Rocky Mountain High
Fear meets elation when you’re sleeping on a cot against the side of a mountain
NEAR ESTES PARK, COLO.— We’d shimmied into our harnesses back at base camp before scrambling up through the brush and coniferous deadwood to the base of the mountain. We were only a 20-minute drive from Estes Park, but even 10 minutes outside the most bustling town must, by the laws of the state of Colorado, be a wilderness pregnant with a hundred possible Jon Krakauer disaster stories.
Before us: 150 Krakauerian metres of sheer verticality. We were going to be climbing around and over it, lowering ourselves about a third of the way down it and staying there for the night.
We were out here in Rocky Mountain National Park to go cliff camping. Now, strictly speaking, cliff camping is not a thing. When the most serious rock climbers in the world attempt to climb certain rock faces, they are occasionally stuck partway up when they either run out of steam or daylight. Instead of rappelling back down to try again the next day, they decide to sleep on the vertical face itself. So they hammer a few bolts into the rock, secure some lines to it, themselves and a metre-wide canvas bunk they unfurl from their packs, bundle up in an ultralight sleeping bag, and sleep dozens or even hundreds of metres in the air. Sounds fun, right? Local climber and entrepreneur Harry Kent’s idea was to get his professional rock-climbing staff, including Brett Bloxom, to rig up the sky cot in advance and then guide guests up or down to it to experience what previously only the most elite climbers ever have.
Though Bloxom said he gets some stick from fellow climbers about co-opting such a serious activity for tourists, the fact is, cliff camping is pretty elite itself. Only about a dozen people have done it since Kent Mountain Adventure Center started offering it last year, and as far as they know, they’re the only outfit in the world to offer it.
The climb to the top of the cliff is not technical — no special equipment required — but it isn’t easy either. Cliff camping is a leisure activity, according to the Colorado definition of the term. This is an active state, and the bar for entry is set pretty high.
You won’t need much personal gear: loose-fitting but relatively warm clothes (I noticed most of Bloxom’s were from Patagonia) and deep-treaded shoes. Take your phone so you can take photos and advantage of the good cell coverage to amaze your Instagram followers.
Once we arrived at the top, Bloxom tethered us to each other and some bolts in the ground, and then explained we’d be rappelling down together. As anyone can tell you who’s rappelled, but has not rappelled often, that first step into the void takes some grit. Bloxom seemed like a trustworthy sort, though. I’d watched him double-check all the carabiners, and the ropes seemed nice and thick. So I looked over the edge, leaned back into my harness, slowly shifting my centre of gravity off the top of the cliff, and, our legs entwined, sometimes gracefully, sometimes less so, we walked Batman-and-Robin-like down to our bed.
The metal-framed bed didn’t look like it could support us. The first thing Bloxom had me do when we landed on it and our tethers had been transferred to the same bolt that was holding our bed in place was to jump on it, to get it off a couple of crags it had got stuck on. I did as I was told, and when I wasn’t dashed on the rocks below, I felt a little better. .
There are at least half a dozen reasons adventure travellers do what they do. People like to test their limits, do something they haven’t done before, inspire admiration among their friends or, failing that, envy. It can be a way to simply keep fit or throw a variation into an already athletic life. Yet at its best, when you step off a cliff, swim alongside a sea turtle or even just stand upright on a paddleboard for the first time, it can create a tran- scendent moment. Perched on that slip of red canvas amid 1,000 square kilometres of coniferous Rockies, feeling the air chill as the sun slides behind them, and talking to a full-time climber for whom this was every bit as extraordinary as it was for me, was unquestionably one of those moments.
By 8:30 p.m. it was dark and we were tired. We laid out head-to-foot and foot-to-head in our respective sleeping bags, and went to sleep. I woke up once, just long enough to stare up at the unadulterated night sky, framed by the vertical planes that surrounded us.
At about 6:30 a.m., after a 10-hour sleep, I opened my eyes. I turned my head, which had ended up snuggled under a still-sleeping Bloxom’s feet, and looked straight down over the edge. Better than a cold shower.
Stepping off the bivouac into thin air once we’d packed our stuff up was as harrowing as stepping off the summit. The cot shifted under us as we stepped off, a reminder that only ropes tied to a single bolt were holding it in place.
I rappelled down by myself as Bloxom broke down the bivouac. Forty-five minutes later, we were in his truck, and 15 minutes after that I was in the shower at the Four Seasons Inn in Estes Park on a Colorado high I’m not sure any of the state’s legal dispensaries could have matched. Bert Archer was hosted by the Colorado Tourism Office, which didn’t review or approve this story.