When Learning the Ropes Can Kill You
January 18, 2017
Travis “The Kid” Hackett was 50 feet up a crumbly groove, ropeless, about to fall and die. A few feet above him, “Coco” Dave Elberg clung to blobs of hardened lava keyed into a chossy cliff like rotten teeth rooted in a bad case of periodontitis. He strained down, trying to grab Travis’ shirt, hair, pack strap, anything. I was under The Kid, holding up the crumbling ledge he stood on. The ledge budged, fine dirt fell away and Travis made a noise like a Formula 1 racecar shifting into third gear.
Twenty years old at the time, with shaggy sun-bleached hair, faded-jean-colored eyes, body like a muscly Slinky, ape index of a condor. He’d “wanted to learn about first ascents, see how it’s done,” so Dave and I invited him on a scouting mission to a crag Dave had spotted on his way home from trimming coconut trees in Lahaina, Hawaii.
We’d walked for an hour, passed four big rock fins to arrive at a streaked white-and-green wall, 80 feet tall and smooth as bathtub porcelain.
Coco pointed to a groove left of the wall.
“Let’s climb this to access the top,” he’d said. “It doesn’t look too bad. I’m comfortable soloing this.”
“Me, too,” The Kid agreed.
“Hold up!” I said. “Better get your gear out—just in case.”
I’ve been new routing for 43 years and consider myself something of an expert at getting into fixes, and this dirty, vegetated, vertical slash looked particularly ticklish.
“Put on your harnesses. Take some cams,” I said.
They ignored me, so I sat down in the shade and watched Coco and The Kid charge up the groove—pulling on tufts of pili grass, kicking off huge chunks of a’a lava, black dirt rising in a cloud.
Dave said, “Just one more hard section and I think it backs off.” And then, “Oh shit, it’s even harder above. I don’t know about this.”
And then it happened—the thing I knew was going to happen.
Holds broke, death was looked in the face, egos melted. The thought occurred: I wish I wasn’t up here. Downclimbing was deemed impossible.
Have you noticed how being right is rarely satisfying? For example, 50 years ago scientists told us about the effects of climate change. Do you think scientists feel any joy now that hurricanes, floods, plagues, rains of fire, and hailstorms of fire mixed with blood are razing the earth?
No, most of the time being right is a drag.
Heaving a grumpy sigh, I got up, climbed to a stance just below The Kid and shored up the crumbling ledge with my shoulder. We watched Coco Dave make more sketchy moves, picking his way through elbow-deep hale koa bushes and digging footholds out of the igneous graupel.
“It’s just as bad up here,” he reported.
I wanted to complain, maybe say, “Yo, I knew this was going to happen.” But I also knew that if the ledge broke off, 200 pounds of 6’ 5” Kid was going to fall across me like a Sasquatch and knock us both to the distant gulch floor, and that image quieted me for about five seconds. Then I lit into The Kid.
“I told you to rope up!” I yelled. “I see a cam placement right here.”
“I’m sorry, Jefe, but I saw Dave and thought it didn’t look too bad, and I … ”
“Dude,” I said, straining to hold up the ledge. “you don’t follow Dave. Dave is a lunatic. I’ve seen him climb hundred-foot coconut trees no bigger around than coffee cans. He loves this stuff. He’s not normal. Look at him.”
Dave was listening, peering down from beneath a sun hat with the neck protector folded out, looking like a Saudi prince in a keffiyeh making an oil deal—nodding, confident. He smiled.
“It’s true,” he said. “Soloing loose rock. Being way up here about to bite it. I do love this shit.”
He scrambled higher and we followed. Eighty feet up now and there was no turning back because all the holds were breaking, disappearing, and there would be no way to reverse the climb. Safer to push on.
A hundred feet up, level with the top of the wall, Coco leapt rightwards and landed on a solid ledge. We followed and stood there panting, wiping muddy sweat out of our eyes and trying to process the adrenaline jabbing our sympathetic nervous systems like a BOSS-coffee enema.
“Next time,” I said shakily, “we rope up.”
“Honestly, I’d do it again,” Coco said.
“No!”
I shouted it and they both looked at me.
“We have to rope up! Every time! Rule number one: rope up. We cannot kill The Kid. He’s only 20.”
I’m not sure why I have such an outsized sense of responsibility for The Kid. Maybe it’s because I’m a father and after investing thousands of hours dunking diapers, feeding, clothing, entertaining and educating my kids, I simply have to keep young people alive no matter what. It’s in me like an oath from a Marvel movie: With great responsibility comes great anxiety.
Whatever it was, I knew I’d feel just awful if anything happened to The Kid, and when I climb with him, I watch him tie his figure 8 like my dog Badger watches me eat a pork crackling—with that kind of deep concern.
We survived the approach and got the bolts into an incredible—I always think my routes are great—5.11c called Banjo Yoda. On the hike down I watched Travis loping through the watercourse, white skin almost visibly cringing in the 90-degree tropical sun. Around the bend a boulder leaned over the dry streambed like the palm side of a slapping hand.
“Check out that block!” The Kid yelled.
Twenty feet tall, sharp edges, steeper than a doctor’s bill. It really was a thing of beauty.
“Get over there so I can get a photo for DR,” I told him. “Give him some perspective.”
Travis waded through the cane grass to the base of the boulder and stood there smiling. I framed up a shot, but Travis was so tall the huge boulder looked short.
“No dude, you gotta sit down and pull on,” I said.
Still wearing his massive pack, The Kid squatted, grabbed a hold and lifted off the ground. The edge snapped, hit him in the mouth and broke off a chunk of his front tooth. He cartwheeled down the grass slope and slammed into the rocky creek bed.
“Broke da mouth,” Coco Dave said when Travis showed us his chipped tooth. “That’s what Hawaiians say when they like the grub. ‘Aw broke da mouth, brah!’”
“This is the Broke Da Mouth Boulder,” Travis said, spitting some tooth spillikins. His smile showed the jagged chip.
The Kid was naming boulders. Poor fool. I knew then that he was doomed.
July 4, 2020
“I’m so glad Travis has a mentor like you,” Marnie said.
Marnie Meuser (54) is The Kid’s mom. Tall, blonde and strong—good looking like her three sons, the twins Travis and Tommy (24) and Jimmy (26).
Tommy is a top model living in LA, recently featured in an ad campaign that included a 20-foot banner hung on the Duomo cathedral in Milan, Italy. In the Diesel Denim ad he’s dressed in sharp clothes, squatting and cracking the road with a punch like a superhero.
Marnie is a budget analyst for the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument—Palmyra, Johnston and Howard atolls, Baker and Wake Islands—as well as the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument—Nihoa, Laysan and Tern Islands.
She’s a cool mom and Travis hangs out with her all the time. They’re always camping and hiking and exploring together.
On this July 4 holiday, while the world was locked down tighter than a pickle jar, she was walking up to a cave near the summit of The Turtle to wait for us while we tried to send Travis’ first big independent project.
He was calling it Aumakua (5.12a, five pitches), which is a Hawaiian word for “spirit ancestor.” According to the scholar Mary Abigail Kawena¬‘ula¬o¬ka¬lani¬a¬hi‘iaka¬i¬ka¬poli¬o¬pele¬ka¬wahine¬‘ai¬honua¬i¬nā¬lei¬lehua¬a-pele Wiggin Pukui (known as Kawena, for obvious reasons), aumakuas manifest animals—sharks, owls, sea turtles, eels, even clouds. They often show up and save their descendants from harm.
Marnie was doing the grueling two-hour approach for fun and because she wanted to be there for Travis who’d tried the climb before with Uncle Chris Janiszewski but was shut down on the steep third pitch.
I thought about what Marnie had called me—a mentor. Was that what I was?
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