) that it would hold a fall should I happen to take one. Leaving the weak belay I faced a crumbly tips traverse through an overhanging bulge with no gear for 25 feet. This was the point of commitment on the route, where you need to know yourself, and what you can do. At that point I had to know if I blew it Tino and I would find ourselves freefalling to the ground with a blown anchor attached to us. With many deep calming breaths I climbed through the section of disintegrating 5.11- terrain and found adequate protection above. From that point on we knew we were home free. Just one pitch of nice 5.10 crack climbing separated us from the top. So with these first ascents you need trust in yourself, trust in your partners, and you need to know when you are dealt a loosing hand. As the gambler says, “You gotta know when to hold em, know when to fold em.” So in a lot of ways alpine climbing is a gamble, but you get better at the game the more you play. So above are some of the experiences that I view as highlights. Are they the hardest routes I have done, no way, will they be classic, never. But they in my mind are times where I stepped into whatever was up there with an open mind and played the cards right. The days in unknown terrain, where my mental boundaries are tested will always be the ones that I remember.