My first summer as a climber can be described in two words: Delirious excitement. I devoured climbing magazines, forced conversations upon anyone I suspected to be a climber, and got out five days a week while working and living in Lake Louise, Alberta. My climbing resume was pathetic (its shining highlight was a 5.7 I’d led on gear) but I didn’t care. I was inconceivably psyched.

My friend, who I will call David for reasons that will soon become apparent, recognized my excitement for the vertical and invited me to climb the long and easy Joy on Mt. Indefatigable, in Kananaskis. Joy is an apt name. The west side of Mt. Indefatigable is more of a ramp than a face, and Joy scampers up it via a continuous 2,000-foot limestone corner, gaining steepness with height like the ultimate ski jump. Going at an amicable 5.6, Joy would surely be overrun with crowds if not for one simple fact: there is not a single bolt on the entire route. Thankfully, however, it tops out on a gentle ridge, intersecting perfectly with a beaten walk-off trail. At least, that’s what we were told.

David was a more experienced climber than me. He climbed 5.11, had been to Yosemite, and, most importantly, wasn’t a star-struck kid dreaming of competency. David was confident and he exuded it. I respected that. I also respected that he (1) owned a car, (2) owned a double set of cams, (3) didn’t have anyone better to climb Joy with. We planned to climb it during a smoky day at the end of August.

***

David and I nailed the approach and clambered into Joy’s massive right-facing corner. At the time I didn’t really know how to equalize three pieces of gear to make an anchor, but I feigned confidence below the first pitch, so we decided to swap leads. By pitch six I had doubled the number of trad leads in my career, and had built an equal number of unequalized anchors. David didn’t say anything. I’m nearly certain he didn’t notice. The hazy sun peeled around the mountain near noon and we reapplied sunscreen at a belay. David had been slurping water from a hydration pack and, in a surprised instant, sucked it dry. No matter, we laughed, only four more pitches to go. We continued up the steepening corner, staring at an emerald lake between our legs at each belay, watching the lodgepole pines grow smaller and smaller. I was blissfully—one might say ignorantly—giddy with excitement.

We lost momentum 200 feet from the summit ridge. One of us suggested we leave the corner and pull onto the expansive slab to our left. I don’t remember why. Placing no gear, I climbed the corner’s vertical left wall and edged out to the slab. It was horribly loose and devoid of cracks. I downclimbed and told David it didn’t go. I told him to take us to the ridge. The chossy lead was the steepest I’d yet done and it had shaken my dogged enthusiasm. I was grateful watching David climb the final rope length to Joy’s end; the day had been fun but I was ready to be done. Twenty more minutes and you’re walking, I assured myself.

“Anthony! It doesn’t go!” David screamed. He started down climbing.

Shit.

David arrived several careful minutes later and explained through haggard breaths that he’d topped out the corner and only saw loose, technical rock along the summit ridge. It was impassable terrain, a death wish to even attempt. He said we needed to go down. 

I was shocked. Joy was lauded as the most straightforward route in the Canadian Rockies, and Mountain Project’s admin had famously not provided a pitch-by-pitch topo because it was “impossible to get lost.” The sun was setting, and high on Mt. Indefatigable, the wind picked up. I thought of David’s experiences climbing around the world and contrasted it with my own. Surely if there had been a way out of the corner he would have found it. I conceded to bail.

David’s plan, as I remember it, was to re-lead the corner’s steep left wall and traverse onto the slabby face. About 500 feet to our left was another corner system, which, if we could get to it, appeared to level out closer to the ground. David said we would still have to leave many cams as rappel anchors, but its shortness would allow us to comfortably down-scramble from a higher point. I said it sounded like a plan.

David led a 240-foot traverse without any gear while the fiery orange sun dipped below the horizon. He belayed me off of one tipped out No. 1 cam and told me not to weight it. He led another traverse, nearly 250 feet this time, without any gear. He built a seven-cam anchor in the shattered rock and I stumbled after him, horrified at how blank the slab had become. In an effort to conserve gear, David then explained the concept of down-leading to me and I lowered him slowly while he clipped his rope to cams. The placements were infrequent and my feet quaked as I slithered down.

Our headlamps came on as I rigged the fourth lower. I sent David down into the growing night and heard a shriek some 200 feet below. Did he just say bolt? Indeed, a bolt! David’s beam had caught the unmistakable glint of rusted hardware. It was only one but it was good enough; we began rappelling. Several more bolts arrived in the night and we greeted each with deference. We made multiple rappels and shared nervous giggles at each station—Were we about to get away with this?

David hit the ends of our green rope and searched in vain for another bolt. I watched his headlamp pan frantically and my heart sank. He built a complicated, janky anchor and offered a weak “Off rappel.” We had rappelled into nowhere. Even I could tell that our new anchor was bad, and our dim headlamps only highlighted a slammed-shut corner below us. It was well after midnight and we were exhausted. I told David we needed to spend the night. He agreed.

I stayed on rappel and also clipped into David’s anchor. He clipped loosely into my belay loop and together we felt like there was a pretty good chance of surviving the night. I peeled off my lace-up rock shoes and exchanged them for woolen socks and tennies. Then I stuck my feet into my empty backpack, laid my head against the rappel rope strung taut above me, and hung from the 60-degree slab through the night.

Hours later, I awoke to my head bobbing up and down like it was glued to a plucked guitar string. I flicked on my headlamp and shone it up—a rat! A bushy, fat, buck-toothed rat! It scampered along my green rope like a tight-rope walker from hell, its blank black eyes boring into me. I yelped and thrashed and it jumped off the rope onto the slab and into the night. Poor David woke up horrified. I think he thought our anchor had failed. I tried to recount what I saw but he dismissed it as a dream. Maybe I was dreaming. I hoped it didn’t eat our rope.

By 5 a.m. the brightening sky let us see what lay beneath. Without headlamps, and with the left sides of our brains rejuvenated, the rock below us didn’t seem quite so sheer or protectionless. David and I swapped the “down-leader” role and I apologetically started his day with a long runout above a small cam. We stowed the rope after several more pitches and downclimbed loose slab side by side. I gave David a hug when we finally reached the approach trail. It had been the biggest adventure of my life.

***

As I matured as a climber in the following years, and sheepishly admitted to friends that I had in fact gotten lost and then benighted on Joy, I began to wonder where in the hell we’d gone wrong. Had we gone up the wrong corner system? Was the walk-off actually heinous? Eventually I decided enough was enough: I needed a rematch on Joy.

My friend Matt and I walked quickly along the lakeside approach and watched the west side of Mt. Indefatigable come slowly into view. I felt a pit of dread in my stomach seeing the mountain, knowing how much effort it had demanded of me before. But by then I too had climbed 5.11 on gear, climbed cracks across North America, and, most importantly, was no longer a kid desperately feigning confidence. Matt and I simuled Joy in just a couple hours and I pulled over the summit ridge to a calm, pyramidal slope. 

I was surprised to find such mellow terrain. I’d envisioned soaring ramparts of choss—or a teetering limestone gendarme—not a gentle third-class ridge. I tried to put myself in David’s shoes: maybe he was exhausted from taking a leadership role all day, or gripped after eyeing my terrible anchors. Maybe he was just dehydrated. It didn’t matter: we remained friends and I looked forward to ribbing him once we got into cell service. Matt and I shared a laugh, high fived, and walked off. I was grateful I’d learned to think for myself.

___

Anthony Walsh is a digital editor at Climbing.

Read more from Anthony:

• Two Eras Collide When a Legendary Rockies Face is Rap Bolted
• Soloing Felt Easy and Fun. Then an Avalanche Broke the Reverie.
• The Gear That Makes Me Actually Enjoy Alpine Climbing