On the Ridge Between Life and Death
A Climbing Life Reexamined
Chapter One: Gabe
The trouble began on the fifth pitch. I handed Gabe our hardware -- half a dozen soft-iron pitons and eight or nine carabiners dangling from a nylon sling -- and said, "On belay." Once again, I had been unable to drive a single piton for my anchor: instead, I had found a bucket-shaped hollow in the ruddy sandstone and sat in it with my back against the right wall, my feet braced against an opposing bulge.
Gabe started up the inside corner, angling left as the arching dihedral dictated his path. The going looked easy, for he was moving with that jerky efficiency that had become his forte during the last three months. My breath escaped in a sigh of well-being. Once again, we were launched on the flight that turned the neurotic thrum of ordinary life into a staccato pulse of purpose.
But there were no cracks for our pitons. That was the trouble with the First Flatiron -- with all the Flatirons, those massive tilting slabs that stared east from Green Mountain over the mesas above Boulder. Eighty feet up, Gabe sidled left ... read full excerpt from: On the Ridge Between Life and Death: A Climbing Life Reexamined ebook
