This is Part Four in a series about climbing and relationships. You can catch up on Part One, Part Two, and Part Three by following the links.
My son is taller than me in the picture. We are standing on Mt. Whitney, the highest mountain in the contiguous United States. We asked some hikers to take a picture of us. The summit is crowded with smiling hikers in bright puffy jackets. We are the only people wearing helmets, and I overhear somebody saying something about the Mountaineer’s Route.
Most people hike Whitney as a day hike. It’s a 22-mile roundtrip from Whitney Portal. It’s a challenging hike, and I’ve done it a few times. Once as part of the John Muir Trail, at the end of the High Sierra Trail, and once as a day hike with my mom and a few others.
I had the opportunity to descend the Mountaineer’s Route years ago after completing the 72-mile High Sierra Trail, but the fear hit me when one of the guys I was hiking with pulled out a chalk bag. It was before I picked up climbing, and the thought of exposure scared me. We opted to split up. Two of us hiked/jogged down the main Whitney trail while the two climbers descended the Mountaineer’s Route. That decision stuck with me, not as a failure, but as an opportunity, a motivation to overcome that fear and learn the skills I needed to feel comfortable on exposed terrain.
A few months ago, my son watched a YouTube video of a guy climbing the Mountaineer’s Route and free soloing the East Buttress route and the East Face route, and he mentioned the idea of climbing Whitney one night over dinner. I tried and probably failed to contain the excitement in my voice as I immediately started planning the trip in my head. “Are you sure?” I asked him. “Are you sure? Because that is going to take a lot of training.”
He doesn’t exercise all that much, but he’s a natural athlete. He’s skinny, muscular, and wiry with the minimal effort of a 17-year-old boy with the metabolism of a greyhound. He signed up for a gym membership that week and spent hours on the stair machine and lifting weights. I did my usual routine of running, climbing, biking, and managing injuries.
We camped at Iceberg Lake the first night. We woke early, before a hint of the sun slivering to the East, before birds, bears, and marmots. A ceiling of stars lit that space between night and morning, and the milky way streaked across the sky so thick you could almost hear it.
I used red light to keep the night vision, and we prepared in silence, excited but calm. We knew what to do because we had prepared the night before, worrying that our minds might be cloudy this early, but they were clear.
We trudged up the loose sandy rock as the sunlight worked its way up the mountain toward our feet. Every step was a struggle to keep the foot from sliding down to where it was moments before. The rock at the side of the chute came as a relief. We got off the field of talus in the chute and switched to hands and feet, climbing beautiful white glaciated granite and picking lines that would safely lead us up hundreds of feet to the notch, a break in the jagged peaks, that looked so much closer.
The notch paid our reward for the strenuous climb with views—the endless greywhite Sierra peaks and valleys to the west and the White Mountain range to the east. My heart went west, where I had spent so many days backpacking over the passes and through the meadows, following the footsteps of John Muir.
We sat in silence as awe, hunger, tiredness, and excitement swirled around us, each trying to take the focus off the 400 feet of blocky granite that led to the summit above. The Final 400.
I remember one of the first times my son belayed me on a climb. We were in Joshua Tree on the classic Headstone Rock, and as I started climbing, I realized that I had put my life in my son’s hands. The safety lessons ran through my mind, and I was scared. Scared that I hadn’t taught him enough, scared that I would be hanging over a 100-plus foot drop to sharp granite, and scared that I wasn’t in control of my safety.
Giving up control has never been easy for me, and I realized with that first clip on Headstone rock that I had to give up control for us both to grow in this sport. I had to rely on my teenage son to remember the lessons he had learned, and I had to trust him.
The exposure was exhilarating, and the air under my feet scared the shit out of me, but that mix of fear, adrenaline, and triumph at the top is why we climb.
I set up the anchor at the top of the massive boulder, pulled up the rope, and put my son on belay. I watched as he climbed the arête, putting his trust in me at the top.
We both shouted in happiness as he crested over the wall and met me at the anchor. “Amazing,” I said, voice cracking. “Great job.”
I have a picture of him on top of this colossal rock, hands stretched out in victory. The messy mix of emotions comes back to me when I look at it…mostly happiness, excitement, maybe some sadness that the day is a memory, and absolute awe of the surroundings and our small place in it.
Beckett studies the route that will take us to the top in silence. He looks up and finds a line, and we talk about it, but the talk only reassures us as we both know it is the line that will take us to the top.
There is no rope as we climb side by side, testing the smooth, cold granite and pulling on it to ensure it is solid and will hold our weight. It’s not a race or a competition, and we climb together. It’s easy climbing, not the free solo stuff of movies, but there is a risk, and with that risk comes adrenaline. I look over at him, and we share the same look; at least his face shows what I am feeling. It’s a mix of excitement, concentration, a safe amount of fear, and the pure fun of climbing over rocks for no purpose other than to get up the side of a mountain. It’s a beautiful feeling.
I can’t suppress the pride in this person to the side of me. He has become all sinew and veins, as tall as me but leaner, stronger, and quieter. His voice is low, expressing the joy we both feel. The quiet grunts, the non-words that convey climbing bliss. The sound of wind on the wall surrounded by monoliths that we are connected to by the skin of our hands and feet, our bond running through the rock now, the connection not through the strength of the rope that we trained with, but through this shared experience of touching granite together, side by side, separated and connected through the process of reaching the summit.
I didn’t want it to end, this fleeting joy in the process, but the process leads to the summit. People were standing with the Whitney sign; some had camped near the top to see the sunrise. People were shivering inside sleeping bags, holding summit signs, and taking selfies. We had been alone on our route for so long, and sharing the summit with so many others was hard.
People asked us questions about the route, and Beckett talked with them, sharing our experience, and I looked at him like the others did, with pride and awe, but for different reasons. He had become a man since the first time we tied in together.
The walk-off wasn’t as exciting as the climb. It never is. On the way down, we talked about regular things like school, friends, and the future. There is always this pressure to give advice, to create this imbalanced conversation where the kid talks and the parent imparts wisdom. I’ve learned to stay away from that, and this wasn’t like that. This was two friends talking, no lessons, no guidance, just filling the space between us with words I don’t remember now, but the feeling stays. This feeling of satisfaction, respect, and deep love for the man next to me and our shared experience.
Brilliant adventure... I'm envious of this experience with your Beckett! These are moments of a lifetime of memories. I decided to do some research.... from the All Trails app:
"This is an extremely difficult and dangerous mountaineering route to the summit of Mount Whitney. Only experienced climbers should attempt this route, and only under the right conditions.
Beware of loose/falling rock and ice on the final sections. Route finding skills and comfort with exposure are a must; getting off route on the steep/exposed sections can be risky.
Please use this SAR PDF document to help you prepare: https://inyosar.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/PSAR-2020.pdf"
I’m incredibly proud of both of you.