South Ridge of Superior (Utah, Little Cottonwood Canyon) February 8, 2013

photo: Maruader - profile shot of South Ridge of Superior with ascent and descent lines drawn in. I did this route in
April of 2012 as well, check out Marauder's trip report for it here. When Moon and I did it there was slightly less snow than is pictured here.

A storm is moving in. Yesterday a presaging cold front pushed out the miasmatic inversion that has been choking the Wasatch. It's not supposed to start snowing until around 9am, but snow flakes waft gently, steadily (and in greater density than I'd prefer) downwards, kissing my nose and ears and I cough, a slurpy hacking, spitting out viscous phlegm onto the asphalt, my lungs slightly burning. I lean back against my car and look around. The lights in the parking lot cast wane beams that reveal the falling snowflakes, directing them to the tarmac.

I'm 28 years old today. I see the twin lights of Moon's pickup swing around the curve into the Little Cottonwood park and ride; I check my phone - it's 6:08 am. He's late to my party.

Last night we discussed the wisdom of doing a technical mountaineering route while racing an incoming snow storm -- I felt some hesitation but Moon argued that being on a prominent ridge we'd be out of avalanche danger and that for the descent we could further bypass avalanche danger by opting to take the east ridge down to another spur instead of the standard descent, glissading down the bowl that funnels down from the summit. Well - I think, looking at the falling snow - at least it's not a race anymore.

We load Moon's pack into my trunk and drive up-canyon towards Snowbird ski resort. 

Moon on the approach to the start of the south ridge early
morning.

I don my helmet and strap on my snowshoes, flipping on my headlamp. We cross the street, hoisting ourselves up a thick bench of plowed snow and sink to our knees. We angle through trees and through deep troughs of powder, heading at a slight diagonal uphill to the start of the ridge. Moon is enthused about the weather, which continues to fill the air with crystals that land as small pricks of cool fire on the skin of my face. I've come to prefer my water stationary, frozen against stone, and subject to the myriad abuses of sharp, climbing-related apperatuses, but I content myself to thoughts of the ridge and push aside anxiety about the possibility of being caught in a full blown storm (the forecast wasn't calling for huge amounts of snowfall).

Just as the storm's cold front brought an end to the pollution's Occupy Wasatch sit-in, however, the cold morning air and the beauty of the ridge rising into the clouds, its stern line blurred by flurries of snow picked up and swirled by vortices of wind, also stirs something in me; I can feel it wrapped in a thought, the exhalation of a conviction,  pushing its way through the preoccupations with ice climbing and finances that have dominated my neural super highways for the last few months. Whatever it is fails to surface and I focus on getting up to the ridge, my mind subsiding into a comfortable blank.

Laboring up sloughs of deep "pow," skiiers delight,
mountaineer's bane.

And then, after some moderate effort slogging uphill in the loose snow, the slope of the land is drawn upward in an ever-tightening line of stone and powder, funneling up into the vertex of Mt. Superior. After diagonaling for some time across the loose fluff and through trees we follow the tightening curve of the ridge and start directly up.

Moon is ahead of me, up to his waist in soft snow that moves easily enough around our legs as they churn but cruelly all but completely disallows forward movement. This is the very definition of slogging. We head for clumps of rocks with nooks and cracks that we can hook with our ice axes and pull up against, searching for pockets of snow with a firm enough crust to support our thrusts forward. The exchange rate this morning between effort and distance is atrocious. My body is a Hummer, bleeding fuel into the snow, inefficient.

Finally we reach a rib of immobile rock that allows quicker travel, and my legs seemed to sigh in relief, exhaling strength and energy back to my limbs. It's taken some time to get even to here and it is growing steadily brighter.

photo: Moon - gratefully pulling myself through the
deep powder with the exposed rock

photo: Moon - finishing the initial slog to the lower section of the ridge
proper.

The once occasional islands of exposed, mottled stone marshal forces against the powder and pull themselves into respectable formation, a pyramidal ridge of stone that marks the beginning of the real fun. We have, however, established the pattern of the ridge that will repeat itself several times before we're done: arduous snow-slog, exhilarating fin of bare stone - rinse, repeat. The route is a manipulative romantic partner, punishing and withholding affection to our breaking point, then, when our pain is almost ready to give way to the liberating clarity of self-respect (enough is enough), the mountain rewards us unexpectedly with bliss, giving us just enough of what we want in such spectacular display that when we're thrown back into the powder our former spark of indignation is lost amid our eager, graceless flailing.

Our first break comes shortly after the section of rock we've just climbed up and across. We climb up next to a drooping cornice that leans off of a perch from which we can see a major portion of our route.

Coming up to the first knife-edged section of the ridge.

Moon is positively effervescent in his glee as he looks at that next section of the ridge, which sharpens considerably.

"This is the best birthday party I've ever been to!" Moon enthuses, unabashed.

I laugh, cough, and spit. It's a valid sentiment. I requested work off for my birthday to get out and do something I love, and with our trip to Europe on the horizon everything now has the added benefit of being  "training."

I'm grinning from ear to ear. This is alpinism. This is what we love.

Because of the cornices, the wind, and the snow on the rock we decide to rope up and simul climb for some extra security. I ask if I can lead out across the first knife-edged section, and Moon graciously concedes, "It is your birthday, after all."

Because the snow on the ridge has been whittled down by the wind into stiff slabs and the rock is covered in powder and occasional smears of ice, we don crampons for extra traction (crampon points, while at first awkward on rock, are actually really helpful for pushing off small footholds, especially in stiff mountaineering boots). I tie into the rope and Moon coils his end around his shoulder and chest, tying it off so that we're tethered to each other by a reasonably short line.

photo: Moon - beginning one of the more exciting sections of the ridge

I begin by approaching a ten foot block of exposed stone and pull myself up, to my left the stone bare, blasted by powerful winds, to my right the snow a treacherous temptation -- cornices are notorious for collapsing. Although the snow extending off the east side of the ridge feels solid I stay off of it as much as possible. In places I can see the seam between the snow and the rock widening, delaminating.

photo: Moon - slowly coming up to the end of the first "serious" section of the ridge, the top of "Suicide Chute," a col
between the lower and upper sections of the South Ridge.

Wind whips around my head and I squint against the grains of crystalline snow that bite my brow and left cheek. 

The ridge is a Richter Scale reading of its own creation. I move carefully up and down a series of sharp points, moving my gloved hands from stone to stone, sometimes jamming a fist between ice and rock while burying the other in the firm snow that somehow clings to the top of the ridge despite the wind that abducts all but the most densely compacted layers.

photo: Moon - a big drop to my right

photo: Moon - almost to Suicide Chute

Cresting one last snow-bedeviled spike in the ridge I slide on my butt down a short snowy ramp that deposits me at the col between the upper and lower portions of the ridge, which is also the top of a steep gully known to skiiers as "Suicide Chute." Moon and I regroup here, clouds swirling around the upper portions of the ridge, ahead of us a large, bare buttress of stone, our first major waypoint.

To our right the chute drops steeply into the bowl below which it feeds. We've gained a lot of elevation, and the vertical relief between the saddle at which we stand and the broad south face of Mt. Superior below is breathtaking.

I begin up the rock that is feathered in strokes up and to the right as if it, like the snow, was swept in the direction of the wind. Weaving up to this hold then that, I ascend the easy ground made thrilling, touched with a little snow and framed by inclement weather. 

photo: Moon - Climbing the rock to get out of the saddle and onto the next
portion of the ridge.

At the rim of the stone buttress the ground eases off into a firm, thin layer of snow that feels disconnected to the ground beneath it; it vibrates as a single piece as I punch it with my hands and feet for purchase. I ignore the image of a slab coming unglued and carrying me down the ridge; the snow here is only an inch or so deep and my crampon points are biting the earth beneath. Soon the ridge sharpens again, and I find myself reaching for stone.

photo: Moon - just above the rock buttress

I turn to watch Moon come up over the rim of the rock buttress below and am immediately lost to where I am in the spectacular view behind me.

Moon in the short snow section that connects the rock buttress and another short section of really exposed ridgeline, a look at the ridge we'd crossed behind us.

As Moon gorilla-climbs up the steep snow section which the rock below abuts, I get my first good view of what's been under our feet. Our path has taken us along the crest of a serrated wall, a beautiful fin whose face is a series of stacked, right-angled, vertically running corners that rise in a precise, parallel geometry. The fin extends out to the left from my current vantage point and ends abruptly, curving, presumably, back to the right and downwards out of sight.

I'm shaken back to the ground beneath my feet when Moon, who has since reared upright off of his hands as the ground eased, whoops again in a guttural expression of unreserved approval for this Picasso of nature. Impossibly, as if the mountain had a taste for the sentimental (think The Notebook) the clouds break and we see blue sky. The falling snow eases and the wind dies. It is a moment of sublime manipulation and we're taken in.

"So dawn goes down today," wrote Robert Frost, "Nothing gold can stay." We're treated to one more short, extraordinary fin of frosted stone before the moment of harmonic crescendo that we've been enjoying is lost and we are again subjected to a heinously deep snow chute.

The rock disappears as the ridge broadens. I lift a leg to swing it forward and up the snow slope, but as I do so my other leg sinks further into snow as the layers of powder I'm trying to push off disintegrate below me when the pressure of my weight is applied. I try a few times, first angling the swings of my leg to the left, then to the right, searching for a pocket of firm snow that will buoy me up as I in turn swing my other leg forward. Soon I have dug out a small pit for myself, a wall of snow reaching up to my waist and blocking the way forward and up. Finally, swinging far out to the side, my leg settles in some firmer snow that I can push against to get my other leg out of the pit I've created to gain a fraction of ground, using my arms like a swimmer. Every once in a while I reach a patch of firm snow that supports my weight and my spirits rise, only to sink with my legs as the crust collapses and I again find myself half jumping, half dragging myself through the powder. This is hell, and progress is excruciatingly slow.

photo: Moon 

We rest frequently and I'm reminded by the improving acoustics in my stomach that I didn't eat breakfast and didn't bring any food. I'm fatigued. Moon slowly catches then passes me, and by the way the rope is gradually growing taught I can tell he's moving faster than I am. Slowly we inch closer to a finger of rock that extends down to us like those foam and rubber red rescue tubes a lifeguard will throw a floundering swimmer. Moon reached it first, and I stopped in breathless jealousy to watch him crawl onto it.

I was out of thoughts and my heartbeat felt hollow, as if it merely pumped stale air through my veins in wheezy paroxysms of desperate, fading energy. This is not an exaggeration. It was getting on towards noon and I hadn't eaten since the night before, and the snow sections of the ridge reached vulgar levels of tedium and the energy cost of movement forward was appalling.

As Moon moved up the rock, gaining speed, I struggled forward, my goal simply to not let the rope go completely taut between us. There was no celebration when I reached the rock, and when again the ridge sharpened, the alley-cat-yowling-duet of my heart and stomach quieted any rapturous outpouring of alpine sentimentality.

photo: Moon

I continued on, not looking up, compelled forward by efforts to prevent the rope from going completely taut. At this point the rope served no purpose; coiling, it, however, would have cost us energy and time, and as it was focusing on Moon's speed as evidenced by what the rope was doing between us was a good motivator.

photo: Moon

Final rock obstacle.

 Moon waited patiently for me to catch up to one final step up an eight foot boulder. When I reached him he placed a cam to protect the step, clipped it (we probably placed three cams the entire ridge, a lot of times we'd just weave the rope over rock horns, alternating what side of the ridge the rope ran on so that if someone fell it would act as a pivot point--we weren't too concerned about falling), and hoisted himself up and took a few, careful steps and was gone from my vision. 

I unclipped the cam and wracked it onto my harness, then when I felt the rope go tight I pulled up onto and over the boulder, scampered up a short section of snow, and had the entire canyon burst into view as we reached the end of the really steep part of the ridge.

Moon topping out the last of the real obstacles on the South Ridge, Monte Cristo ahead.

We faced Monte Cristo, the next mountain west along the Cottonwood Ridge. We turned our sights east to the summit of Mt. Superior, taking a sharp turn right which marked the end of the South Ridge. Now it was a mere walk to the summit though it looked to be a ways off, especially as my legs were so tired and my hip flexors on strike. Luckily there was a good crust on the snow that made walking much easier; I only occasionally would punch through the crust, sinking up to a knee.

Approaching the summit

Looking down at the ridge below. The real end to the South Ridge route
before it turns into a hike up to the summit is at the top of the final horn.

photo: Moon - The South Ridge below

As I'm walking up along this seam where the south face meets the shoulder of the mountain, I catch sight of the South Ridge, and I'm again taken back by the beauty of the view. The words fierce, proud, and brooding come to mind, although the ridge is clearly none of these things, being, after all, only a ridge, made of slow stone, a small bump in the skin of the earth. I feel wasted, completely depleted of calories, my efforts having burned everything that was readily available and surely currently whittling away at some fatty reserve or muscle tissue. Oxygen and magnesium. The thought comes and goes without an accompanying explanation, but I feel the stirring again. Like this morning. As I rest, panting slightly, looking down at the oval shadows below that are the transient memory of our plodding, I remember how in my high-school-Chemistry class the teacher once used a strip of magnesium and a lighter to demonstrate a chemical reaction.

Although magnesium reacts easily to oxygen in the air, it requires a source of energy to meet the activation energy requirement, or the minimum amount of energy needed for the reaction to take place. It has to be unsettled. So you hold a flame to the strip and the heat is the catalyst that starts the reaction. Magnesium needs eight valence electrons in its outer energy level to be stable. It has two, and oxygen has six (oxygen also needs eight to be stable). The heat from a flame provides the necessary energy to stabilize the two, a process in which the two outer electrons of the magnesium atom are transferred to the oxygen atom. Magnesium, having lost its valence electrons, loses that outer energy level - but the level beneath has eight, and it is stable after the transference. The atoms now have equal, opposite charges (+2 and -2) and they form a new ionic compound: magnesium oxide. Metal and air, bonded by flame.

As my breathing starts to slow and I feel the lactic acid draining from my legs, replaced by dull fatigue, I feel happy and content. Like the magnesium I have been stripped of my outermost energy level, exposing a more stable core. The manufactured complexity of modern living has all been reduced to a set of concerns and basic actions far simpler yet far more physically demanding than what my life consists of down in the valley. The beauty of the ridge, the weather, this setting, these are my oxygen. Beauty alone, however, is not enough catalyst for the reaction I feel. The difficulty of the ascent, exacerbated by the wintry conditions, has burned through all my body's meager caloric caches and I feel anemic, like the powder left in the wake of the burning strip. The fatigue and the wearing away of my strength leave me vulnerable to fores I feel in this place at a lower level than I would normally register at full physical capacity. My fatigue is the catalyst, and something about this place changes me into a more basic creature, simpler, without complexity of motive or thought. Perhaps the edict to lose one's life to gain it is just a matter of chemistry. The reward is in the process and the final compound. The incandescent burning of the magnesium is tantamount to the caustic joy I feel of laboring up unforgiving terrain and suddenly being greeted with the beauty of your surroundings, or pulling across a blade of stone and catching sight of the exposure below you, having it shock you to consciousness and feeling all that space rush in to you. This is the mountaineer's high, and it is a sign of the reaction taking place.

When left alone to the minutia of my life I tend to be moody and react strongly to emotional stimuli, but if I can get out, especially into the mountains, I find I am much more balanced in my everyday life, and after each trip am more motivated and have more energy to accomplish the "higher" tasks at hand. I get more of this feeling from the long, mountaineering routes than from a few hours of climbing (thought it is also rewarding); there is something about totally exhausting oneself, that, combined with the beauty of alpine terrain, produces a longer, brighter burn, and a greater feeling of satisfaction that bears over into my personal life. I can honestly also say that I am psychologically different because of my alpine experiences.

photo: Moon - walking slowly to the summit

Moon and I on the summit

On the summit the wind picked up considerably. Moon shared some water he had that was flavored with a powder mix, and the sugar helped me to regain some of my depleted energy. If being in the right place can have a positive effect on the psyche, being in the right place with a good companion only magnifies the benefits. It felt good to be on the summit, and the banshee-wind with its attendant sheets of snow that were actually being carried up the mountain just increased the alpine feel and the sense that we'd been transported into another elemental plane disconnected from our concerns and cares below.

The ridge extending west of Superior to Monte Cristo. Dromedary, Sunrise, and the BF Twins also share this ridgeline,
known as the Cottonwood Ridge. Moon and I will traverse the entire ridge from Superior later in the spring.

Even my visage had been transformed, bonding with the elements swirling around us.

photo: Moon

Much to our delight the wind howled raucously up the face of the mountain, its breath flinging pellets of snow in waves of icy bullets. Whatever world we'd crept up into, fragile interlopers, its swirling chaos brought us peace.

photo: Moon - me on the descent, the wind buffeting us pretty hard

****A special word of gratitude to Moon. On our way down we glissaded down sections of the ridge, and during one glissade my camera case came unclipped from my backpack. I didn't realize this until after a half hour or so after it had happened. I was so tired I was ready to leave it behind, the thought of having to snowshoe up through the powder looking for it was too much, but Moon, insisting that if someone offered him $300 to climb for 45 min back up the ridge, would find the strength to do it. I followed him but he made the real effort, finally retrieving my camera and all my pictures of the trip, saving me a lot of money. Thanks man!