Every once in a while you come across a pure, unadulterated example of the Wetass Spirit. And climbers Chris Thomas and Will Mayo have it in spades. The big mountains are so done, and so crowded. So Thomas and Mayo headed for Mount Huntington in Alaska and climbed a piddly little 10,700 foot subpeak on its southwestern face. No Death Zone, no sponsors, no media hoohaa. But they did the single thing that is most important: they tested themselves, they put their lives on the line. To make the climb, according to Climbing magazine, they “followed a hazardous rocky gully to a full-pitch ice traverse and then a beautiful ice gully to the top. They reversed the line in descent and returned to basecamp after a 23-hour roundtrip.” The danger of rockfall was with them the entire way, and they could simply have disappeared on a no-name face. When they got back to their camp, they toted up the risks and weighed them against the relative unimportance of the summit they had bagged. And–displaying a second key ingredient of the Wetass Spirit, which is humor–decided not to call their little hill “Mount Mayo” or “Thomas’ Tower.” Instead they settled upon a more inspired, more revealing label: “Idiot Peak”…
“Dude, only an idiot would risk his life for this mole hill. Luckily for you, I’m feeling pretty stupid…”
(Photo: Will Mayo)
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The Earthist Chronicles 