Buford

At noon I struggled to lift the brown wool blanket with a yellow tiger on it off my legs. Snow had been falling on and off for about three hours. Magazines slid to the floor and a candy wrapper rustled under me as I shifted into a sitting position. I realized that it was inevitable that we were going to climb today.

Will had been zipping around the motel room, sharpening his crampons to maniacal points, stacking his rack and flaking out the pig so that he could recoil it for the millionth time into an even neater bundle. The pig is a pink rope about 100 meters long. But as I saw him sneak the thinner, much shorter blue rope into my back pack I realized that we were going to do something less lengthy than we had the day before. Well, I thought to myself, how bad can it be?
The ice season had worn me out, starting with the -20 degree temperatures in January that froze my eyelashes together. Standing on Chapel Pond in a wind that seemed to be blowing through a worm hole that had opened up in the Adirondacks from the Antarctic, I began replacing the f word I normally associate with ice climbing, F-U-N, with another F word that, while a consonant longer, and a letter different, more aptly described the situation. But here we were, in the Adirondacks at the end of March, on potentially the last good ice climbing weekend of the season. The temperatures were in the 20s during the day and it felt downright balmy outside. The ice was sure to be, as Will described it, hero ice, “good sticks all the way to the top” (this is a direct quote) of whatever horror show he was planning on dragging me up.
So 2:30 PM arrived, finding Will and I traipsing across the crusty surface of Chapel Pond. There was a wind blowing but it wasn’t cold compared to the previous months. I was so focused on stepping exactly into Will’s footsteps that I almost walked into him when he stopped. We were standing at the top of a short hill with a cliff to our left and a path to our right. It was a place I had never been before.

“Oh good. Buford’s in. You have to climb it. It’s an Adirondack classic.”

I dropped my pack in the snow and looked around. The cliff on the left was a dark face almost barren of ice, a few fragile chandeliers gracing its face. I looked to the right but could not see any ice through the trees.

“Where is the climb?” I asked.

“Right here,” he said, point to the cliff on the left.

“Where?” I asked again. Maybe it was around the corner, just out of sight, I thought. I could hear two other climbers busily hacking up routes in the vicinity of Ice Slot and Hot Shot.

“Right HERE,” he said. Will bounded up the rest of the hill we were standing on to the base of the cliff on the left. He tapped one of the sturdier looking ice chandeliers with the end of his ax. It snapped and tumbled to the ground, sounding like tea spoons being dropped into a deep aluminum sink.

“Hmmm,” I said. I felt the pound of chocolate I had eaten for breakfast while reading back issues of the New Yorker suddenly turning into a solid waxy ball in my stomach. Was this some kind of sick joke? Had he gone mad? I decided to focus more intently on what he was saying to see if maybe he had slipped into some kind of psychotic state. But he had stopped talking and was busy flaking the rope out into the only area near the base of the climb that was free of microwave sized ice blocks.

“You should be pretty safe here. I’ll leave you some slack on the anchor in case you have to dodge any falling ice.”

I looked up again at the climb, realizing that the puny little stragglers still holding to the cliff wall wouldn’t hurt me if they fell on me. It would be like someone dropping a Popsicle stick on my head. I consoled myself with the knowledge that the real torture would not begin until I was on belay.

“So, over here, the start, is called the torpedo.” Will pointed out what must have once been a nice fat icicle. It was now cantilevered and holey. Four misshapen blobs the size of skulls seemed connected together up a soft stretch of the sheerest ice. Torpedo my ass, I thought.
“Then there’s a ledge near that tree.” Will pointed to a scraggly little branch hanging near a ledge that started right above the ice skulls. “And then there’s a bit of a crux-y section next. You might have to get out on the rock a little because I’m not sure the ice is thick enough to get a good stick in.” That comment worried me, because to me, a good stick means getting seven or eight teeth of my ax into a block of ice the size of a refrigerator. The day before Will had told me, after I had managed to get one tooth of my ax into a chuck of ice the size of a shot glass, to move on it because it looked “bomber”.

In addition, I had had exactly 15 minutes of mixed climbing experience. Mixed climbing involves climbing rock while wearing ice-climbing gear. There’s a reason not many people try mixed climbing. It’s dangerous, sketchy, hard on your equipment, and it requires immense creativity in the use of your tools. The day before, on Power Play, confronted with 15 feet of iceless rock with no place to balance a tool or crampon, I had stuck my ice ax sideways into a crack and mantled up on it. That is a move I guarantee you will never see in any climbing magazine or book. My ax bounced up and down as I weighted it, making diggery doo-like springing sounds. Had I weighed 10 pounds more it probably would have snapped in half. Breaking tools is no big deal to Will, but I am somewhat attached to my quarks and strive to maintain their shiny newness. It’s like clinging to the new car smell.

“All you have to do is get to the bulge. The ice is fat up there. It won’t be bad.” I looked up skeptically and tried to remember when Will had last had his glasses prescription checked. He grinned at me with that evil grin that materialized every time at the crag. “And, if it’s too sketchy for you, I can always lower you down.”

Those were fighting words, and both of us knew it. I silently cursed his light blue helmeted head as he sped up the “torpedo”, putting in a couple of ice screws for my benefit, not his. He paused for a few moments on the ledge before making his way up the sketchy section. Two climbers who were happening by stopped to take pictures of his graceful ascent. Soon he was at the top of the climb.

You see, I told myself, as Will pulled up the slack and put me on belay, that wasn’t too bad; it wasn’t hard for him at all. Apparently my brain had managed to space the fact that Will has sixteen years of climbing experience, most of it on much, much worse ice than Buford. I clomped up to the base of the climb, knocking the balls of snow from the bottom of my crampons. Then I looked up for a good tool placement.

Four ice heads looked down at me with grinning little ice faces. The heads were the remains of the torpedo, and from this angle they made me think of pirates hanging down from a dilapidated ship. The torpedo was laughing at me. That made me angry. I swung my left ax into the first head. It severed in half like a rotten cantaloupe. Now I only had half a head to work with. And the other heads, which had looked, at the bottom of the hill like nicely placed steps, now revealed themselves to be stacked in a position that made it incredibly awkward to get a tool placement.

Stupid, stupid heads. I struck again and again with my tools, groveling my way up the torpedo. Luckily I was able to reuse many of Will’s tool placements. After a short effort I was at the ledge with the scraggly tree. The ledge was about 8 inches wide, and seemed to be the safest place on the whole climb. It stretched about three feet to the right, where there was another tree, a little ice alcove, and above the alcove, the crux of the climb.
Will called down to me.

“The next section is a little sketchy. You’ll want to move out onto the rock on your right. There’s a good sod pocket above the alcove.”

Sod? Will wanted me to stick my still fairly new beautiful Quarks into SOD?

“It’s okay to stick your ax into the turf. It’s frozen.”

I gingerly traversed from the top of the torpedo over to the ice alcove. It was filled with a wonderful perfume smell that was kind of like detergent, and kind of like the smell of something else that I couldn’t quite place. I suddenly felt a strong desire to climb into the alcove until it got too dark to finish Buford. But I was still fired up from hacking all the heads in half, so I located the sod pocket that Will had yelled down about, and tried to figure out how to get a placement into it.

The sod pocket was a nice deep pocket and it provided the only good tool placement in the crux. Unfortunately, since I am 6 inches shorter than Will, I realized that I would have to get a good foot placement to step up on before I could reach the hold.

I looked to my left and saw rows and rows of chandeliered ice. The side of the cliff might as well have been covered in champagne glasses loosely tied together with thread. Every time I got a good stick into a chandeliered ice curtain and weighted it, it smashed apart. I finally got a good stick with my left foot, but getting to this particular placement involved me having my left knee almost in line with my face, which, given my past record of damaging my face, was not a good thing. I jumped up and forward, managing to miraculously hit the sod pocket with my right ice ax. I was about to declare victory over Buford when my foot placement burst like a rotted tooth getting a root canal. Desperately trying to get some balance I hooked my left ice ax behind a curtain of icicles that were as structurally sound as peppermint sticks.

“Are you okay?” Will yelled. I had been making quite a racket and he must have noticed that there had not been slack on the rope for the past 5 minutes (or had it been 15 by now? it was hard to tell) and I was making little if any progress in an upward direction.

“I’m fine!” I yelled, my voice a little shaky.

“I’m going to take your picture” he said, leaning out over the final bulge with my camera. It was then that the icicle curtain that my left tool was hooked on decided to give way, smashing the hammer of my ax into the side of my head.

Luckily he had switched out my adze with a hammer a few weeks previous. Had I hit myself in the face with my adze I probably would still have my ice tool embedded into my face.

Moments before hitting myself in the faceAfter the hammer blow I felt a new desire to get the hell off Buford as fast as my little axes and crampons would take me. I managed a far flung stick with my left ax, and it sank into something that felt like a sturdy hold. I scraped my crampons up the rock face, trying to dig my front points into lichen or any little fingernail wide crack I could catch them on. I was well situated and sensing the end to the Buford epic when I realized that, by mistake, I had forgotten to unclip the rope from a piece of rock pro that Will had placed to the side of the ice alcove.

I explained to Will that I needed some slack, a nd I started to down-climb back to the alcove. Of course, I have no experience down-climbing rotten ice so I in fact tumbled back to the alcove. The technique I used for freeing the piece of protection Will placed involved me taking off both of my gloves, laying my axes precariously balanced on the ledge because there wasn’t enough good ice to stick them in, and climbing a small tree since I couldn’t get any purchase on the rock. I don’t even know how Will had managed to get the piece of protection into the position it was in. I think he’s secretly from another planet, one where everyone has stretchy rubber arms.
After getting the rope issue straightened out I rested on the ledge. Climbing with Will was definitely stretching me to my limits, but in a good way. Musing in the ice alcove I realized that I couldn’t name another climbing partner I had had who would put me in a situation that required me to climb a tree with crampons on.

I attacked the sketchy part of Buford with new vigor. Sparks literally flew from my crampons as I aerated a thin blanket of lichen. I stuck my tools into sod chunks frozen on the side of the cliff. I knocked down the weaker icicles and moved up on single-tooth placements that were so precarious my axes were swinging like pendulums. I laughed. I almost cried. Then I saw the blood.

The last 15 feet of Buford is a bulge that forces the climber out over a very steep chunk of ice. This is usually the crux of Buford, but the ice was thick and sticky here so I had planned on hammering my way up to the top so that we could hurry back to the motel, change, and get a huge pizza at Mr. Mike’s in Lake Placid. A pitcher of beer with 8% alcohol can also be procured there for only $6, but honestly, I go for the pizza. In fact I was thinking of tomato sauce when I came across the blood so I thought it might be some kind of delusion like those guys on deserted islands have when they see a grilled cheese sandwich levitating in front of them.

“Will? What the HELL? Is this BLOOD?”

“Oh that. Yes. It’s blood.”

I looked the streak of blood, which went all the way to the top of the climb.

“Will! What’s this blood doing on the ice?”

“Oh. Um. Well, I got hit on the face with a piece of ice. Minor flesh wound.”

The blood streak widened out and reminded me of the skid marks you see when people hit animals on the highway and then slam on their brakes, trapping the carcass under their tires and dragging it along as a thick path of gore smears the road. I began climbing more quickly so I could get to the top and see what had happened to Will. Also, the two climbers whom I had heard climbing further in the canyon were walking out, and they were yelling encouragement to me as I fumbled up the final section of the pitch. An audience is great encouragement for me to move quickly up a climb.

The path of blood was so engrossing that I didn’t even realize I was at the top until I saw Will’s boots in front of me. I stuck my axes into some sod and crawled across the final section of the climb. The top of Will’s nose had a ½ inch gash where he had been hit, and the blood had run down both sides of his nose before catching in his 5 o’clock shadow and trickling to the end of his chin. I tried to wipe some of the blood off but it had frozen in place. Will set up a rappel and we headed down.

I didn’t ascend Buford gracefully, cleanly, or easily. But it was a great ending to my ice climbing season, during which I felt I had made little forward progress, mostly due to the extremely cold temperatures. I felt completely pumped up about climbing ice, rock, plastic, or just about anything (except for trees, with crampons). I was saturated with the feeling of success that drives me to the crag even on the most bitterly cold and miserable days.

Feeling guilty about not fully cleaning the route on the way up I told Will I would grab the gear as I rapped down to the base of the climb. I lingered for a few moments in the ice alcove after pulling a piece of gear out. I inhaled deeply the perfume scent again, still unable to place it.
As we walked across Chapel Pond Will gave me two pieces of gear that I would need for trad climbing. They were both cams, one named Big Red because it had a red sling on it, and one named Greeny, because it had a green sling on it. He said that he was giving them to me for the determination I had shown on Buford. We discussed the climb, section by section, as we sat in the flying brick (the nickname for Will’s car) taking off our gear and drinking tea.
“Hey,” I said. “Did you notice that smell in the ice alcove?”

He said he had noticed it. We spent the next few minutes discussing what we thought the alcove smelled like, trying to place the scent.

And suddenly I realized what the smell was. It was the smell of spring.

*****
This story is dedicated to the memory of Eric Mayeaux. Eric was my boss for the past 6 months and he died unexpectedly the week before I climbed Buford. His sudden death is believed to have been caused by the tremendous amount of stress he experienced at work.

Eric was as excited as I was at the start of ice season, and every Monday morning when I came into the SCIF the first thing he would always ask me is “Did you climb this weekend?” He would ask it in the same way that most of my bosses asked “Did you fill out your timecard correctly?”
We often talked about Eric coming to climb with me in the gym. He seemed to think the whole sport was twisted and sick, meaning he enjoyed hearing about it a lot, but he didn’t really want to try it himself.

I thought of Eric while I was climbing Buford. The day before, when Will and I were climbing Power Play Lite, I was standing at the base of the climb belaying Will. There was an eerie silence over Chapel Pond as it snowed lightly and it seemed as though we were the only ones for miles around. Suddenly, I heard the hoop-hoop-hoop sound that a rope makes when it’s being pitched off the top of the climb. Stupid bastards didn’t even yell “rope!” I thought to myself, looking up at the top of the climb (genius me, looking up to see if a rope is about to hit me in the face). But there was no rope. Puzzled, I turned my attention back to Will. Hearing the sound again, but closer, I looked up and saw above me a huge hawk. The noise I had heard was his wings flapping through the air. I’m not by any means a bird person but the sight was amazing, the hawk’s wingspan stretched out like a great shadow against the sky. Later, Will told me he had seen the bird also and the sight was so breathtaking that he stopped climbing and just watched as the hawk sailed out over the pond and into the trees. It was one of those magical moments that can’t be explained or recreated with words.

While climbing Buford I thought of the hawk again, and how I normally would have gone into the office on Monday and told Eric about it. I imagined my highly exaggerated and metaphorical description as I told Eric about the bird, and then I imagined his response to my story, which would have been along the lines of “Wellll, Franki,”( in his southern drawl), “you’re lucky that bird didn’t poop on you.”

Lest you think I mischaracterize him, this is the same man who, when we had our systems engineering Christmas party, decided to tell the story of his sister’s cat. Everyone else had been telling heartwarming, schlocky holiday stories. But Eric’s story was about how his sister had a stupid cat (actually Eric thought all cats were stupid) who decided, in the wee hours of 25 December, to eat a long tinselly garland off of the Christmas tree. When the family awoke they found a very sick cat, one end of the garland hanging out its mouth, and the other end hanging out its ass. Eric had to drive the cat to the vet and spend the greater part of the day waiting for the cat to be operated on. He said that he imagined that if he pulled either end of the garland the other end would move. His sister wouldn’t let him test out his theory though.

He often introduced me to people (people I had to work with, or people like the program manager) as “This is Franki, she’s got no common sense, she puts these pointy things on her feet and climbs around on ice”. To this day I have people on the project say to me, when we are introduced, “Are you the one with no common sense?”

So Eric, where ever you are, I hope you can raise a glass of good bourbon to those of us with no common sense, who wear pointy things on our feet, and who leave the mess of work behind to go climb some ice.

Finis