Note: As it is rapidly coming up on four years after the events laid out in this report took place, I timed my podcast to have this episode roughly coincide with the anniversary, and in doing so, I felt it necessary to revisit what was arguably the culminating, pivotal, capital-I Incident in my Colorado fourteener quest. Content warnings for near-death experiences as well as justified fears of heights.
I also feel it is worth noting up front that, while I naturally have plenty of thoughts on this particular Incident nearly four years after it took place, I will forego the afterword I have been tagging onto the ends of preceding episodes because I think there is a certain value in letting this one stand more or less on its own as I first presented it to the world a mere three weeks after the events discussed took place, when they were still raw and inescapable in my mind. I did make some edits for clarification and correction of embarrassing typos, but while I was given permission by Eric Sheffey to give him the proper credit for his role in helping to ensure that the immediate aftermath went as well as could be expected, most other edits were to preserve the anonymity of those connected to the events who may or may not wish to be reminded of or publicly associated with them, and as I do not have a ready way of contacting most of those involved, if I have erred, I elected to do so in favor of preserving their privacy.
But while I do plan to add an afterword of some sort in separately, let me delay no further in plunging…ha, ha?…back into this one:
2021 was going to be the year I finally finished the fourteeners. I’d been picking away at them since I was an out-of-state college student returning home for breaks in 2005, gaining some momentum when I moved back to Colorado in 2010, losing it again when I left for SoCal in 2015, and then recommitting to the fullest extent possible when I came back for good in 2017.
I wasn’t 100% certain finishing would be a realistic goal until last year, however. I lack the fearlessness many of the 14ers.com regulars seem to possess, and so I recognized that the Class 3 peaks were going to be a thorough test of my abilities – and then there were the Class 4s!
But then I decided 2020 was my year to tackle the two fourteeners widely reputed to be the hardest in the state, and while I can attribute my summit of Little Bear only to good partners and good luck, subsequent summits of Capitol (even if it did take two tries) and Snowmass’ S-Ridge boosted my confidence all the way into cockiness. I ended that year with 12 remaining, and while my extreme fair-weather hiking tendencies meant that I’d only totaled 10 new ones in my previous record-setting year, I took some comfort from the fact that many of my leftovers could be grouped into single outings.
Such was the case with my first newbies of ‘21. Like my ‘20 Elk conquests, however, Castle and Conundrum required a second visit for success. My first try was in late May, when my left ankle, prone to raising a fuss ever since my first go at Snowmass the previous year, cranked the yowling up to 11 at around 12,500’. To judge by my more successful partner Eric Sheffey’s account of the remaining route’s conditions, however, this was probably just as well; I hadn’t used crampons in more than a decade, and certainly not for as long nor under such conditions as the snowed-in couloir, connecting ridge, and saddle had presented him and the duo he’d been able to tag along with.
There was far less snow to be found a few weeks later, though my partner for that day and I did make use of our crampons and axes to ascend the headwall at dawn and thoroughly enjoyed our glissade of its softened snow hours later.
That day restored my confidence to such a degree that, when Eric and I confirmed plans to use his Maroon Lake permit for a trip up Pyramid on July 6th, 2021, I felt absolutely no trepidation about the proposed peak. Pyramid, I’d heard, could be kept mostly Class 3 with maybe one or two spicier moves thrown in, and I, veteran of the likes of Capitol and Little Bear that I was, should have no trouble whatsoever with such trivialities!
I joined Eric at the pull-off he’d found on Castle Creek Road, the closest source of free parking on public lands we could find to Maroon Lake (the footnote I added for this stated: “The ‘mystery’ of how my long-suffering Subaru Outback ended up on Castle Creek Road was arguably the least interesting part of this tale, but since it apparently posed quite the puzzle for a certain Kansan climber of my acquaintance, I included the explanation for his benefit”), a couple hours before sunset on July 5th. A relaxed round of open-air chitchat turned into a hunker for cover under the door of his trunk as a classic evening downpour unleashed its fury on us.
“I was listening to a podcast about Pyramid before I got here,” Eric told me as I eyeballed the torrential three feet between us and the front of my own car, home to the dinner I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to enjoy anytime soon unless I wanted to be waterboarded by Mother Nature.
“What do we have to look forward to that isn’t mentioned in the route description?” I asked, as much out of genuine interest as a distraction from how ravenous I suddenly found myself.
“There are lots of cairns.”
“Oh, that’s good!”
“…LOTS of cairns.”
“…like, Capitol levels of cairns? Only a select few of which go the way you actually want to go?”
He nodded. “That’s what it sounds like.”
I’m sure I tried to mumble something useful in response. It wasn’t too long afterward that the rain abated somewhat and I was able to dash for Booger and my Michelin Star-worthy and super-nutritionally-balanced Lunchables, then curl up in my sleeping bag for the all-too-short hours until our alarms were set to blare.
We were joined by a friend of Eric’s sometime while I was dozing, and while we didn’t get moving with any particular degree of enthusiasm for a midnight start after a night of rain that had lasted longer than the National Weather Service had foretold, our lack of trouble driving to Maroon Lake offered some reassurance to paper over our lingering hints of unease over potential dampness on the route as well as general nervousness about its forewarned difficulties. A quick ascent past the lake, lowlighted only by a brief need to backtrack a hundred feet or so when we realized we’d overshot the turnoff for Pyramid, and then a surprisingly speedy-considering-yours-truly-was-involved climb up the beautifully maintained trail boosted our confidence further.
I could’ve done without the tangle of boulders this mountain had vomited over the eons as well as the snowfield that, while perhaps all of twenty feet in width, nevertheless was hard enough that I deemed it necessary to don my spikes (though my surer-footed partners scurried across more quickly and less encumbered), and it took a matter of milliseconds past the amphitheater for me to understand where the nickname “1000’ of Suck” came from.
Still, we reached the saddle just as the sun crested the peaks to our east, giving us a breathtaking respite in which to retake our breath for the challenges that lay ahead. Once we stirred ourselves into motion again, I was pleased to find those challenges well within my abilities – while I did not actually make the Leap of Faith as literally as my buddies did, I found a pleasingly grippy set of hand- and footholds in the workaround. The Green Wall, too, surprised and satisfied me with its solidity.
I suppose I can take some consolation from the apparent commonality of Pyramid predecessors I personally know who also felt that the last few hundred feet to the summit provide the best opportunity to bite off more than you can comfortably chew. “I know this mountain’s rated Class 4, but this is more *real* Class 4 than I was expecting,” I mumbled a couple times as my buddies and I scrambled up a chimney that probably has nothing on North Maroon’s but which did a number on whatever dignity I might have had going in. Whenever we’d double-check the line between the last cairn we’d seen and the next, however, we certainly couldn’t see any viable alternative paths.
We double-, triple-, quadruple-checked the line of cairns leading us up to a short but sheer rock band about two hundred feet below the summit. Eric, far more experienced at rock climbing than I, certainly could’ve clambered up the faint depression overlooking a precipitous drop into the gully next door, but as I couldn’t find a way to get my foot on the one decent protrusion at waist level, he retreated away from the gully in search of a better option. Our third partner had rated his method for passing this obstacle as “kinda sketchy,” so Eric examined the rock overhead with the intensity of an oracle poring over tea leaves, then darted up and over the imposition via a set of holds that looked uncomfortably slender to me.
I examined his route as I distractedly acknowledged the climber who was coming up behind us but who elected to wait below while we finished navigating this segment. “It’s not too horrible,” my partner encouraged me from a few feet above after he gave our new companion a greeting of his own. He then gestured down at the shiny smooth stone in front of me. “There’s a foothold above your left foot” – indeed there was, albeit far smaller than I would have liked – “and handholds on either side above your head” – indeed again, though far reachier than I would have liked.
I drove my fingers and wriggled my foot as far into their respective holds as I could. I glanced back down at the ledge on which my right foot remained, a ledge that seemed barely wider than my foot was long. I then looked back up at Eric and the hoist I’d have to make. It wasn’t optimal, but there sure didn’t seem to be any friendlier options. But I’d had the advantage of watching my partner scamper up, and I was sure I’d played Monkey See, Monkey Do on maneuvers of equal or even greater sketchiness than this. Besides, I concluded as I took a last glance back down at my right foot, the worst that seemed likely to happen if I did flub this move was that I’d belly-flop into the rock, then slither down, Wile E. Coyote style, until my feet reconnected with the ledge on which I was presently grounded. I inhaled as deeply as my lungs would allow before shifting my body weight to my tautly perched left foot.
As it is often wont to do, Murphy’s Law reared its ugly head with a bang, not a whimper. My foot exploded off its hold with such violence that my hands had no choice but to relent or be ripped from my fingertips. While I believe my toes did hit the ledge as predicted, they couldn’t sustain enough of the rest of me to resist the inexorable will of gravity.
I would imagine that my fall had to be far more terrifying to witness than to experience. Once I understood that I was going down, down, down, I resigned myself to my fate – Jim Morrison was right; this was, indeed, The End. The only small act of compassion I felt I had any right to ask of this mountain was that my head would strike one of its more-grounded rocks with enough force to render me unconscious before I landed, or, barring even that minor mercy, that I would at least die on impact so that I wouldn’t be subjected to seconds, minutes, hours of listening to my blood gurgle into the otherwise pristine landscape and feeling my lungs heaving futilely against the jagged fragments of my ribcage.
I seemed, however, to be painfully cognizant of my surroundings as I blinked at the formerly cheery climber who had been waiting patiently below us, her face mere inches above my own. I suspect I must’ve lost momentum when I hit the body-sized outcropping on which I’d landed, else I would’ve struck her down with me. To judge by the tightness of her fingers around my shoulder, however, neither one of us was in doubt that she was largely, if not solely, to acclaim for preventing the ball-bearing scrabble beneath me from rolling me toward Part II of my plunge into the chossy abyss below.
“Wow, you must have a guardian angel looking out for you!” she half-gasped once we determined that I’d come to a rest of some sort.
Yeah, you! wouldn’t occur to me as a response until days later, so I groused, “A very passive-aggressive one,” as I began tenderly easing myself into a sitting position in hopes of reassuring her that she could relax her vigil as much as our environment would allow.
Eric scrambled down with as much haste as was safe once I’d slid to a halt, and he switched into professional mode from his day job as a paramedic the second he knelt beside me. I tried to keep my voice steady – it was hard to see the point of crying over spilled bodily fluids – as I recounted a list of the injuries demanding the most attention: my lower back hurt, which fragments of years-ago First Aid courses informed me was not a good sign, but I was paradoxically reassured by the fact that the same foot already tweaked on neighboring Snowmass now protested even more stridently.
Eric sent our new friend, my saving grace, up ahead with one of our two remaining radios. He then used the last to inform our third partner that there had been a “situation,” quickly agreeing that it would be a good idea for the one who was already ahead anyway to go on to the summit to see if he could get better reception for his inReach should it be necessary for him to draw on his training as a flight medic to get and stay in contact with Search and Rescue.
Eric told me later on that he’d deliberately given me a pause in the back-and-forth action to make an informed decision all my own about my prospects of continuing either up or down; after all, sometimes trips, slips, and falls in the mountains merely knock the wind out of the afflicted’s sails, then fade into a low-grade annoyance at worst.
I knew from my initial attempt to sit up, however, that this was not a rub-some-(more-)dirt-in-it-and-walk-it-off deal. My spine had apparently somehow survived Eric’s estimated 20’ plunge more or less intact, but I dreaded what another tumble, even a small one, might do. And when my partner removed my shoes and socks to evaluate the foot that throbbed so unabatedly that I could practically see its pulses radiating through the air, we could see that the afflicted ankle was roughly twice the size of its right-side counterpart.
I cast a brief glance down from my perch to the dizzying drops of highly questionable stability below. What muscles weren’t compromised tensed hard enough in automatic response that I feared they would snap any as-yet unaffected bones clean through. It was time to make good on my half-joking threat of just about every fourteener past whenever I got a little short-winded.
“Get me a helicopter,” I sighed to Eric once the uppermost of our trio radioed to us that he had reached the summit.
Of course it wasn’t quite so simple as that. While Eric and I could see perfectly well that I had no way off this mountain without the aid of wings or blades, I understood that Pitkin County couldn’t simply take our word for it. It took an hour for them to approve the chopper, another hold before the bird took off, then it would be another forty minutes still for it to fly out to pick up the hoist team, then however long it would take from that pick-up to Pyramid.
I knew I shouldn’t have been ungrateful. If I were to have yet another Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Day on a mountain, I’d sure had the stars align with me for the aftermath: the no-longer-a-stranger climber coming up below me, of course, and her fearless intervention on my behalf; not one, but two companions who were licensed emergency responders; and a clear, remarkably un-windy morning that I was told made for as close to perfect conditions as it got for a heli-vac. No shivery bivvying for who knew how many days while waiting for Colorado’s capricious climate to grant just one sweet sliver of sunshine!
But that didn’t mean my mood was a consistently sunny one. While Eric remarked on my overall good humor, I’d estimate that I probably spent about 90% of the time we spent conversing in our three-hour wait for the chopper kvetching about how little back support most of the surrounding scrabble provided, then griping even harder when I would arduously shift positions to rest against the one flat, angled rock of suitable size…which provided a generous heap of smaller, pokier rocks for use as a seat cushion. Further whining ensued when the clouds started rolling in around 10:30 to provide a hint of just how unforgiving the alpine environment is under even the finest set of circumstances, which mine most certainly were not.
Through it all, Eric was nothing but gracious and compassionate, attending to every need of mine he could provide, including a concerted and partially successful effort to keep the peak’s notorious goats from scrambling up right above us and putting me at risk of a rock shower I was in no position to dodge, then letting me test out his space blanket when the sun started playing Peek-a-Boo. Our flight medic partner, too, was invaluable; dutiful in relaying messages he received from the various personnel coordinating my rescue and eager to draw on his professional expertise to provide context for transmissions that didn’t seem to make much sense to those without his experience. He and our unwitting fourth companion both elected to remain on the summit until I was in the clear to avoid pelting me with rocks, which cannot possibly have been fun given that they had even less shelter from the elements than Eric and I did.
Suffice to say that I think we were all equally ecstatic when we heard the distant sound of helicopter blades and soon saw the Blackhawk flying toward us so directly that it could have had no other possible target. I blew a kiss in its direction as it made one of its evaluative passes, and while both Eric and I were initially dismayed when it circled away from the mountain – “What are they doing?! Don’t they know I’ve got rocks jabbing into some tender areas?!?” I wailed – the flight medic was quick to explain that the chopper had too much fuel for its nearly-maxed-out elevation ceiling (14,500’, which led Eric and me to speculate as to what happens should someone need a rescue off Elbert’s summit) and needed to burn some off before it could begin the next phase of saving my backside.
It wasn’t too long, however, before it moved back in toward the mountain, slowing down and edging closer and closer to the summit…before the winds had them backing off within Eric’s and my line of sight to swing back around for another pass. On the next attempt, it disappeared into the rocks barricading our view higher up, and shortly after we heard it move away from the mountain once again, Eric radioed up to our third partner to find out if they’d reached their target that time.
“Dropped two guys off. They’re downclimbing now,” was the reply, to which I gave a victory spasm. Not long after that, two members of Mountain Rescue Aspen announced their presence and added, “And we have drugs!” to which I believe I added a boisterous, “F— yeah!” In addition to my full-body writhe.
The first rescuer to reach me, after listening to Eric’s rundown of my medical issues and giving his own estimate that I’d actually fallen *50* feet, explained that he would give me a dose of Fentanyl to take the edge off short-term as well as a longer-acting painkiller that would hopefully get me all the way back to Aspen. While I was a tad concerned about the fact that the mountains across the valley from me started swirling as soon as the Fentanyl hit my veins, I was pleased to note that I no longer cared about the rocks continuing their endeavors to become one with my already tenderized flesh.
As Eric, the Mountain Rescue Aspen crew members, and our flight medic partner – who had, along with the poor fourth climber who was now part of the group whether she’d wanted to be or not, followed the rescue team down – hefted me into an inflatable stretcher and began strapping me in as the air pump put some merciful distance between me and the ground, I was pleased at how little I cared about anything, even when the chopper moved into position directly overhead to lower the cable that would soon put even greater distance between me and this godforsaken mountain. What was the rock cyclone its blades stirred but the latest in today’s adventures, anyway?
As I posted on Instagram, I ordinarily feel a little weird about taking photos/video of helicopter rescues, but I felt being the rescued party gave me some leeway here.
I wouldn’t have said no to a second hit of Fentanyl before lift-off, however. As it was, when I received an offer of some anti-nausea meds, I knew It was in both my rescuer’s and my interests to accept. The process of being hoisted from the ground into the helicopter was, as I’d spent the time I hadn’t been snarling about rocks blubbering about instead, not exactly doing wonders for my already-justified fear of heights.
But once the Mountain Rescue crew member assigned to be hoisted into the chopper with me got us both secured to the cable and arranged to have the other man return to the summit with my pack, which he’d bring to the hospital after the ‘copter came back to retrieve him, I only found myself whimpering for the initial yank and subsequent spin into the air. I can almost certainly credit the bevy of drugs swirling through my bloodstream for the peaceful, Zen-like state of mind I achieved as we floated higher and higher, surpassed the summit, and drifted toward the rhythmically rotating blades to be shunted aside and then inside once my latest hero grasped a boot belonging to one of the uniformed men perched at the edge of a machine hovering over 14,000 feet in the air like it was the most natural place to be in the world.
My bad foot did get jostled while my newest round of saviors secured me for the flight to (as I had been informed while being prepped for take-off) the nearest good landing spot, where I would then be transferred to an ambulance, but given the cramped nature of our quarters and how quickly I was certain the drugs’ effects would wear off were I subjected to ricocheting from one wall to the other if I weren’t as firmly attached to the floor as possible, I certainly don’t begrudge them. I did feel my muscles unclench for the first time in hours once the helicopter landed and I was unloaded and then reloaded into the ambulance without further incident.
The next 24 hours were a hodgepodge of x-rays; CT scans; clothes being cut off me in preparation for the aforementioned (RIP, favored hiking shirt, you will be missed when I can hit the trails again); splinting; tentative one-legged hobbling with a walker and then crutches; texts to friends with whom I had imminent plans; inquiries of, “Can I get you anything? Water, blankets, heavy-duty painkillers?”; “Wow, you really lucked out!”; “Are you SURE you don’t have a concussion?”; and two head-scratching renditions of, “We thought you’d be in way worse shape than you actually are.”
But for all my questions about the motives behind the latter two utterances in particular, I have nothing but the kindest things to say about the team at Aspen Valley Hospital, especially the nurses and physical/occupational therapists, one of the latter of whom I had already informally met weeks prior as I’d descended the road out of Castle and Conundrum. Super-duper-especial gratitude for the patience of the nurse who got to deal with me for the overnight shift, as she not only had to deal with my newest whine of, “My nose is too stuffed up for me to sleep. Can you wake the doctor up to see if I can get some nasal spray?” but also, at 11 or so at night, just as I was finally dozing off, hesitantly crouching by my bed to whisper, “Someone named…TallGrass?…called about you…”
I also have no way to repay the debt of gratitude I owe to daway8, who, upon hearing that I was in Aspen and wouldn’t be let out of the hospital until after my partners had to return to their own Front Range homes, volunteered to drive from Fort Collins, over Independence Pass, and back again to Denver in *the same day*, not to mention all the chauffeuring he wound up doing when we were back in Denver and I had prescriptions to be filled, supplies to acquire in order to make my home somewhat easier to navigate with only one weight-bearing leg, and then a subsequent run to the drugstore the next morning after I whined about how much I’d preferred the walker to the crutches, which I did need since I live on the second floor of a building with no elevator, but maaaaaaaaaan was the walker easier for me to use…! And then there was the return to Aspen that Saturday to reunite me with Booger – sure, he did get a hike out of it, but there are hikes that don’t involve eight hour round trip drives.
His efforts were enormously helpful to allowing me some modicum of independence on the Front Range side of that pass. It turned out I’d had reason to be concerned about my back: I broke it. But as it’s merely a compression fraction in a single vertebra, it’s causing far less excitement than my aggrieved foot, which hosts a fractured calcaneus. Apparently having your heel absorb the brunt of your impact from a not-insignificant fall does rather messy things to the bone itself as well as the surrounding tissue; one doctor analogized my condition as being akin to having an egg in my foot that reacted about as well as one would expect to a fifty-foot fall. The surgeon was happy with the results of the procedure, and as long as the healing process goes well, I’ll be able to start easing it back into use this autumn, but I’ve been warned that injuries of this nature can generate pain and aggravation for years to come.
Still, it happens far too often that climbers far more experienced and talented than I find themselves in similar (if not identical) circumstances to mine and wind up being recovered rather than rescued. I myself do not believe in guardian angels or any other sort of benevolent force(s) imperceptible to our blundering human senses, but I do recognize that while that day on Pyramid could have gone far, far better, it also could have gone exponentially worse.
So I will try to focus on the positive while I spend 2021 dealing with a far different set of physical challenges than I had hoped for. It might take me longer to finish the fourteeners than it took the laborers of the man-made pyramids to complete their toils, but I will be sure to pay them a healthy amount of respect when I finally do.
Of Mice and Mountaineers 
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