Slow Pulse Boy

He stood by the window and let the fire sink into his skin

Balin Miller, self-portrait on The Reality Bath

I first heard Balin Miller’s name when someone sent a cryptic note that he might have repeated “The Reality Bath”. It seemed to be happening in near-real time. For a few hours we chased hints and snippets, and social media posts. Photos showed familiar, well-remembered terrain, last seen closely in 1988. Within 24 hours of the first rumor we learned the truth; Balin made the second ascent of “The Reality Bath”, 37 years after the first. One more circle closed. I hadn’t spoken to Randy Rackcliff yet but felt his excitement. We had truly stretched our necks on the chopping block to make the first ascent, and stirred up some controversy (mostly my doing) with the Grade we gave it. The route’s reputation grew year after year, decade after decade, hearsay and facts combining into legend.

I had a strong feeling that “The Reality Bath” would be repeated the winter of 2024-25, even making a bet with myself about who would do it and how. I lost the bet but the feeling was correct. And I felt a strange connection to the protagonist because the music he chose for a social media post was from my era, and a track I used to open virtually every show I ever gave starting in 1986.

“Somewhere the blast furnace explodes ... plumes of amber in the night sky”

Someone sent me a DM describing Balin as Twight-obsessed, which I blew off. Then I read his own words somewhere that suggested the same thing. I looked up his climbing resumé and realized how talented he was, and bold. I felt a tickle of recognition, young Mark, 22 year-old Mark flying home from the Alps. During that flight, as I stared at the mountains pouring their glaciers into deep green valleys I wrote, “22 was just a preview, 23 is the year I will break it all open.” Much changed and much has been done since then but the same self-assurance and drive that had fueled my own climbing was apparent in this smiling, quirky and confident young man. I wanted to meet him.

A few weeks later he walked through the front door of Beringia House where we were about to have a public discussion about “The Reality Bath” first and second ascents, about ambition, history, influence and inspiration, and the future. We shook hands. We might have hugged. He said he was nervous and hadn’t spoken in public since doing a book report in high school. I promised to guide us, assuring him all would go well. The premise of the presentation had me talk about the year I had at 22, then the week leading up to “The Reality Bath”, the first attempt and the ascent. After that I’d interview him about his 22nd year and the week that preceded repeating the route, including the climb itself. Of course, he was nervous, and guarded but I think we did well. I wanted to record a follow-up podcast with him but the winter got away from us and suddenly he was up north doing the Kahiltna Hang and climbing route after route, culminating with a solo ascent of the Slovak Direct on Denali. We traded a couple of texts after that, the last of which saying he’d be around Bozeman in the autumn and we could finally do the podcast.

Social media showed he was on El Cap, brief snapshots of being alone on a big wall. On the morning of October 2nd Blair nudged me at 6:15 and waited for me to surface from sleep, “Can I tell you something? It’s not good.” I rubbed eyes and drew my knees up to stretch my lower back, the antenna inside that had received messages like this for over forty years knew what was coming. “Balin had an accident. He died.” I stayed in bed for a while, rerunning the memories, replaying the loose idea I’d had about mentorship, guidance, and how he could become a powerful advocate for climbing and importantly, doing it in good style. I knew the details would eventually clarify so didn’t ask for any. A heavy sadness colored the rest of the day.

There’s a sense of responsibility heavy on the shoulders of knowing one has inspired others to follow a similar path. Such inspiration doesn’t always turn out well but it often does. We only hear about it when it doesn’t.

I remembered young Mark — seen through the filter of the years — and the many things I had gotten away with, where good luck was more important than any skill. I recalled the silly and deadly mistakes made, and recovered from. I sifted through advice offered by mentors in those early years, shared with words and also actions, and recalled that my reply to the ones who advised me to pump the brakes was to go even harder. Those Elders were trying to keep me alive but what I felt was restraint, a wet blanket, and my young voice shouted inside, “What do you know, Old Guy?” I’d wanted to avoid that reaction from Balin but also imagined conversations where risk and probability could be addressed openly and honestly, no admonition, no advice, we could place the topic on the table and then talk about it or not. What Old Mark couldn’t see, or accurately remember, was the drive I had at his age, the raging need to prove myself, and my desperate hunger to have the most powerful experiences I could imagine. I was burning hot enough to incinerate myself and that ambition made me deaf to all but the most subtle guidance. The mentors who mattered could see that so they simply listened, and set good examples. I wanted to do that for Balin and trusted that if it was meant to happen the natural order of things would put us together when the time was right. Being two generations removed made potential interaction and relationship less obvious but as an Elder it was my responsibility to try.

I’ve asked myself why I cared about Balin or paid attention to what he was doing. The climbs and the style he did them with were inspiring, of course, but it went beyond physical accomplishment. He appeared to be living his authentic Self, careless of what others might think, and few do that at such a young age. Video captured on “Deprivation” in Alaska shows a man doing exactly what he wanted and believed in, one who was where he belonged, demonstrating a level of comfort and talent that comes along rarely. That natural comfort was missing when we met and I realized that being born to do one particular and esoteric thing doesn’t necessarily come with the facility and skills to navigate other terrain, the social environment swirling around us daily. Up there, in the mountains, the purity and happiness of his spirit was clear. Down here it appeared blunted, pressured by the demands of earning living and figuring out how to spend more time up there. It didn’t seem like the social circumstances of this era — the tension between virtual and real, the constant connectedness, the comparative and competitive nature of it all — were nourishing to his spirit. That presumption could simply be me projecting young Mark into his boots and pretending I understand. One thing I certainly projected was the idea of an even older Mark reminiscing with a matured Balin, talking over what was done and how, the routes that got away and the mistakes we got away with, the visions seen, relationships shared, you know, old guy shit.

Since we met I’ve thought much about what I might say to my younger self now, which reminded me that one mentor actually left things unsaid because, “I would have been throwing gasoline on the fire.” Instead he showed me that, having survived his early years of soloing and doing hard routes, he still tended the fire of ambition and challenging experience but did so in a reserved way. Thirty years later he spends winter in the Alps, pushing on edges I lost sight of as the years took their toll. Now I can admire his foresight, how he nurtured the coals without letting them flare up, and maintained the vessel for future voyages.

Given his example, I might tell younger Mark to, “take care of yourself and your body just in case you do survive this meteoric trajectory.” That seems more relatable than, “don’t fly too close to the sun,” but still clumsy. How can we foster the energy that might produce great things without giving the flame so much oxygen that it burns up itself and the things around it? Self-censoring could restrict the bellows enough to slow a real conflagration but it might not even be noticed. Besides, I would never advise young Mark to back off because I lived long enough to see how his bright light inspired others to take the torch, to carry it forward, lighting the way for themselves and others. The incredible climbing being done today has its foundation in what was done thirty and forty years ago just as the climbs of that period were inspired by the successes and attempts of 20-30 years earlier. Many of the protagonists of the 80s and 90s are no longer alive yet they still affect us, and strongly so.

It is sad that what we fear most is someone burning too brightly and dying young when the more common problem is that of a world and society trying to dim what outshines, to control and redirect, to homogenize such energy. How do we keep ego from trying to suppress the people and actions that make it feel unaccomplished or less-than? We used to be inspired by such people and their achievements, and openly so, but in a hyper-competitive world we quickly devolve into comparison, critique, and admonition. The platforms themselves encourage commentary, and many who tap the keys consider themselves expert enough to do so despite their lack of relevant experience. They come with their judgment and, from the safety of a climate-controlled room, they type with their soft fingertips, their thumbs, commenting about someone else’s strong, hardened hands without having any idea where those hands have been or what they have done. They point a soft index finger at the mistake Balin made, implying they would not have done the same but disregard the three fingers pointing back at themselves. Then they trot out an old aphorism that claims, there are bold climbers and old climbers but there are no old, bold climbers. This is patently false. Within my own small social circle I’d say that Steve House, Scott Backes, Vince Anderson, Will Gadd and Conrad Anker were bold and are older. We should listen to them instead of the pretend-bold keyboard warriors who repeat a clever saying as a critique of someone else. In my opinion, they do so to excuse their own lack of courage and justify their own place in the world. Parroting someone else’s expression is easy and convenient, and absolves them of the need to think critically or examine the nuance they so obviously missed. It’s sickening.

More disgusting however are the journalists who assumed, because video of his accident appeared on a social media feed, that Balin was an influencer who died while live-streaming his own ‘content’ for the sake of attention capture. This mischaracterization is repugnant. For fuck’s sake, he did the majority of his climbing alone and only once (that I saw) blew it out of proportion or embellished his accomplishments. The Way of the Influencer is opposite; constantly calling the unremarkable remarkable and calling attention to themselves. Instead, when Balin did post on social media, he was cryptic enough that I had to pause to figure out or understand what was going on. The climbers who spray every detail of their ‘success’ before they are even back on the ground may be accurately described as Influencers. Balin was not one of them.

This is an evil development in my opinion; that what would have been an intensely private and perhaps unwitnessed event twenty years ago is broadcast more or less immediately to a public that has no business sharing in what occurred. Balin had no control over the fact that a stranger was filming at the time and place of his accident, and that stranger profited (if not monetarily then with attention) from his ability to climb, and then, unfortunately, his death. Quickly thereafter, the mainstream media picked up the story without checking facts, and blasted it for clicks and profit. Copy and paste. Command C, Command V. The Way of the Lazy Journalist. One or two looked into Balin’s history but focused on how long the Slovak Route took instead of its difficulty, isolation, commitment or what soloing it actually meant. And that ascent in particular truly meant something to the climbing community.

In the old days, when a new, cutting-edge-of-what’s-possible route got done on a big mountain, it was often sieged by large teams that fixed ropes, shuttled the too-heavy loads from camp to camp using those ropes, and maintained a safety line to ground in case of storm or accident. Basically, the mountain’s most guarded secrets were exposed and violated by use of technology and an engineering mentality. Subsequent ascents were done by smaller teams using less technology — replacing it with skill, experience and courage — who climbed faster as well. Sometimes that style was improved upon by reducing technology even more and climbing in a single, non-stop push. The pinnacle of achievement might then occur when a climber does the route alone. The standout ascents on the south face of Denali are likely those done alone, Charlie Porter, Michael Kennedy, Mugs Stump, Colin Haley, Chantel Astorga, and Andreas Fransson (who skied down it). I posit that Balin’s solo of the Slovak Direct, one of the hardest on the face, is the peak of what’s been done there. The approach by itself, up the heavily-crevassed East Fork, done alone, was bold as fuck or perhaps, as some say, a roll of the dice. Either way one has to be willing, not only to assume the risk but to be transformed because ultimately, it’s what the soloist is seeking. And in the world of disembodied people watching life through a screen or chasing an out-of-body experience through drugs, one who wants to be wholly within themselves and completely present while experiencing the very marrow of life is a rare being indeed.

Balin’s ascent of the Slovak Direct, the crown jewel of his 2025 Alaska season, was a signal flare for what might come next. He had the talent and vision to do something monumental in the Karakoram or Himalayas, something that stood in undeniable juxtaposition to, and in defiance of the acquisition and exploitation culture that has taken hold on the earth’s highest summits. He would not have been alone, of course, because small and capable teams are climbing new routes there in very good style. His style was different, something unique and beautiful, a melange of the old and the new, and backed by a soundtrack covering all of the years that informed his approach to the mountains. I am sad that we won’t get to witness and be moved by whatever Balin might have done in the future, sad that I might not see the next once-in-a-hundred-years talent when the universe puts it into mortal form.

“And for a while the Slow Pulse Boy stood by the window and let the fire sink into his skin”

Balin’s on the other side of the window now and our world is darker for his death but we can still look up and be inspired by the shooting star that lit up the night sky.

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©Jason Thompson 2024

©Jason Thompson 2024

Mount Chephren and the White Pyramid, with The Reality Bath below its seracs

For more context:

Deprivation 2025 Balin Miller, David Hechl, and Vincent Landry

Moonflower 2022 Ethan Berkeland and Balin Miller

Beringia House event Mark Twight and Balin Miller talk about The Reality Bath

Slow Pulse Boy — And Also The Trees