Squamish Climbing Magazine is very excited to have the opportunity to share the story Refugio written by Matt Spohn. Matt lives in Portland with his wife Michelle, and chihuahua, Zoozoo. He has been climbing for 22 years. This is his first contribution to Squamish Climbing Magazine (with many more to come!).
Mason groans, pale faced, teeth chattering—exaltation to the sleepless. The night gone, etched into memory; a sole headlamp flickering, the exfoliating flakes of Half Dome letting loose, the air tightening its hold on my bones. My body entwined in rope for warmth, I watch dawn’s cold grey spread out. I open my hands and stretch my fingers wide. Mason’s head rests against my shoulder and I wonder about his bushy beard, my bare face cold. He shakes and the shivers push me close to the precipice and I wiggle myself deeper into his body, thinking it better to be the little spoon.
You up, Mason asks.
Yeah.
Longest f**king night ever.
Uh huh. Ready to be done.
Me too.
Photo by Matt Spohn ©
Already, small streams of smoke lift through the poppy seed trees far below. I imagine an old couple making coffee and sitting in camp chairs with a blanket draped across their laps. Soon, the valley will be alive and people will snap pictures. I sit up and drape the rope over my shoulders.
That was too late a start to go for it in a day, I say.
We should’ve just climbed faster.
And maybe packed a jacket.
Who needs a jacket when you got me to spoon?
Charlotte is a whole lot hotter.
Mason laughs. I laugh too. I can’t believe the Germans wouldn’t let us pass for four pitches, he says.
But you got to spend the night with me. I pat him on the head and he pushes away.
You disgust me.
He fishes beneath the mass of gear and comes up with his cigarette tin. He sprinkles the tobacco onto the white paper and licks the edges, alongside his gnarled fingers. Damn Germans, he says, rolling the paper. The tip crackles in the flame of the lighter, glows demonic red, and he exhales the smoke through his nostrils.
Wouldn’t have mattered anyway. The Germans would have still blocked us.
Yeah.
He hands me the cigarette and I hold it, watching the smoke swirl before putting it to my mouth. Mason turns and unclips our duct-taped Nalgene and hands it to me.
Finish this, he says, it’s your lead.
I hand him back the stubbing cigarette and take the water bottle. The morning light fills his grey eyes, crusty snot rims his nostrils, open pours dot his gaunt cheeks. I laugh and the air hurts.
What’s so funny?
Our ugliness.
Speak for yourself.
What do our wives see in us anyway?
What we don’t.
Even the changes?
Yeah.
…I’ve changed since Charlotte met me.
The ones who love us change with us.
Hmm…can’t ever know I guess.
Know what?
What they see in us.
Dark and light always bleed together; Yin and Yang, you just have to accept it. Have to laugh. I think weird thoughts and take the last swig and he clips the empty bottle to the back of his harness and chuckles.
Six more pitches to the summit and the click of a thousand tourists’ cameras, I say.
Maybe one will give us some water.
Like we’d ever ask.
I finish tying in. With my eyes, I follow the wall to where it ends in a pure transparency of blue. The crashing of a dump truck, miles away, breaks the silence. The rack of gear chimes as I sling it over my shoulder. A deep croak resonates from within the crack.
You’re on, man.
I think about where our next adventure will take us. I think of my wife Charlotte. I think to keep my mind detached from the pain of my thawing hands. The North Face of the Grandes Jorasses, the Aiguille Du Dru.
Hey, I call down to Mason, the Alps can’t be any colder.
He cinches the hood of his windbreaker tighter. The loop of slack grows.
You should place a piece. Protect the anchor, he yells up.
His mantra; protect the anchor. We carried a ratty, faded Yates Screamer for this purpose, for piece of mind, and so twenty feet above our uncomfortable camp I shove a cam into the peppered granite and clip in.
The Alps, I ask again.
The Alps sound good. What are you thinking?
About how old this Screamer is.
Don’t worry about ‘Ol Yeller, he shouts.
Rituals are dangerous.
Rituals keep us alive.
Out of the cracks, clumps of neon lichen. I smear my feet on the polished, white stone, some giant Buddha put here to save me. The wind; on my breath, leafs red, orange, and green drop. Down and out of sight they flow. The night has gone and now the looming summit. I know the world below waits to deal its fate.
Photo by Matt Spohn ©
~~~
Seven months and the world changed. I rush away from Charlotte, take a taxi to the airport, fly away from my wife, my main climbing partner, flee love because we abused it. It’s just in a rough patch, things will get better, relentless words. Can a door just close? I remember seeing her the very first time, working out at the company gym, her baggy shorts exposing long legs. She ran on the treadmill and in the mirror I could see her curved nose and it intrigued me. I decided to wait by the elevator, for her to finish showering, so that I could ride down the ten floors to the office with her, and I knew when I saw her turn the corner, messy hair and that inescapable layer of fresh-post-workout-sweat, I needed her. Will you be mine? I didn’t ask it. I asked her on a date, and then another, and then she said she climbed, that a rock had smashed her on the face and broken her nose in the Dolomites, and the world fell into place. Seven months since Half Dome, seven months for the world to change.
I can’t shake the sweet smell of the Panettone bread; the aroma of steamy raisons and citron had wafted through the cobbled streets and paraded with me through the Italian town. Now the scent marches me across the glacier as my jacket gathers droplets of melting snow that run slalom-like courses across the red Gortex. Mason and I go in silence, our steps muffled by the mountain’s breath. The glacier groans. A rock tumbles in the distance. I think I hear the cawing of a crow as my eyes strain against the flatness of the light. A shadow escapes through a quick opening in the clouds that closes again with a wing flap.
We climb deeper into a full-fledged alpine experience. The stone Refugio we awoke in an oddly distant memory like the tarmac and the airplane ride and home. My heart pulses and pushes against the chest strap of my pack. Mason enters deeper snow, kicking small notches. Our knees suffer the jolts of falling too fast through the soft and then hitting the hardness of ice. I follow.
How you doing, Mason calls.
Contemplating infinity.
There’re drugs for that.
I know, I already take them.
He stops and looks back at me and we talk with half-yells, winded.
I hope I can move as fast up those crux pitches, I say.
I brood over the thoughts of wet cracks and the notorious runouts. The climbers in town made it seem that Modo del Diavoli would never be repeated. We were up there a few years ago, said a sinewy man, pointing his burley forearm over the bar to a bushy-faced man looking out a window. We’d done all the routes on the North Faces and thought we’d give Diavoli a go, he continued. The left arm of the bushy-faced man’s shirt folded back up to his shoulder, filled with emptiness. It was six days before they rescued us. He adjusted his beanie hat and took a sip of beer. Maybe I’ll go back. Those lucky enough should.
Through the clouds the sheer face of the mountain emerges, a black shadow creeping skyward. Sweat soaks my under-layers, threatening to freeze. I unzip my jacket and look ahead. Mason stands on a saddle among small aiguilles. Crystalline spindrift forms an opaque décor on the rocky tombstones and milky-white rime ice hardens into strange statuettes.
We dig in and the snow pillows against the night. We turn on our headlamps.
What’ll it be, I ask, tomato soup and rice or…tomato soup and rice? I hold up Ziploc bags.
I’ll have steak.
I ignite the stove and the blue flame brings coziness into the cave. Mason cuts off a slice of salami and passes it to me with the blade.
Tomorrow’s a big day, I say.
Everyday is lately. You remember that night on Half Dome? Longest night ever.
A lifetime has passed.
Yeah.
Damn Germans, I say as I stir the soup, the smell of the Panettone finally gone.
Laura didn’t want me to come, he says. We argued before she dropped me off at the airport. She’s pregnant.
What? You’re gonna be a dad…you’re gonna be a horrible dad.
He laughs and the soup bubbles and I pour it into a mug and pass it to him. I sip mine out of the bowl.
Dads are supposed to be handsome, I say.
You’re the one sleeping with me.
It’s forced.
I’m the poster image of a dad.
You can barely tie your own shoes. You can’t even…
She’s nine weeks.
Shit, man.
The night before our flight I saw her sitting in the dark by the cherry-wood table, Kleenex around her slippers. She stood and cinched her purple robe and looked me straight in the eyes. What the fuck’s your problem? She shook her head. Why do you do this? Fun fucking game, huh? She slapped me hard. What could I do? We already had our tickets.
Sudden worries about our climb and about Mason and the thoughts he carries, the doubts, the choosing between, the flipping of coins, all the decisions stitching together life’s fabric. Pick parenthood or pick autonomy, pick her or pick him, but pick something. Acceptance, the reoccurring theme of life.
I just wanted this climb—that’s…
We’re doing this climb, Mason, and you’re gonna raise an ugly little kid.
During the night the mountain comes alive and I don’t sleep for some time. Strange sounds, the wind, the crash of nature. Ice grows and breaks, fissuring into carnivorous mouths. The world waits, more so than people, but I can’t tell what it waits for. Souls? Bodies? For us to learn? To recognize just how much weight exists to place upon our shoulders? I fall asleep. Charlotte comes. I stare into her blue eyes and trace her nose with my finger. The world stops waiting.
~~~
4:45am. Mason looks at me as my watch alarm buzzes. Blackness sits at the mouth of the cave. I lean forward and punch through the entryway and the snow cuts through the oil dark of dawn. Mason clicks on the stove—blue glow and the smell of instant coffee. We eat oatmeal and our hands look childish holding the warm, brown packets; maple and brown sugar; Prindall Jackson’s poem Devil’s Pie unravels in my head.
I want it all,
Everything,
Why ask why?
…
I don’t believe in a decisive break,
That peony and jasmine petals simply fall.
I believe in potpourri.
…
What of Hell?
…
A painful place of grey
For those who fall in love
More than once,
And see pleasure
In porn and poetry,
And believe in color.
…
Fuck the slice want the pie.
Why ask why?
You ready?
Lets go.
Mason adjusts his crampons while I finish pushing the stove and sleeping bags into my pack. We shoulder our loads and rope up. Our headlamps cut a path.
Here, Mason says, and gives me the faded Yates Screamer.
This thing?
Yep. Gonna save us one day.
It couldn’t hold body weight.
I clip it to my harness and shake my head.
You psyched, I ask.
I’m pissing my pants, but I’m psyched.
The skirt of clouds lifts enough to see a thousand feet up Diavoli. Hideous cornices dangle off ridges. Thin ice and polished limestone meet the white sky like decaying fingers reaching for something unknown except maybe to those upon death’s throes.
I got butterflies.
Me too, I say.
I imagine Mason’s thoughts, his unborn child and Laura, pregnant, alone. One more ring to carry around the neck. Would I be climbing? I don’t know. Why ask why? I began thinking of Charlotte again. Our separation, so far, just words.
This is a big ass climb.
One pitch at a time.
Look, Mason points.
The alluvial wisps of clouds break and a flood of pale, cold denim traverses the sky. We cross beneath the towering blocks of a hanging glacier. We hear the house sized ice blocks teeter. Through our feet we feel their vibrations. A blue curtain lowers beyond the mountain.
It’s beautiful.
At least my butterflies have been freed, Mason says.
Maybe it’s just acceptance, I think.
Photo by Matt Spohn ©
~~~
The world turns vertical, vacant open space stretches off the wall in every direction, I exist in hard breathing and fatigue. I hope eventually bliss. I uncoil the full length of the rope as Mason sets an anchor—a cam into crumbling rock and a precariously placed ice axe.
Don’t fall.
I’ll try.
Neither of us is hauling the other out.
Then it’s up to us I guess.
I swing my tools into the ice. They hit rock and spark and my crampons screech as they slide onto small footholds. I find enough purchase to move up but I continue to gouge the rock and leave animalistic claw marks. I find a series of loose flakes and I clean away the ice with my gloved hands. I tap them and they ring hollow. Dull thuds like the closing of a coffin’s lid. I move on, nothing suitable to secure myself. A few more swings, a few more steps, my headlamp’s beam matches the days and I console myself by whispering, at least I feel solid.
Twenty feet left.
Mason’s distant voice pulls me and I look down at ghostly slack. I climb to a stance, twist an ice-screw into a shallow patch of ice so lucid the rock below blooms, texture and strange pockmarks. I clip in. I look around and find a thin crack and the piton rings as I hammer it in. Quick motions to equalize the anchor and then I sit, listening to the webbing settle, wondering if we just do the best we can.
Charlotte captured me, pulled me in and I had felt I would never be released. We traveled and climbed and then settled. Our spirits entwined. The company softball game got out late and while the others rushed to the bar we grabbed hands and went beneath the old, rusty bleachers. We watched the others cross the ochre field and run across Davenport Road, beneath black telephone wires that stitched together heaven and earth. They all disappeared into O’Kelly’s. Beer glasses clanked. We watched the cotton candy sky twinkle with early stars and then darken into something profound that reflected off the tiered aluminum risers. We kissed and I felt her flesh tingle and the sweat in her palms, smelled the sweet aromas of lavender and cherry blossom in her hair. She squeezed my hand and whispered, don’t ever let go. Things change. I met someone, she said a few months before this trip and the spell faded and now I wonder if all spells fade. What do I want in the end, she asked? I didn’t understand. You mean, I asked, you don’t know. I don’t, she said. I love you, I said. I had a premonition before things spiralled out of control: freedom, to dwell in fantasies that have no relation to reality. I make up for myself what I love. How is anyone one hundred percent about anything, she responded? The truth: how is anyone one hundred percent? I love you, she said.
Warmth rests on the other side of the mountain. It will never reach us on the north face of Diovoli. The anchor shifts as Mason move up. Precise motions built over years, intimate knowledge of rock and ice and one’s self.
Most run-out pitch I’ve ever seen, Mason says. You soloed it.
The cracks were too rotten for any gear.
It’s supposed to stay the same…I’m glad you’re leading.
How you doing?
A little unfocused, but good. You?
Jazzed.
That’s a lie.
I know.
Mason’s eyes hold what-if thoughts of a fatherless child and a widow: fun fucking game…is this some kind of joke? Maybe in the end we will laugh? A layer of clouds swim below and the rocks of the talus look like small shark fins. He rolls a cigarette and lights up.
Look, he says, smoke rings, and he puffs three perfect circles.
The mountains make a constant cocoon of forgetfulness. I could stay with you forever and never realize the time. I look up and down and I know what exists. Nothing confusing. No heart to break, the pain physical and so, forgettable. I laugh with Mason and we know 3,000 feet of earth waits. How many pounds is that?
Life is sure quick, I say.
Sometimes it can’t be any slower.
I guess.
If you want to talk about anything…
I’ll hide my humanity.
Just saying if you need to get shit out.
He takes another puff and then crushes the cigarette against the wall and puts the butt into his pocket.
~~~
The crow flies the last of the nine miles. Oil slicked feathers and golden talons. She stretches her wings and circles above the world, all things useful, nothing a leftover. The shadows are sudden and she feels their pull, caught in the sudden turbulence. She fights. A feather floats down, barely discernible beneath the big, heaping black bellies of clouds. The town’s people shudder their windows. A man in a flannel leans the outside chairs of a café inward, against table clothed tables to keep them dry. A young boy lifts his head and giggles and the first enormous drops break on his face. Fires are made. Hot chocolate for the kids and Amaretto for the adults. The cobbled streets transform into a mighty sea where brave kids let loose their boats of leaves and twigs. Parents call. It’s suppertime. A pretty blue-eyed girl, her hair braided into a dazzling ponytail, points to the outline of the mountains and says, poppa, what of the climbers.
Matt Spohn lives in Portland, OR. He loves coffee and is as psyched as they come. Look out for Part Two of Refugio next week on Squamish Climbing Magazine!
