JOURNAL ENTRY: MAY 30, 1998
Rustling haulbags. I wake up. Russ sits up, too, holding a .44 six-shooter in each hand. “Did you hear that?!” we both whisper. I pull a sawed-off 12-gauge from my sleeping bag. Suddenly, the fly slashes open. Josh screams in pain — they’ve got him. I see clumps of ruby eyes — halved, glistening pomegranates — black skin, long, white-furred legs ending in a single hook slashing at my face. Giant arctic wall tarantulas. Ch-chik, baboom, ch-chik, baboom! Two down. “Die, f—kers!”
“Mike, wake up! The sun’s out!” Josh told me. No giant tarantulas — just the first break from snow in nine days. Finally, the sun and I could see each other.
Each time we moved camp, it took at least 20 hours — to break everything down, haul, and rebuild our portaledge safe haven. Just packing the haulbags took more than two hours (opening a frozen haulbag is like bending thick aluminum). And then the hauling: I’d go up, set up the 5-inch pulley, and then Russ would join me to counterweight, with Josh lowering out the bags. Double hauls. Repeat. Just as we moved the second set of bags to Camp 3, the wind and snow started. In just minutes, I was so cold I needed two hands to open a biner. A couple hours later, our hanging stove warmed freeze-dried stew mixed with cheese and salami. Safe again in our ledge, we reminisced about when we’d each lost our virginity and how much we missed beer, sushi, cheeseburgers . . . and warm, sunny Yosemite. We weren’t even halfway up the wall.
Pitch 12 and 13 continued with unending spindrift and the demand for our full attention. I started pitch 14 on a calm day and moved quickly up a perfect Lost Arrow corner. An hour later, I arrived at the giant ledge bisecting the Walker Citadel. Teetering at the lip sat sharp chunks of stone, from cinder block- to TV-sized — lethal shrapnel ready to fall with a push of the breeze.
I yelled down that we needed to move camp . . . now.
My wall spouses didn’t like the news but neither did they question my decision — as with any marriage, you must trust your partner. As we hauled, Josh was stuck below, hiding beneath the bags as he jugged in their wake; wall grenades exploded as the bags rounded the lip. Josh took only one hit — directly in the head by a bowling-ball-sized stone, no injury, helmet unbroken, and a sore neck for which he took ibuprofen pills the size of pinto beans.

Seventeen days on the wall, 14 pitches; halfway.
At the ledge, everything changed: we’d risen out of the shadows cast by the walls across the fjord, and we welcomed sunburns on our faces, enjoying balmy, 30 F weather. The under-vertical pitches and ice-filled cracks morphed into badass steep aid. And, for the first time in 17 days, we could shit without hanging in swamis.
The headwall above inspired us: Indian red and silver granite — there was no snow. Still, it was a long way. We worked through kitty-litter flares, paper-thin seams, hollow/echoey flakes, hooks, and heads. Delicious, balletic, bodyweight-only placements too delicate to bounce-test. We jugged and hauled in space. Four rope-stretcher pitches brought us to Camp 5, pitch 18. When it was your lead, you were boss. The route didn’t allow otherwise. Russ started off pitch 18 into overhanging granite: exposed, with natural hooks. He was as carefree as he’d been since the first pitch. Then — Whiplash! — he took a daisy fall and shockloaded his previous hook. It held. He looked over at Josh and me as we peeked out of the portaledge, cracked his wicked grin, commented how nice it was the hook held, and then continued. The hook stuck this time, and Russ worked his way through overhanging natural hooks, heads, and beaks. Stout A4, setting the stage for the hard mental aid to follow.
The next 700 feet continued in a blur of hammer blows. Our haulbags lost weight as we gained muscle, psyche, and momentum. We watched the melting ocean’s metamorphosis: the once-white frozen plains were turning electric blue, with giant cracks in the sea ice splitting the fjord. We hauled to Camp 6, more than 3,000 feet up, the summit still nowhere in sight.