The Day I Sent All Along the Watchtower
The author dreams big and has the adventure of his life on the 3,000-foot All Along the Watchtower on North Howser Tower in the Bugaboos.

Sep 1, 2020 | The Day I Sent

Lying in my tent, listening to “No Hard Feelings” by The Avett Brothers, I went through a mental list of every person I loved in this world and pictured them smiling. Occasionally David’s feet hit my shoulder as he tossed and turned in his sleeping bag. There were no more rest days, no more warm up routes. In a few hours, the alarm would go off and the dream would begin. The entirety of my experience had woven its way into one odyssey: climbing The North Howser Tower via All Along The Watchtower (VI 5.12).

The alarm went off at 3 a.m. I almost pressed the snooze button but forced myself up. My friend David Tan remained buried under his sleeping bag. I sparked a lighter, lit the stove to make coffee, and listened to the calming sound of the stove whirring. David rolled over, his normally bright eyes and tan face looked stern and tired. He said he didn’t sleep well. I greeted his concern with a tired nod.

I double-checked our kit. Two breakfasts, eight Clif bars, three gel blocks, rack, ropes, climbing shoes, stove, protein powder, and Carl’s ashes. Wait … I’d packed both the protein powder and ashes in Ziploc bags, but … which one is which? We laughed, then made sure Carl’s ashes were packed somewhere that they wouldn’t be mistaken for whey. It’d be a shame to lose them now. I’d been carrying Carl’s ashes for over a year, when his girlfriend Sophie gave them to me in a mason jar on a sunny June day.

This was the third time in as many years that I had found myself sitting in a tent at the Applebee campground in the Bugaboo Provincial Park, considering a bid on North Howser tower. Once before with Carl’s ashes, and the first time with Carl himself.

Carl Hawkins and I first met in February 2018 at the Canmore rec center, where we began climbing together consistently. I was 17, and had graduated high school in Calgary a semester early and promptly moved to Canmore. Carl was 25, living in an unheated van in the Save On Foods parking lot, working odd jobs to fund his climbing habit. We were an odd pairing. He was much taller than me and often sported the shadow of facial hair I couldn’t yet grow. Both of us were constantly sporting patched-up puffy jackets. His was a soft purple.

Over that winter, we became friends, climbed a bunch of ice and trained indoors together. We soon schemed about tackling big objectives in the Bugaboos that summer. All Along the Watchtower was atop our list.

The Bugaboos are a group of dramatic, glaciated granite spires in eastern British Columbia full of wonder and mystery. The prominent Howser Towers, with their steep and massive west faces, are Canada’s slice of Patagonia, as they’re often described. An El Capitan-sized hunk of granite, the west face of North Howser is the biggest and most committing feature in the Bugaboos.

Day I Sent Watchtower
Howser Towers

In 1981 Ward Robinson and Jim Walseth pioneered the first ascent of All Along the Watchtower, discovering a striking line that included a perfectly cleaved corner crack, running for hundreds of meters up the wall. In 1996, Topher Donahue and Kennan Harvey freed, at 5.12, what has become one of the Bugaboos’ most iconic lines.

In my youthful ignorance and exuberance, I seriously thought that with one 5.12 sport route and a couple of months in Squamish under my belt, All Along The Watchtower would be a fun challenge for me. This was a sign of just how inexperienced I was.

On that initial trip to the Bugaboos, I remember feeling rather small amid these grand mountains—yet even this didn’t deter me. I wanted to climb All Along the Watchtower. Being a few years older and more experienced, Carl questioned whether this was the best first route.

“Perhaps we should warm up on some other routes first,” he said, wisely.

“But this will be the adventure of our lives!” I insisted.

My enthusiasm deflated like a balloon in a freezer once I laid eyes on the grand east face of Snowpatch Spire and saw how big that was. Suddenly I wanted nothing to do with the west face of North Howser, which I understood was bigger, badder, and more than a scream for help away from camp.

Day I Sent Watchtower
Carl pours a finger of whiskey amid the squall.

Fate saved us from ourselves that trip as a blizzard moved in and collapsed our tent. We spent the rest of our trip sitting in a cave drinking whiskey. We made plans to one day return—stronger, braver, and more experienced—to climb All Along the Watchtower together.

I ripped the topo out of the guidebook, pinned it to the ceiling of my minivan, and hit the road to cut my teeth at the iconic destinations of the West: Squamish, Smith Rock, Yosemite, Indian Creek. Each night, wherever I was, I would lay my head down and look up at the topo. Each night, the dream dug itself a little deeper. I would close my eyes and imagine free climbing through the corner, gracefully pulling through the roof crux, reveling the air below my feet.

In December 2018 I found myself broke and living with my parents in Calgary, looking for a job to fund an upcoming trip to China. I met up with Carl, and we climbed a Rockies classic ice climb called Moonlight. He danced through the frozen air with silent elegance and confidence. Coming straight from the desert, and shitty at ice climbing to begin with, I clumsily followed his lead with frozen hands. We returned to our vehicles and cracked two frozen beers. We thawed them on the heater in my minivan and did our usual scheming. The Watchtower came up. Now (somewhat) wiser, I knew we would need to put in real time preparing, climbing lots of granite together. Eventually, the beers ran empty and we parted ways. On the advice of my friend Jordan, I had recently adopted a habit of telling my friends that I loved them more.

“Carl, I love you!” I shouted at him from my van.

“I love you too?” he replied, looking confused. Then the prodigal stoic Rockies hard man drove away. I never saw Carl again.

A week later, over breakfast I read online that a climber had died soloing yesterday, Christmas day, on Cascade Falls, just outside Banff.

“Bummer,” I thought, and continued to scroll, not thinking much else.

About 10 seconds later I got a text from my friend Dan:

Hey Nat. I don’t know how to say this. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but the guy who died on Cascade was Carl. I’m sorry, my friend.

I cried and cried. I’d only known Carl for 10 months, yet I felt as if I had lost a brother. The pain was so deep. I spent the next few days sad and afraid. The permanence of death pierced through the romanticizations that were justifying my lifestyle. Suddenly, it all felt like a lie. I just wanted blissful ignorance again. I was so scared of being scared.

So I did what any 18-year-old climber who had just lost a friend soloing would do: I went soloing.

On a dinky frozen waterfall, I was shaky and horrified. I had hoped to find flow, to forget, and move on. Instead, I backed off and cried alone in the forest.

At Carl’s memorial, his father said, “I had some friends lose a child a few days into its life. You know what they said to me? Wow. We got a few days with our beautiful child. A few amazing days. Me? I got 26 amazing years with my son. Of course, I’m sad. My heart is broken. But I’m also grateful.”

Using these words, this brave gratitude, as a compass, my fear waned. I chose to view mortality as a catalyst not a hindrance. Carl’s death rocketed me deeper down the rabbit hole of climbing, and I blasted off into adventure after adventure.

Carl’s ashes sat in my glove box and accompanied me to many beautiful places that he never got to visit. I considered spreading them in many places. Glacier Point, overlooking Yosemite Valley, where he never got to climb. Indian Creek, where he never got to see the sun dip between the Six Shooters or the sandy grins on everyone’s faces at the crag. In 2019, I returned to the Bugaboos for another attempt on The Watchtower with another close friend, DC, though this attempt never got off the ground. I considered spreading his ashes on a glacier or a different route in the Bugaboos, but I knew it wasn’t the right place.

“The right place,” however, still scared me, though now in a new way. Now more experienced, I knew enough to understand how serious Watchtower is. I also knew that I was now ready to try it. Maybe that’s what scared me most. The topo on my van reminded me every night of a quest that I felt compelled to complete.

Day I Sent Watchtower
The author (left) and David.

In the summer of 2020, I returned to the Bugaboos with David Tan. David and I didn’t know each other terribly well before the trip. We had met in Squamish the summer prior, and had shared a rope and a lot of laughter in Vegas and Joshua Tree over the winter. But we’d never done any big committing routes together, which caused some anxiety for us both.

My nervousness about our partnership faded away as soon as I saw the way we naturally looked out for each other on our “warm up” routes in the Bugaboos. As our time in these mountains went by, our comfort zones expanded and our friendship grew stronger.

And then, it seemed like it was time.

So it began. David and I quickly ascended the boot-packed staircase to Bugaboo-Snowpatch col, catching the sunrise as it filled the Columbia Valley with orange hues. I felt consumed by the beauty of the expansive glacier. Soft snow made the descent down the Pigeon-Howser Col a fast glissade. In the East Creek Basin, a cirque of beautiful granite walls surrounded us.

As we neared the rappels—the point of no return, of finally committing to climbing a route I’d only ever seen as a hand-drawn topo, taped to the roof my van for the past two years—I grew increasingly nervous at the ominous sounds of rockfall clamoring down around us. Anxiety grew as we neared the rappels.

At some point, David said, “I think we should definitely go to the rappels, but I am far from being totally committed to them.” I felt the same way, and felt guilty about feeling the same way. If we bailed, I wondered if I would return.

Day I Sent Watchtower

David reached the first rappel station before me. At last we saw the reality of the dream. There was no more romanticizing or going along half-heartedly. Three thousand feet of rock bore down on us, as if to ask if this is really what we want. Never before have I stood in such a tense place. I felt sick.

“If we don’t thread these ropes right now, I don’t know if I can do this,” David said. “Fuck. Fuck. We are fucking rapping into fucking El Cap!”

The Canadian Rockies legend John Lauchlan once said, “Once you commit, there can be no hesitation.” It was 7:50 a.m. We were hesitating, shitting our pants, listening to the voices in our heads screaming how bad this idea is. The next thing I knew, the ropes were threaded through my belay device and I was descending into a quiet and powerful world.

“Here we go, buddy,” David said, pulling the rope.

We ascended the rockfall-prone access gully as if running up the stairs of a dark basement from an unknown menace. It felt surreal to be at the base, flaking our ropes. Then were moving up the rock, gunning for the bivi ledges seven pitches up. This went according to plan, as much as anything goes to plan in the mountains.

We got off route, and then back on. We climbed a wet crack with a “5.10 bouldery move,” according to the topo, and a 5.7 pitch that was a torrent. We ran two pitches in one and David, on lead, ran out of rope, resulting in simul-climbing insecure terrain for some time. I sat there, two hand jams plugged into a crack running with water, wondering if David was okay 70 meters above. The rope would come tight, and with absolute trust in each other, I continued climbing. These moments felt like dodging punches in the ring. Full survival mode.

We reached the bivy ledge a few hours before dark. Our gear had time to dry and our weary hearts had time to rediscover their courage through hot food and mountain vistas. We laid down our rope, half of a Thermarest, and a single sleeping bag, and settled in.

The quiet mountains lulled us into a decent rest. We knew we’d need it. Day two is the big one.

Morning came. We didn’t anticipate our stream would freeze overnight, so we had to spend time melting snow. Soon, I was leading while David tended to filling up water bottles. He greeted me at the belay with the news that we were out of gas.

We had a long time to go before we stopped, and there would be no hot meal awaiting us this time. At least we had water—and a radical corner system ahead.

The corner was surreal. No ledges or natural breaks; just one big, clean corner zooming skyward. We swung 30-meter leads, always ending at hanging belays. With every strange stemming move, every painful shallow foot jam, every look at the valley a thousand feet below my heels, I was reminded that I was living the reality I had dreamed of during so many nights in my van.

Day I Sent Watchtower
Endless corners on All Along the Watchtower, North Howser tower.

And yet, the reality of the experience was proving tougher, grittier, and without the gracefulness and composure I had envisioned so many nights before. And yet still we had managed to free all of the 20something pitches that were now below us. Ahead was the crux roof pitch. I really wanted to free this route. I felt nervous, excited, and ready to seize an opportunity.

My “all free” dream, however, was quickly extinguished by the soaking-wet crux holds. Without frustration or regret, I began to aid through the four-meter section. Due to my principled distaste for aiding, I haven’t practiced it much, and I was slow. It was comforting to have David on the other end of the rope. He turned up the reggae that had been playing out of the phone in his pocket all day, and smiled.

David led the next pitch in a mix of free and aid, and it was beautifully frantic and fast. The sun began to set. We were drops of water in a golden ocean of granite. In that moment, I was overcome with emotion thinking of Carl, wishing he was here, and feeling humbled by how much I had to grow and learn just to be here, now, doing this route and bringing this dream to fruition.

The tears stopped as I recognized that our vision quest was from over. Even though I hadn’t freed those four meters at the roof, and even though David was climbing in a mix of free and aid, it was important to me to follow his leads free, simply because it was what I wanted to do.

Atop the headwall, I wrestled a 5.8 offwidth with a cramping body as night descended. The crack ultimately spit me, leaving me totally drained. A long, convoluted ridge lay head for us to climb by headlamp.

David took over, making most of the major decisions—or at least the good ones. We navigated the ridge under a night sky that defined wonder: surreal meteor showers, flashes of a distant thunderstorm, and no wind to speak of. Midnight became 1:00, then 2:00. Sometime around 3:00 a.m., we arrived at some nice flat ledges. David suggested we stop and spend the night. We had no food or water, but some rest would do us good. I stubbornly disagreed, insisting that we go until we find a spot with water. Wrong move. He obliged. I can be a real turd sometimes.

By 4:00 a.m. we encountered a tricky section of ridge that took an hour to safely navigate. The ridge became easy again, and we saw a bump ahead. We scrambled on to see if we could put the rope away. We arrived at the bump at 5:00 a.m., and found no more terrain to climb. David and I stood on top of the summit of North Howser Tower, just as red began to appear in the east.

The summit was calm and the sky clear. We laid down on our Thermarest under our sleeping bag, listened to The War on Drugs and Eddie Vedder, and enjoyed the scene. For two hours of the most supreme peace I have ever known, we watched the world be beautiful.

5:00 a.m. on the summit of North Howser.

I awoke from a nap to a blue sky and a hot sun. We knew that it was time to begin our rappels down the east face, and begin our journey home. While he rolled the sleeping bag and organized gear, I quietly walked over to where the summit overlooks the steep west face with a Ziploc bag of Carl Hawkins’s remains in my pocket. The right place. I was here. It was time. I scattered the remains of my dear friend, letting them go but holding on to his memory. “Do not let sorrow die for it is the sweetening of every gift,” wrote Cormac McCarthy. It was wonderfully underwhelming.

David and I rappelled, freed a stuck rope, hopped over the bergschrund, and stumbled back to camp with our cups very full. We were greeted by a strong force of community. Hugs, relief that we had returned. Congratulations on our adventure. It was overwhelming and humbling.

And it all began with two friends merrily drinking whiskey in a cave, dreaming about what it would be like to one day climb All Along the Watchtower.

About The Author

Nat Bailey

Nat Bailey is a Canadian rock climber and writer. He is the co-creator of an online climbing magazine called Rockpirates, and has landed four kickflips on his skateboard (and counting).

Comments

4 Comments

  1. Avatar

    Good job Nat

    Reply
  2. Avatar

    This was nice to read again the second time around. Your story and climbing pursuits come from a place of passion and authenticity. Keep doing what you’re doing Nat!

    Reply
  3. Avatar

    I loved this. Great writing. Thanks

    Reply
  4. Avatar

    Fantastic piece of writing.

    Reply

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