Forget Ghosts. This Scary Story Is a Climber’s Worst Nightmare.

“This is surely how I die,” I thought, sitting 400 feet above the start of a first ascent project, isolated and alone.

I sat in my Toyota Tacoma, parked on a dusty pull-off in Castle Valley, Utah. As I leaned back, I craned my neck to take in my objective for the day. After 40 minutes of hiking up a crumbling slope that felt like a StairMaster made of sand, my project loomed above. I’d set out solo to explore and rope-solo a six-pitch line I’d rigged a few days prior. Deep in the badlands, Parriott Mesa rises from a mound of eroding dirt. Loose blocks and dusty cracks litter its walls. An adventure climber’s dream.

I’d hiked to this desolate base to see if I could link each sequence and create something new. It was harder than expected. Partners eager to invest the time or risk turned out to be scarce. So, I decided to work it alone, using a fixed line to rope solo.

With a sigh, I steeled myself for the long approach. After filling my pack with water, a harness, shoes, and ascending gear, I started up, saving what energy I could. The crux pitch loomed 400 feet above—pitch three of the six-pitch, 600-foot route. I’d need every drop of strength to unlock it.

The hike passed without incident, except for the coiled rattlesnake, tail shaking as a warning. In a pile of sandstone talus—broken remnants of an old rockfall—the serpent lurked, waiting for a quick snack.

At first, I wanted to get close to the snake and see its patterned scales. But on the off chance it struck me, I was hours from a hospital, and I’d read somewhere that sucking the poison out of the wound wasn’t a thing. Curiosity gripped me for a moment as I hesitated to get closer. I decided against investigating more and gave it a wide berth, my thoughts drifting to the desert’s warnings, dangers, and harsh indifference.

By the time I reached the wall, sweat traced my temples. I sat on a ledge barely wider than a sidewalk, staring down at the Martian valley of red sands and dust a thousand feet below. Jagged slopes fell away in fractured ribbons of red and tan.

“I wouldn’t want to slip down that,” I muttered, as my imagination flashed intrusive images of a body tumbling, shredded by stone. My two-week-old fixed line swayed in the afternoon wind, slithering back and forth.

“Well, no time like the present,” I said aloud, a few minutes later, shaking off fatigue.

I clipped into my ascenders, tightened my harness, and stepped into the stirrups. The distance up the wall wasn’t the problem—it was the angle. The sandstone cliff loomed above, just off-vertical as an overhand, enough to leave me free-hanging in space as I inched upward toward the day’s goal.

I’d fixed the line a week before and trusted its integrity, but the voice of Duane Raleigh—my mentor and the unsung master of desert first ascents—whispered in memory:

“Always go top-down when soloing.”

I brushed off the unease and began jugging. Twenty-five minutes in and 400 feet up, I felt a slow unnatural slide down. Then I saw it, the sheath of the rope had been sawed clean through, the wind and sandstone acted as a dull blade, cutting each new fiber of the sheath of the woven rope. Suspended in space, I watched a pale plume of core strands flutter in the air. With both sheath and unknown amounts of core severed, I was unsure of how much of nylon remained between me and the meat grinder below.

Fear gripped me to my core—so absolute, it brought with it an eerie, unnatural calm. I hung there for a moment, forcing my breath steady as I ran through options. I was suspended in open space, my toes stretched toward the wall, but fell inches short from reaching it. The pitch curved like a drawn bow, and the plumb line from the anchors hung about 20 feet left of the bolts—just far enough to strand me on a near feature-less face mid-air. Close enough to feel the wall’s presence, but not to touch it.

I could try to swing, generate momentum, and tap my toes against the sandstone to reach small edges and inch toward the bolts. My other option was far riskier: attempt to jump the damaged section of rope with my ascenders. But with the sheath shredded and the core half-exposed, that would mean unclipping my lead ascender. This was something I had no desire to do just in case the rope did snap.

I had hoped that the ascenders might jam up, keeping me off the ground. That would be extremely unlikely, so I chose the first option: swinging toward the bolt line. The rope was holding for now. But I had no idea what condition it was in above me; I could easily find myself in the same situation again.

“This is the dumbest way to die,” I muttered, as I began pushing my hips forward and backwards to gently swing, trying to get close enough to tap the wall with my toes and build enough momentum to latch onto tiny, fingernail-sized crimps. Every move was a micro-inch of desperation.

Seconds stretched into eternity as I waited, half expecting the rope to snap. Finally, I gained enough swing to latch a small feature and began my desperate gamble to the bolt line.

Twenty feet became 15. Fifteen became 10. My chewed-up nails scraped at the sandstone, clawing for purchase, knowing that a single slip would mean a massive swing on a frayed line. Three feet from the bolt, the holds vanished. The rope behind me coiled with tension. Fixed draws rattled in the wind—all of it waiting for one mistake to send me spinning into the void. I was going to have to throw myself toward the bolt.

Luck, for once, was on my side. The bolt I’d been inching toward still had a fixed draw from when I’d been working the line a week earlier. With my death grip locked on the rock, I unclipped my improvised personal anchor, ready to slam it into the draw the instant I reached it.

With a deep breath, I swung, grabbed the draw, and clipped in. The moment the carabiner clicked, the weight of it all hit me. Relief, anger, frustration. A flood of emotion swept over me as the adrenaline ebbed.

The next few bolts were close enough that I could aid upward. I ascended using the fixed draws and short, mostly unweighted lengths of the static line. At last, I reached the section where the sheath had failed. My plan was to tie an alpine butterfly to isolate the damaged area. Then I could still salvage a session to work the crux below.

Clipping into the bolt beside the exposed core, I finally saw what had been holding my life in balance: three single strands of core fiber, each no thicker than a piece of yarn.

Without a single thought, I fixed my line, rapped down the 400 feet, packed my gear, and hiked back to the car without stopping to see if the snake still sat coiled in wait.

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