Catching a Classic Ice Route in Rare Condition

Ephemeral

by Eli Helmuth

This word rolls off the tongue conveying more than it’s simple definition: “Lasting only one day”. Catching a classic ice route in rare condition I learned early in my tutelage in the high peaks of Rocky Mountain National Park, is the essence and the joy of alpine ice climbing. It would be great if these smears of fear, these smatterings of thin ice covering golden granite were timeless, but that is not their nature. They come and go, these brief moments of ice over rock. Unannounced, often unnoticed unless one is attuned to their possibility, they are often gone by the end of the day. But if you can be there at sunrise to find the frozen water glimmering in the new day’s sun, you’ve found something better than gold. 

My tutor to the high peaks here, who grew up at their bases and who has found some of his greatest joy on their flanks, once shared on a long hike-in to what turned out to be an outstanding day,” For every four times that I’ve hiked into do an intended route, I’m lucky to found the treasure just once.” On this very memorable hike, we did find the gold, and it was frozen. Not in any guide book, no name to speak of. Maybe climbed by Duncan or Alex way back when- who knows and it doesn’t matter. We didn’t tell anyone of this journey, and what a journey it was. Three hundred feet of ice no thicker than a CD case, sticking firmly (for the moment) to the side of Mt. Meeker at over 13,500’. “And how do we climb this stuff”, I wondered as the time arrived. “Very carefully”, I learned as I watched the master, gently tapping his pick in and then with the delicacy of a ballet dancer, lightly stepping into the former pick holes with mono-points, ever so lightly. Deep breaths for buoyancy - light as a mouse. Don’t break the ice. If we do though, it won’t matter, because it won’t be here tomorrow.

(This article was originally printed in the 2006 Black Diamond Ice Catalog.)