Opportunity Lost

I'm back on the sharp end. Kind of. After six months of healing, following two back surgeries and complications, it might be more accurate to say I am on the dull, blunted end. It’s not a place I have spent much time in my climbing career—not because I am so good at climbing, but because, back in the day, I was determined to forego the clumsy stages of vertical apprenticeship and shoot straight for a skewed version of grace.

This started with my first trip to Yosemite, in 1996, when I tried to skip the real Yosemite experience. I stayed at Lower Pines instead of Camp 4, avoided El Cap, and never brought a headlamp on a climb because I never planned to use one. This might be a logical approach when cragging, or even for long routes that you know well. But the truth is, I was 19, and I had all of the experience of a handful of seasons of mountaineering and toproping, plus one summer of alpine rock climbing in the Cascades, to steer my decisions. I thought this was plenty. Who wouldn’t, with a partner that was a ringer?

Eli was 11 years older than me—all of them spent climbing and guiding full-time. I did what any hungry young climber does with a more seasoned partner: I co-opted Eli’s experience and made it my own. We flew around the valley, granite line to granite line. And then we hit the Sentinel. The Chouinard-Herbert was our goal; we had friends who planned to spend the same day on the Steck-Salathé. The four of us had a leisurely breakfast and wandered up to the cliff at eight. Gardiner, Joe, and Eli’s combined experience was at least 30 times greater than mine—an easy figure to calculate when you have only really been climbing for a year.

The approach seemed quick and straightforward. Someone, I don’t remember who, had been up there before. We passed two French guys going the wrong way and felt smug about our collective approach precision. At 15 pitches, the Chouinard-Herbert would likely take us the good part of the day. It never occurred to me that it might take more. Never mind that I’d never climbed a 15-pitch route before. Eli and I wished Gardiner and Joe a good climb on the Steck-Salathé and settled into swapping pitches on our route’s opening, low-angled pitches. I was belaying at the top of the Chessman Pinnacle when I heard the first “Allo?”

Soon a hand was pulling on my anchor. The Frenchman’s foot skimmed my hip as he clambered over the anchor, right in front of me. Right about then, Eli yelled “off belay” from above, and I tried not to look up and into a questionably appropriate view of the Frenchman’s aqua cotton tights while I confi rmed Eli’s call. The man completed his move and stood beside me at the stance. I craned my neck and saw Eli just as he saw the Frenchman.

What happened next was not my fault. Eli yelled: “Mmmhhh… Frenchies!”

“Frenchies?” the Frenchman asked.

His hand was still on my anchor.

“Non,” I said. And then, “Oui?” I tried again. “Comment s’appelle…” That wasn’t right, either. How do you say in French, I wondered, that your climbing partner was not exactly a fan of French climbers? That he’d been delayed and hassled, on mountains and crags around the world, by this man’s countrymen?