Climbing the Winds

The Wind River Range is a mountain range in western Wyoming that follows the Continental Divide for about 100 miles. It ends in the north near Jackson Hole and the Tetons, and in the south spills into the Red Desert.

It’s untamed, rugged and difficult to access–and it’s where I first started climbing.

This was August 2014.

Fremont Peak, 13,700 feet. I gasped my way up the first thousand feet, rested at a flat saddle and stared up at the remaining two thousand. A scramble of loose rock and gravel gave way to wide granite slopes ascended by crawling belly first. I tucked my jaw into my chest to avoid the dizzying view ahead–looking up is just as bad as looking down.

At 12,000 feet the elevation got to me. Panting, I paused and pretended I didn’t feel a headache coming on–the first sign of altitude sickness. At 13,000 I looked at my splayed hands and feet and gasped as if I was a marathon runner. Then I saw the approaching storm clouds. For many minutes I tried to listen for thunder over the roaring of my own heartbeat.

I crawled the remaining seven hundred feet, grasped the cold rock of the summit, and immediately came face to face with a thousand foot drop on the far side. I swore. I shouted curse words and stared with awe and terror. Below me was a vast glacier, like a lake that had pooled out of the wind in the safety of the mountain. I continued to swear, gazing over the cliff and afraid I would be sucked in.

I smelled something burning. Looking up, I saw my friend with a lighter in one hand and a bundle of sage in the other. He let it burn and placed the remains under a flat stone he took from his pocket and lay at the summit. I listened to the crackle and felt the wind. I had run out of swear words.

The way down was a mess of cliffs and terrified shivering. Back on the flat saddle, the clouds finally crashed into the mountain and it began to rain. My friend paused in a moment of contemplation. He had enough cell phone service on the summit to get some news from the rest of the world, and weirdly this is how I learned that Robin Williams had died.

It reminded me of my dad, who had learned of Kurt Cobain’s death over classic rock radio when he was out chopping wood.

I continued below the clouds, picking my way from ledge to ledge on a cliff overgrown with moss and wildflowers, and finally arrived at a narrow lake in the sun. I sat in the grass and stared back at the cliff, waiting for my friend. I took many deep breaths.

Finally he arrived, beaming, and we walked the three miles back to camp as the sun set. Alpenglow turned the mountains purple. A moment later and the sky went dark.