Wholistic Fitness

Bantu and his son Rowan, training on the Sacred Peak. photo by www.JamesQMartin.com

Most Treasured Sangha,
Some of you have wondered about Bantu and his ascent up Denali. Last Saturday, Ananda and i met Bantu with our children, Dewa (ours), Rowan (his). We placed our children into our bicycle trailers and wheeled through a magnificent early June afternoon toward one Flag’s many fine city parks along one of Flags many fine sections of bicycle paths.

We swung our children. We frolicked with them in the green grasses. We clambered around on the playground sets, creating more difficult climbing moves for ourselves as we chased our children.

We did not speak of Denali. Nor the cold bite of arctic wind. Not one word was spoken about tangled, frozen ropes at 3:30 am after cramming freezing feet into diamond hard mountaineering boots while the constant howl of wind ripped at tent fabric.

Instead, we spoke about how “well trained” we both were – still – after HP PROP WORKOUT two days prior. We spoke of upcoming bike rides with our families and warm evenings to spend camping, bouldering, splashing in southwestern creeks.

ilg TAF’s hard-core mountaineers do that. For, once having known the white windy summits of Turtle Island and elsewhere, we tend to sequester those high-intensity m(om)ents. Stuffing them gently yet firmly into our most sacred of places inside.

Here then, is Noble and World Class Mountaineer’s Andrew “Bantu” Frost’s final Denali Update. He sent it in a while ago…and it came attached with this personal note;

“Honored Teacher.
I am in Oregon. Rebuilding something essential in me. Just friends and flowers and long runs among the ancient trees, the cresting waves of fern and blackberry, the susurrus of salal against my ankles.

Today, we will stand Rowan before the Pacific’s edge. And he will be a poem, I am certain.

Forgive my recent silence and absence. I have been practicing everywhere.
– Bantu”

***

Steve,

Namaste. Namaste. Namaste.

Tonight, I need that pressure toward honesty and clarity. Namaste. Here.

I have always thought of the joined hands as the heart made whole before my body; a way to give it to those to whom I present it. Hopefully these words will beat like pressed palms.

You know the difficulty of this past week for me, although it is a pittance compared to the struggles in which some other warriors in this clan are currently engaged. Which makes this update not easier, but more difficult to write, as it makes me more aware of the egoism which drives my pursuits in the mountains.

But it is always better to begin before the ending. So here. Here is an update. Here is a heart.

Two weeks ago, Zach and I drove up to Texas Canyon, southwest of Blanding, UT, west of Comb Ridge, middle of nowhere, to do some scary sandstone climbing. I was a bit worried, however, because I hadn’t heard from my partner for Denali for the past month, and was trying to track him down through his brothers. That worry aside, however, I had a few days without parental obligations, so Zach and I were off to Chossville, UT.

We thought that we specialized in this sort of climbing: steep, sandy, rotten, wide climbing. Scary stuff. You know, we’re goofy enough we can usually laugh off our fears and insecurities. We made our way into Arch Canyon (the main canyon) in the late afternoon and set up camp at the confluence with Texas Canyon. The route that we were particularly excited about, the South Face of Texas Tower, an 800 ft. monolith in Texas Canyon, featured (among other horrors) a 140 ft. long overhanging 8″ wide crack about 600′ off the ground. So we decided to introduce ourselves to the place with a bit more moderate first route.

We chose Dreamspeaker, an extremely aesthetic, narrow tower downcanyon from where we’d camped by about two miles. The next morning, we got a slow start, in accordance with our belief in moderation… of everything except coffee, and in consideration of the strong winds and the previous day’s rain (this rock is NOT safe after rain). After about a liter of coffee apiece, we jogged downstream, then made the approach, arriving at the saddle beneath Dreamspeaker around 1100 am.

I won the game of rock-paper-scissor, so I got the first pitch. The belay was an old drilled pin (probably not very good) from which I traversed about 20 feet to the right on friable rock with about 200 feet of exposure. After bouldering up about 15 feet of unprotected 5.10 climbing on bad rock, the rock improved and the crack became overhanging thin hands (5.11), a very strenuous, but beautiful size, which gradually widened as I made my way up the pitch to a natural belay beneath a four inch wide crack, which began with a strenuous move over a roof. That pitch, thankfully, would be Zach’s. The 5.10 offwidth that followed was not what I’d really call fun, but it was on good rock, even if long sections were pretty unprotectable. We made the exciting rappels, impressed, yet again, at another of Tim Toula and Scott Baxter’s burly 1980’s routes. South Face of Dreamspeaker (5.11+ R).

Although Dreamspeaker was pretty exciting for a two pitch climb, we felt ready to give Texas Tower a shot the next day, so we woke early and arrived at the base of the South Face by 800 am. We paused here, drank a bunch of water, taped our hands to our shirt sleeves and our ankles to our pants in anticipation of a day of wide cracks. We had decided to do the climb in blocks. That is, I’d lead the first four pitches and Zach would lead the last three.

This climb is a bit of a blur. A stream of bad rock, death blocks, horrendous runouts and wide, unprotectable cracks brought me to the fourth pitch which requires a 5.11 20′ runout on face holds around a “death flake” which you must pass on its right. After climbing out to said flake, breaking holds and looking back at my one lonely piece of tipped out protection, I climbed carefully back to the belay, shaking.

Zach, who had not even led a pitch yet, was ready to rappel. After he had repeatedly affirmed that I wasn’t just being cowardly, we rapped. We weren’t having fun. Zach is a wise friend. He said, “It is better to listen to your judgement than your ambition,” and “It is best not to confuse an aesthetic summit with an aesthetic climb.” All this while wearing a tie from 1987. When climbing with Zach, I feel as though I’m tied to a wise philosopher and a clown at the same time. This is the classic definition, of course, of a fool.

We spent the rest of the day walking around in Arch Canyon, bouldering and looking at the many ruins and arches there, wondering what sort of rock this mud was pretending to be. Turns out, it’s called Cedar Mesa Sandstone, the same rock that comprises Mexican Hat and the crumbly, single pitch climbs in Valley of the Gods. We came to the conclusion that with the promise of a first ascent, we could probably shake our way through 6 to 8 pitches of this rock, but not for a measly repeat.

The next morning, we drank coffee again, then climbed the Whiton-Tackle spire, a two pitch 5.10+ off-width extravaganza. Even though the rock was sub-par, the protection was decent, which made for good exercise. Then we drove out as I needed to return to my family.

On the way home, I got to practice yoga.

Because my right rear taillight on my truck was out, a highway patrolman pulled me over about 15 miles south of Cameron, within sight of our beloved Sacred Peaks. As the police officer walked up to the window, he noticed the empty beer bottles that we were bringing back to Flagstaff to recycle (They don’t recycle glass in Blanding, but there is a uranium mill.). This fellow was immediately suspicious that we’d been drinking and driving and so he removed me from my truck so that I could perform various tests.

After I had followed the tip of his pen with my eyes into the blinding eye of the sun and stood on one leg and counted to 100 without quivering (Vrksasana!), he still somehow thought it a necessary use of taxpayer money to “Breathalyze” me. He acted disappointed when I blew a zero. I smiled, took my warning, and drove happily home to my family.

When I got home, however, I still hadn’t heard from my partner for Alaska.

We finally made contact last Friday and he bailed on me.

He listed a few insubstantial (money) and unsubstantiated (fear of the length of the route) reasons for wanting to abandon our trip, but even after I offered to pay for his plane fare (which he could later reimburse me for), he declined. I didn’t attempt to convince him further. The last thing I wanted was to be stuck on a mountain for a month with a person who didn’t want to be there. At the same time, however, I became fully aware of how much this venture meant to me.

To be in the Greater Ranges with your sole intent and purpose being to climb a bold line through the giant features of an enormous mountain leads to a unique purity of vision. And when you do finally throw yourself into the climb you feel each swing of your ice tools like a second set of lungs breathing, as though you were being circulated up the mountain. And your fear finds focus in the next move and the next; the formless apprehension and anxiety which preceded your ascent disappear and instead your weaknesses and insecurities find more immediate manifestations in this piece of rotten rock, that gaping bergschrund, this next twenty feet of overhanging ice, that rockfall, this serac, that lenticular cloud forming over the neighboring peak and the empty fuel canisters in your pockets which are the very essence of the idea of total commitment.

And it seems incredibly selfish to write this, but I long for that remove. For that focus on what is immediately around and above me, for the balance of my life and death to hang solely on the weight of my actions and the swirling actions of the elemental universe.

The past year has been a constant struggle to allow myself to give up control of my life while at the same
time, taking responsibility for my actions. My son, Rowan, was a child whose conception we had actively
guarded against, and whose existence I struggled to accept. And then I gave up much of my work, my
writing, and my time for exploration and climbing to take care of him, to love him. None of this last paragraph,
I know, is tremendously unique. I recite these experiences only because they might begin to inform you and
the other readers of this narrative of some of the reasons why I feel so disappointed in the complete
evaporation of my trip to Alaska.

“There, I would again have had the opportunity to define myself through my actions only. For setting out into the mountains is like sitting alone in a cave, beginning a long, dark, inner journey: you know that everything within you will be measured by what lies ahead.”

Bowed,

Bantu

Postscript (June 10, 2009): On June 3, 2009, three American climbers, my good acquaintance Jonny Copp, his frequent partner Micah Dash, and photographer/filmmaker Wade Johnson, were reported overdue and missing from their attempt on E Gongga, or Mt. Edgar, in the Western Sichuan province of China. Jonny and Wade’s bodies have been recovered from avalanche debris beneath the face they intended to climb. Micah is assumed dead and still missing.

Please breathe for them. http://vimeo.com/5065740?pg=embed&sec