Fall, 2006
Hit the Heights, but Take the Stairs
The New York Times
By STEPHEN REGENOLD
EAST of the Great Salt Lake,across desert brush and urban sprawl, the mountains of Ogden, Utah, stretch jagged and steep into the sky. There, on the front of the Wasatch Range, pyramid peaks cut a sharp silhouette on the backdrop of blue.
also Tom Smart for The New York Times
Chris Peterson, owns the Waterfall Canyon Climbing Park in Ogden, Utah, which has the newest via ferrata routes in North America.
“Long ways down,” said Kym Buttschardt, an Ogden native standing on the edge of a cliff, peering off toward her home thousands of feet down in the valley below. Ms. Buttschardt, a 39-year-old mother of three young boys who operates a restaurant business with her husband, gripped a rebar ladder rung drilled into the rock face. Her climbing harness was tethered to a cable.
“I’ve got to get my boys up here some day,” Ms. Buttschardt said. The climb above, a 350-foot route at the edge of Ogden, was equipped with ladders, bolts and fixed cables. The style of climbing — a European discipline called via ferrata — allowed Ms. Buttschardt and a group of eight other climbers, including three consummate beginners, to move over the stone with little hesitation.
Via ferrata — Italian for iron way — is immensely popular in Europe, where hundreds of cable-protected routes lace the Alps. Ladders, bridges, stair steps, bolts and strands of cable affixed to vertical rock, all permanent and built to weather decades of exposure, are common on prominent peaks. Ropes, rock shoes, belay devices and removable protection — requisite gear for the sport of rock climbing — are superfluous on a via ferrata climb. Indeed, the via ferrata technique, which was developed during World War I to move troops quickly through the Dolomites in Northern Italy, allows climbers with little instruction or climbing skill to safely ascend sheer cliff faces.
“Via ferrata is probably the quickest way for a new climber to get up high and exposed in the mountains,” said Ron Olevsky, a 52-year-old climbing guide from Toquerville, Utah, who helped lead Ms. Buttschardt’s trip. But Mr. Olevsky, who has pioneered climbing routes in the West since the 1970’s, said via ferrata shares few traits with the sport of rock climbing. “If you want to learn climbing technique,” he said, “it’s not the best way to start out.”
In North America, via ferrata has never been a part of the climbing culture. Fewer than 10 via ferrata climbing areas exist in the United States, and many climbers in this country are unfamiliar with the sport. Government-imposed bans that outlaw permanent climbing anchors, notably the Wilderness Act of 1964, make installing via ferrata climbs a red-tape nightmare in many places.
Some climbers have environmental or ethical qualms. “Via ferratas make remote, craggy regions that were formerly accessible to very few people accessible to just about anyone,” said Duane Raleigh, the editor and publisher of Rock and Ice, a climbing magazine based in Carbondale, Colo. “If the goal is to make the mountains easy for everyone, then via ferratas are good. But, in my opinion, they represent the sterilization of the wild lands.”
Phil Powers, the executive director of the American Alpine Club in Golden, Colo., said North Americans could benefit from more exposure to via ferrata. “I am fond of the idea that nonclimbers could experience the thrill of the vertical world so easily on a via ferrata and then maybe pursue our wonderful sport as a result,” he said.
The via ferrata climbs above Ogden — three abrupt lines built last fall under the management of Jeff Lowe, a world-renowned climber — are part of Waterfall Canyon Climbing Park, a private preserve owned by Chris Peterson, a businessman in the area. They are the nation’s newest via ferrata routes.
On a sunny Monday morning in mid-August, Mr. Peterson met Ms. Buttschardt, Mr. Olevsky and six other climbers at the parking lot below the canyon. Mr. Peterson gripped a single trekking pole while giving introductions. He said the trail ahead would entail an hour of uphill hiking to reach the bottom of the first climb.
Juniper berries, chalky blue and small as peas, dotted the trail as Mr. Peterson led the group into the shade of the canyon. Russian olive trees arched over the path. Water trickled unseen in a gully below.
“Keep your eyes peeled for thimbleberries,” Mr. Peterson said. “They can be quite good this time of year.”
At the base of the first climb, the canyon’s namesake waterfall misting just upstream, Mr. Olevsky double-checked harnesses and lanyard setups. A rebar ladder rung stuck off the wall at shoulder height. A silver cable, galvanized steel and a quarter-inch in diameter, traced a path on the cliff above
Mike Santi, a first-time climber from Minneapolis, reached to touch the initial rung on the route. Two carabiner-equipped lanyards, both with shock-absorbing properties to protect from the brute force of a fall, dangled from his harness. Mr. Santi clipped them into the cable before stepping off the ground.
While climbers at Waterfall Canyon are warned about the risks of the via ferrata, its fixed features allow beginners like Kym Buttschardt to tackle sheer rock walls and traverse knife-edge ridges.
“Wish me luck,” he said to the group, his shirt already damp with perspiration from the hike.
The rock above, a houndstooth pattern of lichen and seams and pockmarked decay, formed a giant open book against a blueberry sky. A zigzag of sunlight and shadow painted the face.
In 10 minutes, all nine climbers were perched on the stone wall, fingertips curled around rebars, stepping and pulling fast and fluid. The route began easy and a bit less than vertical, a slab of north-facing quartzite. Carabiners slid on the cable quietly beside each climber as they made their way toward a ledge halfway up.
Mr. Santi, Ms. Buttschardt and her husband, Peter — the beginners in the group — had little trouble on the 350-foot climb. Steep vertical sections ended in rests on small ledges. A sharp ridgeline put the climbers on an exposed rib of rock. Talus slopes lay strewn hundreds of airy feet below. But the stout ladder rungs, spaced close on the wall, made the ascent straightforward and easy.
“Look at this view!” Ms. Buttschardt exclaimed, her hand in a salute on her forehead to ward off the sun. Steep foothills dropped off into Ogden. The pan-flat basin below — a crisscross of streets, a mush of leafy green and desert tan to all points west — yielded only to the Great Salt Lake, which flittered 25 miles beyond.
The climbers continued on in a line, stepping on iron, grabbing stone. Clouds, wispy and white, studded with stalactites of virga, drifted in over the ridge. Nine tiny dots made their way up, climbing a steep stairway to heaven in the mountains above Ogden.
VISITOR INFORMATION
VIA ferrata is a popular European pastime, with hundreds of cable-protected, rung-equipped routes ensconced in the Alps. In North America, the sport is little known, and fewer than 10 via ferrata climbing areas have been established in the United States and Canada.
Waterfall Canyon Climbing Park in Ogden, Utah, is the newest area in the United States, with three precipitous climbs found in a deep quartzite canyon just east of the town. The canyon, a private preserve that is scheduled to open officially this fall, has a training wall where newcomers to via ferrata can practice before heading uphill to the big climbs. Rates will start at $40 a day, which includes equipment rental and a lesson on the training wall (801-550-1761).