Go Climb a Rotten Desert Tower With Your Spouse. What Could Go Wrong?

This article was originally published in Climbing No. 139, August/September 1993, under the title “Withering Heights.” The rules and regulations of climbing in Arches National Park have evolved since the ‘90s—review the National Park Service’s website before heading out.—ed.

You don’t need much of a reason to bail off a wall. Which is ironic, because when you’re in camp gearing up, nothing short of a cracked engine block or a scuffle with the law could keep you off the climb.

But once you’re actually up there in the slings, once the stupidity of what you’re doing sinks in, your backbone can go as limp as a ratty nine-mil rope. Suddenly, little things, like dropping your spoon or remembering that you were supposed to call your mom, are more than enough reason to coil the ropes and call it quits.

So I won’t call you a wimp if you let the local Arches’ tales—100-foot cam-plucking falls and bolts that lift out in your fingers—get to you and you high-tail it out of there. And, oh yeah, I expect the same favor in return.

***

A stout updraft lifted the haul line, bowing it into a large loop that writhed like an injured snake. With a crack the rope fell, jerking so hard on my harness I thought the blade I was on had ripped out of the crud. That’s when I wished I was flipping burgers or working on a salt mine instead of halfway up an aid pitch on the Organ in Utah’s Arches National Park. And when the pin I was testing melted out and dumped a scoop of Middle Jurassic soil in my face, I wistfully saw myself in a cool mineshaft loading big lumps of Morton’s into an iron cart.

After eight hours of slamming nuts and pins into Canyonlands rock, I was cooked. My boots and underwear were packed full of dirt, and I had to occasionally cock my head to let the sand dribble out of my ears.

Lisa, my wife and partner on this as well as a half dozen other crusty towers, was no better off. Strapped to the hanging station below me, she was unable to dodge the fusillade of debris. Sand spindrift rose from my movements, spiraled down and settled on her. From my position 30 feet above there was no mistaking her shrieks as they echoed over the tower’s primal walls.

“Hey,” she screamed in an abusive tone only your mate could use without provoking a fistfight. “Warn me before you throw stuff off—it’s going in my hair.”

“It’s just dirt,” I shot back, “nothing hard.” I was miffed. Disappointed too, for my toil failed to elicit the slightest shred of sympathy or, moreover, respect.

I soon quit listening—I was too busy fighting back tears myself, and besides, I knew that Lisa preferred this over the more painful option of staying home.

The rock was bad. Cracks that had appeared crisp and solid from the ground had fooled me. Again. Camming units went in all right, but when weighted, their teeth bit deep into the sugary walls, which threatened to burst from the strain. In Entrada sandstone, one of the beds that lies above the sturdier Wingate layer, and the strata that accounts for the Organ, you can scratch your name with a fingernail.

The line is obvious. In Arches National Park, five miles north of Moab, Utah, just past the wrinkled tower of mud to the east, an abrupt prow rears above the arroyos and sage about 200 feet off the oily road meandering through the park. On the right side of this buttress, at the base where the mudstone crumples in vertical and horizontal corrugations, a fault breaks an otherwise impregnable wall. The crack goes straight up, cuts right, up again, then bends right before finishing on the tower’s south face.

The climb was so evident that before we started I expected to find the tell-tale marks—grooves etched by rope and white scrapings left by cams and pins—of previous parties. After the first decomposing and grimy pitch the lack of sign made it clear that the line was unclimbed. And judging by the number of plate-sized holds that sluffed off the initial 10 feet of the wall, no one had even tried.

***

To the wall connoisseur familiar with the monstrous neck-cracking sweeps of Yosemite or Zion, the towers in Arches may seem an easy day’s fodder before banging westward to bigger stone. Surprise. Getting up a relatively easy route, like Virgin Wool (5.9 C2—the C is for “clean”—A2) on Sheep Rock, requires putting your head on the block and leaving it there a little longer than the grade might suggest.

That’s because the route is Arches’ soft-sandstone 5.9. And, soft-sandstone A2. If you could strip the hardest mandatory free move on Sheep Rock to a raw technical number you’d find it’s closer to 5.6 than 5.9—but that’s little consolation when you’re mantling on dirt clods or smearing on a grainy slab where you must skate up faster than the rate at which the holds are crumbling away.

And if that makes you quake, wait until you top out. The summit caps, having to bear the full brunt of Canyonlands’ slow but effective erosive forces, can make the walls seem like plate steel. No doubt other climbers than I have begged divine intervention while rappelling off pins driven into the topsoil or a sling around a dirt bollard.

Even if the anchors hold, don’t start drooling in anticipation of cold Wasatch Lagers at the Poplar Place. Do count on your ropes jamming in a crack or snagging behind a flake, where no amount of oaths will set it free.

***

I pawed at a large and teetering clod, which broke apart like terra cotta, drawing more jeers from the belay. A string of shifty pins made my throat hurt. The climbing was only A3+ at worst, and belay anchors seemed solid. Still, I didn’t want to put any of the placements to the test.

After 70 feet of aid interspersed with a few shaky free moves, I reached the base of one of the desert’s constants: a wide crack. This one was short, but appeared formidable. No problem, I had brought a six-and seven-inch cam to slay it. Another desert constant: they were too small.

I just fit inside the squeeze chimney. Then I was stuck. I couldn’t budge—those large cams had me pinned at the hips. Lisa sensed the struggle, but crouched beneath a bulge that put her out of eye or ear shot didn’t know the extent of the suffering. She figured, though, as does every partner who has to endure a long and uncomfortable sling belay, that I deserved everything I got.

Out of strength, I exhaled and slithered back to the base of the chimney. In a flash of hate I considered drilling a bolt ladder, but resisted the urge and instead burrowed deeper into the slot, where it widened slightly. Several dozen exhale-move-inhale-stop maneuvers later I flopped onto an expansive ledge.

Lisa broke down the belay and followed, removing the pitons and cams with gentle tugs, joining me on the ledge. Ours was a spectacular position with the Three Gossips and Argon Tower rising beyond us, and, for the moment, we were no longer blinded by the strain and fervor of climbing.

We sprawled on the ledge, each to our own side, grateful to be free of the confines of aiders, the tangles of sling and rope, and our absolute dependency upon one another. The next pitch looked as if it would take more than the hour of daylight that remained, so we tied together our tattered ropes, patched our partnership with a drink of water and a few Fig Newtons, and rappelled.

***

Arches is paradise with easy access. Over a dozen slender spires and bestial formations rise from the sands within a 10-minute stroll of pavement. Better still, these summits are accessible only through technical effort—you’ll never pull over the top to find a group of pink tourists munching barbecue here. Adding to the lure, the formations stand isolated from mesas and buttes, and most have had only a handful of ascents.

The climbers have come in sporadic forays. Bob Kamps and David Rearick nailed the remote Dark Angel in 1962. This rock spike, only 100 feet high and consisting mostly of either scrambling or bolt-laddering, isn’t much. Yet don’t let that dissuade you; the hour-long approach hike marches you over slickrock ridges, through narrow sand-bottomed gorges, and whisks you past a half dozen rock arches. One, the Landscape Arch, appears so delicate you could probably knock it down with a stout hammerblow. Leave your hammer behind—the Dark Angel goes clean with nuts and Friends.

The Argon Tower, the striking spire on the left that nearly makes you drive off the road, succumbed in 1964 to Bob Bradley, Charlie Kemp, and Layton Kor. Kor, who had recently climbed the nearby soddy Titan, had to use National Geographic photographs of that deed to convince the wary rangers that his was a team of able climbers.

Chuck Pratt and Doug Robinson added another route on the Argon Tower in 1969, and a year later Steve Roper and Allen Steck made the first ascent of the Three Gossips, the tri-headed formation just north of Argon Tower. Their route was later freed by Jeff Achey and Glenn Randall, and is one of the few free climbs that puts you atop a tower.

Getting up any of the towers in Arches will make your trip, but if you only have a day, burn it on Zenyatta Entrada (5.5 C3 A2), the sky-renting line on the west buttress of the Tower of Babel. This six-pitch plum, first climbed by Charlie Fowler, Eric Bjornstad, and Lin Ottinger in 1986, is the Park’s finest outing. Sadly, its popularity is obvious by the white peg holes scarring much of the line. If you get on this route be prepared to climb clean; most of the route, the lower three pitches in particular, go with SLCDs, slider nuts, and wires.

***

We jumared the ropes the following morning. Lisa went first and with every stroke of her ascenders the rope stretched and rebounded and frayed where it bent over a bulge. I kicked around in the dunes, scrambling over small scree piles, stepping carefully to avoid crushing the crusty black patches of cryptogamic soil, the thin sheath of lichens and spores that hold the desert together and provide nutrients and a base for vegetation.

Above our high point, the difficulties relented, as blank rock overcome with hammer and drill always does. The hand drilling was easy, and in under a minute I was able to bore a large hole.

Any drilling, though, even the easy kind, is cruel work. I slumped over, head against the wall, in self pity.

“What is it?” Lisa asked.

“Nothing,” I replied, trying to summon the will to continue an activity that now seemed about as meaningful as golf.

“You’re almost there,” Lisa said.

I wasn’t about to fall for the “almost there” gig—I’d used that trick myself to egg her along on tiring approaches. I knew where I was, and I was nowhere near the top. Still, her support bolstered my waning confidence.

“Yeah, right,” I replied, and swung the hammer.

The route above looked disappointingly featureless. During our binocular reconnaissance two days earlier this section had appeared to have a knifeblade crack, which now proved to be a shallow and unusable split in the baked mud shell.

Lisa was out of it. She lounged on her back in the sun, one hand draped over her face, the other loosely gripping the lead rope. Even comatose she knew the signals perfectly. When I tugged and grunted she fed out slack. And when I got testy she gave me a lot of slack.

I was ready to give up despite the insatiable hunger that permits climbers to endure unpalatable tasks for the sake of a new route. Then a shoulder of 5.5 dirt climbing breached the rampart and deposited us atop a white-encrusted pinnacle stinking of ravens, on the tower’s southwest flank. A sling around some stacked stones and a pin rammed into the dirt anchored a short rappel into a notch between the spire and the main wall. After that, an unpleasant traversing pitch, which required as much crawling and climbing, made me question the validity of our line.

We could see the La Sal mountains 40 miles to the west—and the dark, lightning-charged clouds curling above them and heading our way. Fearful that the rappel anchors wouldn’t hold if the soft rock got wet and dissolved, we quickly aided the exit cracks. With no time to tarry, we denied ourselves the usual respite and glowering, and sprinted across the broad summit plateau, tripping over loops of rope and leaping small crevices, to reach the fixed rappel stations.

The first rappel went smoothly, but on the second, the ropes hung in a crack.

This wasn’t the first time I’d had a rope hang up. Six years earlier I topped out on this tower at dark, in high winds, and without a headlamp. In my haste to get off I forgot to clip to the rappel line, and free fell 160 feet down the sheer wall before a spare rope I was trailing snagged in a crack—this very crack—and caught me.

Call it dumb luck the first time, but now it was misfortune. We tugged and whipped the ropes. They wouldn’t budge, and all the while the sky blackened. I prepared to pull both ends taunt and cut off the bottom tails, which we could then use to get down in a series of short rappels. But as I was about to beat the ropes apart with a hammer and knifeblade, they jumped free and came crashing down around us like snapped powerlines.

It began to drizzle just as we touched down. The drops spattered and gathered into rivulets that crossed the dusty slabs in paths etched by a millennium of storm. We coiled the ropes in hasty, uneven bundles and darted away.

The desert turned dark from the wet. The water thundered down, spilling over the parched land, softening what was before a harsh, forsaken place. Wilted scrubs turned green and sprang upright. Short grasses thrust through the soil, and the desert resounded with the clicks and whirs of insects. Even the thistles seemed less menacing.

We drove past the visitors’ center where several dozen Winnebagos were beached, idly venting exhaust while their occupants shopped for coffee mugs and t-shirts. In a fit of righteousness, I punched it onto the highway.

The shower muddied the windshield and the wipers smeared the red muck across the glass. I had to squint, but through the smudge I could make out the neon lights of the Taco Bender at the north end of Moab. I nosed the truck toward it.

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