Don't Save Anything: The Uncollected Writings of James Salter(52)
Climbing has no referees, no arena, no titles. It has a certain ethic that, in recent years, has been veering toward the extreme. The hard climbs in Eldorado are visible because of the chalk marks on them, evidence of where crucial handholds are. Erickson will not use chalk—the white bag of courage, it has been called. Further, he will not continue a first ascent on which he takes a fall. If that happens, he goes down and abandons the attempt permanently. His feeling is that no climb should be done in a way that differs from how it would be done solo without a rope. Even the retreat, if one must be made, can have nothing artificial about it such as lowering off a piece of protection.
Not everyone conforms to such standards, of course—not everyone can. Climbing has its champions, and they are chosen in what is perhaps the only way. They are singled out in the hearts of others in a confusion of envy and love. They are champions for reasons that are in part clear—their accomplishments, their personalities—but also for things that are not so easy to define. A brilliant climb in itself is not enough to elevate someone into the pantheon. Mountains cannot be assassinated nor the heights won in a single day. The glory belongs only to those who have earned it and usually over a period of time. In this regard, the morality is absolute. There are no upsets, no undeserved triumphs. In one sense, there is no luck. This severity gives the sport its strength. There is a paradise and a final judgment. Above all, climbing is honest. Honor is its essence.
Still, at the end, there may be a question. “People like to do climbs with big numbers on them,” Erickson says. It’s like a drug. For many this means doses of increasing strength until even these begin to lose their effect. “The thing about it is that it is self-indulgent, it has no purpose. It accomplishes nothing except for personal pleasure.” Sometimes, he says, he’s ashamed to admit that he is still climbing at his age. He is thirty.
Logan Construction is on the second floor of a small shopping center. There are two rooms, some drafting tables, plans tacked on the wall and a blackboard with “I love you Daddy” scrawled near the bottom. Jim Logan is divorced. He has twin boys. “I raise them half the time,” he says. “I have them every Wednesday through Saturday.”
Logan is slight, with light brown hair and a reddish beard. He’s thirty-two, wears glasses, and has a quiet, easy manner. A few years ago he went out and taught himself to ice climb. That summer he did the North Face of the Eiger. It was his first real ice climb and one of the few American ascents. “I put my first ice screw in on the Eiger,” he says. “The mountains have always interested me. I was a good climber when I was a little kid. My mother says I could always climb trees and buildings better than anyone. I liked being up in the air.”
Born in Texas, he came to prep school in Colorado when he was sixteen and entered the university two years later. He was already a fair climber. One day in Boulder Canyon he saw two young men—one of them was Ament—struggling to do a climb called Final Exam. They weren’t getting very far. Logan walked up in his cowboy boots and asked if he could try. They laughed but he changed shoes and did it first crack. The next day Ament introduced him to his friends in the college cafeteria, “This is Jim Logan and he’s a 5.10 climber.”
He stayed in the background, however: he did very few first ascents. The big shots then were Kor, Ament, Larry Dalke, Bob Culp, Wayne Goss—he was in awe of them, he didn’t think he was in their class. Nevertheless he entered the world of climbing. He dropped out of school and went to Yosemite. He climbed every chance he got. He found a job as an apprentice in a machine shop. His parents disapproved strongly. “You’re going to grow up to be a ditch digger,” his mother would say. He reached a certain high point in his life when he and Dalke climbed the Diamond in one day. That was in 1968. Then he was drafted.
Climbers as a group were opposed to the war and not ready to serve. The usual thing was to get a mental deferment. They went in for the examination stoned, incoherent, and unkempt. Logan was a Texan, he played it straight. He was sent to El Paso for basic training.
“I was devastated by it,” he says. “I lost all sense of value as a human being. I was in the army for two years. I spent a year in Vietnam, at Camranh Bay. I was a personnel clerk attached to Headquarters, U.S. Army Vietnam. I hated it. It was like being in prison.
“I used to go to a village and spend the night with a Vietnamese girl. She had two or three other boyfriends. I used to work the Ouija board for her friends, girls who had GI boyfriends who’d been killed. One guy had been killed by a tiger. They’d ask me questions. ‘Are you still there? Do you still love me?’
“When I got out of the army I flew to San Francisco. Wayne Goss picked me up and we went to Yosemite. I couldn’t climb. For the first time in my life I was afraid. I was a physical and mental wreck. In the army they destroy your self-confidence and then give it back to you a little at a time. In climbing, self-confidence is very important, knowing the next move is going to go, the next pitch is going to go. I’d fought on the wrong side in the war. I was very bitter.”
Logan got married, bought some land in Boulder with the money he had saved in Vietnam, and built a house. He learned carpentry and became a small contractor. He and his two partners design and build three or four houses a year.
Slowly he returned to climbing. He went every couple of weeks or so. By 1974 he was more or less back to normal. He was climbing 5.11. The next summer he spread his wings and climbed the Diamond free with his friend Wayne Goss. It was the first free ascent of any route on the Diamond. It crushed Roger Briggs, he remarks innocently. “Roger really wanted to do it.”