Kennan: Storm
clouds lurk
Easter Island is the easiest tower in the Bridgers — a short bit of 5.9 crack, some easy scrambling, and bolted face climbing to a great gendarme summit. It was the tower I had been rained off of with Marco that ended my first linkup bid. Since then a huge, piano-like block that had been wedged into the narrow notch had fallen off — fortunately not while someone was standing on it.
With only three towers left, we’re feeling pretty good as I scramble to the notch and yell for Noah to begin simul-climbing. Then I notice an increasing westerly breeze and thick frontal clouds approaching. I might get skunked again by weather! We pick up the pace.
On top I belay Noah, who is now climbing in his approach shoes at a near run. To the east I notice the weekend traffic filling up the campsites along the Bridger Jack road.
“Hey Noah, there must be 100 cars out there!”

I remember our huge Halloween parties at the Super Bowl Camp in ’96 and ’97, where cars gathered like tumbleweeds and Lorne Glick and Kent McClannen stole the show by dancing around the bonfire in Bali hunter costumes complete with penis gourds.
“Not long ago I used to camp below Battle of the Bulge,” Noah recalls.
“A busy weekend back then was two cars, and if you got to watch someone else do Supercrack you were psyched for the Beta.”
“What do you think will happen?” I ask, thinking of the new BLM management plan, as we thread ropes for the descent.
“Only thirty climbers expressed an opinion during the public-comment period,” Noah shouts down the rope with surprising vehemence in his voice. “Climbers are the primary reason for the management plan, but if we don’t add our voices, the BLM is going to think that we are a bunch of apathetic self-centered adrenaline junkies!”

Noah: Waxing Philosophical
I land below Easter Island, pull the twisted rope ends through the searing-hot belay device, and pick up where I had left off when Kennan descended out of earshot.
“We climbers love to praise ourselves for being low-impact compared to cows and jeeps, but we can’t possibly deny that we are having an impact here and that as a group, we are not in control of that impact,” I say, giving the rope a final tug and ducking as the frenzied ends whip to the ground.
“Yes, but do we really trust the BLM — a government bureaucracy — to manage our impact for us?” Kennan protests.
“No of course we don’t! But who can we trust? Most of our fellow climbers don’t really give a damn, or are just trying to recapture lost solitude or bohemian freedoms. I’ve heard complaints that the few good trails we have around here are making matters worse because easy access increases visitation. It’s logic like that which makes it hard to trust our own peers.”
“Climbers are industrial environmentalists,” Kennan calls up as I begin ascending the jagged fist cracks of Sparkling Touch, our next-to-last tower. “Dissent and diversity are just part of our tradition. Faced with regulations, we dilute and disperse.”
As I climb past the second belay anchor and step sideways onto the delicate face-climbing crux, I wonder what could be done to balance the needs of climbers, BLM, ranchers, and most of all, to protect this incredible basin from being loved too much.
The wind whips across the summit, and sand stings my cheeks as Kennan steps up and examines the anchor, a series of potholes threaded like a bizarre Chinese puzzle. A storm is wracking the cliffs of Lockhart Basin to the north, and we can see lightning flashes in the dark, gunmetal sky a few miles off. Thoughts of politics are vanquished as a stray beam of sunlight peeks through the clouds and lights up the whole array of towers to our north with eerily perfect accuracy.
“I think we’re going to make it,” I say.
Our final route is Learning to Crawl on Thumbelina tower, an .11c testpiece of face and arête climbing.
A few stray raindrops pelt down from the sky as I contemplate the blunt crux arête, finally discovering the summit key with a crucial left-foot smear.
The storm passes scarcely a mile to our north and we’re standing together on top of Thumbelina, blessed by nature’s random gift of diversion. The desert spreads out around us in shadowy evening light. Yellow cottonwoods, rich red cliffs, towers and valleys — we absorb it all in silence.
Eight summits, countless cruxes, loose rocks, cracks galore, and precarious moments have made up our day. Now, as we stand atop the final tower, you’d think there would be some monumental cathartic experience to sum it all up and make us one with the universe — but, of course, that’s just not how it works. Or does it? The clouds part for several seconds and a rainbow materializes, beckoning us to the “pot of gold beers” waiting in the truck.

Kennan Harvey, a longtime Climbing contributor and globetrotting adventure climber, lives off the grid (with supporting photographer Cheryl Albrecht) in Durango, Colorado. Noah Bigwood owns and operates Moab Desert Adventures and usually manages to avoid the spotlight, despite being one of the best all-around rock climbers in the country. This is his first feature for Climbing.