Lost in the Towers

Alex Honnold and I climbed Lost in the Towers. Oh, not together. Wayne K and I established the route in 1980 and 4 decades later Alex climbed it twice, first roped and then free solo.

Alex Honnold following the original 1980 route “Lost in the Towers” (first ascended by Jim Walseth & Wayne Kamara), Bugaboos, B.C. Photograph by Jimmy Chin.

When I ask myself, or imagine someone asking me, when I thought I might die climbing, this is the climb I think of. We were bivouacked at the big ledge halfway up the famous Beckey-Chouinard route in Canada’s Bugaboos. A bivouac is a night out far from home, far in fact from a shelter of any appreciable kind. Often remote and exposed. Our bivouac was about where Alex Honnold’s red helmet appears in the photo. Way farther out there than anyone you know would imagine spending the night. And yet for people who climb the ‘Beckey-Chouinard’ it’s a comfortable spot — a sprawling alpine hotel room. Like Fred Beckey and Yvonne Chouinard before us, we camped there, enjoying the late afternoon warmth, prepared, we thought, to complete the famous route the following morning. (Don’t worry, the part where I think I might die is coming.)

Dawn was not like the balmy evening. It was a sunless cold, and we were faced with a big beautiful splitter crack through a massive granite headwall. Imagine a smooth towering tombstone the size of an office building that has a big crack (“splitter”) in the middle. Climbers call a crack like that a “weakness”, a way forward. Without the crack, it’s just a smooth wall, only ascendable by insects with their sticky footpads. People can jam their feet and hands in a crack and pull their way up. They can, until they tire, until their numb feet start banging uselessly against the rock, and they run out power, and out of protection. Protection? This might be a good time to answer the perennial question, ‘How do you get the ropes up there?’ Answer: you don’t. The rope is pulled up behind you, and if you think that sounds useless as a safety item, you’re right! But if you can hook it onto something, it will catch you if you fall. Suffice it to say that when I got rather far up the splitter crack there was no more protection, I was “run out” and I was flaming out — losing the strength needed to hang on. I recall looking down at Wayne belaying me from the once balmy ledge. He was a long way down there. He was also freezing cold but I did not care, I was calculating how badly injured I would be when I had to let go, and drop to the ledge. Both legs broken? Dead?

The Beckey-Chouinard goes left, we went right, past the block sticking out.

This might be a good time to explain that the big beautiful splitter crack is not the Beckey-Chouinard route — we were, as climbers are wont to say “off route”. There are so many consequences of this. I almost died, or whatever. Wayne and I put up a new route (spoiler). The route is in guide books. Alex Honnold climbed it on camera — and not the Beckey-Chouinard way — because our route is super-exposed which to a photographer like Jimmy Chin is golden. (There is footage somewhere.)

OK but back to the splitter crack, the numb feet, the existential moment. Well, on the edge of the crack was a horn the size of my pinky, another weakness. As Wayne remembers it:

“Ok. I remember the granitic horn like it was part of my body. On the second day who is leading out up the crack of doom? You. Why not me? Your uber pack looped onto this horn. We are hanging all in. Literally. hanging on a loop of webbing. We swap gear. And we are off. What are we doing? Just going and enabled by new technology friends. This is a missive on second day of Howser Tower Lost... in time There you have it. We are just two guys out in space. Lastly after topping out you take lead and get us down after stuck rope on sketchy descent. W“ (spoiler)

Yes I hung my Sacs Millet pack on the little pinky horn like it was a not-very-good hook in the garage and that was our protection. We finished the big beautiful splitter crack and then careened right, off the headwall, did some A0, observed the breathtaking exposure that meant we could never retreat, got blocked by a roof, stemmed through it during an electrical storm that spit graupel at us, and finally reached the summit of the South Howser Tower.

There were challenges rappelling down the east side, and then we dashed across the glacier with stuff sacks over socks. When we got back to the hut I wrote up Lost in the Towers as kind of joke. After all we were “off route”, right? The rest is history.

West face of the Howser Towers. Green arrow is Lost in the Towers. Kamara/Walseth 1980. Astute reader will know I have another route on this wall. Wait for it.

[Somewhere is a fantastic picture of Wayne on the summit which I have scoured all archives for but cannot find.]