Doug Artman (solo)

By: Doug Artman | Climbers: BLAT_CLIMBERS |Trip Dates: August 30-31, 2004

Photo: BLAT_PHOTO

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"Well baby I failed."

"Does that mean you're going by yourself again?"

"As usual." I replied.

I had been trying for the last week to find a partner for some moderate alpine climbing in California's Sierra Nevada, without success. My wife just hates it when I solo routes up to about 5.8 in difficulty, but it is getting more and more common.

"Don't worry honey, its only an ice climb this time with an easy 5.6 finish," I snickered. Cell phone conversations being what they are we concluded by agreeing to meet in Bishop for dinner. She was finishing up a drive from southern California, and I would come down from our home in Northern Nevada. After dinner I drove up into the hills for the night seeking relief from the Owens Valley heat.

I was in no particular hurry this morning so I finally got on the trail about 7:30 am. I carried my usual 'flail or bail' gear: a short rope, a few pieces of pro, and a harness. It's a compromise to going alone. Passing up through the Lamarck Lakes. I arrived 3 hrs and 3800 vertical feet later at Lamarck Col, from which there is a fairly direct view of the North faces of Mt. Darwin and Mt. Mendel. The North Face ice route on Darwin looked in excellent shape. The Mendel couloirs however looked thin to non-existent and dirty with rock fall. I had been here before, though, and let this distant assessment fool me. I determined to at least go up to the base of the route. It was blowing hard at the col so I didn't spend a lot of time there and instead dropped down to bench a couple of hundred feet above the lakes of Darwin canyon.

I woke up cold....again. "Damn I'm always cold in this canyon" I muttered and tried to go back to sleep. 5am finally arrived. "Too dark" I rationalized.

5:30am came. "Grunt"

6:00: I couldn't lay there any longer, so I got myself together and started stumbling down the hill to the uppermost lake. My boots left no traces on the rock hard snow. In the cirque beneath the couloirs I stopped to put on crampons as trying to kick steps up the steepening snow was too energy-intensive. I had considered climbing the left couloir called Ice Nine if the route looked in. From below it looked like there was little or no ice after the first couple hundred feet. I resolved to climb the right couloir which from here appeared to be good fat water ice to somewhere above the chockstone. I climbed through the 'shrund on rotten loose rock and got back on neve heading right toward the lower most ice. Enjoyable climbing led up to a short, easy mixed section below the chockstone. Above that was a steeper section of good ice then, abruptly, the ice thinned to a foot wide trickle in the gullet of the couloir. Certainly climbable with crampons but with all the rock it seemed faster just to climb without them. Some careful climbing over verglass covered rock brought me to the top of the couloir. All of a sudden I was in brilliant sun and afforded a massive view. I looked up to see the summit plateau just a short distance above. I stripped off some clothes, changed shoes and headed up. The summit was so pleasant I spent over an hour there.

"If I can just waste enough time here, I can rationalize away climbing back over the col and hiking out." I paged through the summit registers going back as far as 1978, recognizing many old familiar names from the past as well as a fair number from more recent internet boards. No one visited the summit of Mendel or Darwin while I sat enjoying the sun and views. Eventually I headed down the East Face and made my way back to camp.

"Damn, its just too early." I took my time packing up and then trudged back up to Lamarck Col. At the col I met a couple guys setting up to attempt the Evolution Traverse. After talking a bit, we discovered that one of them had been in the Waddington Range of Canada last year at the same time as I had. I spent probably close to another hour chatting before finally heading down the trail. Back at my truck, the self-congratulatory beer was as good as always.