And so castles made of sand
Fall into the sea eventually
—Jimi Hendrix, “Castles Made of Sand”
“Did you hear the Crooked Arrow Spire fell down?” my buddy, Ben Kiessel, asked me.
Another one bites the dust, I thought. I used to be surprised when I heard a climb or a major section of a climb fell off, but now two decades plus into my climbing life, it seems to be commonplace.
This piece is an excerpt from Volume 24 of The Climbing Zine, now available
Banner photo: Jimmie Dunn on the first ascent of The Cobra, Fisher Towers, Utah. The tower has since fallen down. Photo: Jimmie Dunn Collection
I climbed Crooked Arrow Spire ten years ago with Dave Ahrens, and I recall a winding chimney that led to a bolt ladder. It’s one of those exciting chimneys where your body is the gear, placements are sporadic, but there’s no need to panic. I’ve always felt very comfortable in these types of chimneys, like a hand crack for your entire body.
Just across from this spire in Castle Valley, Utah, is the classic Jah Man. Well, it used to be classic until the first two pitches fell down.
I remember when I got the news that Jah Man had collapsed. I was in a hotel in Denver, about to fly to Thailand, and I was doing the usual morning social media posting and scrolling. I’d rather be writing in a notebook than pecking on my hand brain, but as a publisher, it’s important to have a constant presence on social, and I was there writing away with my thumbs in the matrix, like many of us are these days.
Of all the climbs that have fallen apart, Jah Man was the only one that made me sad. It was the classic of classics, a tower route that I’d repeat often. I recall an awkward 5.10+ start (the universal default grade for a hard, weird section in the desert of Southeast Utah) and then a 5.8 chimney (also another default, possibly sandbagged grade) that led to a glorious ledge that, once you arrived there, life was beautiful and your only care in the world was a #1 Camalot–sized pitch. (If you had enough of said #1 cams.)
They say you can never truly go home, a statement that contains truth and lies, but returning to a classic tower with a good friend sure is close.
From what I understand, that glorious ledge where thousands of us climbers once stood is where the chimney collapsed. Climbers’ memories, mine included, are often as unreliable as a politician’s promises, but this particular ledge is cemented into my mind for a couple of reasons.
The first time I stood there, my partner and I were struggling. We were in our first couple years of desert climbing, and we didn’t have the gusto for that thin hand crack pitch. I can’t remember which one of us backed off—maybe both of us, maybe we didn’t have enough #1s—but I remember that we retreated. I remember looking at the rock and next to the anchor bolts seeing several holes similar to a block of Swiss cheese. I’d yet to drill a bolt in sandstone, so I wondered what the hell was going on there. Now I know that the holes were probably ovalized due to the quality of the rock, and when they tried to place the bolt, it wouldn’t properly tighten, and thus they had to drill another hole, and another, and another, till they finally got a good one.
I also remember that day, in a momentary lapse of concentration, that I’d unclipped myself from the anchor. I was on that big ledge and must have felt safe and comfortable, but I remember writing in my journal that it freaked me out that I’d completely detached myself from the system.
Years later that crux pitch would be in my wheelhouse, and I’d led it several times. There’s a beautiful metaphor for life in these types of climbing experiences: one day you can’t do something no matter how hard you try, but when you return with more experience and strength, you can enter that flow state, the state that provides some of the best moments for our lives.
The era when I would return, year after year, was when many well-traveled desert tower routes still had tiny quarter-inch bolts about the size of a nail on them. It was also when I still used a hand drill, and I talked more than one climbing partner into doing the hard work of hand drilling a bolt or two on an ascent. Replacing a quarter-incher with a proper modern half-inch expansion bolt is gratifying work.
Photo of Dave Ahrens hand drilling a bolt on Jah Man, circa 2013
Those bolts that we replaced used to get clipped hundreds of times a year, but now they never do, just sitting there on a hunk of rock, a tower that itself will fall down someday. And perhaps aliens will find a chunk of rock with a bolt in it on the ground and be puzzled by what the humans were up to.
Perhaps my statement about those bolts never being clipped is a bit incorrect, because there was a route that emerged from the ashes. Just days after the chimney collapsed, a crew of Moab locals established a route amidst the carnage. From a bit of Mountain Project research, it looks like the grade is solid 5.12, and it gets climbed every so often. I’ll probably never climb it, my appetite for obscure trad climbing is little to none these days, but the fact that a new line arose from the ashes shows that life and climbs go on.
It’s pretty wild to think about standing and climbing on something that fell to the ground. In enough time, like the Jimi Hendrix lyric, all these towers will eventually crash and burn. How wild and awesome it is to climb on them knowing this. Even more wild is that the ones that seem destined to collapse any day now seem to remain on and defy gravity. The Texas Flake on The Nose of El Capitan is one that comes to mind, one of several that climber geologists in Yosemite have their eyes on.
A few days after Ben shared with me what he heard about the Crooked Arrow Spire, I decided to do some internet research. I found a Reddit thread with a picture of the rockfall incident. A massive boulder had fallen off the top of Parriott Mesa, and while it appears as though it may have struck the top of the spire, the tower, in fact, was still standing…….
