Allen Throop/Venture contributor The view of the Great Plains from the Flatirons were a perfect setting for reflection for Corvallis' Allen Throop, a victim of ALS.

Final climb

Corvallis man with ALS savors adventure with children on Flatirons

By Allen Throop
Venture contributor

BOULDER, Colo. — "Belay on," a voice somewhere above me called.

"Climbing!" I yelled back as expected.

Then, in a break with traditional climbing methods, three sets of hands pushed me up over a three-foot ledge onto the bottom slope of First Flatiron, outside Boulder.

The last climbing adventure of my life had begun.

After the push, I got my feet under me and started climbing as J.P.'s suggestions came steadily from above.

"Smear your feet out onto the rock."

"Keep your heels flat against the rock."

"Get your legs straight."

"Stick your butt out."

JP and I had shared a tent on a long, difficult trip in Alaska a few years ago.

I had great respect for his climbing ability and knew he was the ideal person to be above me on this trip. His skilled rope work and advice would be appreciated all day.

As I moved up, he came into view, securely fastened to the rocks and confidently working the two ropes.

Traditionally, climbers move one at a time. On this climb, my son Henry climbed next to me while JP was above, an arrangement that couldn't have been better.

When we reached J.P.'s belay point, Henry coiled our two ropes and J.P. began climbing the next 100-foot pitch while I watched the sunrise over Boulder.

As I sat, I could feel my muscles twitch, as always now. "Fascilations" my neurologist calls them.

Although the doctor would not like the imagery, I thought of each twitch as another strand of muscle breaking, with no hope of repair.

As J.P. prepared our next belay, the ancient sandstone we were climbing on demanded my attention. I could think about the rock's history when I was resting.

What J.P. called nubbins I saw as pebbles deposited from a stream long ago.

When climbing, the task was to find a foothold rather than ponder how the rock was formed. I focused on nubbins, on little cracks -on anything uneven enough to help make climbing the sixty-degree slope possible.

Up I climbed, slowly, occasionally looking off to the right to check on the group moving next to us.

My daughter Heather and two of my climbing friends moved up the slope at a speed similar to ours.

Once, I heard Heather comment that she was glad she had two good hands to help her climb.

Since I had been diagnosed with ALS two months earlier, my hands had weakened considerably. Lou Gehrig gave up baseball after his ALS diagnosis.

I knew that my outdoor activities were fast coming to an end, but the middle of an 800-foot climb was no place to start worrying about hands.

I had pushed for this climb, and my friends and children had agreed to accompany me.

Now, with a long way to go, I looked for the nubbins, smeared my feet, straightened my legs and climbed.

Henry and I had talked for years about climbing one of the Flatirons, but always the day was too short, the weather too hot, or our energy too low.

In January, we realized time was running out.

For me, this was the epitome of all climbs.

My son was beside me, my daughter not far away. The others were friends who wanted to be with me on the Flatiron that day.

The energy of the group would get me to the top.

J.P. did a masterful job of handling our two ropes. When I slipped, the rope caught me quickly.

At times when I couldn't find a foothold, Henry worked his way over to me and calmly said to look again.

His foot would be placed firmly against the rock, and by standing on it I could continue to move upward.

After the fourth pitch, we reached a wide ledge and waited for two others to join us.

Having started late, they were hiking around the back of the First Flatiron directly to the ledge.

Waiting gave us time to look east where the early purple haze over the prairie had dissolved. In the far distance, the white tips of the Denver International Airport terminal were visible.

On the first four pitches, we had been moving straight up the face of the Flatiron. Since J.P. was directly above me, I couldn't fall far if the rope was taut.

When we started again, we switched from climbing the face to climbing up something like the teeth of a huge handsaw blade lying at an angle of at least 45 degrees.

As he led, J.P. placed protection for all of us.

At critical points, he found cracks in the rocks and placed anchors into them. The anchors, with colorful names such as nuts, cams, and chocks, come in many sizes, designed to fit many crack shapes.

Once an anchor was placed securely into a crack, J.P. would use other gear to connect the anchor to our rope.

If done properly, the anchors insured that J.P. could never fall more than twice the distance he had climbed above the last anchor.

When Henry and I followed, our maximum potential fall distance would be less. Henry removed each piece of hardware as he reached it.

At one point, Henry and I had decided on our approach to a three-foot vertical rock wall perhaps 30 feet above us. When I reached this barrier, Henry was already on top of it.

Grabbing my outstretched arms, he pulled me straight up.

Again, unconventional climbing technique but it worked.

Since we were moving across the slope, the last six pitches were more exposed than the first four.

With J.P. no longer directly above me, I knew that a slip would result in a slide down the rock face until I was below the next piece of protection he had set.

Such an experience I could better do without.

We continued carefully up and down the saw teeth. The view to the east now included all of Boulder and what looked like all of the Midwest in a great colorful patchwork.

Henry, a physicist, explained the change from purple haze to full-color landscape in terms of sun angle and light diffraction.

I reveled in the beauty of the ever-changing view.

At times we moved off the 60-degree slope to the east and onto the rocks sloping west. The slope was only 30 degrees but, unfortunately, within six or eight feet, the rock ended at a vertical or even overhanging cliff.

To our left, then, we had a steep uniform slope a few hundred feet long, and to our right, a vertical drop of up to 100 feet.

Soon we were high enough to see the magnificent snowcapped peaks of the Rockies dominating the western skyline.

As I took in the view, Henry moved up beside me, put his arm around me, and said, "I love you Dad."

The short sections where we climbed down off a saw tooth were worse than climbing up, for, due to the geometry of the rocks, the rope was anchored below me.

I chose not to think about the consequences of stumbling.

Late in the afternoon JP, Henry and I reached the summit.

As I sat and watched the others finish the climb I had time to reflect.

My thoughts ranged from the ever-present muscle twitching of ALS and what would inevitably happen to my body, to how lucky I was to have these people with me on this climb, to the formation of the Flatirons millions of years ago.

Shortly after getting the ALS diagnosis, I made the decision to live with the disease rather than fight it.

Since no cures are known, the options were few.

Without the disease, I would not have been privileged to share this day with very special people.

Henry and I eventually would have climbed one of the Flatirons. While it would have been another nice but perhaps not outstanding memory, we all knew this climb was different.

I was able to watch J.P. display masterful skills as a lead climber.

Henry and Heather had the experience of climbing with people very special to me.

On top, I could forget about individual nubbins and think about the vastness of time.

The rocks we were sitting on are approximately 300 million years old. The First Flatiron was tilted up to its present angle perhaps 65 million years ago.

Except for superficial changes made to the landscape by humans, the view from the top has changed little for a long, long time.

The Flatirons will outlast all the structures I was looking over.

The human influence on the landscape before me was minor, and the significance of a single person in the overall scheme minuscule — just one more nubbin on the surface of the First Flatiron.

But that little nubbin will cherish the memory of this climb.

Once we were all assembled on top, the next task was to rappel 100 feet down the vertical backside of the First Flatiron.

I watched J.P. move effortlessly down the cliff face until he disappeared from view.

My turn was next.

Once more, procedures were modified since I did not have the strength to control my own descent.

After the rope was secured to my harness, J.P. played out rope from below to lower me down the cliff. Even with these conditions, I will cherish the memory of the free rappel at the bottom where I hung away from the cliff and could rotate slowly, enjoying a final view in all directions.

After I took off my climbing gear I embraced Janet, my wife.

She handed me a pair of ski poles.

I would use them to give me stability as together we went down the long, very rocky and rough trail to complete the journey.

Corvallis resident Allen Throop is a regular Venture contributor and a longtime outdoor enthusiast. He was recently diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease, for which there is no known cure.