Just as Joe and David are exploring the newly named Luang Massif on the remote border of Nepal and Tibet, I am climbing in the hinterlands of western Arizona. It’s amazing that even here, in the continental United States, there is still so much unclimbed rock. All around the western United States are hidden, unseen, and unclimbed cliffs, mountains, and pinnacles. Most climbers go to the tried and proven places, the places with guidebook descriptions and photo topos and gear lists. That’s a good thing if you’re like me and want to go far off the beaten track and find unseen and unclimbed rock.
I had the good fortune in 1970, the year I graduated from high school, to do the first ascent of an unclimbed 13,932-foot-high mountain, one of Colorado’s 100 highest peaks, in the Elk Range. We named the rocky precipice Thunder Pyramid after distant rumbles of an approaching thunderstorm disturbed our summit reverie. It was a very special experience and one that is hard to come by these days.
Likewise, yesterday I trekked four miles across the desert and up steep rubble- and catclaw acacia-strewn slopes to the base of an unclimbed 350-foot-high volcanic tower in western Arizona. Layton Kor, one of the greatest American rock climbers of the 20th century, had previously discovered the tower, which he described to me as “a giant Coke bottle.”
Layton, British climber Dennis Jump, and I attempted the tower, climbing two long pitches up a gaping chimney filled with loose rock, dust, and giant chockstones wedged inside it to a belay ledge atop a massive wedged chockstone. The next pitch went onto a vertical face covered with thin rotten flakes. We drilled four bolts to a hanging tooth and then retreated in the late afternoon’s dusty heat, leaving the route to finish on a cooler day next winter.
Climbing is all about adventure, about finding challenge and satisfaction. Yesterday as we climbed and hauled a heavy pack and drilled bolts and pulled off loose flakes, we all agreed that adventure climbing is a lot like working a construction job. At the end of the day, after hiking four miles across the sun-burnt desert and dodging a rattlesnake, we reached my truck parked in a wash. I cracked open the ice chest and we sat on the tailgate in the setting sunlight and drank a cool beer. After a long day of climbing—it’s those little things in life that you’re most grateful for.
Photograph top: We attempted the right-hand, 350-foot-high tower. Photograph bottom: Layton Kor and Dennis Jump rig rappel ropes at the Hanging Tooth belay ledge. Photographs © Stewart M. Green
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