Edge of Flight. That’s the climb that always defeats me. Seventy feet of hard sandstone up a perfect arête.
Tomorrow I’ll be standing at the base of it, my harness weighed down with gear. I’m already running through the moves in my head. I’m already imagining Edge of Flight.
I raise my right foot to a tiny ledge just two inches off the ground, then reach for the first handhold—a hump of rock that fits in my right palm like a softball.
“Ready to climb,” I say over my shoulder to Rusty.
“On belay,” Rusty says. He tightens the rope in the belay device clipped to his harness.
I grip the arête with my left hand, then lean my weight to the right. I raise my left foot and place it on a tiny nub of rock so that I’m standing on my tiptoes on two square inches of stone. My fingers keep me balanced against the cliff face.
“Climbing,” I say.
“Climb on,” says Rusty.
It’s all balance for the next forty feet up. Like most female climbers, balance is what I’m good at. The guys can crank the overhangs, but for me, climbing is a highwire act. I’m defying gravity on a vertical plane. I’m moving on an updraft of muscle tone and thin air.
On the ascent, I find the tiny chinks and cracks in the rock to lay my pro, otherwise known as protective gear. I clip the rope to my pro in case I fall. But I know I can make the first forty feet without falling. I’ve done it before.
Then I come to the crux.
That’s where the microholds run out and there’s nothing more to grab or stand on. Nothing to grip, to keep me moving up the flat, smooth rock face.
I perch on the ball of my right foot. There is no foothold for my left. So I hold it crossed behind my right for balance. My arms stretch wide on either side of the arête, gripping tiny nubs of rock. My cheek presses against the stone. I tilt my head to look up at a big pistol-hold grip far above. I know from watching Rusty climb that once I get to the pistol-hold grip, I’m home free. After that, it’s all chunky handholds and footholds to the top. But how can I make it across the gap?
It’s all technique, says Rusty.
Easy for him to say. He’s six-foot-two and has arms like a monkey. I’m five-five and still working on my technique. But I’ve figured out a way to pull this climb.
I must let go with my right hand so that I’m touching the rock at only two points of contact—right foot, left hand. Then, I have to circle my right hand upward, while rising onto tiptoe with my right foot, like a dancer on pointe. But while I move—and this is the critical thing—I must hold my body perfectly balanced, like a ball poised on a juggler’s fingertip. And when my outstretched hand reaches the very top of its arc, I must grab the pistol-hold grip and pull up. Pull up as hard as I can.
I know that’s what I have to do. But every time I get to the crux, I lose my nerve. I’m standing forty feet above the ground, and my last piece of pro—a tiny metal nut wedged into a crack, with the rope clipped to it by a carabiner—is stuck in the rock five feet below me. If I lose my balance and come off the rock, I’ll fall ten feet before the rope jerks me to a stop. But if the weight of my body rips the nut out of the crack, I’ll go into an uncontrolled twenty-foot fall. A fall that will bring me dangerously close to hitting the ground.
So although I know I need to let go with my right hand, I can’t do it. Instead, I always hesitate, chicken out, let myself slither downward in a controlled fall and bunny-hop into the safety of Rusty’s belay. Then I shout for Rusty to lower me down.
But not this time, I tell myself.
This time, I will work up the nerve to pull Edge of Flight.