Moments From The Nose

The sunset came and went while David meticulously back-cleaned the entire Great Roof. Two more pitches of climbing in the dark before we would earn the next ledge, known as Camp V. Not “V” like “is for vendetta,” rather “V” as in the Roman numeral five. Tunnel vision of a dying headlamp helped me free the awkward Pancake Flake. What should have been one of the more exposed pitches was now completely palatable because the only thing below was the glow of David’s light. I finished, fixed and hauled, then aided the last pitch of the day.
Walls are always growing taller
With their routes always harder
Still easier to climb
Than shutting out the pressure of my mind
El Cap veterans will regularly mention the smell of piss that lets you know you’re close to the next ledge, but what they fail to detail is the potency of the stench. I could feel the acidity in my eyes as I gained the final moves up a slab, sticky with stale urine. Unlike our previous night on El Cap tower eight pitches below, there were three ledges to choose from, each one void of other parties. The first sat 50 feet under the third. I figured this one would have collected the most human residue so I skipped it and went to the second which sat a good 15 feet left of the other two. This ledge was flat but sloped away from the anchor which was now over 2000 feet off the valley floor. We rigged the portaledge and went to bed.
I needed to grow up
So I did
Just to find that I’m still young
In my new state of mind
I was more tired than I could have imagined, yet sleep was near impossible. Too tired to sleep. I had been on guard ever since the sun hit the horizon four hours earlier. Tired minds make mistakes. I saw the great red eye of Taurus peak around the wall above me. Aldebaran, falling into the star category “red giant,” is nearing the end of its six billion year existence. This star, like all stars, began as cloud of gas. The first step of life was gravity pulling the gas particles together. Eventually enough coagulation occurred where the central particles were being smashed together with enough pressure to merge the atoms themselves, a process known as nuclear fusion. This ignited and powered the star until the atoms at its core got too heavy to fuse any further. Now the star is panicking. The fusion that has been pushing outward against the pull of gravity is about to lose its battle. But not without one last fight. The star inflates, multiplying its magnitude and cooling it from a hotter bluer light source, to one that is relatively cool and red. However, people have somehow reduced this to an arbitrary dot that makes up a greater image, a zodiac constellation.
Autumn’s in the air
Nights are too
Cold, but that the fair
For days tempered with care
I hate to entertain the idea that stars lying hundreds to thousands of light-years apart have anything to do with each other, let alone the human affect, but like all humans, I fall into hypocrisy. Orion cartwheels across the wall, following only 30 minutes behind Taurus giving me a taste of nostalgia. I’ve known this constellation as the marking of winter. A reminder that autumn is only a transition, a marking that the climbing season is nearly over. One more day to the summit, I hoped.