“Oh no! No, God no!” John bawled in a voice of imminent doom.
I had heard climbers use this tone before. “Okay John,” I calmly responded. “You’re going to be fine. What do you see?”
“This twenty-foot-long, 1,000-pound flake of rock just shifted three inches! It’s going to topple and kill us all!”
Such an event would obviously be a major obstacle to our success. Still, on past adventures I had witnessed numerous death flakes that had miraculously stayed in place. I hoped this was the case here, but leaned in tight to the overhanging wall all the same.
John had walked large cams for forty feet. He was now looking at an eighty-footer. Every move of his body caused the solitary cam on which he stood to expand closer to its limit. I could hear his labored breathing as he strained to secure a knifeblade in a crack to the right of the flake.
This development didn’t help the fact that John Furneaux, Paul Bride and I were already feeling rather exposed. We were pinned far above the Tiedemann Glacier on the 2,000-foot south face of the Incisor in Canada’s Waddington Range, trying to aid a new route that we then intended to free. I could see Paul slinking away on rappel a pitch below. Perhaps he was thinking someone needed to survive in order to tell our sweethearts the unfortunate news.
A tedious hour wore on as John slowly tested the flake, placing opposing nuts and cams with the apprehension of a surgeon. Jamming, praying, pleading, he at last reached a safe ledge and hammered in a belay. Only the dependable ring of pitons coaxed Paul and me from our hiding places.
As I jugged John’s line, I cleaned the cams from the wet, overhanging offwidth, each retraction sending me swinging out another body length from the wall. To my surprise the Wobble Flake seemed to be quite secure. The last cam was so solid I couldn’t pull it out.
“Matt, throw in a hand jam and expand the flake!” John yelled from above.
I sank my palm into the wide slot and easily swung the flake clear. The cam dropped out like gum from a machine. My eyes wide in disbelief, I ascended until I was in a safer position, then yelled down to Paul to get out of the way. Grabbing both sides, I shook the pillar in an attempt to detach it for good.
A loose block above the flake had jammed it, preventing it from toppling out at the apex of its swing. John and I stared at each other, amazed that we were going to free climb it, just as it was, the next day.

Two years earlier, a friend and I had bivied on a ledge 100 feet to the left of the Wobble Flake. The ledge was big enough for one butt cheek per person; we hung half our weight on our harnesses, our feet tucked into our packs, our thoughts on the steep ground ahead. Over the past three days we had climbed difficult aid for 1,000 feet up smooth granite, capsule style. Our plan involved another 1,000 feet to the top of the Incisor and then a connection to the route Belligerence for another 3,500 feet to the top of Mt. Combatant*

(*FOOTNOTE: The route Belligerence was climbed in 1994 by Greg Child, Greg Collum and Steve Mascioli over eight days. Don Serl, in his book The Waddington Guide, notes, “The tremendous scale and logistical complexity of [Belligerence]…makes this seem a route more at home in the Karakorum….[The route] holds pride of place as far and away the biggest technical undertaking in the Coast Mountains so far…—Ed.).

We had opted to go light, but mental baggage combined with the blank wall above weighed on my friend’s mind. We escaped our dreadful bivy, rappelling into the night, the glow of the moon highlighting the spectacular offwidth to the right.
“We should up the ante next year and climb that!” I suggested as we set up another rappel. But in the event, our lives pulled us in different directions. It would take me another two years to find a willing partner.

Paul Bride and I had been friends for ages. In the winter of 2003 we survived our first big adventure together, soloing deepwater routes for three weeks in Vietnam’s Ha Long Bay. I soloed; Paul photographed. In the evenings, we discussed future trips, drifting aboard an impromptu catamaran of two kayaks, a portaledge and a tent.
“Remember me telling you about that route in the Waddington Range?” I asked Paul.
“Yeah…” Paul drawled. His jet-black hair stood on end, an eraser head, thick and greasy.
“I need someone fast, and you haven’t done much alpine climbing, so… I found another partner.” Paul just listened. Taking a slow breath, I continued. “It might give you the chance to focus more on photography.”
“Sounds great,” Paul said absently. “Who’s your partner?”
“John Furneaux. He’s the guy who soloed the Split Pillar in Squamish. Twenty-five, an assistant alpine guide. We’ve only had a day of climbing together, but he’s good.”
John was more than good. His bold tactics had created quite the stir back home. He free soloed…a lot; in fact, he seemed to prefer climbing alone. But with enchainments under his belt such as Angels Crest, Rock On to the Buttress, and The Ultimate Everything—thirty-eight pitches up to 5.10c, all after a day of guiding—I knew he would be up to the task.
“I’m sure he’d like to get his hands on your Waddington route,” Paul said as the current gently lapped against the catamaran.
“Yeah, he’s stoked,” I replied. “I can’t think of anyone better.”

On July 11, 2004, our team of three tumbled out of the helicopter and onto the glacier below Mt. Combatant. A steep icefall, a 400-foot couloir and a final thirty feet of 5.11 cracks brought us to our base camp on a protected ledge directly below the Incisor. We spent two days fixing ropes. Three low-angle pitches brought us to the dramatically steep headwall, on which the next two pitches formed the overhanging crux.
The first, an A3+ seam, did not exactly cry out with free-climbing potential, but after aiding it I was still hopeful. An unlikely splitter sliced the hardened surface of the flat, gray wall above. The Incision is the Incisor’s obvious bad boy. The lightning-bolt feature zigzagged only once in 200 feet, at a triangular roof in the heart of the pitch…but then, as John soon found out, there was the matter of the Wobble Flake.
On Day 3, I tried the A3+ seam on toprope, freeing (though not linking) all the moves at 5.13a. On my first lead attempt, I fought through the initial 5.11d crux, my fingers crimping the edge of a seam. A throw to a ledge kept me from testing the integrity of a birdbeak, the only pro between me and the belay thirty feet to the left.
The crack widened to deep fingers, then suddenly petered out as the wall became vertical. A blank traverse brought me to a Lost Arrow I had fixed earlier. With all my weight on one finger in a mono pocket, I flailed, trying to clip the pin. My feet slipped. The pocket tore deeply into my knuckle as I popped off. I flew past Paul and his camera, two small cams blowing out of the gritty crack as I whipped by.
At the end of my thirty-foot ride, the sense of what I was doing began to sink in. I spun in space at 10,000 feet, the spectacular glacier whirling 1,000 feet below. Blood poured from my finger.
“I think I’m done for the day,” I called to John and Paul.
The next morning I tried to climb past the mono with another finger, but using the wrong digit was too awkward and I popped off again and again. When I made it past the crux at last, my tips were bleeding. I knew I couldn’t repeat it.
Unfortunately I had miscalculated the possibilities of gear; a birdbeak seam was the only option. Twenty feet higher I clung to a 5.11 roof, the rope dangling free to the Lost Arrow far below. I tweaked a small nut in above the roof. Finally able to relax, I made another few moves before reaching bomber gear and the belay.
Next up: the Incision. Water still seeped from its recesses, but it was much drier than when we first had arrived. John jumared my pitch and got ready for a free attempt, racking a large selection of wide cams onto his harness. His white, bulbous knuckles—the result of frostbite—are the dominant feature of his huge hands, which themselves are disproportionate to his lean, six-foot-four frame. But those hands work wonderfully for filling wide fissures.
Paul hung from a fixed line, his finger hovering over the shutter button as John karate-chopped the crack. From his vantage point, Paul could only hear John clipping gear as he disappeared beneath the roof. Then a desperate hand reached over the roof, and Paul began to fire his camera as John’s fingers groped for the edge of the horizontal crack. Inverting, with his feet in the ceiling, John stabbed for jams. A tape glove tore loose; he frantically whipped it off, then immediately stuffed his hand back in the crack. Cutting his feet loose, he shot them over the roof and scratched at the lip for purchase, his knees at his elbows and his arms shaking from the effort. With just enough power to spare he stuffed his feet into the crack, plugged in a 3.5 Camalot and sagged.
He had he lost the redpoint. If he wanted to claim a free ascent, he would need to repeat the pitch without the rest.
When he had recovered, John kept climbing to the base of the Wobble Flake. I jugged up. Hopeful that the difficult pitches were behind us, we rappelled back to camp to rest and prepare.

Back in camp, we wore t-shirts and sandals in the continuing sunshine, our mood lifting with each sunny day. The good weather and the perfect, El Cap–like granite made us feel as if we were climbing at a local crag. In the afternoon we wrestled boulders into place, creating walls, tent platforms and cairns; a helicopter landing zone came to naught when we encountered boulders too big for us to trundle.
In the evening we discussed tactics for the big day.
“Guys, I don’t think I have much chance of sending that face without some rest.” I opened my palms over the hot stove for Paul and John to see. My red, raw fingertips glistened with sweat. A scabbed knuckle on my middle finger split open as I tried to bend it.
“What’s more important to you, Matt,” John asked, half listening to his MP3 player, “the free ascent of the lower half or the summit push?” He sat on a boulder with his back slouched forward and his knees propped above his waist. His long arms hung nearly to his feet. His scruffy blonde hair and unshaven face made him look older than his twenty-five years. “I don’t think the weather will hold for both. Personally, I’d like to try for the summit—but then again I’m biased. I don’t think I have a chance to free that pitch. I don’t even see the holds.”
I gave in. “Screw it, then, let’s go tomorrow, and I’ll aid through it if I have to.”
“You should at least try to free as much as possible,” John said, strains of U2 audible from his earphones. “Even if you fall off every move, it’s better style than pulling on gear.” He dropped a chunk of crusted snow into the pot, pushing the snow down into the boiling water with his bare fingers. “I think I’m just going to jug it.”
“Well, if you’re going to jug it anyway, then the second should jug every hard pitch. I could save a lot of energy by not seconding your offwidth. We’ll go for a team-free ascent.”
John got up and whipped a rock over the glacier. “All right, then! Tomorrow we smoke this thing!” His smile beamed in the evening light, a mouthful of straight white teeth.
Paul had been picking through our pile of cams and pins, taking pictures of the abused metal. Both he and John made me look like a midget. Paul’s job in a health gym back home fit his jock-like appearance. His shock of black hair combined with his thick black eyebrows and dark complexion to reveal his Italian heritage. I could see why all the girls back home swooned over these two. I felt a little out of place listening to their complicated love lives. My wiry black hair, crooked teeth and big nose might give me character, but I could still count my lovers on one hand.
“What gear are you guys bringing?” Paul asked.
“One rope will keep us light and fast,” I suggested. “I think we should leave our boots, too. How about down booties over our rock shoes for the descent? We could duct tape our crampons onto them!”
I didn’t own any booties and I tend to butcher my gear if it means success. Paul, who knows this, hid his warm booties behind a boulder. John just smiled, caught up in a plan that fit his bold personality well.

By 6 a.m. John and I were simulclimbing the initial pitches with one rope, two sets of cams, a couple of pins, two ice axes, a lightweight tarp, an alpine stove, a radio and no boots. Feeling strong, I sailed through the 5.13 face only to slip off the final hold of the pitch. Oh, well: 5.12d A0. Still, it felt remarkable to have performed my best attempt on the day that counted…and without a single bolt.
Unfortunately, I had already blown through the last bit of skin on my fingertips. As I waited for John to jug the pitch I taped each one in anticipation of the 4,000 feet still to come.
John accomplished the impossible, climbing through the 5.12b offwidth roof, past his former 3.5 Camalot rest and straight through the Wobble Flake for the redpoint of the entire 200-foot pitch. Now above our previous high point, spectacular splitter granite kept us flowing upward. A 5.11 finger crack on a steep slab, a slapping arête into a deep chimney and a bold stemming corner protected by RPs yielded 1,000 feet of new ground by 10:30 a.m.
Atop the Incisor, John had me take a picture while he balanced on the sharp ten-foot point. Behind him the rock fell away for a couple of hundred feet to the start of the Jawbone Ridge. Gendarme towers balanced along the jagged precipice to the Snow Shelf, 2,000 feet away. The edges of the ridge dropped 1,500 feet vertically into blasted slabs. Any escape by rappel would be threatened by hovering seracs on the left and right. Committing to the ridge meant committing to making the Snow Shelf, from which, if necessary, we could angle down to the Waddington/Combatant col.
We moved efficiently, rappelling 300 feet down the back of the Incisor, then simulclimbing to slash the distance to safety above. We did what we could to be fast. If we were able to stand on a ledge, we rarely clipped in for belays. A bomber pin was usually enough for a rappel. We soloed up to easy 5.11. Feeling invincible, we bounded over the rock, losing ourselves in the moment like children.
In the center of the endless towers, our lighthearted disposition gave way to the harshness of mountain reality. A long chimney led to a notch between two towers. I climbed out of the chimney and into the notch, then manteled a pile of unstable blocks, carefully slotting a blue Alien into a crack above to keep the rope from tumbling blocks onto John. Scurrying along a series of ledges, I picked up momentum; the pressure of reaching the summit before dark was ever-present.
I reached over a small roof, careful not to release any loose rock. Suddenly I was airborne, a block the size of a television in the air beside me. My mind went into survival mode. I briefly acknowledged that my last piece of gear might not hold a fall and that our risky simulclimbing tactics made the situation serious. And then I was simply falling.
I grabbed everything I could in an attempt to stop. The block bounced off my knee, gouging it deeply. I caught a sloping rail and slid down it, desperately trying to hold on. As I popped off the end, the rock sliced my palm and fingertips. Blood mixed with rock dust. I checked a ledge with my pelvis, flipped upside down, then slammed another ledge with my shoulder. The blow swirled my vision, but it also significantly slowed my descent.
Finally, forty feet below the notch, the rope caught my fall. The blue Alien bent awkwardly in my direction.
I had managed to fall down the other side of the notch. Pulling myself upright, I assessed the situation. Blood poured from my hands, droplets dotting the rock. The pain was all encompassing, but I didn’t feel any searing pinpoints as I would from broken bones. This time I had been lucky.
“I’m OK!” I yelled to John. I pulled myself up the rope until I reached the notch, then looked back down the chimney. John had his hands braced against the rock.
“You all right?” he asked calmly, using his guide’s voice.
“I fell…far,” I replied.
“I know. You dragged me up the chimney.”
“I’ll keep going,” I said. My body started to shake. My hands left bloody prints on the rock walls.
“No. Sit down and drink some water. I’m coming up. ”
I huddled amongst the loose blocks, directly below the Little Cam That Could.
John climbed up and checked my shoulder. I winced in pain. Reaching down, I pushed fabric against my bleeding knee in an attempt to make it clot. John started reracking the gear. “Can you make it to the Shelf?” he asked.
“I think so.”
John took off while I fed out slack. When he reached the hole left by the block, he peered down, imagining my fall and the distance to the cam. He shook his head.
“You’re super lucky, Matt. That could have killed you.”
“Could I have done anything better?” I asked meekly.
The cam was the only gear available, and we had kept the slack out of the rope while simulclimbing. “No,” he responded. “It’s just the game we play, I guess.”

We kept climbing, weaving our way around the 100-foot towers of the Jawbone. My right arm was useless, but I found I could lead up to 5.10, using strong legs and good technique to make up for my damaged upper body. John took the bigger pack; he would lead all the hard pitches from here on. Still, our mood and speed had taken a hit.
Loose stone lay everywhere. I pushed along a horizontal chimney, careful not to touch my injured shoulder to the wall.
“Go light!” John warned me as I reached the belay. The slabs beneath us groaned and shifted. The crack system we were anchored to seemed to widen as I watched.
John led on, struggling to find gear behind vertical loose blocks. Reaching the top of a 5.11 corner he peered back over the lip as I pulled tight on the rope.
“Matt, wait! Hold on!”
I looked up to see him flipping the rope out from behind a block.
“Okay! Line fixed.”
I jabbed awkwardly with my ascenders, twisting my back with every thrust. The moves pinched my shoulder; I yelled out in frustrated pain with each foot of progress.
We reached the Snow Shelf by 3:30 p.m. and stopped for a brew and a reassessment. Safe at last, I could feel the overwhelming pull of escape.
“Well, Matt,” John started. “You’re leading pitches and holding your own. We’re doing great for time. What do you say? Summit or plummet?” He looked me in the eyes, his expression glowing. Fifteen hundred feet of rock remained to the summit. We were climbing one of the Coast Range’s great rock routes, and we both knew it. We didn’t want the climb to end here.
Despite the blinding pain in my back and arm, I knew one day I would completely forget the suffering and remember only the energy of the day. I could use these thoughts to push forward with each coming breath.
“Sure,” I answered. “Let’s go for it.”
We continued on, a new fire in our hearts.

Reverting to simulclimbing, we climbed three 5.8 pitches to a ledge 500 feet below the Toothless Tower, the end of the southeast ridge of Combatant. We opted to skip the tower, traversing instead into a gully in an attempt to gain the summit. As I down climbed to the couloir I saw that John was fixed to a belay. Somehow, he had made it across the ice.
“Matt!” he yelled down to me. “Slide across!”
“What? How did you get across?”
“I hopped over some boulders fifty feet below. Don’t worry; I’ll hold your pendulum.”
His idea was one devised by a tired man, but I was too tired myself to suggest an alternative. I down climbed again until there was no rope left, then hesitantly weighted the rope. Immediately I picked up speed, shooting across the couloir, my rock shoes skiing on slush. I was soaked and angry at our carelessness, but I was relieved we were across nonetheless.
Pitch followed endless pitch as we continued up rock along the left side of the gully. Had we been fresh, we probably could have climbed straight up any of the 5.11 corners directly to the summit, but we were exhausted and stuck to easier ground.
Eventually we reached the saddle between the Toothless Tower and the main summit.
“Look over there,” John said, gesturing toward a point of rock much higher than we were. It was Mt. Tiedemann. “We could easily climb that, too.” Somehow, his mojo was still kicking.
Mine wasn’t. “Like hell we will,” I mumbled under my breath.
Patches of snow near the summit made for treacherous footing in our rock shoes. As we scrambled up the final pitch, a wave of happiness overcame me. After eleven hours of exhausting climbing, we were near the top and close to turning around.
“Fuck!” I yelled.
“What’s up?” John called from the belay.
“There’s more rock!”
We had mistaken the summit of Mt. Combatant for the summit of Mt. Tiedemann.
Dropping our ropes and gear, we soloed the last 200-foot tower, taking care not to slip in our fatigued state. The icy wind from the Chaos Glacier whipped at us, even as the sun warmed our backs. Eleven and a half hours after leaving base camp, we reached the top.
“Wild! You can see the entire Coast Range from here!” I screamed to John over the wind. Elated by our success, we snapped a couple of photos to share with Paul…but we still had to worry about the descent.
To save time and gear on rappels, I slid down our single rope for its entire length, placing one or two pieces in the granite walls of the couloir along the way. John removed the anchor while I belayed him from below. He kicked down the ice with his duct-taped-on crampons and our two ice axes, his rock shoes burning his feet inside his down booties.
We reached the Shelf with hours of daylight left and easily descended to the Waddington/Combatant col, where we discovered a stash of booze, left by a party that had retreated in a storm.
“John, let’s grab a couple of beers to share with Paul. He’s been without a drink for too long. He’s probably freaking out.”
John pulled a bottle from the snow. “How about a swig of Jimmy Beam?”
We continued to the edge of a 1,500-foot icefall. We were now level with the top of the Incisor. Skipping a time-consuming rappel along a rock band, we headed straight down the icefall, navigating detached ice blocks the size of houses while ice walls leaned in overhead.
As darkness enveloped us we made it to the last 5.11 pitch at the top of the steep couloir below camp. It was our final obstacle to warm bags. John led as Paul hovered overhead, silhouetted against the sinking light.
John stalled at the crux, cursing his wet hands and slipping shoes. Paul could have easily tossed down a rope, but after such a great day, John was determined to finish properly. His curses increased in volume as his focus narrowed. Pulling out his overlooked ice axe, he shoved it in the crack and quickly manteled into camp.
Sixteen and a half hours after leaving, we collapsed onto the warm talus and peeled the rock shoes from our swollen feet. John and Paul sat and talked as they shared the rescued beer. I crawled into my sleeping bag, hoping to alleviate the overwhelming pain and exhaustion.
It began to rain, then snow; the storm would last for three days. Huddling safely in my tent, I rolled over to sleep.
“Do your worst,” I mumbled to the wind. “This time we won.”

Summary

The Smoke Show (ED2: 5.12d A0, 4,500'), Mt. Combatant (12, 323'), July 17, 2004, John Furneaux, Matt Maddaloni