Night soloing in the Tuolumne high country
By Chad Shepard

I turn off my headlamp, and as my eyes adjust, the abyss beneath crashes open. From my small ledge halfway up the Southeast Buttress (III 5.6) of Cathedral Peak, I can scarcely make out the pine trees several hundred feet below. The peak, rising ominously above, is defined in silhouette by brilliant stars.
Two hours earlier, I’d set out from my cabin in jeans and a long-sleeve T-shirt; it’s late summer 2007, and the days are still long. Tuolumne Meadows has been my home from open-to-close for the past eight years. I come to climb, but I’ve taken various jobs to legitimize my long-term presence in the eyes of the government. My current position with the concession service has earned a cozy canvas cabin just behind the Tuolumne store. On the occasional evenings when my mind is restless, a short walk, a few deep breaths, and a glance up at the Cathedral Range are often enough to quiet my thoughts. Tonight, I need stronger medicine. Tonight, I am depressed.

I’ve been cyclically depressed for as long as I can remember, but the highs and lows seem to become more pronounced as I age (I’m 32 now). I remember being high-strung at a young age. I first contemplated taking my life when I was 7, growing up in a small town in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. It was autumn, and the fields were ablaze, smoke plumes rising like mushroom clouds. (Burning fields was a common practice, to revitalize the soil between crop cycles.) The sun filtered weakly through the curtains of my bedroom window, and I sat with a dull hunting knife poised at my stomach, a red welt developing where the point pressed skin. I was crying, scared about how painful it was going to be but angry for hesitating.
Back on Cathedral Peak, I sit and tuck my fingers into my armpits. The occasional gusts cut through me; they carry up the faint butterscotch fragrance of the Jeffery Pines. The pale light of the waning moon just begins to touch the summit above, rolling the jagged shadow of the adjacent ridge back from the peak, as if exposing the mountain for some private unveiling.
Events have compounded over the past couple weeks, leading to this impasse. Each problem, be it financial, work, relationship, or health-related, is manageable, but taken together, they overwhelm. This cascade is not entirely random — it is more of a pattern. Something triggers the cycle, and then the pattern unfolds. It’s taken all my energy to keep up appearances; on the phone with family or friends, I feign false optimism, possibly to avoid fumbling attempts to explain the unexplainable. I begin to loathe questions like “How are you?”
Several hundred feet up, my problems have followed. The past: I see mistakes and regret. The future: hopelessness and fear. I look farther forward for meaning. In some sort of metaphysical twist, I begin to see the world in geologic time: the Cockscomb splinters and topples. The nine Echo Peaks slough into the abyss. Unicorn Peak crumbles into a nameless heap.
I lie back and roll to my side. The position of my body on this ledge — it’s darkly familiar. I responded to a climbing accident here four years ago, on this route I’ve probably done 200 times. The guy had fallen 80 feet and lay in a cascade of blood, looking out dead-eyed.
I roll my head into that same position, to complete my tribute. A half-hour later, a glimmer catches my eye: moonlight has overtaken the face. The rock is reborn in the delicate light. I climb again, tracing intimately over familiar stone, granite known as well as a lover’s form. Hundreds of feet up, I allow an indulgence in the moment, a pure right-now instant ropeless on perfect glacial patina.

I do not look to climbing to cure who I am, but seek rather to make it a sustainable part of a depressed life cycle. Tonight, I am here for clarity of mind. In my darkest moments, I will find no happiness, but I can find peace in the mountains. Near 3 a.m., I stand on the summit.

The climber and artist Chad Shepard calls Tuolumne Meadows, California, and Las Vegas, Nevada, his seasonal homes.