Mt. Kyes July 20-21st

[RAM]

This was different. No popular classics here. Dug out of the bowels of the
encyclopedic Becky guides. The mountains sometimes climbed, but rarely on this,
the north side. Total beta for the peaks? A few vague sentences. Most don't
realize the subtle advantages of going were others go. The boot track a little
easier to find. The rap anchors, a rainbow of sling announcing their presence.
Camps hard to miss. Old melted footprints in snow signaling the way. Multiple
sources of info to access. For us it was just..... go to here, then go to there,
then there. How? You figure it out. So when the thing is over, you realize how
little you knew. And how much you know now. And how you earned it with choices
made, both good and bad. The place becomes yours. And your tired, sweaty, bug
bitten self feels the extra effort demanded. The thicker brush pushed through.
The extra tension used with your legs to hold purchase on steep trackless
heather. Sun blazing on the snow during a heat wave. The mental strain of
uncertainty. You feel you really know the place and that you earned that. It
makes it more special. You also feel puny. Puny in the face of the real pioneers
of such places as you count all your advantages and imagine....only imagine what
it must have been like for these.....these really tough characters who came
first. No popular classics here. True. But for you and your solitary partner,
the only other person, save one, you saw for 3 days.......they are true classics
indeed.

Out of the remote parking lot, the bugs were there from the start. Aaron tried
going 5 miles per hour uphill, to outrun them, to no avail. Out came the DEET. A
permanent inhabitant of the alpine pack, it had not been checked for awhile
and....and....and after a few sprays it was empty!! We rarely use the stuff, but
when you need it....you NEED it. We considered abandoning the trip. We press on
and then coming down the hill, at a sprint, the only person we saw on the trip.
We chat, while both dancing around the bugs and I talk him out of his DEET. A
can of Off which is almost empty. This saves us. For with what we were to
encounter, without this gift, it would have been beyond our capacity to deal it.

The trackless approach takes longer and is harder than we thought it would be.
We thrash thick pine. Climb exposed cliffs with full packs. I slide 30 feet down
a steep heather slope, poles abandoned, fingers desperately digging into the
soil, lucky not to go further or get wrecked on the rocks below. And finally we
pull up to tree line and a heather camp, with a snowfield for water, in fading
light, with clouds of mosquitoes and black flies as company. When I take my knee
brace off, I count 25 biting bugs on the exposed leg. We live in bug nets, with
no skin exposed, Finally we notice the wonderful peaks, soaring upward to the
sky. After a rushed dinner, we climb into sleeping bags too warm for the heat
wave and we drench in sweat, choosing that over swarms of bugs circling us just
beyond the tops of our bags.

The next day, we figure routes around the narrow and exposed approach ridge
leading up toward the mountain. The detours are large and complex in places.
Belays, rockfall and exposure are part of this approach. Up the steep snow to
the base of the technical part and at last a break. We are finally there!! Where
you ask? The sweat dries. Sun and shade are both present. A bit of flowing water
by a "cool room" moat. No blazing sun on a glacier. NO bugs. We are comfortable.
It has been 19 hours since that has happened. I ask....."Is happiness the
absence of misery?" And somehow this seems profound to both of us. We will climb
the peak. It is dangerous in a variety of ways. Route challenges, hollow
volcanic rock with no protection. Steep snow and even the class 3 finish is
exposed, sharp rock, climbed on a layer of small rocks, acting as ball bearings.
Yet when we return to this spot, this spot of comfort, we will spend hours
lounging, avoiding the world below. Hunger, hardening snow and fading light
force our hand and eventually we head down to camp. We generally suffer well. We
have had a lot of practice. There is laughter heard, borne of the absurdity.
What else to do? Except eat, cover ourselves in repellent and watch another
sunset....oh and pack for the next days peak. A hard one called Monte Cristo,
whose apparent difficulties, staring at me through the bugs and netting, will
rob me of some sleep

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[stefan]