There is an interesting phenomenon in climbing that involves what I am going to dub “contingent ascents.” That is, ascents that often are not cutting edge but garner a lot of attention or interest because the ascent hinges on some kind of contingency. This category of ascents contains a degree of gradation, from the “first female ascent” (which may or may not be significant due to many factors) to something as contrived as the First Deaf Colombian ascent of Mount Everest (not that being deaf or Colombian is contrived—but these days climbing Mount Everest is). Other contingent ascents might be: Climbing a famous route and downgrading it. Climbing a route without a chipped hold. Mixed climbing without heel spurs. Mixed climbing without leashes. Climbing a Grit headpoint without crash pads. Everest without oxygen. Everest without porters. Everest without fixed ropes. Not using kneepads. Climbing a sport route on trad gear.

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I was checking out the latest edition of Summit, the British Mountaineering Council’s quarterly and I came across an article by Doug Scott, the famously tough, knighted British mountaineer who climbed the Southwest Face of Everest in 1975 but is best known for his crawl with two broken legs off Baintha Brakk (AKA the Ogre), a 23,901-foot peak in Pakistan.

In the essay, Scott looks at competition in climbing. Prompted by sport climbing’s possible inclusion in the 2020 Olympics, he starts by running down the history of alpine competition, a subset of the sport with a surprising history of accolades including Olympic medals (20 awarded so far for alpinism) and Piolets d’Or. Scott shows that competition is nothing new, but his thesis really is the question of whether there should be competition in climbing at all.

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“My boy is in Mississippi State Prison, been in there four years for beating a cop’s boy nearly to death,” said the stranger on the barstool two seats down from me and Herndie, my old climbing buddy who was out for a few months of R and R in the crisp Colorado air.

“I’m Ted, and you two are?”

We introduced ourselves and I thought that was the end of that.

Herndie and I had been driving around late evening looking for the OU game on a big TV. The University of Oklahoma football team was ranked number one and, both of us having gone to that school, we followed the team when they were doing well.

We ended up at the Crystal Club on the boulevard in Redstone, an enclave of 92 people, mostly retirees or owners of the various hotels and restaurants catering to tourists who spill through town when the weather is nice. The Crystal Club has satellite TV, two screens and I know the owner Billy and he’ll tune to whatever game you are looking for.

“My boy is only 5’ 7” but he can bench press 450 and look at my shoulder,” said Ted.

His shoulder looked fine, except when you actually looked at it you saw that the outside part of it was missing, as if it had been blown away by a cannon ball.

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The  scene seemed  familiar, as if I was at a bar on this Saturday night, dressed in my newest jeans and designer boots, waiting for the perfect guy. But instead of a bar I leaned into a vertical wall and instead of holding a drink, I held cold granite. Nevertheless, on the granite face of a solo climb, I heard the words, “Do you want a drink?”

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It was autumn, and I walked into the Alcove in the crisp air expecting only the usual evening climbing and restoration.

In the middle of the floor of this highly traveled little rock corner, just 12 feet tall but steep, was a stone hump, currently disturbed by rock dust, perhaps a few shards, and a large sign, block-lettered and firmly duct-taped down: “WHOEVER DID THIS, you are an ASSHOLE.”

It was signed “Rick West.”

“Ohhh, you’ve never met Rick West?” people always said of this denizen of the Alcove. “Just wait.” I’d heard enough clues to envision a Hell’s Angel type, sleeveless and bicepian and probably scowling with exaltation for the rock. Now I quailed, because he was livid—and at me.

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I took on the responsibility of organizing and planning the annual Rifle Clean Up this year, and I approached the event with the goal of making it more fun than it usually is.

In years past, the clean up party involves a day of clean up projects and ends with beer, food and climbers standing around the community house in the dark, listening to music from an iPod and shining headlamps into each others’ eyeballs. I knew the potential for more fun was there.

The Rifle RendezSPEW went off on Saturday with a clean-up that involved removing about 100 pounds of old razor-sharp aluminum/nylon quickdraws; rebuilding trails and belay stations; adding a picnic area across from the Project Wall; trundling a 500-pound block poised over the road on a new route that hadn’t been properly cleaned; selectively Perma-Drawing routes; anchor replacements; a novelty competition: the GNAR-inspired Game of SPEW (Send Points for Elitist Wankers); and a costume party where people dressed up as Rifle routes, won TONS of gear at a raffle, ate burgers and drank beer to their hearts' content, and danced to music spun by a fog-machine-wielding DJ.

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Three weeks ago Kirk Meier (the intern) and I divided the drill, bolts, hammer, rope, draws, anchors, water and pretzels and hiked to the Notch. We hung a rope over an 80-foot granite slab called the Red Faction Wall and worked out a series of moves. Most of the holds were copper-smooth slopers, but there were a few gouges in the burnished surface. The bottom looked like the biz. Some small sidepulls ran out at a blank space. The only jugs on the route reappeared after five feet and I scrubbed these rasp-textured incuts with a wire brush. Dirt piled up. I blew the sand out with some aquarium tubing.

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Four years ago I was at Quartz Mountain, a 300-foot-high hump of pink granite that punches up and through the wheat fields of western Oklahoma. I practically grew up at Quartz, crimping and padding around on its technical slabs in the 1970 and early 1980s, before sport climbing, sticky rubber and even harnesses. I’ve had a love/hate relationship with Quartz. Hating the incessant wind, the heat, humidity and mostly the run outs that typify less-than-vertical granite. Loving the spectacular position of a granite cliff juxtaposed against the landscape’s otherwise awesome flatness, but mostly loving the clan of climbers I came to know as friends and who remain friends even today.

I moved to Colorado in 1990, leaving Quartz forever, but returning a few times a decade to climb with my old buddies. As the years passed, I my trips back became even less frequent. Predictably, my mad granite crimping skills, skills particular to being 20 feet above a bolt and 20 feet below the next one, picked up some rust.

Last time I was there, about three years ago, I wanted to relive the glory days by romping up a few routes, but when I actually got to the base and couldn’t even see the first bolt, I changed my mind completely and decided that glory couldn’t be relived, which really meant that I could either go for glory, or live.

I uncoiled the rope and handed the sharp end to Russell Hooper. Variously known as “Walking Boy” for his peculiar ability to walk during a footrace and still beat you, and “Corndog” for a reason I’ve never understood since he didn’t seem to especially like corndogs, Russell was the finest technical climber I’ve ever known.

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Years ago, when they were still married, Margo Talbot and Joe Josephson, two high-standard ice climbers at the time, passed through town. Always convinced that I am terribly busy, I am not all that forthcoming with invitations to stay, or at least for long, but they were easy-breezy. Amid the magical hush of a days-long winter snowstorm that buried Mike’s and my house and hillside, Joe raced around indoors with our then-3-year-old, Teddy. He bought him a toy dinosaur and voiced its many thoughts as they ran up and downstairs on perilous adventures. Margo turned her direct gaze on me and said, “OK, how do you change a baby’s diaper?” and then cleaned the swamp mud enveloping eight-month-old Roy. One night the couple (she from British Columbia, he from Montana) cooked us a curry dinner.

When, after two or three days, they said they were moving on, I protested. I said: “I don’t think the roads are safe yet.”

Who knew Margo carried such baggage?

A month ago I read, in two days

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