The Stone Mirage (Cont.) | Outside Online

You Are Here:

Home >> The Stone Mirage (Cont.)

Today's Question
How do you make primitive snowshoes? answer

What should you do if you get lost driving in a snow storm? answer

Today's Question
What is the greenest ski and snowboard on the market? answer

Can I really damage a coral reef with sunscreen while snorkeling? answer

What kind of dog will make me look manlier? answer
Is there a sport that safely combines my twin passions for guns and kayaks? answer
How come most of the world's cultures enjoy eating goat, but Americans don't? answer

Online Favorites

Special Issues

Photo Galleries

Outside Magazine July 2002

Page:

The Hard Way
The Stone Mirage (Cont.)

WE'VE USED UP all our wood, and the fire is dying out. We're both awake now, talking.

Todd spent 18 winters in Hueco Tanks, Texas, training. Three summers in a tepee beside Devil's Tower putting up outrageous routes, two more in a tepee at Mount Rushmore.

"I realized that you had to live with the rock," Todd says. "That was the only way to fully comprehend and then test the boundaries. After a while I began to see the limits of possibility in different places and started searching. I didn't have an apartment for seven years. I was looking for rock with a future.

"History means jack. The places with the most history have the least future," Todd continues. "Most rock-climbing areas are dead ends, due to the nature of the rock. Places to visit, but not places where you can live with the rock. To do that, the quantity and the quality of the rock must combine to allow limitless improvements in difficulty."

Todd and his partners have put up first ascents, none rated less than 5.12+, on the hardest continuous rock climbs ever attempted. He spent 60 nights on the east face of Trango Tower in Pakistan in 1995, completed a 14-pitch masterpiece up the strongest line on the Hand of Fatima in Mali in 1998, free-climbed the Geneva Dihedral on Ulamertorsuaq in Greenland in 1999, and made it up the east face of Poi in the Ndoto Mountains of northern Kenya in 2000. But they are not alpine climbs. They are well protected. You are not going to die. Todd believes in safety and, unlike almost all mountaineers the world over, does not equate adventure with risk.

"Adventure is pushing yourself into unknown realms," Todd says, "not dying just because the pro sucked."

Page: