NOTHING STOPS “MO” BECK FROM GETTING TO THE TOP
Lauded Colorado paraclimber joins Maine amputee in documentary “Adaptive”
The Lotus Flower Tower, a 2,200-foot wall in the Cirque of the Unclimbables in Canada’s Northwest Territories, is considered one of the world’s great climbing walls and is listed in the guidebook “Fifty Classic Climbs of North America.” Arvada resident Maureen “Mo” Beck, who was born without a left hand, and Jim Ewing, a climber from Maine who is a below-the-knee amputee, climbed it in August 2018 with a film crew documenting the adventure.
The peak is located in extremely remote terrain 700 miles east of Anchorage, Alaska. The documentary on their climb, “Adaptive,” is touring the country with more than 70 stops on the schedule, four of them coming next week along the Front Range.
Beck, 33, is a former Paraclimbing world champion, and in March, National Geographic named her one of six Adventurers of the Year. She works for Eldorado Climbing Walls, based in Louisville, and for Paradox Sports, which provides adaptive climbing opportunities for athletes with disabilities. She also is supported by The North Face, Sterling
Ropes and Scarpa footwear, speaking and teaching at clinics for those companies.
Ewing, 55, lives in Maine where he is an engineer for Sterling Ropes, which funded the film project.
The Denver Post interviewed Beck and Ewing via teleconference last week to discuss the climb and the movie.
Q : Jim, the f ilm begins by explaining how you lost your lower left leg and how you returned to climbing. Can you summarize that part of your story?
Ewing: The simple summary is that I screwed up in a major way and ended up taking a fall that resulted in a belay-system failure. Ultimately I fell 50 feet to the ground and got completely shattered. The worst of it was my ankle, which was not really salvageable. Over the course of a year following the accident, it just got worse and worse, to the point where I could barely walk on it. Everything I researched pointed me in the direction of amputation.
Q : But there’s a lot of second-guessing that comes with voluntary amputation, isn’t there?
Ewing: I made the decision, and I knew all along that I would go through with it, but it’s still an emotionally painful decision. While you’re waiting, you start to think, “Well, maybe I don’t need to do this. Maybe I should look at something else.” Because you are losing a limb, and it’s permanent, and you can’t put it back on if you don’t like how it feels, it’s this very definitive (thing). You can’t turn back. I think it’s the instinct of self-preservation.
Q : What was it like returning to climbing?
Ewing: I actually returned to climbing before my amputation, but it was very difficult and very painful. I’ve been a climber for over 40 years. When my friends were asking me to go out climbing, I realized I was starting to try to find excuses to not go, because I knew it was going to hurt a lot. That’s when I figured out something had to change, because for me to not want to go climbing, there’s something wrong. Ultimately, I ended up with the amputation and returned to climbing before I got my first prosthesis. I suddenly could climb without fear of bumping my foot and causing pain. I would use crutches to get to the base of the wall, put on the one climbing shoe and just go for it. I felt so much freer, free from that pain, free from the fear of that pain. (Note: Ewing’s climbing accident occurred in December 2014; the amputation was in July 2016.)
Q : How did you decide to climb Lotus Flower Tower?
Ewing: It was my idea, and I started thinking about it after my amputation. I started trying to think of cool objectives, things that I had always wanted to do. Lotus Flower Tower was one that was always there as an, “I’ll get to it one day.” If you want to be a little philosophical about it, after you have a near-death experience, you start to think, “What are the things on my list that I want to get done?” The Lotus Flower Tower has just always struck me as one of the most beautiful lines anywhere in the world. So that was it — that was what I wanted to do.
Q : Mo, when you got the invitation from Jim — whom you had never met — what was your reaction?
Beck: First, I Googled Jim. I found out he’s actually a super-legit climber. I feel like more people should have heard of him, but he kind of flies under the radar. I don’t even think I Googled what Lotus Flower Tower was. I had never heard of it, but it just sounded cool. I was thinking, why not? I had never done anything like this before, but when someone asks you to try it, you should try it.
Q : Mo, an interesting tension in the f ilm comes from the fact that you are primarily a sport climber without a lot of experience in “trad” (traditional) climbing. For people who don’t know anything about climbing, please explain the difference between the two and why it presented a challenge for you.
Beck: Sport climbing is more about the physical act of climbing, but you’re quite safe the whole time. The protection (hardware) is already in the wall for you, bolted and glued in. It’s like a 100-meter sprint. It’s an athletic feat; the track is there for you, you just go up and execute. Trad climbing is more like a milelong run where you’re laying your own track (on a rock face) the whole time. It’s more work, it’s strenuous, and along the way you’re placing your own protection (in the rock) that is removable. This was my first time on a 2,000-foot face where I would be spending a night.
Q : Lotus Flower Tower is a gorgeous peak in a spectacular setting. What was it like to be there, to take in the surroundings, and look up at that huge face?
Beck: The big thing for me was the scale. Here (in Colorado), when you see (a peak) from the road it looks big, but by the time you hike all the way in, you’re like, “Oh, it’s actually not as big as it looks.” It seems more approachable, once you’re at the foot of something here. The Unclimbables just never got human, from going around them in the helicopter to actually being down in the cirque. Usually when you’re on a wall, your perspective changes and you feel comfortable. There is no point on that tower that you don’t feel like an ant.
Q : What was the climbing like?
Beck: It was much wetter than we (expected). Everything you read tells you that the (rock) is loose and the climb is wet, but when you go to do those things, you still have a little bit of denial, like, “For us, it’ll be dry,” and, “For us, the rocks will be nice and solid.” It just wasn’t. We were moving so much slower than we had planned on, because the wall was so completely wet from the rainy season. People complain about loose rock in Colorado (but) that is nothing compared to the loose rock up there. It was terrifying. And, in the pictures and from the research I had done, the tower looks like it has really nice big cracks that I could fit my stump into, but the cracks were way smaller than they looked. They were tiny, like you couldn’t even get your fingertips in most of them, so I had a much harder time climbing than I thought I would.
Ewing: Conditions were quite a bit more rough than I had anticipated. I’m used to climbing a variety of “garbage” (rock), but this stuff was right up there with some of the most garbage-y stuff I had ever climbed. The lower pitches are actually quite easy, and we could have climbed those easily, except we brought packs (for an overnight stay on the peak). That’s what slowed me down the most. The terrain was quite loose, which normally I can deal with, but having a pack on just made it that much worse. And the scale of this stuff, it was pitch after pitch with stuff on it that could potentially kill you, almost on any move.
Q : The stunning beauty of those peaks comes through in the f ilm. What was it like when you could relax your focus, settle in for a night on the mountain and admire the scenery?
Beck: For the first time in about 18 hours, we got to sit and look around and relax. For all of the horrible weather we had on that trip, this one night that we were sleeping out in the open was calm, pretty warm, no wind at all. The Northern Lights came out, which was really early (in the year) for them. This was my first time ever bivying on a wall. There were no lights for hundreds of miles, so the stars were just incredible, as were the Northern Lights. That’s when I was pinching myself, wondering if it was real. It felt like Disney World, like there was no way it could be real.
Q : Mo, at one point in the f ilm you say, and I’m paraphrasing, “If you can’t decide whether or not to do something and the only reason you have for not doing it is fear, maybe that means you should do it.” Please elaborate.
Beck: I should have said no to the trip because I was unqualified. It was like if you ask someone who has taken a couple of intro ski lessons, “Do you want to go backcountry heli-skiing now?” It was such a big step for me. I was afraid of letting Jim down. Then I realized I’d already imagined all the worst-case scenarios, so it can only get better from there. And I was never worried about safety. I didn’t think Jim or I would do anything risky. I wasn’t afraid for my life and limb, it was more the emotional, “Am I ready for this?” The actual takeaway was, “Oh my gosh, I’m so glad I said yes, even though it led to some sleepless nights leading up to it.” Since then I’ve said yes to some other crazy things that I’m unqualified for.
Q : Such as?
Beck: I’ve dabbled in ice climbing, in the Ouray Ice Park and some multi-pitch (climbs) back east, but I’m not an ice climber. Then another amputee friend of mine, Chad Jukes from Ouray, said, “Hey, you want to come up to Alaska and do this big multipitch backcountry ice-climbing expedition?” This was after Lotus, so my yes to him was even quicker. I was immediately like, “Yep. There, done.” I’ll figure it out. It’ll be great.