Naked Ascent

We were soon at the base of the West Ridge route on Mount Stuart. I cheekily suggested that we might want to climb it nude. Nicolai readily agreed. He was known for his nude ascents, especially his first nude ascent of Mount Rainier, probably the only one by anyone ever. A stunt that seemed a bit crazy, and one with no small amount of bravado and risk. I heard that the weather on Rainier, that day of his nude climb, had been perfect, or he would not have been able to pull it off. But pull it off, he did.

The weather on this day was perfect, the risk of freezing to death was, unlike on Rainier, slim, and I was eager to try this outrageous naked climbing thing by making a nude ascent of the West Ridge of Stuart. It seemed like a good idea at the time. We dropped our packs and took off our clothes. We stuffed them into our rucksacks and began climbing upward. I was self-aware in a whole new way. At first, I felt a bit smug. The heat of the sun warmed my skin, a satisfying sensation. This nude climbing was a cool thing to do. Definitely.

We climbed un-roped since the difficulty level of the route was well within our capabilities, and it also helped us make up some lost time. We stayed close together, climbing in tandem. Pitch after pitch went by, and as we got higher on the ridge, the immense scale of the mountain became ever magnified as I looked around and down. As we climbed further, a thought occurred to me. What if I fell? I didn’t expect to take a fall. Falling was a remote possibility in my rational mind, but the seemingly irrational thought wouldn’t go away.

By now, the novelty of climbing naked from one jagged granite block to another had worn off. No longer smug, I was just a small, naked climber, a mere speck, on the West Ridge of the mighty Mt. Stuart, the single greatest exposed mass of granite in the United States. My thinking had progressed to envisioning my small crushed body found bloody and naked on the rocks below after a horrendous, terminal fall.

For some reason, I thought it would certainly be okay for my lifeless body to be found, fully clothed, but not to be found stark naked. No, that wouldn’t do. I continued mulling this over, perhaps overthinking it. Yes, I was definitely overthinking it. I climbed on and upward and as we neared Long John Tower, reached a decision. I called out,

“Hey Nicolai, hold up. I’ve had enough of this naked climbing. I’m going to put my clothes back on.”

Without a word, he patiently waited, and after I had hurriedly rejoined the world of the clothed, he turned, and we both continued up the ridge. We hadn’t seen anyone else on the climb and thought that we might have the entire route to ourselves.

We soon came upon a group of four climbers. They were all roped up and geared up as if they were attempting the North Wall of the Eiger. Even though this was a ridge climb, they all wore climbing helmets. It seemed a bit much. They looked like they might be right out of a Hollywood movie about climbing an extreme European alpine route. One of them had some blood on his face. It looked like a close encounter with a rock during a belay, but I couldn’t tell for sure. I didn’t ask.

They had stopped and clustered together, presumably discussing either the injury or the route, or both. We suddenly appeared, two scruffy-looking guys climbing un-roped with minimal gear, one aboriginal, tautly muscled, darkly tanned, and stark naked. Of course, now I wished that I hadn’t put my clothes back on because the shock value would have doubled, but it was too late.

The four turned and stared as we approached, mouths open, no words. The buck-naked Nicolai shouted out,

“Do you mind if we climb through?”

They nodded as if in a trance, and we climbed quickly past them, resuming our un-roped ascent. And as we did, I examined their faces and was shocked to recognize two of them.

Those two were the same guys that worked behind the hardware counter at REI. The climbing hardware at REI sat in a glass-fronted counter, a display case not unlike what you’d find at a jewelry store, presenting precious hunks of forged and machined metal bits precisely arranged, displayed like objects of art. 

The floor behind the counter seemed raised. I always felt the guys who worked behind the counter were looking down at me. They were a shopper’s nightmare, conducting themselves as self-absorbed, narcissistic smug little know-it-alls. Consequently, when I wanted to physically examine something that resided inside the display counter, I always felt like some poor small wretch out of a Dickens novel.

“Please, sir, may I see the piton?”

I bought some climbing hardware at REI in my early mountaineering days. I found their attitude so disagreeable and unpleasant that I quickly transferred my subsequent hardware purchases to the Swallow’s Nest. I named them the hardware punks in my mind. They were so full of themselves that I grew to despise them.

To see them now on the West Ridge, fumbling around like incompetents, was better than laughable. It felt like redemption. So, the undeniable truth was that there was no foundation whatsoever for their self-assured smugness. The curtain had been pulled back and the hardware punks revealed for the posers they were. I laughed heartily inside, a very self-satisfied laugh, as we swiftly left them behind, arguing amongst themselves about what to do next.

Nicolai and finally I roped up and belayed each other for the more difficult 5.6 layback crux pitch near the summit and then, un-roped again, deftly made our way up the jumbled granite blocks to the top. The sun was slipping towards the horizon, painting the sky in warm orange hues. As we paused on the summit, Nicolai, bronzed and naked, crouched like a primate eating peanut M&Ms from the bag. We rested there, savoring our accomplishment and the view ahead.

Nicolai was in that monkey-like position when the four climbers appeared below and began making their way up the granite blocks, slowly coming towards us. I could only imagine how Nicolai’s crouching silhouette might have appeared to them with the fading sun behind us. It might have well resembled the opening sequence of 2001: A Space Odyssey, the Dawn of Man scene that featured the dark apes. 

Before they arrived at the summit, we were up and gone, already descending towards the saddle between Mt. Stuart and Sherpa Peak. We would not see or think of them again. And it was there, in the rocky granite saddle, we bivouacked for the night, settling into our down sleeping bags, staring wordlessly up at the pinpoints of ancient lights in the moonless sky, as our conscious thoughts slowly faded to black.

This is an excerpt from ‘Climbing Naked,’ a mountaineering adventure story about our ascent of the West Ridge of Mount Stuart. The story is told in my mountain memoir, Banquet of the Infinite, which is available as an illustrated eBook on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo.

Photos and mountain art are by the author.