Learning to Fly

by Steph Davis

  I put on my wingsuit and climbed in and out a few times, knowing it would be more of a struggle with airspeed grabbing at my wings. I sat on the floor next to Mario’s seat with my back to the dashboard, the tandem team sitting next to me. I watched Mario concentrate as the Cessna picked up speed and then gently lifted into the air. I loved the feeling of liftoff, the automatic feeling of elation in my chest. I watched the desert landscape from the window, all the familiar canyons and cliffs looking like a small-scale model in bas-relief.

  Mario flying the Cessna

  At ten thousand feet, Mario turned some knobs and the engine noise dropped a level, then he reached over me and released the door latch. The door popped open, held up against the wing by the rushing air. A little restricted by my arm wings, I grabbed the doorframe, got a foot out on the step, and used brute grip strength to fight the wind and pull onto the strut. I looked over at Mario and smiled, and he nodded and smiled back. I let go of the strut and slipped into the air like a fish dropped back into water, into my brief moment of precious flight.

  Flying over the desert was much better than flying over Colorado farm fields. Now that I’d gone from skydiving all day every day to just a few jumps a week, each flight felt even more special. I would drop everything and speed out to the airport if I could get on a single tandem load.

  Somehow, juggling my focus between three different pursuits was working for me. Turning my mental energy toward climbing Concepción, I realized that I had been sharpening my visualization skills through base jumping and wingsuit flying all winter. All of that visualization with base had resulted in perfect exits, every time. It worked. But a base exit required only about four seconds of mental work to visualize—the concentration was pretty easy because it was so short. Concepción was two hundred feet long, steep, and angling, and it opened gradually from a tiny seam to an off-width-size crack at the very top. For Concepción, I lay in bed every night, imagining the feel of every handhold and every foothold on the entire two hundred feet of the crack, visualizing my body doing each specific move I’d deciphered, in one continuous ascent. Usually I fell asleep or got distracted before I had got up even half the climb. I had to work hard to keep my focus long enough to practice the entire climb in my mind.

  Freeing Concepción, Moab, Utah Jim Hurst

  Another problem created by the unusual length of this crack was the need to carry enough gear to protect it, which was a lot of extra weight. Climbing is highly dependent on a good strength-to-weight ratio, and hanging twenty-five metal camming units from my waist, all of which I would also have to place into the crack and clip the rope into, was not an advantage. I solved the problem by placing only two cams for protection in the last eighty feet of wider crack rather than the eight or ten that one might normally use, to eliminate heavy pieces on my harness through the difficult thin climbing on the lower portion of the route. The physical training, visualization, and full-commitment approach worked. On my first attempt to lead up Concepción with a rope and gear, I free climbed it with no falls.

  Only two other people had ever been able to free Concepción, and the climbing community took notice. I was in the best crack-climbing fitness of my life. I was also rapidly becoming solid with my base jumping, and gaining confidence with my parachute skills. As winter turned to spring, I jumped all around Moab and went back to the Little Colorado Canyon, this time flying my wingsuit off the eighteen-hundred-foot cliffs. And I returned to Castleton several times, climbing up the North Chimney alone, using a thin rope to pull up my base rig so I could jump off the summit, no longer in fear of impaling myself on the juniper trees.

  Free soloing and jumping Castleton struck me as the most perfect thing I could do. It was perhaps the most majestic tower in the desert, a four-hundred-foot pillar of sandstone set way up on a thousand-foot pedestal of dirt and scree, with a flat summit that could be accessed only by climbing and left only by sliding down ropes or jumping. Jumping was a lot better than laboriously rappelling down ropes, in my book, but waddling off the edge with a lot of bulky climbing gear stuffed inside one’s clothing detracted from the experience. Climbing up with nothing and flying off with nothing was the ultimate aesthetic, as well as undeniably practical, I thought: the best way up and the best way down. And I liked nothing better than something so simple, so practical, and so adventurous.

  The steep, switchbacking trail up the long red talus cone ended below the north side of Castleton Tower, providing an imposing view of the sheer wall. From there, climbers could circle the tower, deciding which face to ascend. The North Face route climbed a spectacular crack system that split the face from ground to summit. The dark, sharp-edged sandstone was iced in large sections with white calcite. Huge slabs of this rock lay around the trail, obviously having sheered off the wall. The calcite coating had hardened in drips and channels, creating features that could be used as handholds and footholds on the wall. But the calcite was slick and smooth, nothing like fine-grained sandstone, providing a contrast that could be startling when climbing. The North Face was undeniably the most beautiful route on the tower, but certainly not the easiest, and was known to be disconcertingly slick or wide at times, steep and extremely exposed. No one had ever free soloed this beautiful crack line. It didn’t take more than a few trips up the easier North Chimney, just beside the striking North Face, for the seed to get planted.

  Castleton Tower, Moab, Utah Krystle Wright

  Every time I looked up at the sheer cracks on the clean North Face, I felt a small pull. What could be better than free soloing Castleton and jumping it? Soloing the most beautiful, difficult route on the tower and jumping it. My summer on the Diamond had brought my free soloing to another level. And training for Concepción had left me in better crack-climbing shape than I’d ever before been. I was gaining experience with base, and extreme currency through jumping every day. Jumping Castleton had become a regular outing. I had a system now for approaching a hard free solo, the method I’d used on the Diamond, and I knew it worked. Once I’d started, I couldn’t stop thinking about the North Face. My brain began outlining the steps.

  In late April, Mario stopped by my house. He knocked on the door in a bright blue motorcycle jacket, and when I opened it, I was startled by his electric-blue eyes. He wore glasses or sunglasses when flying, and I’d never noticed just how blue his eyes were, or even that they were specifically blue and not gray. Maybe the afternoon light was catching them in just the right way, but right now there was no way not to notice. I wasn’t used to blue eyes, having grown up in a family of Greek descent. They made me strangely unsettled.

  “I took the dirt bike out to check out that feature I mentioned yesterday, the one that looks a lot like the Tombstone, sitting pretty high up on talus. I was wondering if it might be possible to take a wingsuit off it. I remember you were interested, so I took some pictures.” Mario took a digital camera out of his pocket. “It’s called the Cash Register. It looks too short for a wingsuit jump, and the overall height isn’t as much as I was hoping for. But it is a very nice feature.” He seemed at ease in his own skin to a degree I’d never seen in a human, only in animals.

  “Oh … thanks, I’d love to see,” I said. “Come on in. I was wondering, actually, if you know how to jumar?”

  I’d met plenty of base jumpers who’d assured me they could jumar, using metal ascenders, or “jugs,” to climb a rope rather than climbing up the rock itself. My definition of being able to jumar came from Yosemite big-wall speed climbing or alpine climbing in Patagonia and Pakistan, and I had consistently been unpleasantly surprised when taking jumpers up a tower or a wall. Invariably, they took at least thirty minutes to jumar a rope rather than three minutes, arriving exhausted and dragging at the next ledge. I had learned never to believe a base jumper who said he could jug.

  “Yes, I have Jumars, and I can climb a little,” Mario said.

  For some reason, I believed him. “Well, I want to climb the North Face of Castleton a few times and jum
p it, and I’m looking for someone who wants to go up there, but the route is pretty hard and you’d probably want to jug the rope rather than climb it.”

  “I’d be happy to go up there anytime,” Mario said.

  “I’d like to go tomorrow.”

  “What time?”

  The next day I was shocked to discover that Mario could actually jumar. Athletic and efficient, he seemed totally comfortable on the rock and with the climbing equipment. And he could also belay and manage ropes and clean gear after being shown just once. I was starting to sense that he was one of the most competent people I’d ever met. In French they call that a débrouillard, which can somewhat be translated as a person who can deal. I valued that quality a lot, especially in a climbing partner.

  I led the three pitches of the North Face, placing my gear sparingly as I’d done when assessing the Diamond routes for free soloing and lingering in the crux sections. Each pitch had one hard, steep section that I would have to make solid if I wanted to climb without a rope. Mario jumared with his base gear on his back while I hauled up my rig. It was beautiful and sunny when we reached the summit, with almost no wind. I’d done a few other base jumps when Mario had been in the group, and I’d noticed his habit of gearing up and then standing quietly to the side, evaluating the wind and the site almost like a scientist or a desert fox, saying little unless someone asked him to explain something. He never seemed in a rush, listening purely to his instincts and the place. I wasn’t surprised when I learned that Mario was a legend in the base community. He was B.A.S.E. #320, and he’d been jumping since the late eighties, everywhere from the Venezuelan jungle to Norwegian walls. He’d developed equipment and techniques, opened hundreds of new exit points, was constantly active in every form of jumping, and had never been hurt—the greatest badge of honor for someone who’d pioneered for so long.

  Sharing the Castleton jump with Mario was a totally different experience. He stood at the pointed arête, with his hand out over the edge, feeling the slight wind. “It’s just updrafts,” he said. “The talus cone faces directly south here, getting baked in the sun.” He spat down the wall a few times, watching the droplets fall all the way to the base. “There’s nothing. We may get some turbulence from the heat over the talus, but there is no wind. It’s perfect.” Mario described the wind and the air as though they had visible form. He didn’t find them mysterious or treacherous at all, but simply elements to be observed and understood, like everything else. This world in which wind and air could be seen like water was another dimension, one I didn’t know at all.

  I jumped first, flying out over the talus cone, landing softly on the dirt trail. I watched Mario’s canopy open, then turn sharply left. He was going the wrong way, behind Castleton, and then he disappeared. Perplexed, I stared up, wondering where he would land in the rugged terrain back there. Suddenly, his parachute reappeared over the notch where Castleton connected to the neighboring formation, the flat place where climbers left their backpacks and shoes before starting up to climb. He was flying a corkscrew around the tower. I started to laugh out loud in delight as he finished the curve and flew down the talus cone toward me. As he approached, he grabbed his front risers and pulled down hard, forcing the canopy into a fast dive. His legs were cocked in a running position, like the wheels of a plane coming in to land. He dropped the front risers and pulled down on the brake toggles to level off just above the ground, toes skimming over the dirt, then ran out the speed as his feet touched down, like a jet decelerating on a runway. Though I’d never seen a base jumper do this, I’d seen it plenty of times at a drop zone. He had just swooped his base canopy.

  Mario flying around Castleton Tower

  Mario grinned at me, radiating exuberance as his parachute billowed softly down to the ground beside us. I felt as if I’d just seen an elite climber walk up to a cliff, effortlessly waltz up the hardest route there, and then do a handstand at the top just for fun.

  “You flew around the tower! That was crazy!”

  “No, not so crazy. I wasn’t committed until I wrapped around the north side, but by then it was obvious I had the altitude. I’ve been wanting to do that for a while,” Mario said, his entire face lit.

  I looked back at the tower, a deep red spike against the blue desert sky.

  For the next week and a half, Mario became immersed in my Castleton project, as he seemed to do with anything he turned his attention toward. We climbed the North Face three more times and ran up the easier North Chimney together a couple of times just for the jump. Though the climbing on the North Face was hard enough that he needed to ascend the ropes instead of following my leads, Mario showed no concern or skepticism about my plan to climb it without a rope. He clearly understood why I would want to do it and respected my method of going about it. He was also fully enjoying the opportunity to jump Castleton so many times in a row and gain more experience with climbing systems.

  On the fourth trip up the North Face, I brought only three pieces of gear. I climbed up and down the most daunting section of the third pitch, a section where I had to paste my feet on a bulge and reach high for a face hold on steeper rock. Once I had that, the angle eased off and I could get back into the security of the widening crack. But I knew those two moves on the bulge would be intimidating without a rope. The last time I’d climbed the route, just a few days before, I’d felt 90 percent sure I could climb it safely without falling. After this climb, I felt more than 100 percent sure, maybe 110 percent. I was ready.

  When we reached the top, a strong wind came up from the west. We sat for a while, waiting and watching, but it quickly became obvious that we couldn’t jump today and would need to rappel down with the ropes. I decided to hide my rig in a crevice, covered up with rocks. After a slight hesitation, I put my hiking shoes in with it. The next time I came here, I could climb with nothing. Walking down the trail barefoot today would be worth it. My base rig and shoes would be up here waiting for me. It couldn’t have worked out better.

  I checked the weather and the wind forecast for the next few days. I needed both good climbing conditions and good jumping conditions, and I also needed the right amount of rest. The weather was not looking perfect, but the forecast made it seem like the winds might be just good enough to do it in two days. I decided to rest for two days and then go for it.

  On an overcast and cloudy morning, I started up the talus cone. I’d woken up with a faint scratchy feeling in the back of my throat and wasn’t sure if it was just nerves or the actual start of a cold. I decided to ignore it. I wanted to climb while everything was fresh in my mind, and I’d also made plans with my friend Pete to shoot video today while I climbed. I’d done the same on my last solos of the Diamond, feeling that I’d like to have tangible memories someday.

  Pete was a Boulder-based filmmaker and a strong climber who was always ready to hike or climb a mountain to capture footage. The day before I free soloed Pervertical for the first time, I’d called him out of the blue to ask him if he’d like to hike up and shoot from a distance while I climbed. With no hesitation, he told me he’d be there, even though it would require a 2:00 a.m. start to hike all the way up Longs Peak, and he’d need to find someone to go up with him. Though I couldn’t see him, Pete was stationed almost a mile away on a high overlook with a long lens and a friend shooting stills as I started up the face at 7:00 a.m. When I climbed it again, he shot from a short distance away on the wall, hanging from a rope, while another friend took photos. And when I’d climbed Concepción, Pete was there with two friends, to capture my ascent on film. I’d noticed that even if he was hanging above me on a wall, he had the unique ability to become almost invisible while I was climbing, so he was not a distraction in any way. As long as I didn’t have to see or interact with anyone, I didn’t mind having someone I knew to be competent hanging out of my field of vision with a camera while I climbed at my limit. I’d grown accustomed to putting in the extra effort to take photos or video, as part of being a professional c
limber. And I knew that these climbs were something special. My grim feelings about climbing and the climbing world were fading, and the practical part of me was aware that making the effort to shoot these climbs with Pete was a step toward steadying my wobbly career and taking it back.

  As I walked up the steep hill, looking at the clouds, I spotted two small, dark shapes high up on Castleton, way off to the side of the North Face. They must have got up early to be up on the wall right now. I noticed the little scratch in my throat again, a little bothered by the slight dent in my energy level. I decided to focus instead on the nice feeling of walking up the hill, carrying nothing but my shoes and chalk bag. It was so easy to walk without the weight of gear or ropes or a base rig.

  I listened to music on my iShuffle, walking to the mellow beat. I had some doubts. Maybe today wasn’t the day. I felt a touch sick, and the clouds looked threatening. A slight breeze came up. It was only seven, early for wind to come in. Maybe the weather forecast was wrong. It would be a real shame to make the climb and not get to make the jump, the second half of the arc of travel. I reached the base of the North Face and sat below the long, clean dihedral. A fist-size crack started in front of me and stretched up a large corner for a hundred feet. At the top was the first crux of the climb, leaving the fist crack and stepping my feet out onto the white calcite as I grabbed the underside of a sharp flake, shuffling up and right into a much thinner crack.

  I looked at the sky and looked up at the wall, felt the sides of my throat with my fingers, swallowing a few times. It’s always so hard to know how you feel when you are deciding to go up. In the past, I’ve nearly always felt almost sick before a big climb or worn out from a sleepless night before it. When I stood below El Capitan, dwarfed by the three-thousand-foot wall, preparing to free climb it in a day, my stomach was in tight knots. I knew that if I fell at any time in the twenty-four hours of difficult climbing, I would probably be caught by my rope, but I would not succeed in my dream of freeing the wall in a day. The pressure would grow with each pitch that I finished, and I felt almost sick with anticipation, doubt, hope, and excitement as I racked my gear and tied into the rope. It’s a strange moment, the last moment before setting off on a dream route, putting hands on the first holds, stepping off the ground and onto the rock, knowing that the decision has been made. From that moment, everything in the world will be about the climb, for however many hours or days it takes.