Ardbeg, Vaca & Beyond

A First Ascent in Valley of the Gods in 2013

February 2013. It had been a hard, freezing winter. Plenty of time to reflect on the desert and climbing and, of course, the desert. And climbing in the desert. My early visits, the first port of call was always Moab, the perfect base, with nearby climbing objectives in every direction. In recent years I’d been exploring farther afield, to other areas such as the San Rafael Swell, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Glen Canyon. Perhaps it was time to revisit Moab?

There was a time I loved visiting Moab, when it was a Wild West outpost of the climbing community, presided over by the likes of Kyle Copeland and Eric Bjornstad, hell, even Warren Harding for a while. With a rotating list of visiting legends like Charlie Fowler, Jimmie Dunn, Katy Cassidy, and Jim Beyer.

But now it was 2013—where had that time gone?—and Moab had morphed into something large, impersonal, crowded. Little of the old vibe was left. Except for the wintertime. Moab in midwinter, even now, seems to rewind to that earlier era, with the ghosts of Harding, Bjornstad, and Copelend chuckling over closed-up restaurants and dusty sidewalks.

So I called Chip Wilson and we arranged to meet in Moab. Chip was originally from Boston, moved to Boulder in the 1980s. While he was in Boulder, I found him a job working with concrete, he introduced me to desert tower climbing. We hit it off, both of us relishing obscure and unclimbed climbing challenges, whether in the South Platte or in Utah. At one time he was notorious for regularly finding himself benighted. Over time, he learned to avoid epics but the experiences taught him well: he knows how to deal with anything, he’s reliably upbeat, positive, optimistic; you will never hear Chip whine. An excellent partner for an adventure. As soon as he’d picked up a few rudiments of concrete finishing and form setting he began buying equipment and bidding on jobs, hired friends to help. To escape the cut-throat Front Range competition, he relocated himself and his company to Telluride, where he stayed, and thrived.

When I arrived in Moab, the Colorado River was as solid as I'd ever seen it. The town was silent, catching its breath, before the springtime onslaught of tourists and ATVs.

Chip arrived. It was cold but we wanted to climb, something, anything. We drove south, and south some more, searching for somewhere warmer:

Well, OK, not that far south. Not quite. We stopped in Blanding for gas. The dinosaur, happy that gas was selling at over 3.5 bucks a gallon, was dancing:

Then on to the Valley of the Gods, where we camped amid a deep stillness. The very rocks seemed alive, in subtle motion as the sun's shadows slithered across the landscape. To spend time here to experience a slow unraveling of stress and time, silent minute by silent minute.

The good news was that Chip had brought a huge pile of lumber for the midwinter nights. The bad news was that, for reasons I don’t now recall, the lumber was all fire retardant rated….

In the heart of the Valley lies Eagle Plume Tower, the biggest, coolest tower for miles and just what we had our eyes on. Yeah!

There was an unclimbed line on the south-southwest aspect. This line was Chip's idea and we'd had been eyeing it up for several years, staring through binoculars, marveling at how, if the light was just so—and only if the light was just so—the third pitch looked featured and doable. We hiked in and Chip got busy on the first pitch. For hours and hours. All day, really, throwing down rocks, inching his way up the cliff.

As Chip climbed higher, Art Dog became worried.

Next day my second pitch turned out to be easy except for the last few feet, a traverse under a roof. It had appeared hard from below and we expected to place a couple bolts but instead I found a hook on a flake, followed by what looked like a good Birdbeak. Except the Beak crumpled. As did a Tomahawk. Damn. The seam was just 3/4" deep. I'd heard that Peckers were perhaps tempered harder, so tried one. It, too, folded over. Three pins ruined, so far. I almost called for the drill. I tried one more Tomahawk, this time tapped more gently and precisely and it—just—held!

I eased onto it, began breathing again. Next? Nothing obvious. Except a little fear, as I was moving away from the dihedral and looking at slamming back into it if things went south. Maybe an upside-down knifeblade under the roof? I picked out a knifeblade, painted sky blue. The blue was important. This was not just any knifeblade, but one that had arrived in a box just a couple months ago from Ron "Santa Claus" Olevsky, rescued from the Kyle Copeland Collection. Kyle, long ago, had told me he was aficionado of knifeblade cracks. He'd have smiled at this placement. Ron, staunch proponent of clean aid, would have growled. Next I hand-placed a baby angle behind a flake, slithered left to a foot-ledge, relaxed and placed a two-bolt belay from where I could lean back and heckle Chip as he cleaned.

The next pitch was the crux. That was clear from the ground. Through binoculars we had imagined all kinds of beaking and tensioning shenanigans. In the event, this pitch went quickly. Chip galloped up a splitter crack for 70 feet then lurched left under an overhang to another crack. Not a word of complaint or doubt. When my turn came, I was shocked to discover that the “splitter” crack was flared and fragile. Pitons came out easily, some falling out from merely weighting the rope. The traverse was frightening, steep, and technical. Chip had done real well, stacking half-placed Leepers, indulging in all sorts of trickery.... A fine lead.

The next, and final, pitch was mine. A couple moves up vertical rubble were followed by a long knifeblade crack. Kyle Copeland would have enjoyed himself here, as did I, driving newfangled Toucans into what would have been knifeblade placements twenty years earlier. Overdriving, it turned out; cleaning went embarrassingly slowly....

We scrambled to the summit, where we found a parade of precariously balanced refrigerators. Hiding beneath one, we found Bill Forrest's original register, on a business card, from 1976.

There was, it turned out, a second register, at the other end of the summit. Placed by Mike Gruber and easier to spot, this had kind of taken over as the go-to register. Comparing the two, it appeared there had been about 30-40 ascents, so far, of Eagle Plume Tower. Lots of familiar names appeared: Rob Slater, Ralph E Burns, Stu Ritchie, Roger Schimmel.

For me and Chip, this was our second ascent of this formation, both times by new routes, 26 years apart. In March 1987, Chip and I had climbed a new route we called Milk Crates From Hell, in honor of the stacked blocks we had to climb.

Summit selfies! Above: 1987. Below: 2013

We stayed on top for a long time. Twenty-six years earlier, we had energetically trundled boulders from the summit. This time round there seemed no need for that. We simply lingered, taking it all in.