Why on earth would you be out climbing at night? It happens, but what could cause such a thing? Some of the reasons that come immediately to mind are these:

1. Factors such as avalanche risk or snow conditions could make it safer or easier to climb at night due to the lower night-time temperature which could better freeze the snow and make it less likely to avalanche.
2. The climb could be so long that you might need the extra hours of an early, night-time start to complete it safely.
3. The climb unexpectantly turned out to be so long and difficult that you used up all the daylight and couldn’t finish until after dark.
4. Unseen factors, such as an injury or sickness, stretched the climb out beyond daylight hours and into the night.
5. You might want to climb under cover of darkness so that others can’t see you, what we in the business call stealth climbing.
6. When climbing in the desert during hotter months, you might want to start in the dark so you can finish early enough that the heat of the day doesn’t do you in.

My climbing career goes all the way back to 1962, and over the course of all those years, I can safely say that all of the reasons mentioned above have come into play for me at one time or another. Some of them make for interesting tales, and I now present the better ones for you here, with full embellishment.

The first night climbing I can recall with certainty was all the way back into the 1970s, done on climbs on the big Cascade peaks in Washington and Oregon. Anybody who has climbed the Disappointment Cleaver route on Mount Rainier from the Muir Hut has no doubt started in the dark, usually heading out by headlamp at midnight or 1:00 AM. The main reason for such an early start, especially in the summer months, is to take advantage of the cooler night-time temperatures. The snow will be firmer and make for better footing with crampons. Also, you’ll be very high on the mountain by the time the sun rises. You can tag the summit after the 4,200-foot climb, then start down early enough before the snow softens too much and the risk of avalanche increases. The 3 times I’ve been on that route always found me starting in the dark.

Climbs of Mount Hood and Mount Baker also saw night-time starts, as did my first climb of Mount Adams on the north side via the North Cleaver route. Perhaps the strangest night climb I ever did was on a repeat ascent of Mount Adams in 1990 with a friend. We started on a late afternoon on June 20th on the South Spur route. We agreed that we would not be in any hurry, we’d carry plenty of food and drink, and we’d stop as often as she wished. We left our vehicle at 6:00 PM, climbed until we reached tree-line as night fell, then leisurely continued up endless snow slopes all night long. Daylight and sunrise found us pretty high up. We carried on at a leisurely pace, eventually reaching the summit at around 11:00 AM. There was no-one else on the mountain. We took plenty of long breaks whenever we pleased. The entire trip was done on snow, and it was firm enough that the footing was excellent all the way. The day wore on, and we didn’t get back to our vehicle until 7:00 PM. That still stands as the longest single push I ever did to climb a peak, and actually it was a lot of fun.

On a 1970s winter climb in the Cheam Range of BC, three of us made it back down to our camp late in the afternoon after having finished some great climbing. By the time we’d packed up and headed down into the forest to locate the trail we’d used the previous day, it was dark – really dark, like the inside of an undertaker’s hat. The trail was steep and icy, and I was having a terrible time keeping up with the others. My night vision has always been poor, and that night it totally let me down. I remember pleading with the others to slow down as we descended the trail as it twisted its way steeply down through the bush. For some reason, I didn’t have a headlamp, so I was relying on the dim light of those ahead of me, and I was afraid of falling on the icy trail. It took hours to reach the vehicle, and the whole unpleasant business still stands out vividly in my mind decades later.

In 1989, after a week in snowstorms camped on the Dome on Mount Robson at 10,000 feet and two failed attempts on the Kain Face, the 3 of us decided to pull the plug. The route down through the Robson icefall was impassable, so we had to descend the Razorback. There were12 different spots where we had to rappel, clouds swirling around us, snow sometimes blowing uphill through the air around us. Visibility was poor at the best of times. Our monstrously-heavy packs didn’t make things any easier, and my lack of experience on such terrain slowed all of us down. We had started down at  around 9:00 AM, and nightfall overtook us still high on the mountain. Two other climbers were camped down below on the glacier, and they climbed part of the way up to us and helped guide us in. It was 1:00 AM by the time we finally turned in for the night. It had taken us 15 hours to drop a thousand vertical feet.  Memorable, for sure.

On a January 2010 climb in the Sonoran Desert, Paul and I decided to climb a peak that was way out there. The area was closed to climbing because of the danger from drug smugglers. When we started, it was pitch black and we were using headlamps to navigate with map and compass. We did mark the location of the truck with my GPS, though. An hour or more passed before there was enough daylight to allow us to turn off the headlamps. A few miles later, we came across a poor Mexican indocumentado. He was in rough shape. Because he was heading north on foot and we were heading south, we gave him instructions as to how to reach a road and wait there for help to pass by. Paul and I carried on, taking all day to reach and climb our remote peak. It was a real death march, and miles before we made it back to the truck, darkness fell. It was a miserable end to the day, bushwhacking by headlamp and GPS in the inky night. Soon after having reached the truck, a Border Patrol agent drove by. He told us that he was the one who found our guy lying by the side of the road earlier in the day. He was in a bad way. He propped him up in his vehicle, put an IV into each arm and radioed for a rescue helicopter to fly him to the nearest hospital a hundred miles away. He said that if we hadn’t given him the quart of electrolyte that we did, the poor guy would have died before reaching the road and being found. He also said that in his delirium, the man spoke of 2 guardian angels that had found him early in the day and given him drink and directions.

At the height of summer in 1989, I was climbing a desert peak. Every day boasted 100-degree-plus temperatures, so a night-time start was in order. As I followed a rough trail up the mountainside in the dark, trying to get by with just starlight to navigate, I had a hunch that I should turn on my headlamp. Good thing, too, as the next step I was about to take would have had me step right on to a large rattlesnake, coiled up and apparently resting right in the middle of the trail. Holy shit! I backed up carefully and gave him a wide berth, passing around him well on the uphill side.

Another climb done early on that involved night climbing was one done on an Indian reservation back in the 1980s. I hadn’t obtained a permit, so I guess you could say I was trespassing. Not wanting to be spotted by anyone, I drove to my starting point late in the afternoon. It was late November, it was cold, and the thousand feet I climbed up to a mesa was on ground frozen hard. It was through forest, and even though there was no snow in the bush, the steep, icy ground made me wish I were wearing crampons. Once on the mesa, I traveled 4 miles of easy ground, staying on the height-of-land until, with the very last of the fading light, I reached the highest point. I could see the lights of a village 2,500 feet below and miles away as I left a register of sorts in the gathering gloom. By the time I left, it was pitch-black. There was a solid overcast, so with no help from the moon, I started back using map and compass. After a couple of miles of walking along the flat ground of the mesa, I heard a faint rumbling sound. I wasn’t using a headlamp, as I found that the snow-covered ground made it just light enough to see where I was going, barely. The noise became louder and I could tell it was getting nearer. Suddenly, out of the dark came a group of 6 horses, running at full-tilt. They literally passed around me on both sides as I stood there. It was both scary and magical at the same time. I stood there, speechless, as they sped off into the dark. It certainly gave me plenty to think about during the final hours of climbing in the dark that night.

In the dead of winter in late 2016, two of us had been climbing for a week in the bombing range. It was a stealth climbing trip, and on 2 separate occasions we had come to within a hair’s breadth of being caught by the military, but we had gotten away both times. We had saved the most outrageous stealths for the last day. We left our hidden campsite at 4:00 AM on mountain bikes under cover of darkness and rode for  hours deeper into the range. Twice that night we almost got caught, but managed to steal away each time and keep going. By daybreak, we had already put in 3 hours of travel in the dark. We climbed three peaks that day, and at one point had intruded a full  40 miles into the totally-off-limits bombing range. As we finished our final peak, darkness was fast approaching, along with a powerful rainstorm. The final 9 miles were a frantic race against the storm, with rain blowing horizontally across our path in the dark. Needless to say, we were soaked to the arse by the time we made it back to our clandestine camp in the night. This was one of those days that started in the dark and finished in the dark, for 2 reasons – the great distances involved (30 miles covered that day) and the need for secrecy.

The final climb I’ll tell you about took place at night for one reason only – it was a total stealth on private property owned by a mining company. For years, I had entertained the idea of penetrating deep into the mine to climb a lone peak, but it was miles inside the mine and I knew I’d never get permission from the company to do the peak. The stage was set in early March of 2015 when I decided to do the deed. In the late afternoon, I climbed over a boundary fence in a quiet corner of the property and walked a few miles through the desert to reach the edge of the part of the mine that was being actively worked. I hid in a hollow in a steep pile of tailings until darkness approached, using the time to scope out the lay of the land. My peak was in plain view and less than a mile away. By the time it was completely dark, I had changed into black boots and clothes that matched the darkness of the night and set out, leaving everything I didn’t need in the hollow which I marked with GPS. I dropped down the tailings pile, crossed an active road, then crawled under two scary moving conveyor belts to reach the slope of the peak. It was a 500-foot climb up the slope to the top of the peak, but at least all of that was done through natural desert where I didn’t have to dodge the works of man. After I tagged the summit, I returned the same way to my stash on the tailings – I could now breathe easier, as from here on I wasn’t very visible. I felt pretty smug as I walked the few miles back to my truck in the cool night, but during the stealth part of the climb, which spanned several hours, I’ve gotta tell you that I was pretty paranoid.