A Bolt from the Blue Read online

  Extremely sweet and a little shy, with a self-deprecating streak that does little to mask deep reserves of both poise and self-awareness, Craig at the time was only in his fourth season as a ranger. His career motivation pendulum had come full swing, from an unfocused seven and a half years playing on the beach in college in Santa Barbara to watching a short-haul procedure in a Teton meadow in 1999 and deciding that he had to get a job as a climbing ranger, whatever it took. When Renny called him the following summer, stating that they had an opening for an emergency hire and asking if Craig could be there in a week, what it took for Craig to get the job was to rent out his apartment in Boulder, quit two jobs, and drop out of grad school. He made it to Jenny Lake within the week.

  The first rescue Craig took part in, a couple of days after he arrived, was on a falling ice glacier on Mount Moran, where he again watched a short-haul operation, this time as a Jenny Lake climbing ranger. The helicopter was heavily weighted, and to achieve forward airspeed, the pilot had to use gravity to point downhill, which caused the aircraft to drop like an elevator, and the doors were off, and the whole experience was so overwhelming that Craig couldn’t believe it was his job. There was no looking back for him at that point.

  Once Leo’s short-haul attempt was aborted, it was unclear when or if the weather would clear long enough for Leo or Dan or Craig or any of the rangers to be inserted into the scene through the air. Most of the clouds had begun to drift away, except for a thick band that had unequivocally settled itself in the vicinity of Friction Pitch. The summit was basically cloudless, the area below the pitch was relatively clear, but a turmoil of clouds was clustered right at the elevation where the rangers needed to be. In the event that the weather prevented short-haul insertions entirely, Renny made the call that they needed ground support.

  Jim Springer, whom Brandon had assigned to lead the lower of the two rescue scenes and who had been gunning to climb up the mountain the moment it looked as if they might not be able to short-haul, was quick to volunteer to go. Everyone realized that it was imperative for someone to get on-scene to make contact with the climbers as soon as possible, and even as the initial decisions were being made and Leo was first gearing up, Jim had been pushing his agenda to climb.

  “Why don’t I just go?” he asked Renny. “I’ll just go.”

  Once the first insertion attempt failed, with Renny’s blessing, Jim took off alone, assuming that another ranger would be coming up behind him. With about 40 pounds of climbing gear and rescue equipment—a first-aid kit, some technical apparatus, rope, some of his own personal gear, warm clothes, rain gear—on his back, he proceeded up the mountain at a steady jog.

  Jim had begun climbing as a kid, summiting Mount Rainier at age 16, then moving on to technical climbing in Yosemite. He hadn’t been to the Tetons before he applied as a Jenny Lake ranger in 1984, but he was hired right away, and he came to the area knowing which specific climbs he wanted to do in the Teton range. His fondness for the job flows from the freedom it gives him to hike and climb without taking other people (other nonrangers) with him. As he says, in a voice so slow it is almost a drawl, “rangers don’t have clients.”

  Jim came to consider himself less of a tech climber and more of a backcountry adventurer, with a preference for hiking and clambering around the mountains. He also became interested in backcountry resource management, rehabilitation, repair, and maintaining the park service for future generations. The only real downsides of the ranger position, from his perspective, are the intensive training and the required shifts in the ranger station. While Jim doesn’t necessarily elaborate on his thought processes verbally, he can be relied on to make and implement quick, efficient decisions. It seems clear that if he was your dad, or the ranger instructing you in how he was saving your life, you would do what you were told. His penchant for pink Crocs does nothing to diminish his influence.

  About 20 minutes after Jim started up the Grand, ranger Jack McConnell, age 42, arrived on the scene, and Renny asked him to catch up with Jim. Later, Jim expressed his gratitude for the head start. As a result of his unparalleled aerobic skill in scrambling up a mountain, Jack has a reputation as an animal, a beast, a machine. He does not have the compact, wiry body of a climber—at six-foot-two, 195 pounds, he is dense and thick, with legs like tree trunks—but still, Renny deems him Alex Lowe material.

  Lowe, known as “the Lung with Legs” and considered one of the greatest American mountaineers of all time, was a frequent climbing partner of Renny’s before Lowe’s death in 1999 at age 40 in a massive avalanche on Shisha Pangma in Tibet. In Renny’s opinion, Jack’s cardiovascular system would have given Lowe’s a run for its money. “If you are gonna go running up the Grand with Jack,” Renny says, “you’re gonna get your ass kicked.”

  From his own perspective, Jack’s strong point is an ability to “move quickly in the mountains.” His modesty might seem affected if it was not so clear that it is an integral part of his excessively sincere, almost solemn outlook. He also seems somehow legitimately oblivious to his appearance, a mash-up of naturally wholesome innocence and rugged good looks.

  Jack grew up in Rhode Island, primarily outdoors, cragging and bouldering, exploring rock-climbing routes in Lincoln Woods. Two events in his childhood helped influence his professional path. When he was four years old, he took a tram ride with his parents up Cannon Mountain. While drinking hot chocolate at the top, he encountered a bearded man with a red hat and knickers, a climbing rope slung over his shoulder, and young Jack determined prekindergarten that he wanted to be like that climber. Then, at age 13, at the Summit Shop in Providence, the owner who sold Jack a pair of hiking boots spoke passionately about the Tetons, instilling what was to become Jack’s lifelong fascination with the mountain range.

  At that point, New Hampshire set the stage for more serious climbing—granite cliff bands, ice climbs. Jack climbed with friends and read plenty of how-to books, but he never took any formal instruction. After high school in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, and college at the University of Rhode Island, he headed to Yellowstone, where a high-school friend was working. He hung out with a community of climbers at a Climber’s Ranch in Yellowstone and worked at the Old Faithful Inn, where he determined that six years of bellman duties—hauling luggage up four floors with no elevator—was ideal training for climbing.

  The first time Jack glimpsed the Tetons, hitchhiking into Jackson, he had the feeling that something was waiting there for him. He knew instantly that it was where he belonged, but even so, it took him some time to join the Jenny Lake climbing rangers. He instead began spending his winters in Jackson, becoming the ski patrol director and running the race program at Snow King Resort for a decade.

  He retained, always, his love for climbing, running, skiing, moving in the mountains, covering ground, seeing what was there. The mountains truly drew him in—he considered them a mystery he wanted to uncover, a problem he yearned to solve. He understood the tradition of the Jenny Lake climbing rangers, had a tremendous amount of respect for them, but didn’t think he was skilled enough to join them. In 1998, he finally put his application in anyway.

  Feeling that anyone could become a rescue tech with enough training, Jack knew that Jenny Lake selected for qualities beyond rescue skills and technical climbing expertise. He believed that the Jenny Lake rangers were specifically looking for climbers with a passion for being in the mountains, and in that arena, Jack saw himself as having an advantage in the hiring process.

  As predicted by everyone except Jack himself, he was hired as a Jenny Lake climbing ranger on the spot.

  It was abundantly clear that it was the job he was born to do. On the mandatory mountain patrols every pay period, Jack always picked the routes with the shortest approaches and the steepest climbs. He became depressed if he didn’t have a chance to cover 5,000 vertical feet in a day. Trying to keep up with him, even for younger rangers in peak physical condition, was extremely painful.

  Becoming a memb
er of the Jenny Lake team wasn’t simply about the job duties to Jack but rather what he termed the brotherhood of rangers, the ability of the rangers to channel one another’s expertise while simultaneously keeping an eye on one another. He realized that there were plenty of sacrifices associated with the job—lack of monetary compensation leading the list—but he knew from the start that the opportunity to be in the mountains would be enough for him. That core belief was what set Jack up for success every time he was called on to help someone. In his sixth year at Jenny Lake in 2003, he still considered himself a rookie.

  Jack had spent that Saturday afternoon, a day off for him, taking a seven-mile run around Jenny Lake. He heard a rumble as he was coming across the meadow, but he didn’t see the lightning flash. Although he wasn’t carrying his radio, he figured something was up when he caught a glimpse of Leo tearing purposefully around the corner of his cabin. Jack raced to his cabin to find out what was happening, flipping on his radio as he simultaneously dialed dispatch. He received the radio page immediately and took off down the dirt road to the rescue cache.

  When Jack arrived, activity was blossoming into full swing at the rescue headquarters. He started organizing his gear—flight helmet, suit, rock shoes, approach shoes, rope, light rack (a set of climbing equipment, including cams and carabiners), harness, chalk bag, a handful of candy bars—when Brandon told him that if the weather shut them down, Jack would be climbing to the scene.

  By the time Laurence flew Jack to the Saddle, Brandon had already decided to split the scenes and assign separate logistics to the upper and lower sites, an organizational structure that made immediate sense to Jack. He relished the worker role, completing discrete tasks that were assigned to him, as long as doing so put him in the midst of the action. Jack reported to Renny on the ranger hut on the Saddle, who confirmed that his job was to catch Jim and climb with him to the scene.

  In preparation for the ascent, Jack tried to dump a bunch of stuff out of his pack, but most of it was essential. His personal gear weighed about 20 pounds, plus he was hauling approximately 20 pounds of rope. He had to keep the ropes, climbing gear, medical equipment, rain gear, insulation and clothing layers, water, some food (energy gel and Milky Way and Snickers bars). There was technical climbing involved in several sections of the route, and moreover, he couldn’t imagine that they wouldn’t be spending the night on the mountain. He managed to offload a pound or two, but his pack, like Jim’s, still weighed more than an average five-year-old child.

  Jack then stripped down to running shorts and a T-shirt and, with his 5.10 free-running shoes on, began almost literally running up the mountain. He was in perpetual training, including scrambling and running hills nearly daily. This assignment had him covering about a mile of territory spanning 1,500 feet in elevation. A person can’t really increase in altitude like that at a full-out run without dying, but Jack was moving over steep, technical terrain, progressing up the mountain at a pace somewhere between a trot and a dash. He was, quite simply, running as fast as it is possible for a human to run uphill. If he believed that he could have made it alive, he would have considered actually sprinting.

  As it was, Jack monitored his pace right on the edge, maintaining an aerobic state, balancing his heart at a threshold of 85 percent of its maximum rate. Straddling a psychological safety line of his own making, he thought of the space he had to cover in small, incremental units in his head—this little pitch, this tiny step—problem solving with every footfall he took.

  He caught up to Jim before the end of the Wall Street ledge.

  By that point, Jack and Jim saw Laurence back in the air with Leo once again on the end of the rope. Jim stopped to take a picture of the short-haul, with no memory later of having done so. He did recall the desperate feeling of wanting to beat the helicopter to the scene.

  Jim, who had been a runner in college, was shuffling-running so fast that he was seeing stars and likely operating at some level of anaerobic shock. Intended for high-intensity, shorter-duration efforts such as diving for the finish line or passing a fellow cyclist, the anaerobic system is not designed to sustain any type of prolonged activity. In this state, without enough oxygen getting to his brain, Jim was producing lactic acid faster than his body could break it down. He was in tremendous discomfort as a result—his breath was very short and rapid, and his muscles were burning. Still, he viewed the climb as a competition, with a singular loop running through his mind: can’t stop the pace now, not after all this effort, it wasn’t fair for the helicopter to get there before them, they should be the first ones on-scene to see what was going on.

  Despite knowing the route cold, Jim and Jack stopped to rope up together at the step across the gap on Wall Street, not wanting the adrenaline of the situation to cause them to slip up and trigger more rescues for the team. Despite the 800- or 900-foot vertical drop if they missed the move, neither Jim nor Jack would normally have bothered to use ropes in that (or any) section of the climb. They were exposed and in high gear, however, needing to force themselves to get their ropes out, decelerate their pace from the race with the helicopter.

  Even with that delay, they reached the first victims, on a tiny ledge below Friction Pitch, in just about 45 minutes, covering the same ground that the victims had taken seven hours to climb. (There is a bit of controversy over the timing of this climb, with some records logging it at just less than 70 minutes. It seems likely that Jim left the Lower Saddle and made it to the base of Friction Pitch in something short of 70 minutes, while Jack, who left the Saddle more than 20 minutes later than he did and caught up to him on the ascent, made the climb in approximately 45 minutes. While 45 minutes doesn’t set the speed record for climbing the Grand [a mark established by a climber not hauling 40 pounds of gear], it comes damn close.)

  As it turned out, Jim and Jack did not vanquish the helicopter after all, but they did, by a split-second or two, beat the other rescuers to the lower scene, pulling themselves over the ledge a moment before the arrival of the rangers who had been short-hauled in and rappelled down.

  EIGHT

  “Socially, climbers are not that adept.”

  —

  Renny Jackson, head Jenny Lake ranger

  On July 23, 2003, Rob Thomas had secured two permits for his climbing group of 13 to camp in Garnet Canyon. The campsites at the Lower Saddle, where the main guiding companies camped with their clients, were already full, so he wasn’t able to obtain his first choice of base camp. Instead, Rob got one permit to camp in the Meadows camping zone at just over 9,000 feet in elevation and another one for the Moraine camping area at almost 11,000 feet, and he split his group up between the two locations.

  Leo Larson had spoken earlier to a member of the climbing party at the Jenny Lake ranger station, stressing that a group of more than a dozen people needed to get an early start to climb the Grand. The day before the climb, on the trail heading to their base camps, members of the climbing party again ran into Leo and also ranger Marty Vidak. Leo and Marty warned the climbers about recent afternoon storm cycles with the threat of lightning and advised them to get an “alpine start” for their climb in the morning, meaning a predawn approach. Leo suggested that they be on the Lower Saddle ready to go no later than dawn, which was 6:06 A.M., enabling them to look across and see Wall Street by first light.

  The purpose of such an incredibly early start is to reduce the dangers that can occur as the day warms up—falling ice and rock and thunderstorms—and to provide a cushion of daylight in case a group is delayed. Based on the rangers’ experience, their point was that with a group as large as 13, there must be a time commitment to do a route, or the dynamic can rapidly go downhill.

  * * *

  When asked why they climb, why they love it, why they risk so much of themselves for it, longtime, hard-core climbers will often turn that question on its head. The response of this class of climber lies not in why climbing adds enjoyment to their lives. The answer, in fact, is that climbing is
what makes living worth the effort.

  If pressed, devoted climbers will admit that the appeal of the entire pursuit is the feeling of membership, of belonging. For a lonely sport, climbers are not alone. By mastering a skill that both is dangerous and defines accomplishment by a precise and measurable standard, a climber is not, after all, an outsider but falls, as it were, quite squarely inside a tightly drawn circle. If a climber is in trouble, other climbers will help him because he is one of them.

  Former outcasts are suddenly included, and far beyond merely being part of a group, they are members of a cool community whose password is not money or connections but competence and expertise. It is intoxicating in every aspect, not only the actual climbing, but also just being around other climbers, lingering in a climbing store, fussing with climbing gear. To enter the community, the world, of climbers, to be a part of their aura, is to be embraced in the romance and the glamour of the quest.

  The competing allure of the pursuit, of course, is climbing as a drug of self-expression, of calmness, of centering. The idea of pinpoint focus on the struggle toward one solitary goal, breaking down the mountain of a problem into many tiny dilemmas and solving them all, overcoming them, conquering them, one handhold, one foothold at a time, is an enticing, powerful draw. As the climber affirms himself through his strength and his resilience, the world falls away and, with it, all of the stress and hassle and monotony of his daily life. Extraneous issues—grief, loss, regret—are not merely obscured or rendered blurry; by necessity, they must vanish completely. The act of climbing is an escape into immediacy, freedom from unrelenting pressure. The climber cannot, at risk of death, focus on, even think about, anything beyond the explicit task at hand. And in that reality, climbing bestows the ultimate gift: it quiets the clutter.