White Washer Rim
Part of my forehead slid past my hood and touched the frigid, breath wet window. The sensation woke me up. Daylight. Ryan, Derek and I had been having a nice, unplanned nap in Ryan’s 4-Runner. My position in shotgun was perhaps the best of the three since I didn’t have a steering wheel to contend with and Derek shared the back with his bike, but none of us could recline our seats. Three day old grocery store donut remnants dotted my shirt, and a headache had formed. I never used to get headaches. The second half of my 30’s has been full of surprises. We had driven here in the dark, partly the night prior and partly that morning. In the darkness, the journey lacked perspective and now that I could see it felt like Ryan had teleported me to this place.
I stumbled out of the car, stiff and clumsy, for a look around. Soft sandstone slabs lay broken and scattered where the earth had eroded beneath them. Dirt transitioned to rock and then back to dirt on and on. In the distance the rock transitioned to air, hinting at a void of impossible size. In the other direction and further afield the rock shot up into massive towers and walls. Everywhere, all around there was only air, dirt and rock with one prevailing color: red. The exception was that sometimes the rock skewed a white color, so as far as I could see the land was either red or nothing.
We were along the White Rim Trail in Utah, which until this moment I had not realized mostly existed inside of a giant hole, and circled another smaller but still very giant hole. Ryan and Derek pointed out towers, some of which they had already climbed. Between them they could name every significant landmark in sight. I remained disoriented, and couldn't follow the thread of their conversation nor validate the accuracy of their names. Not only did this place look like Mars to me, it felt like it too.
Eventually, we three found ourselves silent and looking up toward the tower we had come here to climb; Washer Woman Tower—so named because it looks a lot like a woman bent over a washtub. Probably a good opportunity to joke about calling it washer person tower, I can’t find the words and I maybe utter something even less refined like “Holy shit”.
We (mostly I) cram some more stale donuts and then fill two packs with water, two 40 meter ropes, a double rack, and extra toilet paper for Ryan since he has to shit all of the time. The approach is trivial, and soon we are talking strategy at the base of the first pitch. Ryan asks if I want to lead since it is rumored to be sort of wider and my hands are big(ger). On the drive in I’ve tried to make it clear that I’m not to be relied upon in this place but climbing talk is often laced with false modesty and my real modesty must have been ignored. I refuse immediately and without any hesitation. Derek says he thinks Ryan should lead this first one, and doesn’t even offer up any sort of hand size related logic. Derek must see no reason to be tricky about it, and tells Ryan what we all know: he’s the best crack climber here.
Ryan starts up, Derek belays, and I go in search of the rappel line so I can drop one of the packs filled with items we’ve deemed unnecessary for the task at hand. By the time I’m back, tied in and shoe’d up, Ryan is off belay. Our strategy is to have the two followers climb at the same time, one about a rope’s stretch distance ahead of the other. This works much better than I thought it would, not much slower than a standard 2-person set up and with the advantage of a third guy on hand at all of the belays to deal with ropes and such. Derek and I both follow without too much difficulty.
As we prepare for the next lead, which I have again declined without hesitation, we begin to hear two climbers below us; Charlie and Tom.
I’m sure you’ve seen it written. Maybe even at length, but at least in the form of a meme. Most likely, as multiple posts on social media by your friends—both the kind that you spend time with and the kind you have never met. 2021 was a shit year. Perhaps you have seen me write it too. This labeling of a collection of time, which we have ourselves defined, as either good or bad. We did it in 2021 and 2020. I suspect this practice predates the pandemic too, but my screen poisoned millennial brain cannot recall specifics from such a distant past. On the whole, my year was objectively terrible. When you can deck from 40 feet and permanently wreck your body—but it isn’t even the worst thing that happened—you’ve had a bad stretch. Shit happens, but this idea that you can make an accounting of an entire year, summing all of the good and all of the bad to see where things landed isn’t helpful to anyone. Not only is a year laced with beauty, so are the individual events which would otherwise be painted a shit colored brown. Life is nuanced.
Even a skilled optimist might have trouble finding the beautiful lining, which for the purposes of this analogy may as well be silver in color, of every seemingly tragic event. Given time and motivation, I’m remarkably capable of performing this trick. Yet, despite my skills in this arena there is no denying it: I was badly in need of a win.
The origin of this trip was Charlie, and to a greater extent his twin brother Max. Max had partnered with the legendary Stefan Griebel some years back to combine a climb of Washer Woman Tower with a complete loop on the White Rim. The tower, an impressive feat on its own, is a 6 pitch journey 500 feet into the sky. Our route, first climbed in 1982 by Charlie Fowler and Glenn Randall is rated 5.10+. I’ll also note that the rappel line is called the “Kor route”. I don’t know who first climbed the tower, but Layton Kor is a safe bet to have been the first to climb just about anything in America.
The White Rim is perhaps best known as a jeep trail. Legend has it that the original entrepreneur of endurance Buzz Burrell is the first to have ridden the entire loop by bike in a day. Since I am lucky enough to have access to Legends, I asked for confirmation and some details:
Yes, May 1985. I remember everything about it, including carrying the bike for a half mile on the scree slope above the road because the road was flooded from high water.
The frame was handmade by Tom Ritchie and we built it up at a shop in Crested Butte. Thirty some years later the gravel people re-invented it - quite ironic if not amusing to me.
It was a sweet frame with the lugless fillets hand brazed and very smooth. Reynolds 531 steel. 26” was the only size wheels made; I used 1.5” tires (inflated incorrectly to 48 psi). Shox wouldn’t be invented for another decade.
We packed wet sand into the Cinelli drop bars and bent them out. 23-36-46 front, probably 13-32 rear, 6-speed. Mafac cantilever brakes. Sun Tour bar-end shifters. I always rode with toe clips and road shoes.
For the White Rim I had 3 20 oz bottles, but one bounced out, so I did it with 40 oz and thus was wiped out. I don’t remember food - I used to put dried apricots in the water. Never carried a backpack - still think it’s stupid, even though all MTB’ers do it, no matter what.
The original plan was to go out with Art Burroughs (originator of the Summit Telemark Series) and a few people, but they all faded from the picture, so I went out and did it myself. 11hr 20m - would have been a lot faster except for the hike-a-bike and running out of water.
This loop is now ridden by bike regularly each spring and fall, but at just over 100 miles long it is still an impressive achievement to do so in a single day. The terrain is not easy or fast, and if you’re anything like me you have to stop a lot to take in the expansive and beautiful view. Combining this ride with the climb of a desert tower is… not done regularly.
Charlie, now 10+ years older than his twin bother was when he linked these two objectives had visions of equaling the achievement under the added strain of age and life complexity (his wife Ella was pregnant with their first child). So he “trained quite a bit for it”. He also called up one of the bike-inist and climb-inist guys that you’ve never heard of in Tom. Motivation mixed with considerable strength and skill, and just like that a near perfect team was formed—the A team if there ever was one. I’m not sure how me and my crew of lackeys glommed on, but every A needs a B.
Derek, son of the devil himself (Bill Wright), had already biked the entire White Rim multiple times, with his father and climbed many desert towers with him as well. His adventure laden resume at such a young age rivals many of the professional mountain athletes I know, and far surpasses my own. But, he hadn’t been biking much. In fact he didn’t even have a bike and so he had to borrow one from our friend Stefan. The tires were in such terrible shape that you could practically see the tubes through the frayed side walls. When we unloaded the thing and gave it a look over we pronounced his chances of making it through the 100 miles near zero. Nothing to be done about that now though, we saved those problems (which thankfully never bore out) for our future selves.
Ryan has been my friend for what, a decade now? Long enough to know the score I suppose. Ryan is a monster. A cute little monster, with stubby legs and child’s joy. Ryan feeds on adventure, the way I feed on stale donuts. He can’t stop moving on to the next one. I see the strain this puts on him, and when I’m lucky enough to have joined up with him I see the happiness it brings him. The chances of success dramatically increase when Ryan is involved. He has no quit in him. I’ve been there many times now. Late into the night, both of us now unable to speak our fear and doubt. He will look at me with a blank expression. No smile but also no frown. Uncracked. He will stand up first and continue. I’ll see his broken gate and make no comment. He is an artist of motion, a poet of pain, and so I’ll get up too.
That just leaves me to round out the B team. Four months removed from a battle with gravity. Did I win the battle? Who can say? I’m scarred. Pain follows me now everywhere I go, even to bed. I’m alive though. Many types of strength can bring success on any particular climb, but the one I have leaned on the most has been a strength of mind. I have, from the outset, generally been able to quiet my fear and continue into an ever more dangerous position. This strength has now been revealed as a perilous weakness. Rock climbing is not an activity which will reward an ability to turn off the brain, given time. I lack confidence now. I don’t know what I can do anymore, for how long I can do it, or if I can be relied upon to decide how to do it in the first place.
I am on a desert tower now, over 200 feet in the air. Full of doubt, fear and the ever present pain to remind me where these feelings came from. Derek took the second pitch while we ascended closer to the sky. I’m offered the next lead as we’ve run out of turns. I’m still unsure I can physically withstand even a minor fall, and my friends do not need me to extend our progress. Yet, I surprise myself and take the rack. I need a win.
I hem and haw a bit at the point where I need to leave the ledge and suspend myself over the abyss below, but soon I’ve placed a cam and moved up. Then another cam, and another movement up, and so forth. My brain isn’t off, but I’ve achieved that feeling I have looked for since childhood. Total focus, such that my mind is singularly attentive to this moment and this task. Meditation through motion. This pitch is rated the same difficulty as the one that I almost died on 4 months ago. I flow through it, not with ease, but with competence. I finish on the ridge of the formation that forms the washer woman’s tub, and so I move out onto a wide platform in the sky. Wind rushes from beyond, and I see all the land on the other side that we haven’t been able to see yet. This place is achingly beautiful, foreign and strange. I set up a belay so that I can bring my friends up to see this too.
We make two more pitches, led by Ryan and then Derek, to the summit of the tower. The A team has been nipping at our heels throughout the climb and eventually they join us on the summit.
This is an impossible position to be in. Nobody should be here.
There is no reason to be here.
Yet, here we are. Here I am. Not dead, and still climbing. Is this a win? Have I defied the odds or have I delayed the inevitable and now experience a slight moment of elation during a slow march toward tragedy? If I fall from here, I won’t show up to work on Monday. It won’t be long before my paycheck stops coming and the bank takes the house. My wife will have no husband and my kids no father. I understand how close I came to death 4 months ago. Emphatically, I do not want to die—now or ever—if possible.
My ability to turn my brain off and ignore fear does not extend into normal life. I can’t make showing up to work on Monday my only desire. I can’t ignore the fear of living a life inside the lines. I can’t explain the feeling of being somewhere that nobody should be and seeing what almost nobody can see.
There is no reason to be where I am.
I wish I could share this feeling I have up on this tower but I don’t have words for it. There are no words for it. If you could feel this you would understand that you don’t need a reason to be where I am. You don’t need a reason to fall in love either. Reasons are for mortgage payments, lawncare, cell phone plans, and oil changes. This is a place of poetry, art and music. Things you don’t need, until suddenly you do—when you become desperate for a way to channel the feelings that define a life free of true need.
This was a win.
We make the rappels back to the ground. They are intense. At one point my hip brushes against the wall and a block of stone breaks free and nearly hits Derek in the leg. I hold my body against the wall to prevent an even larger chunk from letting loose until the fellas can get shelter around a corner. Geological time includes now and maybe I’m clumsier than I used to be.
Soon we’re back to the car and we’re swapping our climbing equipment for biking equipment. I attempt to taint the A team’s accomplishment with stale donuts but they hold strong and avoid temptation. At this point in the day, we are beginning the 100 mile bike loop but the A team is about 40% done with it. They are unsupported by donuts or anything else. They must carry all of their climbing gear around the loop on their backs. A teams don’t fuck around. They depart first while we try to get our bikes figured out, B team style. Derek’s borrowed bike needs borrowed bags to hold his stuff and I dispense my gear and knowledge to try to get it up to snuff as best as my B team ass can.
When we depart I pedal with fury and pride. I feel desirous of catching up the A team given that they are handicapped by comparison. We do, and mostly ride all together until nightfall. Along the way I experience total shock and genuine wonder at this land. Ryan is the same, as it is his first time here as well. We creep up on the edge of the rim and peer into vast and open land that may well be untrodden. Is there another void contained within this one too? Another one inside that one? On and on to the center of the Earth or perhaps some other dimension? How will I ever return from this place knowing this type of land exists? What a trip.
The trail flows eternally, like all loops. Everything here is huge and you can’t see the end to it. The sun beats down from above, and the parched land shifts and creaks under the strain of my tires. Walls of dirt and stone surround me and my path circles the abyss on my left with little signs of life for my untrained eyes. Trained eyes would likely find life all around. There are hints now and again of the destructive power of the water that infrequently washes through this place. When I was a child I could spend days on weeks watching water move across the rock and sand in my yard sourced from a hose and funneled into a PVC pipe my dad had set into the ground. You can’t be in this place without thinking about water, and you can’t do what I’m doing without feeling like a child playing in the yard.
Night falls and I migrate with the sun into C team status. This bike has no dynamo headlight and my headlamp is… not great. Not even good. Sometimes the sand opens and a snakelike ditch forms, stretched unseen in front of me. My tire gets sucked into it and I crash. My still broken body cracks and creaks under this fearsome and violent strain. I don’t want to test my fragile neck so recently free of a brace, but I don’t have many options except to slow down. I still crash. This is rough. Despite it, I’m enjoying myself in the fucked up way people that do things like this enjoy themselves. Hints of the landscape wash across the horizon bathed in silver moonlight. Arches, voids, towers. Twists of rock improbable and strange. I do my best to attack the up-hills with my waning strength and although I think everyone probably waited for me, we all end up back at the A team’s camp at about the same time.
A team is done, and they’ve achieved something special this day. B team is at a decision point. I don’t need to ask Marsters any questions, he wants to continue. I can feel it baking off of him or maybe I just know my friend. Derek does not seem as enthusiastic. Tom pulls out home brewed beers. Ella cooks us all spaghetti, which she purchased earlier in the day when she sensed our plans for food might be the stale donuts back in Ryan’s 4-Runner 40 miles away. I’m content. Surrounded by friends, happy and tired. I’m secure in the knowledge that if Ryan picked up his bike, and continued in pain and misery toward the finish line… I would follow. I don’t feel the need to lead such a charge though, and soon we are rolled up in sleeping bags trying to find sleep.
Morning comes and Ryan is running around like a puppy. Checking his chain and tightening the straps on his bags. When I open my eyes he’s standing above me “let’s go dude!”
So we do. Technically we finish the loop + the tower in under 24 hours, but we’ve done it in poor style and not In-A-Day by my definition. That’s OK. We are the B team after all. I have found what I often look for. Beautiful land. Peace in a warm breeze and still mind. Challenge and triumph. Friendship. Laughter. Joy. I don’t need a reason to look for these things, and I never will.