My personal belief, one I’ve held strongly for a great many years, is that no mountain should be off-limits to climbers. Since all we want to do is get to the summit, we’re not doing any harm. It’d be different if we were causing damage, vandalizing property or stealing something, but if all we’re doing is leaving footprints, then nobody is the worse off for our passage. Unfortunately, some landowners don’t agree with me. And that brings us to the subject of stealth climbing, something I’ve touched upon previously in these pages. Some mountains, by the very fact that some person or entity has declared them off limits, cry out all the louder to be climbed. I’ve done my share of stealth climbing, and I’m not apologetic for one moment for having done so.

Many peaks can be stealthed fairly easily just because they are remote, far from watchful eyes, and the chance of being discovered is slim. A rare few, where there’s a high probability of being spotted by people who would be really pissed off if they saw you there, require a different approach – climbing under the cover of darkness. This tale is about one such climb I once had occasion to do.

Knowing full well I’d never be given permission to go in and climb this particular peak, I decided it’d have to be a night climb. Stealth climbers fall back on the old adage “It’s always easier to ask forgiveness than ask permission” – I know I certainly do. I had first scouted the area a year earlier and realized then that it wouldn’t be a cakewalk. A year is a lot of time to ponder a problem, and I finally felt I’d decided on a pretty good plan of action. Here is how it played out. By the way, it goes without saying that there won’t be any maps to accompany this story.

I set out one fine sunny afternoon, the temperature about 75 degrees and a light breeze blowing – perfect conditions for any climb let alone a nice stealth. Within minutes I had crossed over a barbed-wire fence festooned with signs declaring “Ye shall not pass”, or words to that effect. I kept walking across gentle country for a few miles, then climbed up several hundred feet to reach higher ground. There, a bizarre landscape greeted me – mountains, quite literally, of rock placed there by the hand of man. Waste rock from mining activity, in places hundreds of feet high, covered vast areas. Entire valleys had been filled in with this material. Roads had been carefully engineered so trucks could climb up these waste rock dumps and keep on dumping, making them broader and higher. I found myself walking along one of these roads, and I don’t mind telling you that I was pretty paranoid. In the distance, I could see buildings and vehicles, but I felt I was pretty well hidden from their view. Then a loud noise from above startled me, making me hug the slope to be less visible – I wasn’t expecting any activity up there. It was one of those huge trucks they use in mines, about as big as a house, and it was hauling waste rock up a road to dump it.

I had to find a place to hide, some place where I couldn’t be seen from the people and buildings down below, and from the big trucks up above. It didn’t take long to spot a jumble of rocks that filled the bill. I settled in to wait – it was an hour until sunset. That was plenty of time to do what had to be done to get ready for the real adventure. I took everything out of my large day pack and laid it out. Normally I don’t eat much when I climb, but I knew I’d need to have plenty of energy for what lay ahead, so I enjoyed a big snack and drank a lot. The next thing I did was to strip off my climbing pants and shirt – they were a light color and wouldn’t do for what was to come. I put on very dark (almost black) long underwear, top and bottom. Even my boots had been darkened before leaving home, to eliminate any reflective or light-colored surfaces. A dark balaclava on my head and black cloth gloves completed my ensemble. Here is a picture of what I wore, taken at a later date in the city, re-created just for you.

The only skin visible was around my eyes. I timed the coming and going of the big trucks, and also studied the mine buildings with binoculars, looking for any pattern of activity.

I had brought along a very small black day pack just for this next part of the climb. Into it went a quart of water, no food, GPS, headlamp, maps, a dark fleece jacket (in case I became stranded overnight) and nothing else. Now all I had to do was wait. When sunset arrived, I was all set to go. Oh yes, I marked the location of all the gear I was leaving behind with the GPS. I knew it’d be like looking for a needle in a haystack when I returned in the dark, a tiny speck in square miles of waste rock. The angle of repose of waste rock dumps can be very steep, as much as 45 degrees (it depends on several factors, but size and shape of the pieces of rock play an important part), so you need to be really careful when climbing up or down one of these dumps.

The sun had barely winked below the horizon when I set out. I had to drop down hundreds of vertical feet of the waste rock. Usually it was solid and steady, but some of it was loose. I didn’t want to set rocks rolling, due to the noise it could make, the dust it could raise and the risk of getting pinned under rockfall. Moving steadily and carefully, it didn’t take me long to get to the bottom. I was now standing on a road, but I hadn’t seen any person or vehicle on it so far. The next obstacle was a pair of huge conveyor belts in front of me. The first one had a set of metal stairs to cross over it, which I used, but I was paranoid as hell – a set of bright lights had been turned on, illuminating the whole area. The second conveyor belt had no such stairs, so I picked a spot where I had a couple of feet of clearance and crawled on my belly under the belt. Man, was that thing moving quickly! There was quite a breeze beneath it. If you got caught in that belt or the huge metal rollers, it’d rip you from limb to limb in a moment. What a way to go! I was glad to be clear of it.

Once on my feet, I quickly scampered into a gully. It was now natural desert again, where I felt much more at home – hey, I’m not called the Desert Mountaineer for nothing. I used the cover of a ravine about 50 feet deep to make my way up the slope, moving quickly, and before I knew it I stood on the summit of my peak. Wow, it was done. It was just after 7:00 PM, and pitch black. I didn’t stick around, just tagging the summit and then heading right back down.

It was a lot trickier going down the ravine – there was plenty of rock and brush, and several drop-offs, any one of which would really mess you up if you took a header off of it into the night. I had no choice but to use my headlamp in places, but when I did I used my hand to shield the light so it only shone down at my feet and not out into the distance. None the worse for wear, I finally made it back to the bottom. Once the conveyor belts had been dispatched for the second time, I felt easier. Walking back up the road as quickly as possible (this was the most likely place to be seen), I reached a spot where I started up the steep mountain of waste rock. The lights from the mine buildings cast a pretty good light on the slope, so I could actually climb without my headlamp. Using the GPS, I zeroed in to where I’d left my pack in the wilderness of rock. There it was – the chance of finding it any other way at night was nil.

The worst part was done, now I could relax. I took my time, changing back into my regular clothes and organizing my gear. By the time I’d done all the little chores and climbed back up to the road, I saw that the moon had risen. Nice. I walked along with a big shit-eating grin on my face, basking in the satisfaction of a stealth well-done. Sure, I still had miles to go and climbing to do in order to finish, but the rest was easy. All in all, a pretty cool adventure. Nobody was any the worse off for it, and I got to tick off one more on my list.