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Outside Magazine June 2001

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Temple of Zoom -- cont.

WE DODGED OUR WAY up through a sloping minefield of agave and concealed cacti, climbed the chimney sans ropes, and began moving up a ridge of sandstone shelves. Unlike Ganci and Tidrick, all we had to do was follow the route description and stride along in the sunshine with one eye out for the next cairn. At 10:30 A.M. we contoured around to the shadowed north face of Zoroaster Temple.

"Back into winter," I whined.

"Ya sissy!" bellowed John.

There was a foot of snow on the north side, and the cairns were buried. We picked our way along, clambering up breaches in the bands of ice-cloaked sandstone, until we could post-hole diagonally to the base of the northeast arête. It was below freezing. We pulled on caps and gloves, burrowed into our coats, and studied the route.

"Looks like some of the cracks have ice in 'em," exclaimed John, obviously thrilled.

We weren't sure of the route. A slab of rock had fallen out and changed the start. No matter. At noon sharp, John stripped off his gloves and coat and attacked the first frigid pitch. He climbed up to an overhanging 5.8-ish finger crack; clawed out the ice and snow, breaking off chunks of rotten rock; pulled over; scampered to a tree; and belayed me up. Then I led a wide, generously verglassed 5.7 crack. John got off-route during the next pitch and we ended up pumping through a drippy, peeling-off-in-our-hands 5.9 overhang and hauling into a two-foot snowdrift on top. The next two pitches were 5.8 stemmy chimney/hand cracks which could have been beautiful desert climbing had there not been ice or snow every place you needed to put your hands and feet.

Pitch five was supposed to be an airy 30-foot traverse protected by two bolts. John got out his monocular and scanned the wall like a pirate with a spyglass.

"Damn. Where are they?"

On any climb worth a story, it is axiomatic that there will come a point when the protagonists are confronted with something they really don't want to do. This, of course, is God giving you a chance to back off. You will lose face, but you'll save your ass. Wounded pride or peril, your choice. The mythic dilemma.

Infelicitously, it was my lead. I admit my pride is more sensitive than my flesh. I plugged in a little piece of dubious protection and moved out on a band of blank rock above the snow. The sandstone was wet, but the knobs were solid. I skittered sideways like a crab, only to discover that the last five feet of the traverse, invisible from the belay, were glazed with ice.

It was the predictable point of no return, the place where the fear of going backward outweighs the fear of going forward. A few easy moves (in-hindsight bravado) and I was through.

The final pitch was described as a "strenuous off-width, 5.9R." ("R" stands for runout, which means you can take a long fall if you slip.) It was John's lead. Even half-filled with snow it turned out to be not strenuous, not off-width, not 5.9, and not a runout.

And with that we plunged through two feet of snow, cut over to the summit block, scrambled up a chimney, and popped out into the sun atop Zoroaster.

"Four o'clock," said John, checking his watch, "Not bad."

We shook hands like men are supposed to do on summits, snapped photos, sat down and ate the last of our bagels and sardines while soaking up the sun and the phantasmagorical view of the Grand Canyon.

"You know who Zoroaster was?" I asked John.

Like Brahma, Buddha, and other divinely named formations within the Canyon, Zoroaster was named after a sacred figure, in this case the Persian prophet who lived in the sixth century B.C.

"Otherwise known as Zarathustra," I added. "Remember your Nietzsche? The Übermensch?"

"I remember Zorro the Gay Blade," John quipped.

"'Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman—a rope over an abyss.' Thus Spake Zarathustra."

Much is made of summiting, but the fact is you're only halfway home. We started rappelling at 4:30 P.M., reached the base of the Temple at 5:30, hustled back across the snowy north face, trotted along the descending ridge to the Redwall gully, and were off the final raps by nightfall.

Hiking steadily, dreaming of cheese-burgers, we were back at Phantom Ranch by 8:30. The kitchen was already closed. As a consolation prize, the cashier offered us free Oreos and hot chocolate.

We recrossed the suspension bridge at 9:30 and methodically ground out the 5,000-foot ascent, reaching our car on the South Rim at one in the morning, 22 hours after we'd left it. We weren't sore, blistered, or exhausted, merely bushed. There had been no real drama. Drama happens when things go wrong. Drama happens when people make mistakes, when reach exceeds grasp. Ours was an epic non-epic.

On the way out, near the top, we noticed a big trail sign we had somehow cruised by on our way down:

WARNING: DANGER! DO NOT ATTEMPT TO HIKE FROM THE CANYON RIM TO THE RIVER AND BACK IN ONE DAY. EACH YEAR HIKERS SUFFER SERIOUS ILLNESS OR DEATH FROM EXHAUSTION.

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