Climbing Castleton Tower

Sunsets in Moab, Utah always deliver a good show. The towering canyon walls and innumerable, jutting rock formations seem to soften in the fading light, lending the arid landscape a deceptive air of gentle warmth. Awash in one of these golden mirages, Becca and I drove in eager silence. Around each bend, we hoped to catch our first glimpse of Castleton Tower, a striking 400 ft tall sandstone obelisk perched atop a pyramid of loose rock a few miles outside of town. My palms sweat with anticipation and nerves. I would be attempting to climb the thing the following morning. This would be my first big climb, so feelings of excitement and uncertainty vied for dominance in my mind. When the tower finally came into view, it protruded from the landscape like an obstinate thorne, refusing to meld into the desert twilight.

As the concrete reality of the tower settled onto my consciousness, my thoughts turned to my two teammates. If I were to be successful, I knew I would need to rely heavily on their skills and judgment. Dean, a virtuosic sport climber, would be tackling the lead climbing, ascending first with the rope to pave the way for me and our third party member, Kurt, a seasoned athlete who has pulled off some impressive climbs in Yosemite back in the day. It had been surprisingly easy to convince these guys to join me on this fool’s errand. Dean had agreed so immediately and casually that, at first, I worried he thought I wasn’t serious. This fear turned out to be groundless though. By the end of the day, Dean had already enlisted Kurt’s help, and a few days later, we had a date set for the attempt.

Now the time had come, and we were chomping at the bit. After setting up camp, we all convened over dinner to discuss the route. We dissected each of the four pitches we’d be climbing, reviewing technical details and putting together a rough schedule. Ropes were checked, water bottles filled, and snacks distributed. All seemed well until Dean said something that gave me reason to question the whole enterprise.

“We start hiking at 1:45 a.m.”

Yikes.

He was right to get us going so early though. The prospect of climbing in the desert heat on an exposed rock with limited water did not sound appealing to any of us, and my greenhorn abilities presented an unknown that had to be budgeted for. So, we turned in early for what, in my case, turned out to be a brief, fitful nap.

When our alarm went off at 1:20 a.m., Becca and I quickly squirmed out of bed and slid down

the ladder into the dusky night air. Before we had time to rub the sleep from our eyes, we found ourselves hoofing it through the darkness, struggling to match Dean’s blistering pace. As I puffed along, I glanced toward the tower, now just a spike of ebony barely discernible amid the quieter blackness of the sky, and I thought back to a blustery night six months earlier when I had stood in the cold and stared at this same looming apparition.

On that previous trip to Moab, I’d first consciously realized that I wanted to become a climber. That day, I hit the crag with an adaptive climbing group. It was only my second time trying the sport, but by the end of the day, I was hooked. The childlike joy that came from scaling a tall rock felt refreshing, and I wanted more. That night, Becca and I camped beneath Castleton by chance, and as I listened to party after party of exuberant climbers rattle back into camp bursting with successful sends, I wished that I could have joined them. I went about my camp chores mechanically, all the while stealing glances at the moonlit tower. By bedtime, I had decided to climb it as soon as possible. I reasoned that this arbitrary goal would serve as proof to myself that I had successfully incorporated climbing into my life. A strange metric, I know, but it seemed like a good one at the time.

Now as I scrambled up the last scree slope and stood beneath the palpable immensity of the tower, I had to laugh at myself a little. It seemed foolish to give myself a pass/fail grade based on my ability to climb what felt like a sky-scraper rising sheer into the predawn. As we ditched our packs and harnessed up, all thoughts of what this climb ‘meant’ faded away. I was too excited for philosophizing and just wanted to get on the wall. After a quick goodbye to Becca, who had graciously accompanied me thus far to help me on the grewling hike up, I tied in and clambered up the first boulder. Here, though, we were stopped in our tracks. The rock in front of us bore no resemblance to what Dean remembered from climbing the tower previously. After some hemming and hawing and a few minutes of googling we realized we’d strayed off route in the dark and would have to rappel the paltry 15 ft. we’d already climbed in order to skirt around the base of the tower and reach the proper path. I was secretly glad. I’d never rappeled before, and I wasn’t thrilled with the idea of trying this crucial skill for the first time while suspended above a 400 ft. void on the descent from the

top. However, this false start also ate into our schedule, and I began to feel antsy. I knew I would be the slowest climber on our team, and I have always hated making people wait.

So as Dean disappeared from view on his way up the first pitch, I shifted from foot to foot, fidgeting with my harness and pack. Kurt, on the other hand, remained cool as a cuke, simultaneously feeding Dean rope and coaching me on how to arrange all my unfamiliar accouterments. This first pitch consisted of a lengthy chimney, a deep body-sized fissure in the rock that the guide books barely mentioned. Since chimney climbing requires no great technical skill, I imagine the author thought a description wasn’t worth the effort. When climbing a chimney, you press your back into one of the side walls while using your hands, feet, and knees to push against the opposite side to maintain the tension. It’s a game of brute force, and I was eager to work off my nervous energy. As I slotted myself into the crack, Kurt wondered aloud, “hum… I guess you won’t be using a headlamp. Right?” This gave me momentary pause. Dawn was still hours away, and while a headlamp would do me no practical service, I can still see enough to miss the light.

“Nah, I think I’m good,” I responded as I began to climb. Almost instantly, the beam of Kurt’s light disappeared, and I found myself squirming up the chimney in total darkness. No sound entered from outside. My heartbeat and labored breathing bounced frenetically around the confined space, pinging in my ears as I struggled upward. I slid my back up the smooth stone wall as fast as I could with no concept of how far I still had to climb. My pack kept getting in the way, catching on invisible corners and jerking me downward without warning. After a few minutes of hard slogging, I popped out onto a ledge and caught sight of Dean’s headlamp just a few feet away.

Once Kurt joined us, we shimmied around a corner of the tower and prepared for the next pitch, a straightforward section of easy climbing on a broad, open rock face. As Dean set off, I leaned against the cool rock and tore open a granola bar. Dean seemed to be having a tough time with the first few moves. “Hmm, weird” he muttered. “What? Huh! What is this?” A note of frustration began to creep into his voice. By this point, he was just a voice floating in the darkness. Then he went quiet, save for the occasional grunt. Kurt and I perched on our ledge, unable to follow his progress or offer any help other than a, “You got this!” every now and then. This was taking a lot longer than it should have. As Dean flailed above us, the sky turned a rich indigo. Then a lighter blue. Then the first edge of the sun appeared on the horizon.

“Fuck! Come on!” Dean wasn’t quiet anymore. He had been climbing hard for almost an hour and was only growing more confused. As profanities drifted down, the morning came alive. The smell of sage rose with the morning’s warmth, and I could hear the clean swish of birds’ wings in the air below us. Kurt and I chatted quietly about this and that, sharing snacks and stories of passed climbs. “Ugh! This isn’t right! I’m coming down.” Dean called. A moment later he joined us on the ledge, sweaty and mad. As the sun came up, it became apparent that we had missed the route in the dark. We had shuffled right past the correct line, a forgiving pitch full of deep handholds and ideal cracks, and instead Dean had launched up a rarely climbed and incredibly difficult section of cruel, featureless rock. Dean rallied quickly. After scarfing a snack and taking some cleansing breaths, he flashed up the correct line, and Kurt and I followed without incident.

The time had now come to face the hardest portion of the climb, and I was nervous. We gathered on a jutting boulder and surveyed the coming terrain, a meandering crack too small to climb like a chimney, but too wide to be a usable hand hold. This is what is known as an off-width crack, and it requires a very specialized set of techniques with names like “chicken winging” and “knee baring”, all of which are incredibly uncomfortable and awkward. Climbing a crack like this feels more like trying to get yourself painfully stuck in the wall.

Dean and Kurt had given me a crash course in these techniques a week or so earlier at a climbing gym in Boulder. We stood in a tight cluster on the padded mat, and Dean held his

arms up, miming the width of the crack while Kurt positioned my limbs. Both of them had to hold me around the waste and shoulders to keep me from falling over. I felt like some sort of giant, ungainly action figure, and I was not at all sure that I had grasped what they were trying to teach me. At the end of the lesson Dean said that he would bring a pulley on the climb to haul me up this section if I was unable to make it up on my own power. I think he meant to reassure me, but it sounded more like a threat in my mind.

Now the moment of truth had arrived. As Dean, the would-be puppet master, watched from above, I tentatively began the ascent. By this time the desert sun was beginning to sear the back of my neck. Sweat slid down my forehead and pooled in my eyes, but there was nothing I could do. If I failed to maintain the tension on the sides of the crack for even a moment, I would instantly find myself bouncing like a yo-yo at the end of the rope. To add insult to injury, the edges of the crack were lined with a particularly slick mineral which gave the rock the texture of pockmarked glass. I felt like a possessed insect, repeatedly starting up the wall only to plummet without warning, losing all my hard-won progress. A couple of hearty tugs on a pulley would have extricated me from this cycle, but I was determined to climb this pitch like a real boy. Kurt and Dean waited patiently, offering advice and encouragement, and eventually I started to get the hang of it. When I finally flopped up onto the ledge at the top of the crack, I was gasping but pleased. I knew the climb was in the bag.

This last pitch felt like a victory lap. At this point, we left the system of cracks we’d followed for most of the climb and swung out onto a broad open face of the tower. No longer tucked away in the folds of the rock, I gained a new awareness of the vastness around me. The desert sprawled like a sunbather several hundred feet below me, and above I could finally see the top of the tower, distinct against the electric blue of the sky. I climbed easily. Hand holds seemed to open just where I wanted them, allowing me to savor the airy freedom of the moment. Before I knew it, I had joined Dean on a narrow perch just below the summit. After paving the way and tackling all the hardest climbing, Dean graciously let me lead the last few feet to the top.

After a couple good heaves, I was there, standing on the lofty summit immersed in the warmth of a bright, desert morning. Dean and Kurt soon joined me, and congratulations were shared all around. Properly beat, we flopped down to eat a granola bar and ditch our tight climbing shoes and helmets. We sat at the center of the flat top, about the size of a racquetball court and surveyed our surroundings. Nearby in a shallow depression where previous climbers had sheltered for the night, we found an old ammo box full of mementos from other parties, cigarettes, castoff bits of climbing gear, a little jar of weed, and a notebook full of signatures and messages. “What should our party name be?” Kurt asked as he flipped through the pages.

“Three blind mice,” Dean responded, not missing a beat. (We all got a good chuckle out of that.)

After taking it all in for another moment, we stood up, gathered our gear, and prepared to descend. We rappelled down the sheer, northern face of the tower where the distance we’d traveled could be appreciated without obstruction. As the rope paid through my hands on the way down, I felt every foot of the climb slide by. I had accomplished my goal, made it to the top. But as I rejoined Becca at the foot of the tower and began the treacherous hike down to camp, I realized that my relationship to climbing remained unchanged. By this I don’t mean to say that the experience had failed to move me or that I was disappointed in some way. Quite the opposite. Climbing that tower ranks among the most personally satisfying and adventuresome things I’ve ever done, but it didn’t make me more of a climber, and after some reflection, I’ve come to realize this is for the better.

In my opinion, the whole dilemma of identity that surrounds “being a climber” is a nonstarter. Climbing is already rife with very tangible obstacles to entry, technical knowledge, physical ability, and access to climbing areas just to name a few that I’ve experienced personally, so throwing in issues of belonging only serves to overcomplicate things. For some inscrutable reason, I thoroughly enjoy hauling myself up jagged cliff faces, and I think that should be sufficient grounds to lay claim to being a climber. All this processing came much later though. As I slouched into camp and dove for the nearest patch of shade, my brain was too clouded with exhaustion for introspection. Stretched out in the dirt, I glanced back toward the tower, now just a distant mirage in baking heat.