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It’s When You Think You’re Unstoppable

• January 2008
• Uncategorized

My friend Rick Cashner is one of the original Yosemite Stone Masters….and he still cranks as hard as he did back in the golden days. He has some terrifying tales of free soloing in Joshua Tree, and one story about pitching off of a testpiece free solo and hitting the ground, miraculously fairly unhurt. “It’s when you think you’re unstoppable….that’s when you have to tell yourself to stop,” he said, relaying the story to Dean and me once.

We both remind ourselves of that, constantly. As my drive becomes more and more risk based, and as I enter the realm of human flight, it’s so hard to hold myself back or slow down, with anything I do. I just want more.

I spent the last week with Peter Mortimer, the renowned climbing film maker, here in Moab. When I was free soloing the Diamond this summer, Peter wanted to film me on Pervertical. I let him know when I would be climbing it the first time, and he hiked up to Chasm View to film from a distance. After that, I felt solid enough to solo it again, with Peter and my good friend Brian Kimball on the wall above me, filming me close up. So we all went back up together for that adventure. I let Peter know that free soloing Castleton Tower is something I often do, and now that I am a BASE jumper, it seemed obvious and beautiful to free solo Castleton and then BASE jump off it…… He very much wanted to come and film that to add to the “Diamonds Are Forever” film he would be making from our summer footage, and we agreed that he would come to Moab this week.

The day before Peter was due to arrive, it dumped snow like I’ve never seen in Moab. But luckily we were still able to accomplish our goal, with the added fun of alpine play, postholing up to Castleton, and negotiating the snow-covered sandstone for the three days of his visit. I was loving going up and down from Castleton in the snow, scrambling up and BASE jumping off of it. Peter was loving the footage he was getting. We decided to also make a trip up to the Tombstone during his stay, and we were shocked at the amount of snow on the treacherous slabs up to the summit–so much that we needed to fix a rope so Peter could get back down again after being left on top when I jumped. My friend Larry had come along to help Peter with cameras and filming, and fortunately he had a piece of extra rope to leave. I promised him that I’d go retrieve it in a couple of days.After Peter left, I was feeling really fit from the daily alpine starts to hike up to Castleton, and more excited than ever, about everything. I went climbing in the morning, and asked Dean to go for a BASE jump on the Tombstone that evening, because I really felt bad leaving Larry’s rope up there, and wanted to retrieve it as soon as possible for him so he wouldn’t be without it.

Dean wanted to start the hike together, but then fork off to a different exit point, called the Crown, so he could take photos of me jumping off the Tombstone, from a distance at sunset. I couldn’t believe that the snow had hardly melted at all! After about fifteen minutes of hiking together, Dean headed up the steep slab gully to the crown, and I continued off towards the snowy slabs to the top of the Tombstone. I was tired, from so much nonstop action over the last five days, but loved the feeling of being fit and hiking through my tiredness. I reached Larry’s fixed line, appreciating it on the dangerous snow-covered slabs, and topped out on a rise. I saw that he had tied it around the base of a giant juniper tree, down the back of the rise. Feeling jaunty, I headed straight down the steep, snow-covered slab to the tree, somehow thinking I would stick as I took my first step. Instead, my feet skidded out from under me, and I instinctively went into a side-pointing, snowboard position, trying to ride it down the slab. As my feet hit the ground at the base of the tree, I heard a sickening pop in my left knee, which was pointed in, in the wrong direction, and then crumpled down under the weight of my BASE rig. I sat in the snow, looking at the tied fixed line, sweating, feeling a strange urge to go to the bathroom, and also to just sit there and press snow onto my knee joint. I took a bunch of deep breaths.

It was nearly sunset, and Dean was way far away on the other exit point, well out of sight and earshot. I sat for a few minutes, and realized I was in the first haze of injury, where the adrenalin is masking the pain. No way could I walk down, so I needed to get to the exit fast, and do the jump. That would get me out of here the fastest.I limped up the final slabs to the top of the Tombstone, and saw Dean off in the distance. He had no idea. I put on my rig, slowly, trying not to bump my knee. I took a few steps, to see if I could do a running exit….no. Not possible to weight the left leg. I limped to the edge of the Tombstone, pushed off as well as I could with my right leg, and threw my pilot chute almost immediately.

I was seeing weird, starry blurs around the outside periphery of my vision. I decided to land in the lower meadow, rather than on the dirt road, thinking the ground would be softer in case I impacted my left knee during landing.

As soon as I landed, I realized that by choosing the low meadow, I had let myself in for a creek crossing, and a small walk up a hill. The pain was starting to come into my knee, so it was pretty slow going until I made it up to the car. Then home, and to the ice packs…..

I’m feeling pretty lucky. Despite the scary noise and a few days of pain, I’m assuming the injury is mostly muscular, rather than a bad tendon knee thing. It has been improving daily, and I’ve never done a knee before, so I’m diagnosing a strain and some muscular trauma (I never actually go to a doctor unless I’m nearly dead, especially since my brother is an ER doc and I just call him for phone advice when I hurt myself). I’m extremely disciplined with Rest, Ice, Compression and Elevation 🙂 because I like to get better fast from these things. So I’m expecting to be walking better in a few more days. Though I need to fly to Jackson tomorrow to present the premier of “Diamonds Are Forever” with Peter at the Alpinist Film Festival. I’m taking advantage of the bad leg to do more fingerboard workouts and weight lifting (because it has actually been bothering me that I get so distracted from climbing, with wanting to go skate skiing and BASE jumping every day)….

All I can say, is thank goodness I had a parachute, or it would have been brutal crawling out of there that night! It just goes to show what a life saver BASE jumping can be! And it’s a good reminder. The accidents always come when you least expect them, doing the most innocuous and silly things. Everyone thinks BASE jumping is so dangerous, but it’s nothing compared to walking!