1992 Climbing Road Trip

Before the road trip — Ricky and me

The 1992 trip did not come out of nowhere. Ricky and I had already spent countless weekends climbing, hiking, and wandering around the mountains of New England. We were both deep into climbing then — rock climbing, ice climbing, long mountain days, and whatever else gave us an excuse to get outside and test ourselves a little.

We climbed throughout the Northeast, especially in New Hampshire and the White Mountains, and we had already built the kind of trust that matters when you are on a rope, on a ridge, or trying to get yourself out of some questionable mountain situation. By the time we headed west in 1992, we were not just two guys taking a trip. We were climbing partners who already knew each other’s habits, strengths, stubbornness, and sense of humor.

One winter night on Mount Washington stands out as part of that history. Ricky and I got stuck up there in the dark and cold, and for a while it looked like we might have to both crawl into the one bivy sack we had carried. That would have been a miserable night, but it also says a lot about the kind of adventures we were having back then. We were pushing hard, learning constantly, and sometimes getting just close enough to trouble to remember the lesson forever.

So when Ricky got tired of receiving my postcards from earlier long road trips and decided to buy an old van for his own western climbing trip, it made perfect sense that we would go together. The postcards may have planted the seed, but the years of New England climbing gave the trip its foundation.

The Needles of South Dakota and Mount Rushmore

Our first extended lead climbing on the trip was in the Needles section of South Dakota, near Sylvan Lake. Those climbs were wild: straight-up spires sticking out of the ground, rounded and covered with crystals. The rock was beautiful, but it was also tough on the hands, and it demanded attention.

That was where we really started learning the systems we would need for the rest of the trip: leading longer routes, rappelling with two ropes, managing rope tangles, using anchors properly, belaying carefully, and thinking through how to get back down after committing to a climb. We had climbed plenty before, but this was different. These were real spires, real exposure, and real consequences if we got sloppy.

We could have easily stayed longer in the Needles. There was so much good climbing there, and the whole area had that strange, beautiful Black Hills feeling. But we knew we had a lot of road and climbing still ahead of us, so eventually we moved on.

We also stopped at Mount Rushmore for about fifteen minutes, basically just to say we had been there. Neither of us was especially moved by it as a park experience. We both felt it made sense as a national monument, but not really as the same kind of national park experience as the wild places we were chasing. It felt more like something in the category of the St. Louis Arch: worth seeing once, but not the reason we were out there.

That said, the rock around the Black Hills and Mount Rushmore area was excellent. We found more climbing nearby and poked around on whatever good rock we could find. The Needles gave us a real push forward as climbers before the bigger western objectives that came later.

Devil's Tower: the climb that almost happened

Devil's Tower, Wyoming was one of those sacred climbs I was really looking forward to. We were not completely sure if it was doable for climbers like us, but we set up camp right next to the Tower and spent the evening scouting a good route.

Several climbers coming in for the evening assured us that we had the gear, experience, and time to complete one of the easier routes. Finding the rappel station on the summit before nightfall would be critical. We decided: four thumbs up. We would give it a shot in the morning.

Then morning came. The weather was cool and perfect for climbing. As we ate our Wheaties and watched the fog burn off, Ricky realized we had to meet Ann at the airport in Montana that evening. I think he knew even then that he might marry her someday, so we blew off the climb in favor of not leaving Ann stranded at the airport.

Knowing what I know now, and being one day closer to death, next time I would send a limo to the airport with a note saying, “Honey, thanks for understanding. Have the limo driver bring ya home, tip him well, and I’ll see ya around midnight if all goes well.”

The Grand Tetons

The peaks in the Grand Tetons of Wyoming were awesome. We had near-perfect weather and spent four days up high. We had permits for Grand, Middle, and South Teton, and summitted two of the three.

When we woke up to attempt the Grand Teton at 4 a.m., we were in the middle of an incredible thunderstorm. Almost every party blew it off and slept in. Sure enough, it cleared beautifully by late morning, too late to climb, so we spent the day chatting with other alpinists, scrambling ridges, and making the best of it.

Our climbs up Middle and South were spectacular. At the end of it all, we exited west, just south of the Grand, down a new route we named the “Driskell-Johnson Death Gully.” It was steeper than you-know-what, full of scree, ledges, and tricky down-climbing, but between the drops were some of the most beautiful alpine meadows I have ever seen.

At one point Ricky had to drop his heavy pack to a lower ledge. The pack bounced, started rolling, and then accelerated down the gully in slow motion. It finally smashed into a boulder and exploded into pieces. He recovered most of his stuff, though half of it was trashed. We still laugh until it hurts whenever we remember that day.

Needless to say, we had an awesome bivouac that night on ledges near a river. Sleep never felt as good as it did that night.

That was exactly the kind of moment where years of climbing together mattered. We could get frustrated, laugh at disaster, make a plan, keep moving, and still end the day grateful to be out there.

The Bugaboos and the Canadian Rockies

The Bugaboos in Canada were one of the coolest places we visited. The place is a huge icefield with massive granite monoliths everywhere, and even getting in there felt like part of the adventure. The road in was rough, the approach was serious, and by the time you reached the Conrad Kain Hut, you knew you had arrived somewhere special.

We met two Australian climbers on the way in who were carrying an extra case of beer up to the hut, which immediately told us that these were our kind of people. That was part of the Bugaboos experience too: serious alpine climbing mixed with hut life, strangers becoming instant friends, and the feeling that everyone there had worked hard just to be in that place.

We spent almost a week at the Conrad Kain Hut. The hut register itself felt like climbing history. I remember seeing names like Todd Skinner and Paul Piana in there, which made the place feel even more legendary. We were surrounded by glaciers, clean granite, spires, snow bridges, and big alpine routes that demanded attention.

We hooked up with Jan from New Mexico and climbed Bugaboo Spire. Ricky and Jan teamed up for parts of the climb, and the whole route had that classic alpine feel: exposure, route-finding, rope work, and the constant awareness that the weather and the mountain had more authority than we did. There was also the Gendarme, and the usual question of who was going to lead what when the climbing got more serious.

One of the reminders that the Bugaboos were not just a playground came when a snow bridge collapsed overnight. Things like that have a way of sharpening your attention. It was beautiful country, but it was also real alpine terrain, where glaciers and snowfields change while you sleep.

After leaving the Bugaboos, we kept following that same mixture of climbing, wandering, and soaking. We moved on toward limestone cliffs above hot springs, which was just about the perfect combination for that trip: climb hard, soak afterward, sleep cheap, and then look at the map for the next place.

Ricky loved the Canadian Rockies so much that when he and Ann got married a few years later, they went back there for their honeymoon. That says a lot about how deeply those mountains got into him too. For both of us, the Canadian Rockies were not just another stop on the road trip. They were one of the places that helped define what real mountain travel could feel like.

City of Rocks

We spent almost a week at City of Rocks in Idaho, climbing as many of the classics as we could find on all the different crags. Every night we would sit around the campfire, drink a few beers, spread out the guidebook, and pick the next day’s targets: the best four-star climbs that were still within our grade.

That became our rhythm. Find the crags with the most classic routes, seek out the lines that looked awesome, climb all day, then come back to camp tired, happy, dusty, and ready to start flipping through the guidebook again. In our opinion, City of Rocks has some of the best climbing in North America because there are so many different climbs available at every level, all packed into a beautiful landscape of granite fins, domes, walls, and towers.

One of the best parts was that you could camp right there in the middle of the monument, pretty much wherever you wanted — or at least you could while we were there. So the whole place felt like a giant climbing playground with campsites tucked among the rocks. Wake up, make coffee, look at the crags, climb until your hands hurt, then sit by the fire and plan the next day. It was exactly what that trip was about.

Hot springs, coffee, and Jack Daniels

We met so many cool folks on this trip. We met “Mary and the Juggler” at a hot spring that we slept in one night. The next morning their van was still up by the roadside, and they gave us some much-needed coffee to start the day. It was fifty percent espresso and the other half was Jack Daniels.

I think we ended up back in the hot spring until noon, but I am not very clear on the rest of that day. I do know that sometimes we climbed for seven days straight, and kept pretending that we needed occasional days off for recovery and rest. Yeah right — the whole three-month road trip was recovery and rest.

Montana high country

Rick's girlfriend Ann came out to join us for three weeks in Montana, and the hikes we all took together are some of my best memories of the entire voyage. We would backpack into alpine lakes up around 12,000 feet to fly fish, only to find some of them still half iced over even in August.

The cutthroat trout up there were as wild as the country itself. Ricky caught a bunch. I caught one by hand, by trapping it against a rock, which probably says something about both my fishing skills and my persistence.

Solo in Idaho

Living together in a van for three months — climbing, hiking, eating, drinking, camping, and existing in the same small space — can wear on your nerves. Every once in a while I would head off for a week or so to give us both a break. One morning I hitchhiked over to Idaho, about 400 miles and seven rides away.

By strange coincidence, Ricky and I were at Ruby Ridge the day Randy Weaver surrendered after a 10-day standoff with the FBI, but that is a whole other story. While solo in Idaho, I spent a couple of days at Jigger Johnson Hot Springs and met some wonderful people there. One older guy, who owned the Grubsteak restaurant up on top of a mountain an hour away, offered me a ride back to town.

I spent the next three days at his place, riding horses with him during the day and working at the restaurant at night. That was one heck of a special place and time. He was in his sixties and getting ready to sell the whole place to his wife and go travel for a few years.

Cody, Wyoming: the Johnny Walker Black story

On the way toward the Tetons, with a little extra time, we stopped at a local cowboy bar in Cody, Wyoming. Sitting up on the top shelf was an old dusty unopened bottle of Johnny Walker Black. It was obviously too expensive for the locals to bother with, and it looked like it had been sitting there forever.

Somehow we convinced the bartender that it was just regular cheap scotch, so he opened it and poured us shots for $1.25. It was smooth — very smooth — and we immediately knew we had found a bargain. The bartender told us nobody else had ever touched the stuff and probably never would, so he wanted our assurance that we would be in town long enough to finish the bottle.

We tried. We honestly did. But we could not quite finish it off before moving on. We did promise him, though, that we would be back “soon” to work on it some more. That was one of those ridiculous little road-trip stories that probably would not happen twice, and that is exactly why it still makes me smile.

More photos from the 1992 trip

These are the rest of the photos from the page, kept clickable and woven into the same modern format. Some are climbing scenes, some are road-trip camp scenes, and some are simply the kind of old scanned photos that hold the flavor of a long trip better than perfect modern images ever could.

More adventure pages

The 1992 trip became one chapter in a much larger story of climbing, hot springs, road trips, backpacking, and choosing experiences over routines.