Chasing away bad thoughts on the Traverse Without Return

In France people don’t celebrate Halloween, they celebrate the Day of the Dead, a day used to remember all those who have passed. On this day while living in France I decided to make a list of all of the people in the climbing world that I have known who have died or who have somehow touched me. I once heard that if you make it past seven years as a climber your odds of survival drastically increase. I am not sure where this saying came from but it doesn’t seem to hold much truth as I wrote down fifteen names (accidents from the past eight years) and most of the people on my list had climbed for much longer than seven years. I remember a statement that Jim Haberl, a name that was on my list, made; He said, with regards to death in climbing, that the older he got the less friends he had.

Climbers surround me. My climbing partners are climbers, in general the girls I date are climbers and the people that I hang out with when I am not climbing for good or for bad are climbers. Within this tight group I find that the perception of risk is somewhat skewed and the idea that climbing is a safe activity is commonly propagated. However, I understand that this is essential since fear and hesitation would only compound the risks that one subjects oneself too. Yet, you don’t have to step far from the circle to see the “extreme, risky or dangerous” label that the rest of society stamps on the climber. I wanted to peel away any machismo, and wade through any hysteria to try and understand how I really perceived the risk in climbing.

Most of my time is spent sport climbing and bouldering and although it could be argued that both sport climbing and bouldering are excessively risky I am not talking about these types of climbing. I am looking at the more traditional types of climbing such as big walls, climbing in the mountains, poorly protected routes and even free soloing. I personally don’t like being scared — in fact I hate it. Yet more frequently then I like to admit, I find myself pursuing objectives that involve chasing away bad thoughts. For example, being on a climb where you hear your inner dialogue say, “good job buddy, now you’ve gone and done it”, or perhaps you picture the block you are attached too letting go and falling a thousand feet with you attached to it or the worst possible thought; thinking about the people that you are going to let down if you die. Negative thoughts are in no way productive and must be fielded properly because thought can alter the outcome. I can imagine that a climber like Peter Croft has developed his mind to be like an iron clamp that simply does not allow negative thought to enter. For me, if I take on a risky climb it is a constant battle to keep negative thoughts and imagery from entering my mind.

It was October and I had been living in Southern France for about four months when I decided I wanted to climb “Le Traverse Sans Retour” or the Traverse Without Return. The Traverse Without Return climbs along the base of the sunny south facing band of sea cliffs know as the Calanques and covers nearly as much ground as climbing El Capitan but of course sideways. Early one morning I picked up Gui, a young up-and-comer competition climber who I had climbed with at the climbing gym. Gui, twenty and fiercely strong, had not spent much time climbing outside and I figured a multi-pitch climb would be good experience for him. From Aix-En-Provence it took us an hour to drive to the Calanques on that perfect clear morning.

Not long ago, I was at a sport cliff and beside me a climber was getting seriously upset with a climb because his situation was scaring him. Yet, there was absolutely no need for him to be hanging on the side of a cliff in the first place. What is unique about the dangerous situations in climbing is that you arrive at them by choice and therefore are completely accountable for the outcome. My desire to do anything that is perceived to be dangerous stems from a belief that I can make good decisions and the inner reward I get from making good decisions.

Gui and I arrived at the top of the cliff after a two-hour hike from the car and bumped into two older climbers. They had done the Traverse before but it was not on their agenda for the day. After some morning chitchat they happily offered to show us how to get to the start of the Traverse Without Return. The climb, which traverses climber’s left to right starts at the bottom of the cliff and you must make four rappels to access it. Accessing the first rappel station involved crossing a narrow ledge above a sheer drop to the Mediterranean Ocean. The old climbers did not skip a beat and they quickly scurried across like a couple old goats. After showing us the rappel station, they wished us good luck before leaving. When they wished us good luck, the severity in their tone caught me off guard. The Traverse Without Return is notorious for being a route-finding nightmare and I realized that we must have looked like a couple dumb kids about to epic. We didn’t have helmets and our rack consisted of quickdraws, one set of stoppers and a small selection of shoulder length slings. The unfortunate truth, that neither the old climbers nor us knew at the time, was that the Traverse Without Return had recently been altered by rock fall totaling 50,000 pounds of limestone and was in fact closed to climbing!

Our second rappel landed us on a nice ledge where we found another station. For the third rappel, the topo showed a short traversing rappel to another station just thirty feet from our position. I went first and thirty feet down the rope hanging still a couple hundred feet above the crashing sea I could not find a station. I swung side to side but there was nothing! From my position the wall started to overhang below me. When talking with the old climbers they had called the final rappel “moron!” or funny. They said that the final rappel involved descending overhanging rock and upon reaching the bottom of the rope you would be free hanging in space. Then, while hanging just above the sea, you needed to lasso a horn of rock with the excess rope and pull yourself back to the cliff. The information from the old climbers about the overhanging rock was lining up, however, without finding the rappel station I wouldn’t have enough rope to make it to the bottom. I shudder when I think what would have happened if had continued much further down the rope in search of a station. My feet would have lost contact with the cliff and I would have been hanging in space making it virtually impossible to ascend the rope. My only option would have been to continue going down. Upon reaching the end of the rope I would have been suspended fifty feet above the surface of the water. I would have been forced to take the drop and if I survived the impact into the cold water I would have had to climb out while getting smashed against the rocks by relentless waves. There I would have found myself at the base of five hundred foot cliff with my climbing partner a few hundred feet above me.

The amount of risk an objective holds is an equation of the unknowns. Such as: how solid is the rock?, how good is the gear?, how hard is the climbing? The less of this you know the more you risk. The more the unknown the more critical decisions you have to make on the fly.

With out finding the rappel station I swung over climber’s left, the opposite direction to where we wanted to go, and stood on a small ledge. I then tried to explain to Gui, above and out of site, with my poor French over the noise of crashing waves that I wanted him to belay me as I climbed back up to him. After fifteen minutes of yelling we bridged the communication gap and I climbed loose decaying limestone back to Gui. When I arrived at Gui I was already feeling like I just wanted to get off the route to try another day. We decided to try and climb back up the face the way we had rappelled but steep unprotectable rotten rock blocked our passage. Under my breath I whispered to myself “ooh….so that’s why they call it the Traverse Without Return”.

I had read that during the first attempt at climbing the Traverse Without Return the climbers reached a point at which they could not continue. Unable to retreat, they called to a passing ship for help but due to rough waters the boat could not get very close to the cliff. The climbers jumped into the Mediterranean Sea, which is very cold during winter, and swam to the boat. As we analyzed our options a deep dread welled in my stomach as the severity of our situation began to sink in.

About thirty feet below us, the point from which I had climbed out, I noticed a large horn of decaying limestone that jutted out before the wall undercut it. Already feeling fatigue from the morning excerpt I rappelled down to it, slung it with four shoulder length slings girth hitched together and weighted it while keeping myself attached to the rope. My feet dangling in air I inspected the slight angle of the horn that would resist the slings from slipping off. I bounced on it generating as much force as I could and it seemed like it would hold so I detached my rappel divice from the rope and I shouted, “off rappel”. Gui was soon beside me and as we pulled our rope I felt a new level of commitment to the route. I only hoped that during the next rappel we would hit something below that we could work with otherwise we would be swimming. We wrapped the rope around the horn that we hung from to secure it, I connected my rappel device to the rope and as I rappelled away from Gui I was completely in space. A hundred feet below Gui, at the bottom of the rappel I hovered just a few feet above the agitated Mediterranean. Deep bass echoed from rock chasms as the water surged around me.

I had rapped with the rope stacked neatly between my legs for two reasons. The first its that I learned a long time ago the importance of always maintaining control of your ropes when rappelling and the second was because I did not want the ropes to get wet. With the excess rope I managed to lasso a very shallow horn that was not the horn the old climbers had prescribed. Unknown to us at the time the reason why we had not found the third rappel station was because it had dropped into the sea along with tons of rock! The rappel line we had taken brought us a hundred feet climber’s left of the start of the route. I pulled myself into the wall and clipped into a single sling hung around the small horn of rock. Gui soon arrived and we hung side by side at the base of the wall with the violent sea splashing our heels.

I have heard that as your climbing skills develop you become more adapt at dealing with risky situations and therefore can take on greater challenges with an equal level of safety. Although it is true, that through experience one becomes better at making good decisions the problem is that enhanced climbing skills can also pull you into more dangerous situations. I have been climbing for close to a decade. Where as eight years ago I might have come across a situation that I would have simply been forced to back off, now through better headspace and more importantly greater fitness, I find more often that I have the option to proceed, thus forging into much riskier terrain.

Climbing off the belay, on a pitch not on our topo, I found a rusty pin that protected me as I moved over twenty feet of easy terrain. In our favor was the fact that the limestone walls in the Calanques are riddled with rusty fixed gear from generations of climbers climbing out of boats. Next, I found a well-worn piece of webbing that threaded a hole in the rock that I clipped with a quickdraw. This would protect me for the most engaging fifteen feet of climbing I have experienced in my life.

When soloing or climbing with little or no protection over bad rock I can differentiate between two situations. The first and most conformable is when you can climb over your feet and you can distribute your weight between at least three points at all times. In this situation if a hold breaks there is a good chance you can recover. The other situation, which I try to avoid because it is very mentally stressful and I can only last mentally in this situation for short periods of time, is when you have to commit to one hold to make progress. This generally occurs on steep terrain and if a hold breaks it would surely send you into the void behind you. It is in this situation when one must truly have faith in the mountain and believe it will allow you to live another day.

I searched for the path of least resistance and found a steep rotten face with sideways facing holds. Stepping high I laid back pulling on the suspect holds and it must have looked like I was trying to rip them off the wall. The holds had a thin layer of grit that I needed to dust off before pulling on them. The climbing felt much harder than the quotation given to the route and I remember thinking it strangle that such a famous route would have dirty holds. If any of the holds had broken the monstrous and frigid sea would have swallowed me without hesitation. Arriving at the end of our 70m rope, I had clipped only four pieces of gear and I perspired profusely. I could feel my feet goosing in my sweat soaked climbing shoes. I wedged myself in a crevasse and shouted, “off belay”.

With a traverse, it is just as exciting for the second climber as it is for the first. Gui climbed the first half of the pitch in exquisite style using drop knees and crossing through effortlessly. Then just eight feet from my last piece of protection, which was a small tangle of old webbing threaded through a rusty pin that belonged in a climbing museum, Gui started to strain. When I had come across the old pin I was completely pumped and gripped and it was the only thing I could find so I clipped it for “mental pro”. The move required an awkward mantel into a shallow scoop that relentlessly tried to eject you. Once in the scoop while staying crunched you needed to conform to the rock and traverse sideways. To my surprise, almost instantly, Gui popped out of the shallow scoop and was sent flying towards the sea! I thought for sure he was about to take a dip but miraculously the gear held, stopping Gui just a few feet above the water! Finding a series of holds down low Gui, visibly stressed, arrived at my belay still dry.

We were now on route and both the climbing and the routefinding eased off drastically. However, our morning episode had cut deeply into our daylight and depleted our water supply drastically. By mid afternoon we were only half way into the route and I realized that we weren’t moving at a pace that would bring us to the finish by day’s end. The topo we brought showed a number of routes that climbed the wall from bottom to top. Now directly below one of the most forgiving looking walls along the traverse I suggested to Gui that going up might be our best option for survival. The topo showed a 5 pitch 5.9 that topped out the wall and we decided to give it a try.

Gui lead the first pitch; a beautiful corner with imbedded quartz hand holds that dropped us off on wide terrace with a chance to catch our breath and take the last gulps of our water. Above I could see a line of weakness through the vertical face. At the time that this route was first climbed the hardest grade that existed in the world was 5.9 so the climbing could in fact be almost any difficulty and from the condition of the route I doubt that it had ever seen a second ascent. Our rack was well under matched for the decaying limestone making the climbing overly engaging right off the start. I pulled out onto big jugs on steep terrain and I found a horn that I slung for protection. Fifty feet above Gui I squeezed into a chimney that gave my mind a chance to rest from battling negative thoughts of breaking holds. After resting I pushed and squeezed to the top of the chimney. Above me, the chimney pinched shut and I found a nut placement in the soft limestone. Pulling on good finger locks I exited the chimney and I continued climbing ten feet past the nut on a vertical face. Using energy just existing, I searched for a rest and/or some protection. Climbing over poor rock with little protection I climb very differently. Feeling out every move to ensure I can reverse it and using my core muscles to distribute weight between as many points as possible. Statically pushing and pulling I was feeling out the next move when — crack! The large jug I was holding broke and for an instant I was palming the basketball size block in my hand as I swung outward. In my mind I had already fallen and my eyes immediately went to my rope. I remember wondering what it would be like flying into the jumble of loose rocks below and although I had battled much fear while climbing, at that instant, I was at ease with falling. I shouted rock as I released the block and I saw it smash and explode a few feet from Gui. The thundering crash jolted me back to reality and I realized that I was still on the wall. By squeezing with my core I had created enough tension between my hand and feet to keep from falling.

Generally when climbing you have the option of going down, and having this option gives you something to think about when climbing. If this option is taken away you spend less time contemplating your options. I find the more committed I am to something the better I do at it. Totally committed, Gui and I climbed through the next two pitches quickly bringing us, completely dehydrated and exhausted, to the base of the final headwall. A vertical corner with a rusty pin halfway up it was the only obstacle between a good night’s sleep and us. At a certain point exhaustion can overtake fear. You have no energy to create mental barriers and can climb very freely. Euphoria sets in and you become desensitized to danger. Gui and I where at this point and while I battled the final fifteen feet of the corner, which widened to off-width and was unprotectable, I was at total peace with what I was doing. We topped out just as the sun met the horizon. Feet aching from being in climbing shoes all day, we hobbled back to our packs at the top of the first rappel where we each had a bottle of water and snacks waiting.

Risk has been a part of climbing since it’s beginning and although many have tried and many will try, I don’t believe it can ever be completely removed. On certain days I find it a challenge to pursue an activity that has killed so many of the people that I have looked up to and sought to imitate over the past decade. However as you progress as a climber, it is impossible not to search out bigger and bigger objectives. Before you know it you have given years of your life to climbing and you are on a plane headed to some far off county to push yourself on untouched stone. As a climber, excessively risky situations have their way of sneaking up on you when you least expect it!

CLIMBING
- The Traverse without return is rated 11d but most people climb upto 10+ and aid the hard pitch. If the rappel station gets replaced the route will be more functional than what we experienced but I am not sure if I would want to be spending much time around such unstable rock.

TRAVEL
- The Calanques in Southern France offer a large amount of climbing (other than the Traverse). I would recommend a very well known cliff named la Paroi dee Toits where you can expect to climb in shorts in the middle of winter.

PHOTOGRAPHY
- The images from the Traverse Without Return were taken with my little point and shoot digital camera. If I had fallen in the water at any point, the camera would have been destroyed.