The Bomb Constructor by Chris Van Leuven Alpinist 40

8/13/2019 The Bomb Constructor by Chris Van Leuven Alpinist 40

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June 1990: Athousand feet off the ground, Eric Kohl poundsa scraped-up Birdbeak into the steep, east side of El Cap.

Each hard, precise hammer swing forces the piton fartherthrough the outer layer of sand and dirt into a tighter

constriction within a shallow seam. His nal swing is metwith a shocking rattle, as if hed whacked a car hood with a

steel bar. The hot sun scalds the back of his already reddenedneck. Sweat bleeds into his beaten, double gear sling,

collecting in the creases where it rests across his shouldersand wraps around his chest. After ve years of use, thesalt and the sun have faded the nylon into a hazy yellow.

THE

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Hes only twenty-four, and hes alone. Below him, a long series ofedges and bumps form orange, grey and black features on an overhanging

wall. Organic matter, mixed with leftover moisture from the HorsetailFallsnow mostly dry for the seasondecomposes, oozing down the

cracks in brown streaks, before tear-dropping away from the wall. Terope swings in a gentle wind between scarce placements, mostly knife-blades and copperheads, back to his unattended anchor. Unlike most

wall climbers, Eric commits to his gear without testing it. By then, hesalready solved the equation, which has two outcomes: one or zero. Eitherthe placements going to hold, barely hold (a one) or hell fall (a zero).

Te beak rocks left in the seam. Eric breathes out, and then he stepsup the next rung in his aiders. Te beak rocks violently to the right,the tip grinding against the base of the seam. He repeats his mentor

Walt Shipleys words,You really gotta really want the big ones. He picturesthe rope cheese-grating over the ledges below, and he pushes the imagedown. He calculates the fall potential: easily sixty feet, with a pendulum

swing. Its steep, so hell swing into air, but his rope could snap if it meetsthe blade-side of a ake. He pushes that thought down, too. He grasps

his aid slings rmly with both hands and steps higher. Zero. An explosion of steel sheering away from stone. He falls. Terack of pins slaps against his ribs. Wind rushes past his ears with a jet-like propulsion. He wonders whether these are his last moments. If heis, now, going to die, whats the point of worrying about it? He stopsfalling. Unhurt, he ascends back to his highpoint, reassesses the crackand nds another way to climb it, without resorting to drilling a rivet.

It wasnt his rst big fall, and it wouldnt be his last. During twenty-ve years of climbing, Eric will put up thirty-four big-wall rst ascents,

many of which hell solo. Over and over, hell wedge cams behind akesas they creak and moan. Hell stand tall in his aiders until his harnessbruises his sides and his legs burn. Hell make hard free moves abovetenuous hooking sections, and hell carry endless loads. Hell overcome

heat exhaustion, dehydration and high winds. Hell suffer injuries andrecurring nightmares. Hell mourn the deaths of friends. And all the while hell construct the most natural passage he can up the lines of hisdreams. Hell be willing to fall, even to die, just to be in the location hesmapped out in his mind.

I E in 1995 when he was working at a gear shop in MarinCounty, California, a few miles from where I grew up. I stopped thereafter high school sometimes with Chris Mac McNamara, the wun-derkind who climbed El Cap before he could drive a car. Bryan Law,one of Erics few partners, quizzed us on big-wall trivia from behindthe climbing counter: Lost in America. Who put it up, when? Tey

always had beer. Eric was mostly silent, but when he hadsomething to add, it was always punchy or crude, gener-ally both. He had a particular kind of stare: eyes xedstraight ahead, eyelids uninching. I imagined his braincycling through moments of pain and fear.

Later, at the base of El Cap, Chris gestured to theright of Zodiac: a golden, reecting slab led to a black

section with giant, detached peels of stone pasted to anoverhanging wall. Tats where Erics routes are, Chrisexplained, away from the taller and more well-knownfaces. Many were unrepeated. Horsetail Falls keeps thispart of the cliff off-limits except for a few dry months inthe autumn. Bolts rust from the constant water, whichslowly loosens the bonds that keep the features attached.In the middle of the wall, a big, black, downward-slant-ing roof appears to extend out thirty feet into the air.Tere, Lunar Eclipse, a Steve Schneider and John Bar-bella route, has a hooking section so extensive that aleader could fall fty feet smack onto a ledge. Tat wasErics rst hard El Cap solo. Nearby are Plastic SurgeryDisaster, one of Erics solo rst ascents, and SurgeonGeneral, a line that Eric established with Walt Shipley.Both are still two of the most technical routes on ElCap. o me, they seemed part of an alluring, terrifying

realm. It would take several seasons of practicing aid climbing before Idared venture anywhere near that part of the wall.

I was nineteen, squatting in a concession tent near Yosemites CurryVillage, when I decided to try my rst Eric Kohl route, Jesus Built MyHotrod, on Leaning ower. A few moves into the forty-ve degreeoverhanging rst pitch, I had to throw a sling over a ake that stretchedfar out from the cliff. As I applied weight, the rock exed. Soon I wasstanding up on the disquieting feature, and it was bending like plywood

while I reached for the next placement. If the ake dislodged, Id rideit into the ramp fteen feet below. Teres no way Ill bounce test it,Ithought, No way that could hold.

[Opening Spread]Painting by Mike Dewey based on a self-portrait taken by Eric Kohl.Dewey created the rst layer of the piece digitally, then added watercolor and acrylicpaint. He hoped to create a colorful, punk, loose feel, reecting Kohls years of dan-gerous solos. Mike Dewey/Eric Kohl l [This Page]Kohl atop Reign in Blood (VI A4, Kohl,

2002), Falls Wall, Yosemite, California. l [Facing Page]Kohl leading Reign in Blood. Ev-erything around me was beaks, heads and hooks, and then the seam petered out. ThenI had to hook my way up it, Kohl says. I have it marked on my topo as A3+. Lookingback, its probably more like A4. Its all the same after a while. Andrew McGarry (both)

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Higher up, one of the belays had a single bolt hanging half- way out of the rock. Te rest of the anchor had broken duringEric Kohl and Eric Rasmussens rst ascent. I used direct aid ontwo stacked blocks that shifted like giant, foundation bricks.

Near the exit, I set a series of at hooks on top of fragile chunksof rock. I looked down: the cams Id placed tightly minutesbefore had ballooned open. Te akes were ready to come offand kill us both. I shook violently, breathed fast and kept going.

You aided that? Eric replied when I told him the storyve years later. Astonishment ashed across his face, before hereplied in a at tone: I free climbed around those.

Without looking in a mirror, I could feel it: Erics starereected in my own eyes. Its the shadow that lingers after yougaze at your own mortality. Te more times that you thinkyoure going to die, the longer that look stays. On hard aidroutes, when the terrain gets blanker and more insecure, youhave to believe that a way will open up, and often it doesifyou can keep yourself calm. After a while of repeatedly pushingyour fear down, you start to feel stronger, bolder, more focused.But you dont get to pick when you fall, and you dont realizethat youve gone too far until the rock releases you. Te impres-sion of holding your life in your hands, and throwing it to the

wind, hurts, yet you grow accustomed to it . You experience a

serene mind, a condence, a mastery thats difficult to explain.Te scars never go away.

A H , I had the illusion that I was in control. Ithought I could climb anything in the Valley or on the big wallsaround the world. For the next several seasons, all I wanted

was to nd that sensation again. With that feeling, however,came a pain in my stomach, one that intensied whenever Ihad to make tenuous moves. Over time, the pain became moreconstant. On one wall, a rotten block hit my thigh. A momentpassed before the wound area turned white, and the bloodpooled over my skin. I wrapped a handkerchief over it andclimbed on. Tings always work out, I told myself, No matterhow dire they seem at the time. Late at night, as I was soloing two

walls back to back, I ripped a cam on the Prow on WashingtonColumn and took a long, upside-down, factor-two fall ontothe anchor. I smashed my face against the rock, bled onto theteam in the portaledge below, and was knocked unconscious.For days, I lay in a canvas tent recovering and thinking about

what went wrong: I was pushing too far, climbing on faith andrecklessness, not backing myself up enough. Id come to believethat falls just didnt happen.

A5 doesnt mean death. Chris Mac said to me before myaccident. You just put the piece in, test it, and if it holds, geton it! Tats it. Its not as dangerous as everyone makes it out tobe. Id read Accidents in North American Mountaineering, and Iknew that even experienced wall climbers sometimes died. Teseason before I fell on the Prow, I snapped a rusty copperheadon Zenyatta Mondatta, near where a soloist had plunged to hisdeath. A frayed section of his rope had fused into the sharpcrack that cut it. Sometimes I believe that it saved my life,protecting my rope as I lobbed over the same spot.

After my fall, I became friends with one of the climbers who

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helped me retreat. Dan Oppenheim had climbed many of El Caps mostdifficult aid routes, including a segment of Surgeon General. I askedhim whether he thought there were times when people like Eric pushedtheir routes into a death zone.

Eric has essentially mastered technical aid climbing, Dan spoke ina monotone, emphasizing each syllable almost robotically in a way thatreminded me of Erics answering machine.

He has mastered putting himself in situations that make most of uscringe, I thought. Te big, scary plates on Erics routes were visible evenfrom far away. Maybe Eric rationalizes the risk somehow. Or maybe, sincehes taken it further and longer than most, hes just gured out a way to doeverything right.

M , particularly the handful of Yosemite locals,burn out within ve years. Its almost like a tour of duty. In the 1990s,I spent seven years exclusively climbing walls, but its been years, now,since Ive really gone for the difficult ones. Tese days, I prefer cleaner,free-climbable cracks. I often overanalyze my gear, take fewer chancesand retreat when I dont feel right. I strive to balance the fragility oflife with the inherent dangers of climbing. Not long ago, I met Ken

Yager on top of El Cap. Neither of us was particularly elated to be onthe summit. It was just what we did. We clung to the familiarity ofthe cracks and the vastness of the big stone as the real world moved on

below. I didnt imagine the future.Now and then, I saw Eric standing under the shade of the trees nearthe Lodge parking lot, just long enough to rack up, drink a beer or two.He was climbing less frequently than he did in the 1990s, but he wasstill climbing walls. Tis spring, I thought that perhaps if I did a bigroute with Eric again, I might remember the rewards of being back on ahard leador else realize that its just time to move on.

Most people whove heard of Eric think of him as a hermit. Teyassume he just spits slander around the Yosemite Deli when hes notout soloing some death climb. Few knew that he has become a well-respected X-Ray technician, working for the same hospital for the pastfourteen years. About a year ago, Eric began opening up to more peoplethrough the Internet. Perhaps hed discovered enough security in himselfto feel comfortable around others, at least electronically, even if he didntshare their views. Maybe he grew tired of watching his hair turn grey. Hemissed the old days and connecting with fellow wall climbers.

As Eric and I s tarted chatting online, I hoped to get some insightinto how he coped with risk and fear. Often, when I asked him hardquestions, he gave one-word answers or else turned silent until I switched

topics. Finally in April 2012, I drove out from Colorado to Californiain my grandmothers hand-me-down grey sedan to see him. On therst day, we met up at the rocks in Marin where wed both learned toclimb. Eric pulled up on his black motorcycle. He had an Army haircut.attoos of skulls and tribal art decorated his skin. He carried his blackmotorcycle jacket under his arm while we walked up the steep, windingpath. We bouldered amid the green lichen akes and stone ripples. Ericcomplained about tennis elbow. Around noon, he pulled a tall, gold canof malt liquor (a Cold Gold, as he calls it) out of his black backpack,and we talked about climbing and women.

Te next day, we went to a small, weather-beaten beach crag nearhis house in Pacica. Te anchor on the thirty-foot decomposing sedi-mentary rock had a padlock fastened to one of the bolts. Even if we hadthe key to open it up, rust had grown over the joints, locking it closed.

Late in the day, scattered clouds lled the sky as the sun reected off theocean. I asked Eric again why he continues to climb walls.

He didnt answer. I asked him why he used single-bolt anchors andrecalled hangers on some of his routes. He looked away. I replaced my

question with a statement about why I would do it: When youre highup there on lead, with each placement only visible while youre rightup on it, pulling out every trick you know, free climbing, hooking, andbringing it just barely together, you move into a place where everythingis just teetering on the edge of control, where the decisions are yours andyours alone, where theres no drama, no petty bullshit, and in the backof your head you know a big, hard fall is waiting for you if you fuck up.

Tats it, Eric said. His eyes opened up, and he gazed straight atme. Te look seemed to say, You know what its like up there. Teres no

greater feeling. At least, I thought it did.I asked him whether he had some kind of hole inside him that he

was lling with these routes. I told him about the gut pain Id felt.How Id tried to assuage the emptiness of my self-doubt by climbingimpulsively until I got hurt.

What scares me, Eric said, is getting old and fat. He sipped onhis Cold Gold. He looked at me again, with a light shrug and a matter-of-fact grin. Im totally serious.

But you still drink heavy-calorie malt liquor, I thought. A light wind ruffled the nearby grass. I thought nobody cared

about what I was doing, Eric said. He explained that the reused bolthangers were another way to raise the stakes. So were the single-boltbelays, backed up with knifeblades. Te blown anchor on Jesus BuiltMy Hotrod was one reason he preferred to solo. If someone is up there,youre kind of responsible for their health. He said he named that routeafter the Ministry song, with the lyrics:

icky ticky thought of a gunEvery time I try to do it all now baby

Am I on the runWhy why why

We took a swig of bitter beer. Te whole point of the game, Ericsaid, is to scope out a line that you can piece together with binocularsand then try to do it without drilling anything, potentially risking yourlife and trying to have some fun doing it. I tend to pick out spookylines. Sometimes entire pitches of rock broke away after his rst ascents.When I was in my twenties, I didnt really care. I didnt expect to live tobe over thirty. I didnt even really want to.

At rst, hed viewed aid climbing as similar to deconstructing abomb, seeking safety among the rotting features and impossibly steep

overhangs. By the time he was twenty-two, he wanted to constructbombsto move on hooks and thin, crickety placements barely ablehold bodyweight. Its a good feeling when things get thinner andthinner, and you cant see the next placement until its right in front ofyour face, he said. Im trying to make it as hard as I can. I want otherpeople to be as terried as I was. He shuffled his seat in the dirt. Why

would I want to scare myself all the time? I dont know why. Maybebecause everyday life seems kind of boring. I know it sounds nihilistic,but its not suicidal.

Te Merriam-Webster dictionary denes nihilism as:a) a viewpoint that traditional values and beliefs are unfounded and

that existence is senseless and useless. b) a doctrine that denies any objec-tive ground of truth and especially of moral truths. c) a doctrine or beliefthat conditions in the social organization are so bad as to make destruction

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desirable for its own sake, independent of any constructive program or possibility.

I told Eric that I didnt see much distinction between believing thathuman existence lacks meaning or value and wanting to end it all. He

just laughed quietly and said I sounded like a psychoanalyst.He canthonestly expect me to believe he solos such hard and dangerous walls simplybecause the rest of life is boring.

Eric looked out over the water, past the surfers, up to the gatheringclouds and the suns piercing rays. He said that after a few more trips tothe Falls Wall he might give up, sell his rack and ll his need for solitudeand vastness amid the Sierra peaks instead.

D - , Eric and his older brother Peter rode in theback of his parents stone-grey hatchback through the uolumne highcountry. Polished slabs cascaded over a landscape interspersed withponds and granite domes. Eric and Peter sat quietly in the back, gazingout the windows, waiting for the nal bend in the road that openedto their favorite place in the world. Each summer, the family spent a

week on the shores of enaya Lake, where theyd swim and go on longhikes. For dinner, his father heated cans of stew. Cresting mountains

surrounded them. Te crisp air smelled of ponderosa pines, incensecedars and campres. Tey settled into their site, all four under the roofof a single, spacious canvas tent.

Te next day, their dad inated their crude rubber rowboat andcrossed the half-mile-wide lake. Some days, he swam to the other side.During thundershowers, Eric and Peter begged their dad to take them toget ice cream at the uolumne Store, but he always refused. Going to themountains was supposed to be the treat. His dad aimed to make everyhike into an adventure. At age seven, Eric and his dad went from enayaLake to Clouds Rest and down to the Valley. When the trail faded intoa big meadow, they got lost. His dad went over the map with him,

trying to make sense of their location. But it was Eric who found the way. Tats when I gured out I had good route-nding skills, he says.Both parents were avid outdoor athletes. Back home, in Mill Valley,

they reveled in the steep hills and redwood groves of Marin County,running up all 688 of the Dipsea Stairs to Stinson Beach, the oldesttrail race in the US. His dad traveled all over the state to participate inmarathons. As children, Kohls parents had grown up playing in bombcraters in war-torn Germany. When his mother was only six years old,she stole milk from the local church in Limburg to feed her family. In

[Previous Page]Kohl on Cataclysmic Megasheer (VI 5.11d A2, Kohl-Law, 2000), HalfDome. Kohl told Chris Van Leuven that what matters is control over the whole thing.Engaging in what needs to be done all day long.... Just thinking about what youredoing at the time. l [This Page]Kohl on Reign in Blood. The photographer dangled a

can of malt liquor in front of Kohls head like a carrot to capture some of these images.Kohls big-wall mentors, Walt Shipley and Russ The Fish Walling, turned him on to the d rink during the 19 80s when he rst a rrived in Yosemite. He later explained, I think that a lot of these routes were kind o f fueled by alcohol. Andrew McGarry (both)

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1961, they immigrated to California for better jobs. His dad became anelectrical engineer, and his mom worked at a hospital.

As long as Eric can remember, he was anti-social. Maybe he couldntcatch a ball. Maybe he couldnt relate to his old-money classmates. But up

on the nearby Mt. amalpais, he had only to walk a short distance, turn acorner, and he was out of view of nearly everyone, free to explore the wild. With his parents, and on his own, he hiked every trail that winds acrossthat hill, including some that werent on any maps.

Although he and his brother had watched people ascending the slabsabove enaya Lake, their parents forbade them to climb: oo danger-ous. Now, as a sophomore in high school, Eric tagged along with Peterand his college friends to Split Rock, on the crest of Ring Mountain. Hebecame immediately hooked, working out circuitous sequences that cov-ered the entire twenty-ve-foot-tall cliff. At rst, he wore tennis shoes untilhis brother gave him a pair of tight-tting magical sticky-rubber shoes.Six months later, Peters friends invited him for a week in Yosemite, wherethey took him on roped climbs and taught him how to evade the ever-present rangers. Tey bivied in El Cap Meadow beneath the reection ofthe moonlight on the Valley walls.

When Eric got back to Mill Valley, he checked out Warren HardingsDownward Bound from the library and kept it. Harding became his hero:Eric loved how Harding could be a leader and still make a farce out of thesport. It seemed like the preppy rich kids were all about doing cocaine

and getting ready for their fucking college, Eric said. When I discoveredclimbing, it just seemed like a way out from the way normal people livedtheir lives. Despite his overactive attention to detail, he had no interest inhis studies. He listened to the hard, honest, angry music of heavy metalbands like Anthrax. Since he couldnt afford cocaine, he shoplifted booze.

As soon as he graduated from high school in 1985 he left for the Valley, with less than $1,000, to nd a new existence. His parents blamed them-selves for introducing him to Yosemite.

D in the Valley, Eric slept in the boulders until hehooked up with a girlfriend who lived in the Ozone, the Curry Companycanvas-tent housing across from Camp 4. Like other dirtbags, he scarfedfood from the Lodge Caf or Degnans Pizzeria, but he avoided marijuanaand LSD, because he felt he couldnt climb safely on those drugs. Instead,he gave older climbers cash to buy beer for him. It was like summer camp

without the adults watching over you. He felt as if he belonged. At the end of the season, he enrolled in the College of Marin. He quit

partway through the spring semester. When he returned to the Valley, hemet Bill Russell, roy Johnson, Walt Shipley and Russ Te Fish Walling

at the tables outside Degnans. Tey turned him on to cheap, high-potencymalt liquor. Walt showed him how to aid. Walt had a huge desire for whatever interested him, Eric said. He always said, You gotta really wantthe big ones. Just the way he looked at me when he said it has gotten methrough some hard times.

en years later, I roped up a few times with Erics mentor. Waltstoenails were rotten and stained yellow. Te skin on the backs of his hands

was so thin and scarred that when he shoved his ngers in the granite crackshe bled almost immediately. He sweated alcohol. People dont respectdrinkers, he told me. Tey respect climbers. Tats one of the reasons whyIm climbing. As we walked down from the base of Washington Columnone day, he kicked over cairns. Were in a gully, and people dont needthese to show them the way.

I never got the impression that Walt thought too highly of my

BIG WALL FIRST ASCENTSin Yosemite Valley

RIBBON FALLSIndecision Time (VI 5.7 A4, Kohl, 1992)

EL CAPITANHole World (VI 5.10 A4, Kohl, 1990)

Abstract Expressionist (VI 5.9 A5, Kohl, 1993)Surgeon General (VI 5.9 A5, Kohl-Shipley, 1990)Plastic Surgery Disaster (VI 5.8 A5-, Kohl, 1991)

High Plains Dripper (VI 5.11 A5, Kohl-Humphrey, 1989)Pressure Cooker (VI 5.10 A4, Kohl, 199 0)

Get Whacked (VI 5.10 A5, Kohl, 1992)

YOSEMITE FALLSSprayfest (V I 5.11b, Kohl-Shipley, 1990)...Injustice for All (VI 5.8 A4, Kohl, 1996)

Its So Awful (VI PDK, Kohl, 1998) Wheel of Tortu re (VI 5.7 A4 , Kohl, 1989)

World of Pain (VI 5.8 A5, Kohl , 1991)Reign in Blood (VI A4, Kohl, 200 2)

Witching Hour (VI 5.7 PDK , Kohl, 200 3)Via sin Liquor (VI 5.9 A 4, Kohl-Humphrey, 1988)

Electric Ocean (VI 5.10 A4, Kohl, 1992)Escape from Tora Bora (VI 5.9 A2, Kohl, 2002)

Reckless Abandon (VI 5.8 A 4+, Kohl, 1991)Hurricane Jingus Clusterfuck 2000 (VI 5.9 A4 -, Kohl-Law, 1997)

Route 66 (V I 5.10 A4, Kohl-Middendorf, 1989)Dantes Inferno (VI 5.9 A3, Kohl, 1989)

Satanic Ritual Abuse (5.10 A4, Kohl, 2001)Maximum Exposure (VI A3?, Kohl-Law, 2003)

RHOMBUS WALLToxic Waste Dump (VI 5.8 A3+, Kohl, 198 9)

WASHINGTON COLUMNReanimator (VI 5.8 A4, Kohl-Shipley, 1990)

HALF DOMELost Again (VI 5.10 A3, Kohl, 199 2)

Cataclysmic Megasheer (V 5.11d A2, Kohl-Law, 2000)

PORCELAIN WALL When Hell Was in Session (VI 5.9 A5 , Kohl-Takeda, 1995)

Sky Is Falling (VI 5.10+ A? Kohl-Law, 1998)

MT. BRODERICKMr. Clean (V 5.? A2 , Kohl-Torlano, 1993)

9 OClOCk Wall Express Checkout (VI PDK, Kohl, 1993)

Ice Age (VI 5.8 A5, Kohl, 1990)Crystal Cyclone (VI A4+, Kohl, 1991)

LEANING TOWERJesus Built My Hotrod (V 5.8 A4, Kohl-Rasmussen, 1992)

[For routes that Eric Kohl thinks might be either A4 or A5, he has chosenthe rating PDK, Pretty Damn Klaus. The question marks are hisEd.]

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generation, but he had a way about him that commanded respect. Likeanother Valley regular, the chess player ucker ech, Walt was clearlyintelligent. Rumor had it that Walt had the experience, but not the cleanrecord, to build rockets for the government. Both he and ech saw the

walls of Yosemite as the ultimate eld to apply a smart mind. Forget thatthey lived what many might call a futile existence in a cave or a tent.

Teres an intrinsic reward to planning and executing wall climbs, fol-lowing each step in order, staying organized, moving efficiently throughcomplicated terrain, solving the enigma of each placement. Afterward,

when you drink with your friends around a picnic table, you thinkabout how youre living in paradise while millions of visitors are rushingback to their cubicles. You answer to no one but yourself.

Walt explained to Eric that the walls could be soloed. I thoughtthat was a brilliant way of climbing a route. I could lead every pitch andbelay myself, Eric said. I could do whatever I wanted without anyonegiving me shit. He collected fallen pins from the base of Leaning owerand El Cap until he had enough to call a rack. Using two locking cara-biners and a clove hitch to self-belay, he soloed the Prow on WashingtonColumn in 1986. Ten he spent six days on Lunar Eclipse alone. At thetime, only a few people had climbed the route, and no one had soloed

it. Some parties had already added chicken bolts, lowering the difficultyand eliminating the risk of the crux, a hooking section originally so longand with such a nasty fall potential that if you fell youd probably die.Eric was dismayed. Although aid climbing was about intellectual experi-ence and mastery, it had to have real consequences to be interesting. He

wanted to make his own route. Back on the Valley oor, Walt taught

him how to modify high-speed drill bits and machine-head rivets fromthe hardware storea much cheaper, more efficient option than buyinggear from a climbing shop.

I O , Eric hiked up the steep and nearly forgotten climb-ers path that led through overgrown weeds to the base of Upper Falls

Wall. Most of the year, water pounds down this 1,100-foot cliff, but inthe autumn it turns dry. He entered a sandy, damp, thirty-foot-deepcave, hidden from the Valley oor. On one side of its entrance was a

waterfall, and he stood under it to cool off. Te walls were covered ingreen slime. Te inside of the cave was damp, chilly and dark. He feltat home. He lay on his back on the water-polished stone and looked up

with binoculars for hours. Te yellow, gold and black-pocketed rockhad been scrubbed clean by millennia of falling water. He stared at the

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wall until the obvious strengths gave way to weak-nesses, and his eyes xated on a brilliant line withsome potential scariness to it.

As he began xing ropes, he reveled in the

sense of complete control, focusing on each taskahead without thinking about the pitches behindhim. Before each ropelength, hed stack the haulline in his haulbag and feed the lead line into arope bag, careful to avoid any tangles. Te days

were hot, but the nights on the wall were miser-ably cold. Strong winds blew into the morning,depriving him of sleep. Five days later, he and

Alan Humphrey topped out, and he called his rstroute Via sin Liquor (a play on the nearby climbVia sin Aqua).

He noticed other potential lines, often withlarge, suspended akes. Te crumbling stoneseemed like an inevitable part of otherwise irre-sistible climbs. I had no intention of climbingsomething that was loose to make it harder. I neverreally thought about that when I was younger. Inever thought that they were temporary. Everyonce in a while, these things fall to the ground.

Im not gonna wuss out and drill rivets aroundthat feature that might kill me. If you want to putyourself in a situation, you have to deal with whatis right in front of your face. Being slightly inebri-ated, you can deal.

B , Eric averaged one big- wall rst ascent every two months. Climbingconsumed my whole life, he said, which is kindof how I wanted it. o earn money, he washed

windows and shampooed carpets at the luxurious Ahwahnee Hotel. He could to do the work in halfthe time expected, so hed leave his carpet-cleaning

equipment near a room, head out to the parking lot and nap in his white van. His boss was a fellow wall climber, Jeff Hornibrook, who letEric take days off for new routes. Come back when you get done, Jeff

would say. If you come back.Gazing at the Falls Wall, the Rhombus Wall, Nine OClock Wall,

Leaning ower, South Face of Half Dome, and El Cap, Eric constructed

his climbing bombs in his mind and on paper before assembling themon stone. He tried to increase the progression of both the difficulty andthe style, to see how long he could be in that moment of true engage-ment and follow it through to the end. With Walts voice in the back ofhis head, he used every angle his imagination allowed to raise the diffi-culty and the stakes. Once the obvious lines were picked, it was time toclimb the bigger, detached features.

Eric did some of the routes with partners, but mostly he climbedalone. He chose names that had something to do with the terrain or his

music: Wheel of orture, oxic Waste Dump, Pressure Cooker, Worldof Pain. As he followed a terminating crack system left of Hardingsroute on the South Face of Half Dome, the line petered out and left himhalfway up the wall. Suddenly, it was if hed gone back in time to the

hiking trip with his dad: the trail had ended, and he had to nd his waythrough the rolling granite. He recalled the lyrics of a Suicidal enden-cies song, Lost Again:

Lost it! Im caught in a rage Like an animal locked in a cage Now I look into the barrel of a gaugeboom!

Made me into a foolExperimented on me like an animal urned me into a common criminalcriminal I lost it, but I gotta get with it

Motherfucker, now youre gonna get it In the winter of 1992, Eric was midway up an El Cap line hed name

Abstract Expressionist. Sand poured out while he worked his gear intoa crack between a large block and the wall. When he nally he got anut in, the entire block landed on his arms. As he fell, he ripped a seriesof knifeblades from the rock. Te block cut deep into one arm beforeit peeled away and smashed into pieces on the ground, nearly strikinganother climber at the base. He still has the scar today.

(I asked him about another scar on his upper lip. He refused to tell

the story. I asked him whether hed ever been to jail, and he mentionedthe time he stepped out of the bathroom at the Deli and was instantly whisked away for public drunkenness after not doing anything.)

During the 1990s, he was becoming increasingly misunderstood. Again and again, he put himself at risk for his visions, and he expectedothers to do the same. Hed go so far into these routes that hed haveto readjust to being around people again once he was back on theground. What was there to talk about with them? Why would he wantto discuss someones rst wall when he was already on his thirtieth?His peers saw Kohl as arrogant and cocky. Relationships failed, andfriends betrayed him.

In June 1993, after Eric returned to Abstract Expressionist and xedthe rst few pitches, he suspects that two of his acquaintances set reto his lines. Perhaps it was because of a block Eric detached that almostkilled one of their buddies. Maybe it was over some bolt-chopping inci-dent that he had nothing to do with, or a practical joke. When theropes wouldnt burn down, the climbers untied the bottom line fromthe ground so it shot up the wall and out of reach. o get back on theroute, Eric duct-taped several ski poles together, attached a Jumar and a

lead line and shed his way up. By the time he nished, hed had enoughof the drama surrounding El Cap, and he moved back to the solitude ofthe Falls Wall, where he felt more at ease. But his mind wasnt in his nextattempt, so he descended his xed ropes and headed to his girlfriendsCurry tent cabin. Tere, she was cheating on him with his close friend.

I never went back to that route, he said. You have to watch out forthose women out there. Tey will ruin your life. I was in love.

W in Yosemite, the hot sun and the giant

[Photo]Kohl resting on a reconnaissance of Porcelain Wall, with Shipley, on a chillyOctober day. Shipley and Kohl brought reworks to their portaledge, a decision that re-sulted in a few burn marks. The attempt ended when they ran out of bolts. Kohl returnedwith Pete Takeda in 1995 to nish the route that became When Hell Was in Session

(VI 5.9 A5, Kohl-Takeda). Takeda described it as the most frightening climb of his life.As Kohl led the crux roof, Takeda expected the whole feature to fall, causing a signi-cant geological change and possibly killing them both. Kohl says he often preferred to climb alone, because he worried about endangering his partners. Eric Kohl collection

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walls disappear into cold, damp, thick clouds. Te Valley seems end-lessly deep. Te nearest real townwhere theres more than just rangers,tourist facilities and huge wallsis several hours away. Everything feelsmore intense. You realize the girl who broke your heart is still living

in the same three-mile-long pit. Eric packed up his rig and headed toBishop. He got a job at a gear shop and bolted sport routes by himselfat Owens River Gorge.

One day, he picked up a 1940s beer can from the desert sand, cleanedit up and painted a picture of Yosemite Valley from a postcard hed kept.

A few months later, he found himself at a gear store in Berkeley. Henoticed a sales clerk who looked as though hed been there forever. Ericdidnt want to be like him. roy Johnson, one of his early heroes, hadrecently suffered permanent injuries from a free-solo fall. Within a fewshort years, Walt would die in a kayaking accident. Most of the other

hard-living climbers in Erics group were moving on.Eric signed up for an anatomy class in Bishop. It seemed like a good

way to prepare for some exible hospital job. Soon he got interested inbecoming an X-Ray technologist. Another Valley climber, Bill ChazMcChesney competed with Eric for rst place in the class, but Ericsgrades were so strong that he was omitted from the curve. Eric movedin with his parents and took courses in diagnostic medical imaging atCity College in San Francisco. So I would have some skills that wouldpay more than $10 an hour. A classmate recognized him from the cover

of Climbing 162 and offered him a cheap room near Golden Gate Park.Eric earned his license in June 1998, along with an associate degree.His plan was to spend the summer in Yosemite and look for work later.But hed only been in the Valley a few weeks when the hospital wherehed interned called his parents number to offer him a job. He post-poned his start date to do a few more walls. In July, during the rstascent of Sky Is Falling on the Porcelain Wall with Bryan Law, Eric fellabout forty feet and grazed his head against the marble-hard stone. Ifhed fallen ten feet farther, he would have hit a ledge. He felt nauseated.Te sky and the rock spun. Tey nished the wall, but Eric realized thatif hed been climbing solo he would have retreated. It took him a weekto recover from the concussion. He was lucky to be alive.

As he began work and planned for a future beyond climbing, hestarted having recurring nightmares:

It feels new every time. Te dream starts out of nowhere. Ill be dreamingabout daily life. Ten, all of a sudden, Im on a cliff or on an approach to acliff. Ten I realize Im climbing this day. I look down, and Im way off the

ground. Ten I start to be concerned about how Im connected to the wall.Im on this giant wallnot one pitch up. Ten I realize that Im stuck up

here. I cant lower off like on a sport climb. I have to climb up to get out ofthis place. Ten, the rock breaks away, the size of a brick or bigger. Tere isnothing solid to hang on to or nail. Tats when I realize Im going to die.

Just before I die, I wake up.

A back to his house in the fading light, Eric admitted thatsometimes, after difficult breakups with women, hed wanted to die, butthat desire never inuenced his choice of routes. o climb at his best, hehad to wait until the bouts of depression passed and he felt clear-headedagain. Past a super-sized asphalt parking lot, we entered his suburbia,

where every house was the same dimension. On the fridge, there werepictures of big akes from routes hed climbed and a portrait of WaltShipley standing proudly in a sky blue polo shirt, malt liquor in hand.Eric opened the door. Te inside was vacant except for a few boxes of

leftover Chinese food, and two Cold Golds. He took them out and toldme about his new girlfriend, Cherry ingin:

Were basically married. Shes not a climber. You have to compromise withrelationships. You have to have someone that is sane enough to compromisewith you equally. She knows that shes the most important thing in my life.I just want to go out and have some fun in the mountains. She understandsIm not as crazy as I used to be.

Hed managed to replace some of his need for wall climbing withsolitary trips to the Yosemite backcountry, scrambling up loose rocksand trackless peaks. It was still dangerous, he explained, pointing to aframed peak on his wall. His nger dragged up the center of the face,

where a recent free solo had ended up in some of the most rotten rock

hed ever experienced.Snapshots and paintings of the Falls Walls lled each room. An olddrilled-out hex served as a penholder on his desk. Decorated beer cansand climbing guides lined scattered bookshelves. Tese were the samebooks that Id collected since my teenage years. Now, they looked out-dated. Te rest of the house felt empty, just a black leather couch, a tablemade of redwood burl and a sheet of glass, and a V, which he neverturned on. As if he could sense what I was thinking, he said he had moreof his stuff in the attic. He pulled out a few books of slides. Ten he toldme the story of a friend whod gotten so drunk near the Fisher owersthat she fell off a cliff into a shallow creek. Despite her broken hand, shekept climbing. During their trip, he woke early, led pitches of drippingstucco and waited for her as she nursed her hangovers. It was the lasttime hed climb with her, he said. He didnt respect the way she held her

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[Image]An original painting by Mike Dewey, with reference from a photo of Kohl taken byGreg Epperson, showing Sprayfest (Kohl-Shipley, 1990). ...Injustice for all (Kohl,1996). Its So Awful (Kohl, 1998). Wheel of Torture (Kohl, 1989). World of Pain(Kohl, 1991). Reign in Blood (Kohl, 2002). Witching Hour (Kohl, 2003). Via sin

Liquor (Kohl-Humphrey, 1988). Escape from Tora Bora (Kohl, 2002). Electric Ocean(Kohl, 1992). Reckless Abandon (Kohl, 1991). Route 66 (Kohl-Middendorf, 1989).Dantes Inferno (Kohl, 1989). Satanic Ritual Abuse (Kohl, 2001). Satanic Ritual Abuse(alternate start). Maximum Exposure (Kohl-Law, 2003).Mike Dewey/Greg Epperson

liquor. We stood on his cedar deck and looked at his manicured less-than-a-quarter-acre lawn and his wine-colored, head-high fence. It feltlike a self-contained world. Its a work in progress, he said.

Eric didnt seem to aspire to much more than what he had. He wasin the relationship that would span the rest of his existence. His job

was satisfying; he enjoyed the process of turning an image into some-thing more like arta picture that allows doctors to identify breaks.Hed come to admire one of the surgeons, John Long (not the climber):Hes the smartest person Ive ever met. He does 100-mile bike racesand Alcatraz swims. Eric had earned enough vacations to escape to themountains for weeks at a time. He lived only forty minutes from wherehe grew up, and he continued to visit his parents in Mill Valley, tucked

between the ngers of Mt. amalpais. As we talked about his life, Ericsaid he was pleased that people actually care about this stuff.

, - , Eric still climbs the crumbling, weather-beaten crags near his home. He crosses the street by foot, his raggedclimbing rope sticking out of his thrashed pack. Next August, he plansto return to an old project he started nine years ago on the Falls Wallto see what Im still made of up there. Hes replaced his old, beat-up knifeblades and painted his hooks black with a spray of blood-red

bleeding down the spine of each piece.Hes invited me to join him. Itll be my third time on that cliff; his

sixteenth new route there. We both want the same thing, to be in thatplace where we feel sharp and fast, impatient and without compromise.

We also want to hang out and take in the Valley and all its glory. Erichas spent the past twenty years guring out a balance to his life. Heknows its better up there, or least thats what he remembers, but sooneror later he has to come down, and these routes will remain as images onhis fridge, memories shelved in his mind. Hell always love it, he knowsthat, yet he realizes you can make your own big walls in other ways. Ericsees parallels, now, between climbing and relationships:

You have to be there for them 100 percent. Teres nothing my girlfriend

can do to piss me off. Its both in my perception and what she does. You accept people for who they are, and when you nd someone who accepts you thesame way, its something worth holding on to. Walls require effort. Anythingin life that is good requires effort.

Beauty surrounds us everyday, on the walls, and in the hills andtowns. Its how you recognize, identify and act on it that gives meaningand value to what might otherwise be a purposeless existence. Historymay or may not remember the esoteric genius behind Erics ascents. oachieve true immortality is to share love with others.z

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