A Freaked Out Free Soloist Taught One Climber a Lesson He’ll Never Forget

I had never been passed by a free soloist on a route before, so I didn’t know what to expect. In my mind, if it ever happened, I assumed I’d be the one feeling uneasy—watching some confident climber cruise past me without a rope. Free soloing can be unnerving to witness, even when the climber looks completely in control. The onlooker doesn’t always share that calm certainty. What I never expected was that the soloist would be the one who was scared.

“I’m kind of freaking out here,” the free soloist said as he passed, his voice shaky. We’ll call him John, and he looked about my age: early to mid-twenties. He fit squarely within the familiar Boulder mold: lean, sun-bleached, dressed in the usual outdoor-hippie kit. There was an earnest intensity about him—the kind of earth-hippie vibe that felt less relaxed and more performative.

“Can I like, grab onto you for a second to pass?” he asked as he clutched my harness and anchor to move past me. I was belaying my buddy Tom, who was somewhere high above and out of sight on the final and fifth pitch of the route we were climbing. John continued upward, nervously chatting with me while climbing next to the rope that snaked upward toward the blue sky.

“How do you plan on getting down?” I asked, continuing our awkward banter. “There’s no walk-off. It’s a rappel.”

“I’ll figure it out,” he said, with a confidence that didn’t quite match the tremor in his voice or the tension in his movements, before disappearing above me.

A gambit vs. a gamble

It was a Saturday morning in early November 2011. Tom and I were on our way to Gambit (5.8), a classic moderate trad route high on Shirt Tail Peak, the tallest summit in Eldorado Canyon, Colorado. We hadn’t seen a soul on the long approach. As we hiked into the sun, we rose above the cold shadows pooled at the bottom of the canyon. We flaked the rope, sorted the rack, and started up, blissfully alone in the quiet morning chill.

Gambit is traditionally five pitches, so we swapped leads. Tom took the odds, leaving me the evens. We climbed at an easy rhythm, trading gear at belays, cracking jokes, savoring the solitude. High on the wall, Tom launched into the fifth pitch: exposed face climbing on less-than-stellar rock.

Then I heard heavy breathing behind me. I assumed a faster party had caught us. Instead, it was John.

In Eldorado Canyon, free soloists on classic moderates are part of the landscape. What surprised me was the route choice. Gambit doesn’t have a walk-off; you must descend via three rappels, or what I can only assume is a harrowing downclimb. That alone is usually enough to deter most soloists.

John and I made small talk. He edged past me—hesitant, shaky—and continued upward. Eventually, he caught up to Tom on the final pitch. Instead of passing, he lingered just below him, watching.

“Oh bro,” he called up, inspecting each placement. “Bomber nut.”

Tom later told me how uncomfortable it made him. If he fell, the “bomber” gear would hold—but he’d almost certainly hit the soloist and knock them both off the wall.

When Tom asked him to move past, John shook his head.

“No bro, I’m good,” he said. “Just mental cruxing.” So he just trailed Tom, eventually passing at an easier section towards the top of the pitch.

Meanwhile, I was down below by myself, staring up at rope disappearing out of sight, as I drifted into that familiar mid-pitch boredom.

Then came a scream

A raw, life-or-death scream.

For no logical reason, my first thought was: Bees! Tom is being stung by bees! Even as the thought formed, I knew it made no sense. It was far more likely he’d dislodged loose rock—or fallen. But the rope never came tight in my device.

Then another scream, this time clearly off to the right.

The final slab of Gambit angles that way, ending at a massive corner system that forms a deep gully between the two summits of Shirt Tail Peak. The gully is a mess of lodged boulders and loose rock. Because it’s Eldorado Canyon, of course, it’s also a route: The Mountaineers Route (5.5). John had been downclimbing it.

I spotted him about 20 feet below the saddle of the two summits, dangling from the wall by his leg and screaming. Tom had been watching him from above. He saw a refrigerator-sized block shift, which had pinned John’s ankle against the cliff face, trapping him there. He writhed, grunting, trying to pull free.

When he finally did, the rock came loose, and along with it, several others.

An avalanche of rock followed. Blocks and shards tore down the gully, exploding as they ricocheted into the scree field below. The sound echoed through the canyon like a series of detonations, as dust and debris settled into silence.

I shouted over, asking if he was OK.

No response—just moaning.

“We can come help you!” we yelled. “Just stay there!”

By then, Tom had reached the summit and put me on belay. I climbed quickly, expecting to find only him and start figuring out a plan. Instead, I was greeted by both of them. John had somehow reversed his descent and was now sitting beside Tom.

His ankle was already swelling. I told him to pack it in snow from a patch left over from an October storm.

“Whoa man,” he said, surprised. “Great idea.”

A moment later, he looked up at us.

“Bro,” he said, “I should’ve brought some weed. You guys got any?”

“Let’s just figure out how to get you down,” we said.

Using a few slings and locking carabiners, we improvised a harness and began the three rappels. We only had two belay devices, so Tom would rappel first, then I’d lower John down from above so Tom could help him. I would rappel last. We gave him one of our helmets.

Despite his bravado, he seemed generally uneasy. At one point, we pulled the rope, bringing some small debris with it, and he launched himself into the wall for shelter. “You should be more careful pulling your ropes,” he chided us, slipping back into that earnest certainty. “You don’t want to dislodge any big rocks.”

Eventually, we reached our packs at the base of Gambit and helped him limp down the long scree field. I don’t remember much of what we talked about on the way down. What I do remember was his tone—earnest and certain, as if his way of moving through the world was the more enlightened one. Nearly dying and requiring a rescue was just another ordinary day out adventuring.

We passed Rincon Wall, which was fully mobbed with weekend climbers. Their eyes followed us like daggers. As we helped the limping soloist along, providing him support, Tom and I silently tried to communicate that the rockfall, which these climbers had been in the firing line of, hadn’t been our fault.

After more tedious scree, we gained the well-worn trail that headed toward the floor of the canyon. We asked him several times if he wanted one of us to stay while the other ran ahead to find a ranger or call for help. He refused, saying he could make it down the rest of the way on his own.

“You guys want to get together and climb sometime?” he asked as we started to depart.

Tom and I exchanged a look. “Uh,” we both groaned, “we kind of only climb together,” we lied.

Once down at the parking lot, we went into the visitor center to alert the rangers of the accident. Mostly, we intended to clear our conscience and demonstrate that it wasn’t us who had created the commotion up at Shirt Tail Peak. We told the rangers about John still working his way down the trail. “Oh yeah, we heard that rockfall,” the ranger said. “Glad everyone is OK.”

We had planned to keep climbing that day. Instead, we just drove home.

The unintentional climber

I can still hear the sound of the rockfall and see the dust rising toward me. But more than that, I still think about the question I kept wanting to ask John that day, yet never did: Why were you up there in the first place?

He hadn’t seemed confident. A “plan” seemed completely off his radar. He was improvising in terrain where improvisation carries real consequences. That was what unsettled me. Not the soloing itself, but the way he approached it.

I see this as the opposite of how I make decisions. Winging it has never been in my wheelhouse as a climber. I make plans and do the research. Before I commit, I try to understand what I’m getting into.

This story isn’t about whether free soloing is right or wrong. It’s about how we make decisions in the mountains or at the crag. Confidence, fear, preparation, ego—they shape every outcome.

That day in Eldorado Canyon made me realize I’m less interested in how bold a climber is, and more so in how deliberate.

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