The Tunnel Route
Early lessons in redpointing.
It seems like every town has their small local crag. Where I grew up, in Casper, Wyoming, the place to climb was Fremont Canyon, a beautiful and intimidating granite gorge and hour west of town. It is an amazing place to climb, but it’s just too far out to hit after school or for a weekend morning session. For those days, we had Casper Mountain.
The mountain is, at best, modestly blessed with climbing. There are a half dozen scrappy granite crags in Garden Creek canyon, maybe 20 of the chossiest limestone routes I’ve ever done (and that is saying something), and a single cliff of Ten Sleep Sandstone along a popular hiking trail.
Most of the granite crags were worth a trip or two for us as young climbers. There was the Hamburger Traverse and a scary 5.11 at a place called Red Rocks. There were a few pretty good 5.10s at Grunt Rock. But there was nothing great about the location, nothing redeeming about spending day after day there. It was only the Sandstone Buttress that pulled us back time after time.
It wasn’t much of a crag. There was a bolted 5.9, a 5.9 crack, a thin 12a toprope called “The Trainer,” and Walt Bailey’s famous “Steak Traverse,” which earned a free steak dinner from Bailey for any successful send. For a couple of years, it was probably the crag where I spent the most time. I eventually locked The Trainer down into a training pitch, did the Steak Traverse (much easier than in the days of Bailey with the advent of sticky rubber), and did what seems like thousands of laps on the 5.9s.
The crag’s main feature, though, was a huge tunnel through which the hiking trail passed. It was mostly devoid of climbing—most of the crag is garbage rock—but at one end, Steve Petro had put bolts up an overhanging wall featured with slopers and thin crimps. He had bolted it, tried it a few times, and deemed it too reachy for himself. He opened the route to the community and told everyone about it.
It just so happened that there were a handful of older-than-me, but still young climbers that started in on it right away. I couldn’t even get off the ground, but I was game. It was one of the first sport routes around and it looked like the steep stone on the photos we’d see in the magazines.
Two or three days a week, I’d make my way up there. Sometimes it was with Matt, sometimes with a friend I’d taught to belay, sometimes with my sister or my dad. As projects do, the moves came together slowly. When I got my second pair of climbing shoes, the La Sportiva Mariacher, I could better use some of the sloped dishes for feet. My fingers got stronger. My ability to link the moves seemed to grow by about one move per session.
My efforts always started from the ground with a big sweeping move to a sloping block, then a pinch and a sideways move to a good hold. This was the hardest move on the climb and usually resulted in a hard fall onto the trail at the route’s base—this was in the days before we used stick clips or pre-placed the quickdraws on bolts. If I made the move, I’d clip the first of the Star-Drive bolts with a sense of relief and make the next couple of easier moves to the second. Knowing what I now know about Star-Drives (and Ten Sleep Sandstone), there probably should not have been a sense of relief at any point on the route!
What’s worse, if at any point I fell, I would tram back up to the bolt that held the fall, then lower and pull all of the draws below off as I lowered to the ground. Each effort would be done with quickdraws on the harness in “redpoint” fashion. When I got to the hanging draw above, I’d take it off the bolt, clip it to my harness, then clip into it as if I hadn’t left it there. It was a colossally stupid tradition that has helped me understand humans better in the years since.
The middle section took a left-facing flake for a couple of moves, the powerful liebacking zapping the arms, even though the holds were good. I’d fall exiting the flake for what seemed like months, but in reviewing my journal, was just four sessions. After the flake, I’d grab a sloping bump on the arete to the right, make a big move to a horizontal band of blocky edges, and then have to roll over onto some sloping sidepulls and vertical terrain for a few more feet to the anchors.
The thing felt like the longest route on Earth to me, but is about 45 feet of pretty juggy climbing. Near the end of September, I was climbing with Matt and was going to try to make it to the bump on the arete that day. We warmed up on the 5.9s, then went over to the tunnel and flaked the rope out.
As happens sometimes, I felt light and flew through the first moves. I remember the flake feeling cool on my fingertips but easy to hold, then the arete move went past and up to the blocky edges. I was a bit alarmed to feel no pump, but moved onto the vertical section and felt the excitement of standing at the anchors having sent to climb. We whooped and yelled. There was something perfect about how climbing felt for me.
Instead of the “Tunnel Route,” as everyone had been calling it, I named it “Whispers of Immortality.” This was the exact kind of name a 17 year-old might give a nowhere climb, and I’ve been a little embarrassed by it as I’ve grown older. I really thought it would be a trade route. Was half sure it was harder than the proposed grade of 12a…maybe way harder.
The crew of older climbers (aside from Steve) didn’t believe I actually did the climb, and instead of telling them to fuck off—as I have now learned is the best option—I went back twice with doubters and re-climbed the route to prove it.
It had a few ascents in the next few years. The grade settled in at 12a, and no one ever called it anything by “The Tunnel Route.” One day, my friend Alex Lowe, was on a training run where he’d stop and do a little bouldering as he looped through the canyon on the Bridal Trail. He stopped at the sandstone and did the Steak Traverse, then onsight soloed The Tunnel Route. He told me it felt “a little cruxy” toward the top. I thought so, too.
Every couple of years, I get into another project that feels like it might be the best thing I’ve ever climbed. Sometimes I think it’s going to be some next-level thing. The build-up in my mind and the focus it asks for drives me to become better that I am, and I love it. Every time, these things just turn out to be rock climbs. It’s a funny way to go through life, following these missions. As crazy as it seems to obsess over climbing this specific chunk of rock with so much energy, I’d rather have it that way than not.