April 16, 1964
Above Bell Echo, on the side of El Capitan, is a large crevice in the mountainside that I don’t like any more – even if I did find the little carnivorous butterwort growing there. I don’t like it now because, after beckoning to me so friendlily, it gave me the darnedest scare of my mountain-prowling experience.
A hundred feet or more up, just at the head of this big crevice, is an enticing-looking bench, and the more I looked at it and the vegetation growing up there, the more it made my botanical mouth water. This big friendly-looking gash in the mountain (I have since named it the Lorelei Crevice) looked like the easiest and quickest way up. The lower end is a steep, rocky slope, but the higher up you go the more perpendicular the crevice becomes. The result of a slip would be the same as if it were a vertical wall – the victim would just as surely tumble to the very bottom.
What makes the climb particularly risky is the fact that a trickle of water all down the crevice makes it dangerously slick in places, especially if you’re wearing rubber-soled shoes, as I was. I wasn’t carrying a rope; didn’t suppose I needed anything but my claws, and as much luck as a fellow has a right to expect.
Up about 75 feet the going got steeper and handholds scarcer. A few feet above my head was a narrow shelf upon which a friendly-looking runt of a shrub had found a toehold in a small crevice in the rock. I thought if I could manage to get hold of that bush I could pull myself up onto the shelf and rest a bit before going up the rest of the way. From there on up to the big ledge (and a good route back down) looked easy from where I was.
Bracing my knees against the sides of the crevice, I reached up and found a shallow fingerhold a few inches below the rim of the shelf. Pulling myself up as far as I could I made a quick grab for the shrub and was soon resting in the little niche. Then I looked up and discovered it was impossible to go on. There were no little jutting rocks or cracks for handholds; the rock was not only smooth, but wet and slippery, and to try to go down the way I came up would have been almost surely disastrous. Not even a contortionist could have reached below the rim of that shelf, found the shallow fingerholds and safely lowered himself.
Those were the loneliest few minutes I’ve ever known, in that rocky niche on the side of El Capitan, utterly unable to go either up or down, and 75 feet or more above the jagged boulders below. For the first time in my life I thought I could smell the smoke and feel the heat at the end of the line.
If I couldn’t go up or down, the only alternative was to look for a way out the side, and the prospect was so bleak that for the first sickening moments I didn’t even consider it. The only possibility that I could find was a narrow ledge that led out onto one shoulder of the crevice a short distance. As far as I could see beyond that it was a sheer drop-off.
But in desperation we grab at any straw that presents itself. I carefully worked my way the short distance around the shoulder, and when I found that instead of dead-ending, the little ledge led to safety, the relief was so great I almost choked up.
After that unpleasant experience I decided to invest in a nylon rope for such contingencies. And if I ever get into such a jackpot again I only hope I haven’t remained true to character and forgotten to bring my rope along.
