Deep


in the woods, far removed from outside influence, it seems unlikely that I would find my


way into the climbing world. With a population long- sustained by the paper industry, it is far more likely to encounter the wool-clad hook and bullet crowd rather than the typified tree-hugging, organic-cottoned, yoga mat-toting, contemporary rock-crusher or the nouveau nylon hippy: soft-shelled and macchiato-sipping at the corner café, pontificating on high-country conditions. What I knew best, growing up on the fringe of Baxter State Park, in the shadow of billowing smokestacks, was the desire to escape, to leave the dead-end depression of a remote and dying factory behind. I grew bored with the day-to-day sameness, loathed the fatalism projected by a community with “nothing to do” and yearned for adventure and the uncertainty of risk in the unknown. I made my first venture onto Katahdin by way of its gentle western slope, at age 12, following the famed final stretch of the Ap- palachian Trail. I wound through forest, along stream, past steepen- ing waterfalls, to emerge from tight sub-alpine spruce amid boulders and wind. Scrambling exposed ridgeline finally eased to rolling tundra. The stretching plateau, now in view, seemed to float well above the world of dense forest and innu- merable lakes below to yield a high summit. From here, the landscape expanded well-beyond the crowded treetops, the air was clean, not heavy with yellow-sulfur industrial waste or smothering humidity. At once I felt energized, limitless and free of my oppressive small-town captivity. Despite the proximity, my visits to the park were infrequent, but spending summers on nearby South Twin Lake, I would wake every morning to a view un-inter- rupted as The Greatest Mountain appeared to rise directly from water with nearly 4,000 feet of relief and jutting from an otherwise flat landscape. I would gaze upon those


16 climber MAGAZINEism |


high slopes with a vivid imagination, longing to re-visit tundra and cool breeze. Today I live in the heart of the Rocky Mountain West, in a hip spot called Bozeman. I make ends meet by ty- ing one season to the next, guiding climbers and skiers from around the globe in the local hills and the increas- ingly-popular Hyalite Canyon. By carving a niche out of the local culture and ranges, I’m now able to find an ad- venture fix on a near-daily basis, and every time I do, my mind drifts back to the beginning, back to Katahdin… It’s difficult to determine an exact time and place where climbing began for me. I managed a few hikes to the top of The Mountain with friends as a teen, always trying to outdo each other – scrambling more exposed lines, finding steeper ways. It wasn’t until I went to college in Vermont that I finally tied into a rope and unwittingly risked everything, leading run-out slabs in heavy leather


SEPTEMBER OCTOBER 2011 |


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