Three Diamonds
or
What I Did Last Summer

Early summer, 1984. I am just a pup. Paul Milde has just returned from geology field camp and is ready for adventure. I am, too; it is just a question of how much. In those days Billy Westbay still worked at the Ranger Station, and he gave us a knowing look when we registered for a Chasm View bivy permit. He did inform us that there had been only one successful free party so far that summer and that Pervertical Sanctuary was the only dry route. Then, Pervertical (5.10+) it would be. We didn't even have a topo. We made Chasm View before dark and glanced over at the wall -- implacable, vertical. I tried, without success, to image myself free-climbing on it. Paul and I didn't get to find out. Just before dawn a snow/hail storm hit and our bivy site quickly took on the look of one of those photos they take of parties that have perished in the Scottish winter. "This is no place for teddy bears like us." We packed up and ran.

Summer, 1986. Two years have passed, and I know this summer will be my last in Boulder. The Diamond mocks me. It is perhaps the most famous alpine wall in the continental U.S., and its trailhead is only a 45 minute drive, even in my ancient Valiant. I resolve to climb it or else. I train all summer - running up to NCAR in thunderstorms for the altitude and for general toughness, methodically soloing moderate crack climbs in Boulder Canyon for the speed I figure will be required in the dihedral pitches. Most importantly, I bring out a secret weapon, my California climbing partner Clint Cummins. This time, we are the essence of bravado. We stroll out of the ranger station at a casual 6 PM, pass by the disaster scene of two year previous, and reach the Chasm View bivy after dark. In the morning we hit the rappels and are at the base of the Casual Route at 7 AM. On the route, we fly. I remember running it out like a man possessed in the easy 5.8 dihedrals and Clint's nice lead of the second to last, crux, pitch. There is a picture of me on the Table Ledge traverse with the sun in my hair, taken at about noon. Clint easily makes his 9 PM flight that night back to California.

Summer, 1994. 10 years after our first attempt, I finally agree to meet Paul in Colorado over Labor Day and give the Diamond another try. I haven't climbed for months. In June my girlfriend leaves me. I am filled with paranoid thoughts about work. For the first time in my adult life, a Yosemite trip does not seem to be the answer. But the Diamond clock is ticking and my fitness is nowhere.

Late in July, Jeff K. and I spend a day at the Black Wall, Donner. We are both off the couch. I am sucking wind on 5.9 and 5.10 feels like a religious experience. I decide that in my reduced state I cannot show my face at any of the usual spots and devise a "stealth" strategy. I adopt a bumbly disguise - painter's pants and my old E.B.'s - and put in an appearance at "The Leap." At 8 AM I am the first party to the wall. After I solo a couple of 5.6's, the expected mob scene takes shape at the base of the East Wall. I recruit a hefty belayer and wobble up Psychedelic Tree (5.9) and, the next morning, The Line (5.9+). So I still can climb, sort of.

The Diamond trip is one week away and I get desperate. More embarrassment at the crags seems pointless. I convince myself I have to train for the altitude. After a Friday night bivy at Tioga Pass, I spend a leisurely day at Deadman's. My first good omen - I find that in my slippers I can crank 10+ moves at the Bachar Boulders. That evening in Bishop I catch a movie, Harrison Ford getting chased by Columbian drug dealers. Afterwards, I carboload with a calzone and head south. Bad omen - just south of Bishop my trip odometer reads 325 and a sign appears: LA, 300. So far from home and too close to that place. The scene of an emotion debacle two summers previous, I swore I’d never go back. At 11:15 PM, just as planned, I arrive at a pitch black Whitney Portal (8,600'). My stupid plan is to do the approach in the dark, solo the East Face (5.4) in the morning, and get back to Oakland that night. The ascent will be "on-sight" - I have never been within 50 miles of Whitney, and all I have is some xeroxed pages from 50 Classics and a faxed topo from Clint. Just after midnight, with a half moon lighting the way, I begin. At dawn I reach the enormous cirque formed by the Whitney/Keeler massif and at 7 am I begin the route. It's a great route, easy but surrounded by much more difficult terrain. On the other hand, I swear I did some 5.7 up there, in particular, a leaning wide crack at the end of an easy gully, overlooking an abyss. The route is interesting to the very end - I hand traversed on some blocky jugs imaging myself on a Gunks 5.4, pulled up and over, and found myself face to face with a hiker eating a "Power Bar" (14,600'). It was about 10 AM. It was at this point that the weakness in my plan became obvious. It takes too damn long to hike down all those switchbacks! Worse still, I ran out of water and had to beg some from friendly hikers. At the end, I was hallucinating, with distant boulders turning into ranger cabins. I was a wreck when I stumbled into to the parking lot at 3:45 PM. Just one last detail: the drive, 400 miles back. I made it, but it was not pretty.

Finally, the appointed time. After 10 years, Paul and I leave the parking lot to settle our score with the Diamond. This time we are going to bivy at Chasm Lake (12,400') to try to get a better night's rest. On the hike up, all omens are bad: the spent climbers descending from D7 ("wet, man, took all day"), the 20 minute hailstorm that we sit out under a boulder, and the lone climber at Chasm Lake waiting after dark for his 2 friends to return. But our bivy cave is cozy and protected and we even get something resembling sleep. At 4 AM it is still pitch dark, at 5 AM, after draining our thermos of coffee, we start. Some kind soul has fixed a rope across the snow cone at the base of the North Chimney. We're not setting any speed records and are at Broadway at 7 am. Bad news, broad black tongues of water streak the face. We confer and drop the original goal - The Yellow Wall - for the easier Casual Route. The first pitch is easy and soon Paul confronts the finger crack and traverse pitch, mine 8 years ago- and dry. It is hideous when soaked, with icy pools on all the holds numbing the fingers. I join Paul in a cramped belay below a oozing squeeze chimney. We look up, and it is wet as far as we can see up the dihedrals. It was one of those moments. I look down, at the North Chimney, the snow cone, the bivy, the lake. I don't want to go down. And I certainly don't want to have to wait another 10 years to get back up here with Paul. I don shell, balaclava, and rack and start swimming. A tug on a #4 buried in there somewhere connects to an icy hand jam and so it goes up the corner. I recall a wet traverse using my knees and a leap for the belay anchors at the end of the pitch. And Paul gets one. And I get one to the Yellow Wall Bivy ledge. Nasty, scary, cold, slow; there wasn't a dry jam in the whole corner. The crux pitch was wet, too, and I aided it. As I reached the belay I realized that the sun had left the face hours ago. Paul dispensed with the traverse pitch and we had it. 3:30 PM. Not really enjoyable, but challenging. We must have looked almost as bad as those D7 guys on the descent. We took the long way around to retrieve the bivy gear but did make it back to the main trail before dark. Back at the parking lot I was glad it wasn't an 8 hour drive back to Boulder.

It's a month later and what does it all mean? Believe it or not, we climbed 5.10's down in Boulder the next two days before leaving and it started to feel like old times again. Now, I hold my head high in the gym, for what that's worth. I dusted off the old guidebooks; maybe I'll get out to Yosemite in November. So I recover some of that obsession that has driven me for nearly all of my adult life. Paul's recent letter echoes sentiments I share - we climbed the Diamond and it was wet -we were men up there and no one understands. Perhaps they hear what they want to believe - two out of shape has-beens in aiders on a 10a. I'll say this - it was a Labor Day weekend on the finest alpine wall in Colorado and we were the only party that made it. We also were the only party up there. So did all the Boulder climbers know something we didn't or are we onto something they have forgotten? There is that part of me that cannot wait for Labor Day, next year.

Joel Ager, 1994