Phantom Sprint, 1988

“... see, an ordinary person spends their life avoiding tense situations, a repo man spends his life getting into tense situations!”

The graveyard shift through Glenwood Canyon is best done cold, fast, and loud. Scream through the curves, yell out the window, blast rowdy tunes really fucking loud. Living in Boulder, Colorado, and driving 350 miles, each way, to climb on desert sandstone, weekend in, weekend out, creates a sense of urgency about making damn good use of those two precious days.

Boulder, where I’ve lived for 35 years, is surrounded by perfect rock: Eldorado Canyon, the South Platte, Vedauwoo, Lumpy Ridge. Why travel so far away? I didn’t know then. I don’t really know now.

This ritual began in 1988 when Eric Bjornstad’s Desert Rock guidebook came out. An occasional, novelty road trip became habit: leave town after work on Friday, arrive in the wee hours. Next morning, if it was your lead, you would be wired on fear and desire. As Walt Shipley would say “I’m so amped, I’m arcing!” If you were on belay duty you could nap, space out, hour after peaceful hour. Late Sunday, you’d saddle up again for the long drive home, barreling through Fruita, Rifle, Vail, Dumont and Downieville, teeth chattering, windows down, music loud. Monday would crawl, Tuesday would be for resurfacing and by Wednesday there would be phone calls and plans hatched to do it all over again....

There was a chapter in the Desert Rock guidebook about a place called the Fisher Towers. We’d all heard of the Titan, but nearby there were, apparently, other towers, almost as big, less traveled, and by the sound of it, ascended by quality aid routes. One person, a Jim Beyer, seemed to have single-handedly developed an astonishing resume of wild, difficult climbs. Who was he? Why was he so obsessed with the Fisher Towers? Why had no one else contributed to the development of this cutting edge aid-climbing arena, a veritable mini-El Capitan, in southeast Utah? Were we missing out? Intrigued, Strappo Hughes, Simon Peck and I drove from Boulder to investigate.

We decided to climb Echo Tower via Jim Beyer’s most moderate Fisher Tower route, Phantom Sprint, described in the book as “a great route with minimal hard climbing. Generally A1 to A2 of relatively clean and easy going climbing” Irresistible—or so we thought.

First we had to get to the base. There was the one Fisher Tower Trail but there were no climbers and thus no climbing access trails An attempt to scramble around from the east side was cliffed out, just shy of the climb. Circuitous scrambling past an E.T.-shaped hoodoo (years before it became the Cobra) gained the east face of Kingfisher, from where a traverse across ball-bearing slopes accessed the base of Phantom Sprint. A short, easy chimney acessed a carport-size ledge. We dumped out our packs and sorted gear. Strappo belayed Simon on the first pitch; I had nothing to do so I decided to downclimb the approach chimney and explore.

Right across from us, on Kingfisher, was Beyer’s A4 route, Death of American Democracy. It appeared horrific, blank vertical rock leading to collapsing flakes and fragile curtains of mud. Left was Ancient Arts, which in 1987 had had only a handful of ascents and was not yet on anyone’s radar. The top looked inviting, with its projecting fangs and that spindly summit, but it seemed puny compared to the bigger towers looming over it. Cottontail, just downhill from Echo, was akin to a medieval cathedral in shape, stature, and its intricate facade of flutings and buttresses. Behind us were shattered cliffs and unstable slopes that rose to the mesa-top, nearly 2,000 feet above. From time to time, boulders clattered down toward us. How did any of these formations stay standing? Could we really climb in this place? There were no cracks; no lines of weakness. Sunlight filtered down between lofty summits into chasms shimmering in fifty shades of decay. Dried mud flows, buttresses, grottoes and teetering blocks gave a simultaneous sense of solidity and frailty. Shadows, in real time, crawled across cliffs, coalescing into dragons and gargoyles that grew into sharp focus before fading away. A handful of crows—or were they pterodactyls?—wheeled about, puncturing the silence with commands from the Jurassic age. Simon made good progress, easing efficiently from one placement to the next. It appeared that yes, climbing here was feasible. He moved with confidence. Until the time I looked up and he was not to be seen.

What the. . . alien abuction? Shapeshifting? Of course I knew what had happened—he’d fallen the whole sixty-odd feet he had just climbed—but could not accept it as reality. A black fog infiltrated my mind, closed my ears, shrank my peripheral vision. I wanted to curl up and go away, vanish, rewind the day. Numb, dry-throated, I was paralyzed. Some other part of my brain took over, my limbs frantically propelled me to the belay ledge, and there was Simon: hanging upside down, gently swinging, his helmet-less head close from the ground. Unhurt, unscratched. He righted himself and Strappo, with billiard-ball eyes, gently lowerered him the last couple feet.

We took a break. A long one. It appeared we had a lot to learn. Simon wanted no more of this pitch. Strappo was not so sure either. Intrigued as to why so many pitons, cams, and nuts all ripped out of a so-called A2 pitch, I offered to lead. First I jumared to the only remaining piece, a giant Wired Bliss cam. Approaching it, I saw that of the four lobes, one was not touching the rock at all and its mate on the same side of the crack had scraped a foot-long gouge in the stone and was not cammed but umbrellaed, wide open, stabbed into the stone. I start placing more cams long before reaching it. Beyond, the crack was filled with dried mud with divots where Simon’s pins had ripped out. Instead of replacing them, I tried a different tactic: excavating deep slots with my hammer and a nut pick. I pushed Friends into these holes, yarded on them, deemed them OK. Hours later I reached the belay, where a “fixed” bong dangled at the end of a long sling attached to a Hexentric that fell out when I touched it. The Cutler sandstone, it was clear, was not like other rocks.

Next morning the second pitch was declared to be my lead. Like the first, it comprised a crack that was choked with mud, though the surrounding rock seemed harder and the crack better defined. I worked up and right for 40 feet, using the same, slow, hammer-and-nutpick slot-manufacturing technique. Higher, the crack curved back left again. I was enjoying myself, but could not help but drop dollops of dried mud on Strappo’s and Simon’s helmetless heads. Finally, they made it clear they’d had enough, and demanded that I stop. Captain Bligh, angry at this turn of events, rappelled to the ground and ran off in a sulk, leaving his mutinous crew to clear up the mess.

The parking lot, when I reached it, was hot and empty. Even the crows were having a siesta. I unearthed a bottle of whiskey, made myself comfortable on a lawn chair, placed a Pere Ubu cassette into my ghetto blaster and cranked it. Half a bottle later, but long before the others struggled back with their heavy loads, a distant dust-cloud announced an incoming vehicle. Perhaps it was Jim Beyer, I wondered, ready to start a new climb? Of all things, an enormous tour bus pulled up and disgorged dozens of tourists into the few remaining square feet of parking area that was not taken up by me and the bus. The newcomers looked Asian, perhaps from Japan or Korea. They blinked under the harsh sun, moved hesitantly, as if unsure what exactly they were supposed to be seeing here.

The parking lot now felt crowded, awkwardly intimate. I pretended to be asleep, with my bottle of Jim Beam on one side and cassette player on the other. The tourists pretended to not notice me and congregated on the far side of the bus until their time was up.

As the bus disappeared into the midday haze, Simon and Strappo staggered in, carrying prodigious packs. They heaved the gear into the back of the truck, threw me on top and we all headed home. The Fisher Towers had defeated us. Our trip was over.

Two weeks later I was back, with a new partner, Bill Roberts. I’d not climbed with Bill before, he was a friend of a friend. But he seemed enthusiastic. He was a veteran of Yosemite walls, new routing in Vedauwoo, thin seams at Devils Tower.

I sent him up the first pitch, a sort of sink-or-swim test. He was nonplussed at the difficulties and the sheer challenge of negotiating the Cutler sandstone—“Shit! this feels like more like A4!....”—but he persevered, recalibrated, and began to enjoy himself. Bill was adept at aid, fearless on the free sections and had an open mind; he adapted fast to this new medium. He also brought along a helmet, so belaying under pitch 2 was much safer. I’d found a Fisher Tower partner, and a friend for life. Neither of us knew, then, that one life would end so soon. We took four days to summit on this, the second ascent of Phantom Sprint.

By the time we were done, the cracks that Phantom Sprint followed, previously choked with mud and almost invisible, were pockmarked with holes from our pitons and cam placements. I remember little of the details of the rest of the climb but as we inched our way up the tower we learned to enjoy the Fisher Tower experience. We were continually astonished at how much effort and determination was required for progress up the flared, mud-filled cracks. For Bill, the Fisher Tower experience represented a wonderful contrast to his 9-5 routine—he worked in a government lab, chafing at the dull, office environment. He happily embraced the dirt, fear, and grueling toil. For me, a concrete formsetter, the toil seemed normal, if poorly paid. The Fisher Tower climbing experience was, by any normal standards, awful. But that was the point: the experience was so bad it came out the other side and became a new kind of fun.

Summit day I forgot my harness, and rigged up some webbing instead. Combined with the overalls I was wearing, this had the effect of collecting several pounds of dirt under my clothes. On finally reaching the ground and removing this webbing, I was treated to one of the more delightful treats in store for the desert climber: the sensuous thrill of several pounds of warm dust, sand and pebbles dribbling down one’s legs.

Duane Raleigh referred to Cutler Sandstone as “the World’s only self-healing rock.” And perhaps he’s right. In a big storm it separates into its constituent parts: pebbles, gravel and the weak matrix that holds it together. This gritty oatmeal mix, if saturated enough, dribbles and runs down the cliff. Later, as it dries out again it sets up hard, mid-flow, to remain stable for years—or decades or maybe centuries—before another storm big enough to start the process again.

Bill Roberts and I shared a taste for subversive absurdity; he quickly developed a liking for the band Pere Ubu, while he introduced me to his favorite movie, Repo Man. We could soon recite whole scenes from that movie; the one grand insult “ordinary fucking people!”—quickly shortened to the more socially acceptable “OFPs!”—became a standing joke whenever we saw, well, regular folks doing normal things. We’d yell out loud and just crack up…. And that was it, really, the whole point.

To repurpose that Repo Man quote: “... see, an ordinary climber spends their life avoiding tense situations, a Fisher Tower climber spends his life getting into tense situations!”

We would return.