Sometimes one’s reach exceeds one’s grasp, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. Early March of 1978 Jimmie Newberry, Tom Pulaski, Phil Broskovak, and I conspired to do a big wall in the Black Canyon in winter, which had not been done yet. Both Tom and Jimmie had experience on routes on the Painted Wall, but Phil and I were pretty much neophytes to the big wall nailing game. I had shared many rock and ice climbs and back-country ski adventures with Tom and Jimmie and felt confident in our group. The Black Canyon of the Gunnison River is unique in being locally deeper than it is wide , over 2,000 ft deep, and characterized by vertical walls of black gneiss intruded by phantasmagorically shaped pink pegmatite dikes. Psychologically it can be a daunting place to climb, and with steep, narrow, poison ivy-filled gulches, a challenging place to access. We had chosen to have a go at the second ascent of the Nose Route on North chasm View Wall, a route put up by Brian Becker and Ed Webster of Colorado Springs.

The first day gave us the best weather we would have as we humped our loads down SOB Gulch. We chose a line that started up a set of dihedrals somewhat to the right of Brian and Ed’s original route. The first four pitches were long free climbing at 5.9, but with consistently good protection. We figured that there would be plenty of climbing to go around, so I shamelessly volunteered to lead these first four pitches. They were four of the most enjoyable pitches I had climbed up to that time. As Jimmie and I led up and fixed ropes, Tom and Phil hauled loads.

At the top of the forth pitch we encountered a ledge about 2 feet wide and about 10 feet long that provided an excellent place to set up our first bivy. By the time we got to this ledge we had lost the sun and temperatures started to drop as the first clouds from an impending storm blew in. We had plenty of time to complete the haul and set up a port-a-ledge for Jimmie and Phil, while Tom and I arranged our bivy sacks on the ledge.

Day two started with what was billed as the first challenging lead of the climb. According to beta from Brian and Ed, this was an aid pitch primarily of hook moves with an occasional small wired stopper that traverses up and left to a point where the leader tension-traverses off a hook around the corner and into another dihedral that would yield to an easy nail-up. My whining and pleading were sufficiently pathetic that the lads acquiesced to letting me try this pitch. My only previous experience with aid had been on D-7 of the Diamond Face of Longs Peak. In for a penny, in for a pound.

It was about half way through this pitch that I suffered a failure of character. At the high point of the pitch I was supposed to place a hook and lean out to the left on it and crawl across the face left and downward to the outside corner of the dihedral. Up to this point my hook placements had been on some really positive small flakes that had engendered confidence in this whole hooking thing, but that placement for the traverse hook look real dodgy to me for the direction I would be pulling on it and I wanted to place a bolt. Jimmy was belaying me and voiced his discomfort with placing bolts on a route where the first ascensionists had not. Philosophically I totally understood his point, but I was also pretty gripped at the thought of traversing off a hook I did not fully trust, seeing as how I was already several hook moves past my last tiny stopper. So I put a bolt in. Sorry Brian, but I have never been as accomplished as you at this sort of thing, and now it is time to confess my sins.

I was able to get around the corner and into the dihedral, nail up a ways, and place some anchors to fix the pitch. As Phil cleaned pitch 5 clouds started rolling in for what would turn out to be a genuine winter storm in the Black Canyon.


Once Phil completed cleaning pitch 5 we all settled back in at the bivy ledge for a meal and sleep. Clearly the weather was changing for the worse, but we were warm and safe at that point in time. The following morning when we crawled out of our bivy bags and port-a-ledge snow coated the walls of the Black Canyon.

It was at this point that we held a council of war and decided to bail. We were about 1/3 of the way up, it was day 3 and snowing, and we still had 2/3 of the pitches, including the crux pitches through the pegmatite dikes well above us. Once the decision was made Tom went up and pulled the fixed ropes from the 5th pitch, we packed our haul bags and started rapping the first four pitches. By the time we had gotten off the wall and muscled our loads back up a snow-filled SOB gulch, we had put in one of the physically most demanding days of our lives. At least three of us were quite happy with our decision, but Phil was very disappointed that we had pulled the plug at the first real sign of adversity. Could we have pulled it off had we persevered? That’s hard to say in retrospect. We were a good team and had yet to tap into Tom and Phils’ considerable climbing talents, but most of our experience was in mountaineering, and we had only modest big wall climbing experience. Looking back, I no longer second guess the mountaineering decisions of my youth. No one got hurt and we all went on to live productive lives enriched by our shared hardships and adventures. Friendships forged on the cliffs and peaks of Colorado and beyond are some of the strongest friendships I have. I have no regrets.