KraigWard.com

I’ve been climbing for about 15 years, but I NEVER had any interest in “Big Wall” climbing.  I must admit there was a small part of me that wondered if I’d ever face the MASSIVE fear of doing big wall.  

It was unattractive for several reasons:

1. It required TRAD climbing which never appealed to me.  I’d rather “sport” climb all day on 45 degree overhanging cliffs that are 35-50 feet tall.  
2. For the most part it required crack climbing skills which I could never figure out.  All I felt when I would try it was complete and utter pain.  Pain in jamming my fingers and twisting them to “lock” inside the crack and my feet were miserable enough in the small tight shoes, but then cramming my already squished feet into a crack was a double whammy.
3. Generally “Big Walls” take a full day of climbing and heights of 1,000 feet or more.  I like skydiving and don’t mind heights, but there has always been something about the exposure that freaked me out.

Never the less, when I heard that my hardcore climbing friend Gordon and his good friend Kalvan were going up to climb Moonlight Buttress (one of the most popular big walls in the US) and that they needed a rope gun (a glorified 3rd wheel) I jumped on it realizing I’d likely NEVER get a chance like this.

In the movie it’s hard to really get a feel for the experience.  Kalvan aid climbed most of the route and Gordon and I followed him up using Jumars, but aid climbing or not, the fact that I’d not been climbing in about 8 months, had NEVER used Jumars, had never done a big wall was a pretty bizarre adventure to take on.  

What you can’t see in the movie accept for a bit of dialogue between myself and Kalvin is that he took about a 40+ foot whipper (fall) and a few of his gear pieces came out of the crack and I was belaying him from down below a huge 10 foot roof and couldn’t see him until he came pitching off the wall and when I caught him he’d fallen a very long way and ended up above my head about 25 feet hanging upside down panting a bit.  Keep in mind that we were about 600 feet up at that point.  Pretty wild.

Also the most difficult portion of the route is just before the roof I mentioned above.  We all had packs that were about 60-80 lbs filled with water and supplies and when I was working my way up using the Jumars I found myself being pulled backwards from my heavy pack and it took me literally 90 minutes to climb 40 feet.  I literally thought I would pass out from sheer exhaustion.  I’ve never ever in my life been that tired/frustrated/exhausted.  I wasn’t going to quit or all of us would have had to bail on the climb.  That’s why at that part in the video I inserted some cow sounds as I was grunting up that part and it was almost an event that ruined the whole day.

Luckily I made it through it and eventually got the hang of jumaring.  It was a long day (about 14 hours of climbing) but it was worth it. We then had to climb down the mountain in the dark and make the 2 hour trek walking down the road as we missed the last shuttle out of the canyon.