This is the second episode of the Équipe Solitaire podcast, published for paid subscribers roughly seven months ago. Free subscribers may listen now. If you enjoy it, and want to hear more, please redirect the fee for six ounces of single origin coffee beans (sacrilege, I know) each month towards a subscription to support this work, this writing, these conversations. Thank you.
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We recorded this podcast in September 2024 before I launched the Substack page. Scott is my dearest friend. Some of our experiences appear in “Extreme Alpinism” as well as “Kiss or Kill”, I probably told some of our stories during my visit with Chris, host of the Enormocast, and on the Made For Missions podcast with Matthias but sadly, the first two conversations Scott and I recorded together disappeared when we shut down the NonProphet podcast.
Scott gets right to the point, "What you wanted to accomplish in life in those days seems gravely different than what you want to accomplish in life today ... which I love. And, and Équipe Solitaire gets to both places."
I met Scott in 1985, the night Jonny Blitz fractured his elbow on a wood stove, slam-dancing at the going-away party thrown for my second trip to Chamonix. Scott and Steve Mascioli had just flown back from Alaska where they had retreated from very high on Mount Hunter after all of the stove fuel leaked from its bottle, soaking their sleeping bags. He and I didn't actually talk until '89. He came to France with Michael Gilbert who reinforced his own legend by dryly asking my wife how she could “deal with me doing what I do.” She gave him a blank stare.
When Scott and I climbed a new route on Mount Hunter five years later I finally understood the sacredness of the partnership, the power which can come from it. We shared a psychic connection on “Deprivation” that I only experienced on one other route, also with Scott.
Two decades later, I hadn't swung an ice tool for ten years but I wanted to. More importantly, I wanted to see the smile on Blair's face when she was climbing ice — she loves it so much. So I asked Scott to be our rope gun in Cody, where he and Brian Hall would be climbing since COVID closed the border, keeping the big Canadian waterfall routes safe from the pillaging Yanks. We all met there, in Wyoming, in the South Fork where Scott and I had shared some great days in the past, and climbed "High on Boulder" together. I got to see Blair's smile and loved her even more.
Later she made some cards, printed on heavy stock, with good texture, images from Cody, of Scott and I coming together again in that space, and movement, climbing ice, holding ropes, protecting each other ... well, him protecting me, allowing me to try, to risk, to love out loud ... and holding Blair simply because I asked him to and said it was important, that she is important. Scott trusted me, and we trusted him — of course — and the world allowed us to share something he and I never imagined would happen again. I loved tying the knot in that rope. That was good. I feel great love, respect, for him, for us, for all we have shared, then, now, and in whatever each of our futures hold.
Sometimes, when my own words fail, when I can't accurately describe our relationship I resort to lyrics from a song by Mark Burgess' post-Chameleons project, Invincible:
"In the end, you're only great as you truly are inside
Yeah, in the end
You're only as great as the partner by your side ..."
This was true for Scott and I as we discovered and helped each other define ourselves. He was there, pushing, pulling, seeing me, accepting me, and what we shared and did — ideas became word became action — changed me, made me, allowed me to be where I am today. Yes, he and I did those things but we also kept each other alive, and sensitized ourselves so we could be here now, surviving ... when others didn't make it this far. And while we might not share the rope again, we will have everything else, held between us, with us, in arms that were strong, that become less so, that hold on still.
The conversation ranges from the old to the new and current, from youthful vigor to measured application of strength, and endurance, to recovery from injury, surgery, to shifting objectives and activities to match our maturing abilities. It's good and deep, and I already look forward to the next one.
A couple of quotes from the convo:
"Everyone needs someone to look up to, a bit, and I'm glad we served that purpose for each other."
"After the Ramp Route on Mount Kitchener in 1980, I didn't say, I'm never doing this again, I said, this is what I'm doing for the rest of my life."
This could have been the thumbnail for the podcast (as discussed during it) but the pic of Scott retreating from the Grands Charmoz is stronger. @easton_skye
Michael Kennedy shot this image of Scott and I after we had been on the move for 39 hours. Michael, Greg, JoJo and Ken recovered our skis from below the North Buttress of Mount Hunter and brought them to us below the West Ridge, along with hot tea (probably Emperor’s Choice with a lot of honey as that seemed to be Michael’s favorite at the time). It was glorious — we didn’t have to posthole back to base camp.
Scott and I in Cody, 2020, after having climbed together for the first time in … a lot of years, captured by the eyes and heart of Blair Speed.
Retreating from the West Face of the Grands Charmoz, October 1993. After the storm cleared we went back and made the first ascent of “Birthright”. Shot with a Nikon FM2, 24mm f2.8 lens, Ilford HP5, processed and printed in the darkroom at the public library in Chamonix.
Blair and Scott in Cody, December 2020
September 2024
