More sand than stone

May 5, 2024 mountaingroup

Three hundred feet up the wall, I rested my toes on dime-sized sandstone edges. I was reminded of my ballet days en pointe, the pain was torture. The black rubber of my climbing shoes burned my swollen toes under the harsh desert sun. The skin on my fingers was already thin and oozed into the tiny crimps. I was here again, at the crux, and I needed to focus not on the discomfort, but on the movement: putting my left foot in the small pocket, bending the tiny edges with all my might, and throwing my left hand to the finishing jug.

Written by

Heather Weidner and Hayden Jamieson

Photographs by

Miah Watt

Hayden

In January of 2019, Heather Weidner, Jeremiah Watt, and I walked side-by-side through the Jordanian desert toward our objective: Jebel Rum, a 2000-foot sandstone wall jutting vertically from the Martian landscape. Our path took us past the boundaries of Wadi Rum, a protected desert in Southern Jordan, and we took the final steps to the base of the wall. I had a pang of doubt in my stomach; were we up to the challenge?

A few days prior, a Czech climber we met recommended we check out a route of his called Rock Empire. At the base of the route, we scrutinized the massive sandstone face trying to imagine the line the route would take up such a steep piece of rock. There was an uncomfortable silence as we eyed the runout nature of the first pitch; each of us hoping the other would volunteer to lead. Without hesitation, Heather tied in, racked up, and started climbing. She was attentive as she climbed up the pitch hoping Inshallah (God willing) that no holds would break. She carefully floated up to the anchor without falter or struggle.

The next pitch was labeled 5.12c R in the topo, and the idea of climbing that hard, far above my protection on such fragile rock made my stomach churn. Trying to be brave, I tentatively started climbing. Swinging past the technical crux, I looked at the bolt-less strip of rock above me with no anchor in sight. Using my best “mountain sense” or whatever that means, I followed the path of least resistance and eventually looked around a bulge to find the anchor still desperately far away. I slowly committed to the crumbling holds and tiptoed my way across the final sequence to the safety of the anchor.

The fourth pitch was the crux. At 5.13, it had the potential to send us packing down the wall with our tail firmly between our legs. Again, without hesitation, Heather questioned the blank face above. As she moved higher, the wall revealed dozens of tiny one- and two-finger pockets.

This incredible feature pitch provided just enough holds to make free climbing possible. Heather’s upward progress slowed to a halt as she reached the crux immediately below the anchor. She wavered and contemplated the sequence for ten minutes and eventually committed to a sequence that sent her peeling off the thin holds. After a short rest, Heather solved the cryptic beta and climbed to the anchor. As I belayed, she shouted encouragement and the key beta that allowed me to send the pitch on the first try. The pitch was no longer a question mark.

Heather made one final effort on the pitch in the encroaching darkness. She was millimeters from grabbing the final jug but couldn’t see her feet in the fading light and slipped. We called it a day, rapped back to the ground, and headed home through the convoluted streets with the comforting escort of a few stray dogs.

After a rest day exploring the ancient streets of Petra, we were back at the Jebel Rum with our usual canine escorts in tow.

To save time, Heather and I opted to mini traxion the first three pitches on our fixed lines so that she could get a shot at sending the crux before the sun hit the wall. Our attempt was futile, and as Heather started up, temperatures soared into the high seventies. On the black sandstone, what was already a ridiculously thin climb seemed almost impossible. Heather had to completely rethink how she would climb the crux of the pitch as her previous sequence relied too heavily on friction for the hot day. After a spell of trying every imaginable sequence, she found one that might work. I lowered her back to the bottom of the pitch and she fired it right off, letting out an animalistic cry of grief as she clipped the final jug.

As I belayed, I couldn’t shut off the voice in the back of my head doubting my ability to send in the heat. My toes felt as if they were roasting in an oven, yet I had to stand on minuscule edges and cram them into small pockets. As soon as I entered the crux, my doubt became reality and I peeled off the holds, crying out in pain and frustration. The pitch that I had done with relative ease a couple of days prior now felt out of the question. But with some unrelenting positivity from Heather, I refined my sequence a bit, ignored the self-doubt, lowered down, and confidently sent the pitch.

Each subsequent pitch, regardless of grade, had some element of flavor, from route-finding and hazardous runouts to terrifying down-climbs. The one 5.10 pitch on the route proved to be one of the most terrifying leads of my life. Each move felt like climbing a overhanging sandcastle with extremely high consequences if it blew out. Legendary climber Arnaud Petit describes the experience very well,

“The sandstone is sometimes more sand than stone… You are forced to learn to use your whole body not to break holds. It's more than standing on your feet.”

The closer we got to the summit, the onset of fatigue and the more automated our actions became. Climb, haul bag, belay, unclip, switch rack, repeat. Every so often, we would break from our habitual cycle with the call to prayer echoing loudly from the village mosque far, far below. As evening progressed, Heather and I found ourselves simul-climbing the last few easy pitches to the top of the formation. We took a moment of reflection from the sandy summit plateau and listened to Salat al-maghrib: the call to prayer right after sunset.

Throughout my travels, I have spent hundreds of hours sitting in cheap economy seats on airplanes and thinking about the loneliness of being impossibly far from home. I have enough chossy adventure routes in Utah to last me many lifetimes. What's the point of traveling thousands of miles to seek them elsewhere? Is it the adventure, the culture, and the chance to break away from my homogenized life of creature comforts and conveniences? Perhaps the reason is bigger than that…

Heather

Three hundred feet up the wall, I pressed my toes onto dime-sized sandstone edges. I was reminded of my ballet days en pointe, the pain was torture. The black rubber of my climbing shoes burned my swollen toes under the harsh desert sun. The skin on my fingers was already thin and sweating in the tiny crimps. I was here again, at the crux, and I needed to focus not on the discomfort, but on the movement: putting my left foot in the tiny pocket, crimping the minuscule edges with all my might and launching my left hand towards the finishing jug.

It was already mid-morning and we were only on pitch three of fourteen on Rock Empire, a 500-meter big wall sandstone climb jutting out of the red desert of Wadi Rum. The crux pitch, a 13b vertical tech masterpiece, was sequential, off-balance and thin. We had worked this pitch a couple of days before in the afternoon shade and had figured out the beta, hoping to put it all together in one big push. But today felt different. The direct sun was oppressive and everything felt slippery and insecure. This was my last chance to re-point this pitch and ultimately the entire route. We were running out of time, and I wanted Hayden to have a chance to succeed.

It was my second lead attempt that day and time slowed as I stared ferociously at the final jug. I launched for it and let out an animalistic yell. The next thing I knew, my left hand had latched the last big hold—YES! I clipped the anchors and put Hayden on belay. I was sure he would get it, as he flashed this pitch the other day when we were sussing it out. However, it was much hotter today and he popped off the small crimp just before reaching the jug. He yelled in frustration and we talked a bit as he hung from the rope just below me.

“It’s okay, it’s hot today. You’ll get it. You’ve gotta try again.”

This was a partnership. Minutes before he had waited patiently for me to send the crux and I was happy to return the favor. I lowered him back down, he rested for only five minutes, and then he was on it again. When Hayden made it to the anchors after a heroic fight, we were absolutely giddy. There was one more 5.12c pitch and then mostly 5.11s and 5.10s to the top. We now knew we had a real shot at sending the hardest big wall climb either of us had ever done.

A few months prior, when Hayden asked if I was interested in climbing with him in Wadi Rum, Jordan, I felt a surge of excitement mixed with intimidation. I had climbed quite a few multi-pitch routes before, but they were shorter and much easier than Rock Empire. Routes in Wadi Rum have a reputation for poor quality rock and runout protection. The closest experience I had was climbing long routes in Red Rock Canyon, Nevada. But being merely a stone’s throw from civilization in Las Vegas, it felt only mildly adventurous and overall comfortable. In Jordan, the adventure element would be on a much grander scale, given that it’s in the Middle East in the middle of nowhere, and these routes were MUCH bigger than anything I had done before.

Hayden is very experienced in multi-pitch climbing. I felt anxious committing to the trip—I didn’t want to hold him back. I’ve had my fair share of hard single pitch route projections, but big walling is a different game all together. It requires significant endurance, physical and mental, rope management, reading the rock for the “choss factor”, and route-finding. I was worried I wouldn’t be able to keep up.

But multi-pitch climbing is all about being a team player. If you’re not as strong on one element, that’s okay. It’s about supporting each other along the way so you can get up the wall.

And there we were, Hayden and I in Wadi Rum having completed the hardest pitch of the big wall. It was surreal. We knew we could do the rest, we just had to persevere.

I started up pitch four, the last hard section, graded 5.12c. We knew this climb had big runouts, but I quickly found out it was like nothing I’d ever experienced. The pitch only had four bolts in 35 meters! Each time I clipped a bolt, I had an overwhelming feeling of relief. The climbing wasn’t exceptionally difficult, but the rock quality was variable, which made the runouts unnerving.

I gingerly placed my feet on what looked like harder rock and tried to pull DOWN (not out!) on my handholds, decreasing the chance of ripping off a chunk of rock and suffering a massive fall. On the last twenty-five feet of un-protected traversing, I over-gripped the tiny crimps and let out a yell to pull my feet up and with an overwhelming feeling of relief I was at the anchors.

Hayden and I continued to climb all day, with some exciting 5.11 and 5.10 pitches, and reached the summit just before dark. We hugged and hooted at the top, taking a moment to look out at the Bedouin town below. We started the long way down, rappelling in the dark, and with the soft glow of our headlamps all was silent. I was exhausted but couldn’t wipe the smile off my face.

The last Call to Prayer of the day emanated from the loudspeaker in the valley below, a magical end to our big adventure.

Hayden

… a small realization came over me atop Rock Empire. Heather and I had accomplished a goal that only a couple of days prior we had regarded as terrifying. A goal that we could now log in our memory as an irreplaceable shared experience.

Before descending, we watched the first stars populate the increasingly dark sky, and as we sat there I couldn’t help but marvel at how far a small dream had brought me. From my comfortable life in Salt Lake City, to the top of Jebel Rum on a starry night in the Jordanian desert. In that moment, I was reminded of the importance of dreams; they aren’t just ideas to work towards, dreams are a human necessity.