In 2007, Kelly Cordes and Colin Haley linked two monster routes to climb Cerro Torre base-to-summit in 32 hours. And you know what? It's all good, brah. ... 

The kid wouldn't let up. First, an email. Not just one email, either. Then phone calls.

     "C'mon duder, you've got nothing better to do," Colin Haley said into the phone. I took another swig off my margarita, looked out my window at another splitter October day in Estes Park, and then threatened to call his parents.

     Colin's always psyched for climbing. Only 23, he has the skills and alpine résumé to humble most crusty old veterans. When Colin was 10, his father took him up mountaineering routes in the Cascades. In high school, to harden himself for bivies, Colin slept on plywood — until he started getting laid, anyway. He recently had one of the finest yearlong alpine sending sprees (10 months, actually) ever, starting with his and Jed Brown's tremendous new route on the 7,600-vertical-foot north face of Mount Moffit (13,020 feet), in Alaska's remote Hayes Range. I'm 16 years older than Colin, and I envy his enthusiasm in a wistful, longing way. It makes me smile. I also knew it could only help me if we partnered up.

Alex Lowe once said that there are two kinds of climbers: those who climb because their heart sings when they're in the mountains, and all the rest. I'd like to fancy myself the former, though sometimes I wonder. Sometimes on alpine trips, my inner coward goes crazy, and just waiting around until I get to go home sounds best. Yet over the years, I've beat those thoughts out of myself, and at a specific point everything changes. We cross the 'schrund and I feel like I'm flying, in a different universe, a fantasy world that shapes my life from that moment onward. (Assuming, of course, I've gotten up off the couch.)

     "Yeah, Colin, good point," I said, sighing and scanning my list of excuses: piano lessons, not quite done with this bag of chips, forgot my crampons.

     "You keep talking about going to Patagonia," Colin said, noting the obvious. Ouch.

     I was broke, just returned from Pakistan, and didn't feel like getting serious about my climbing. Once I commit, my pride gets in the way — I'd have to start training. Hard. Now. Another swig off the marg.

     "I have a life, man," I lied. The big Ultimate Fighting match between Tito Ortiz and Chuck Liddell was December 30, and Hooters always shows the pay-per-view fights for free. I don't think they have Hooters in El Chalten. (At least, not the ones with TVs.) Besides, I'd never been to Patagonia and I hate to break with tradition.

     And I have a "hippie" problem. Now don't get me wrong, I'm a peace-loving guy, but something about bongo drums and slacklines makes me want to break things. And Patagonia, I'd heard, has the worst kind of hippies: the fake ones. You know, the faux-hippie-football-jock-frat-boy-combo hippies: the über-annoying bro-brah-braus. Rumor had it they infest El Chalten, where the notorious Patagonian weather means they can just smoke weed, spray, and do nothing. After festering for seven weeks in Pakistan just a couple months earlier — complete with retreat heartbreakingly short of Shingu Charpa's summit after three days and 45 pitches — maybe my brah-chi was off. So festering with a caravan of twirling goldbrickers sounded about as fun as a gutful of pinworms.

     I thought for a moment, developing my defense. "You shouldn't be going either!" I replied. Touché. Colin kept taking months off from the University of Washington to climb. But this time, he insisted, he'd only miss a week of classes — the maximum allowed before the U automatically dropped him. (When you're on the 10-year plan, apparently you know these things.) So that, along with his three-week winter break, meant Patagonia, four weeks door-to-door.

     "We'll be going early, while it's still cold," Colin said. Hmmmm. Good point. Hippies hate cold, even in their llama-wool ponchos and Spin Doctors-by-way-of-putumayo faux-Peruvian toques. "You're building this up in your head — it's not that bad," Colin continued. "C'mon, man, I know you've been wanting to go to Patagonia."

     "Yeah, well, but —"

     " —So you can keep talking about it your whole life, or you can step up and make it happen."

     Bastard.