Training for the New Alpinism by Steve House

Author:Steve House
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sports, Mountaineering, Fitness, Mountain Climbing
Publisher: Patagonia Books
Published: 2014-04-26T04:00:00+00:00

Marathon Pace

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By Kelly Cordes

Three thousand feet (914 meters) up and we were flailing—failing and falling apart. The Kahiltna Glacier bent, flowed, and turned below us—its crevasses the size of city streets. We were done. Halfway up and nothing left.

I could faintly see the tent city at the landing strip down glacier. Scores of people were deepening the trench, single file, up Denali’s standard route that very minute. A guy dragging a sled told us we were headed the wrong way when we started toward the north buttress of Mount Hunter a few days ago. Maybe he was right.

It was May 2002 and Scott DeCapio and I had plans to step it up. You always want to go bigger, to challenge yourself. We went to Alaska more fit and ready than we’d ever been.

But between the weather, the voodoo, and the internal and external conditions inherent to alpine climbing, you rarely get to pull the rope and try for a redpoint. So you’d better do it right the first time. Consciously I knew this—hell, I’d even remembered what Mark Twight wrote to me the summer before, in the front of my newly purchased and cherished copy of Kiss or Kill: “Kelly, It’s easy to be hard, but it’s hard to be smart. Burn the torch!”

Funny thing is, I thought I knew what he meant. Scotty and I had been working our way up the previous few seasons, building our skills and experiences, learning, moving into progressively bigger routes in lightweight, single-push style. In 2001 we’d raced up two 3,500-foot (1,067-meter) new routes with daypacks, heart rates redlining, go-go-go simulclimbing and falling in love, perhaps too in love, with the greatest joy I’ve ever known: moving freely in the mountains.

But not all routes are equal; some have short cruxes and long moderate sections, while others are more sustained, more physical. More exhausting.

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