Matt: OK, so just pulling every trick out of the bag?

Jim: Anything yeah. I was just trying to stay alive. Just trying to get up it.

Matt: How big was the run out off the belay?

Jim: Well, for me, it was 30 years, 29 years ago. But, these guys said it was 40-50 feet. 10-15 meters.

Matt: Straight off the belay?

Jim: Oh no, that was above the knife blade.

Matt: So, that was where all the hard climbing was?

Jim: Yeah, for me it was on top of a 150-foot pitch. I did a whole rope length. Steve and Colin belayed at different places on the pitch.

Matt: Oh, OK.

Jim: So, they didn’t belay as low as Mugs did. They belayed higher up. There is a place, I can remember now where it is, where they got some pins in. So they belayed there and ran past my belay. So, we were lower in the corner. But, the hardest section is still the same. So, for me, it was a full 150-foot pitch that started off as a direct aid pitch, complicated, but not too hard. But, we were tying off icicles and stuff, tied-off pins, and things like that. But, then it ran out. I didn’t remember the knifeblade until they said about it, but it makes sense. So, I evidentially got the knifeblade in that is still there. But then there was nothing to do but just climb anyway you could. Finally, there was a shelf up above me and I got my axe sunk in the shelf and I didn’t know what it was hooking in — it was just like a rock in a little shelf covered in snow. But I got to where I could get my axe to hook in the same place repeatedly. So, I cut loose, mantled onto the axe and stood up and put the pins in. Then I was done.

Matt: That’s quite a fight. What did you think when you saw the report and heard that these guys had done the route?

Jim: Well, I was a bit curious what I was going to feel like cause this was very important to me that we did this and stuff. I was sort of getting to the point where I was wanting somebody to do it. And actually what happened when I heard was my son Michael called me and said, “Dad, Steve House repeated your route.” Then I looked on the Internet and it made me really happy. I really liked it. I liked the idea that somebody else had been there. I called Steve House today, and we talked about it. And so, it’s like Mugs and I knew what it was, and they know what it is. It’s kind of cool. No body else knows what it is.

Matt: It seems like another good thing to come out of this was that now people know exactly where the lines are too, versus what was in the book. History has been straightened out.

Jim: History has been straightened out. And actually for other people who want to climb onto it, I think what it really boils down to is in the lower section of the face, you can kind of go whatever direction you want given conditions and the day, and all that stuff, but when you get up into the steep, harder stuff, there is a line, which is the line that Mugs and I figured out. And, independently, it is the line that they figured out. And there’s obviously more lines out — well there is a huge amount of face out to the right that is going to be steep and hard, and that’s going to be really cool when somebody does that.