Camp 4

CAMP 4 ‘If I die, I die.’ The realness of those words sent a shiver down my spine as I listened to the climbers. It was late autumn, 1969. There was a pause after his words and each face made the slightest nod peering deeply into the flames; Tom Bauman had just soloed the Nose. Slowly, I began to put pitons into the face of life, jammed my fist into fissures, and ascended slowly. I delighted when my blood dripped onto the dark diorite veins in the granite. For this is life and I believe in the challenge of the ascent and the use of a life to outlive it. It is now the winter of 2014, and I wander through Camp 4. I look at the young, intense faces as they to peer into the flames. I would share with them what has been my own first ascent, but Tom lives on, so I scream to a startled camp my tribute to life: ‘If I die, I die.’