GOLDEN — Phil Powers doesn’t feel like he did anything heroic or inspirational. All he did was pick himself up after he fell.
But this was a fall of 70 feet or so while climbing a crag in Clear Creek Canyon. A fall that tore his diaphragm and forced internal organs — stomach, spleen and intestines — into a lung cavity. A fall that collapsed his left lung, broke 13 ribs and three vertebrae.
The fall on May 17 put him in a hospital for 15 days, on a ventilator for five. And it was an accident that just happened to befall the executive director of the American Alpine Club, a man who has climbed two 8,000-meter peaks without supplemental oxygen — including K2 — and pioneered a route on Denali.
If he doesn’t feel like an inspiration to others, that doesn’t mean he isn’t.
“I hear that all the time, and I think it’s kind of funny, because I haven’t done anything other than, when it came time to wake up, open my eyes,” Powers said. “And when I got a little clearance from the nurse to walk, to start walking. That’s really all I’ve done. And literally, it’s been about walking. Literally, all I’ve done is take steps.”
He has only been back to work for a couple of weeks, but those steps are getting a little easier to take. Three weekends ago, Powers hiked Quandary Peak. A week later, he did Mount Democrat.
“I really felt it on Quandary, I have to say,” Powers said in his office at the American Mountaineering Center here. “I felt the altitude, I really felt like I was on a big mountain.”
If his story is inspirational, it also is a cautionary tale. He has been a climber most of his life and spent much of his life as a teacher/guide. But he and his belayer made a mistake, and when he leaned off the crag expecting his belay rope to be taut, it was slack. Down he went.
“Over 35 years of climbing, and tens of thousands of belayed pitches, my faith in the belay was unquestioned, and is now very questioned,” said Powers, 50. “There was huge amount of complacency or trust built up in me, not just for that belayer but all belayers. Belaying is so serious to me, and has been such a great service to me over these years, that I have a lot of faith in it. And I guess that manifests as a form of complacency.”
They were climbing a 5.10 route called Bypass on a crag called Highwire. They had reached the top, and Powers decided he wanted to rearrange an anchor. Then he downclimbed 15-20 feet to put in a directional anchor.
When the rope slackened as he downclimbed, his belayer thought he was pulling up rope to rappel. She also thought she heard “Belay off.” But he wasn’t.
“It was just a bad position with regard to our ability to communicate,” Powers said. “There’s the river, there’s the road (noise), and because of the overhang I’d just climbed over, we were not in visual contact, either. So by the time I asked for tension and leaned back on the rope, I had been taken off belay. I just leaned back and fell.”
He suffered no head injury, but has no memory of the fall or the resulting impact. It took two hours to get him to a hospital via litter, ambulance and Flight for Life. He spent several days semiconscious because of pain medication, but when he became lucid again, one of his first acts was to call his belayer. He knew she would feel guilty.
“It takes two people to make a mistake in climbing,” Powers said. “Now, I’m not fond of the fact I was dropped. But I do own a huge amount of that responsibility myself.”
It goes without saying the head of America’s foremost mountaineering organization wants people to believe climbing is a safe sport. But never 100 percent safe.
“People get distracted, people make mistakes,” Powers said. “It’s a vertical endeavor, so one mistake means a long fall. Because you’re in a vertical environment, you can’t let your guard down, ever.”
And for a guy who has climbed in the Himalayas, strolling up a Fourteener with his 9-year-old son can be a thrill, especially after surviving a fall that easily could have been fatal.
“Climbing is a very personal thing,” Powers said. “The greatest climbs in the world aren’t the climbs that we read about in the newspaper. They’re the climbs we do ourselves. They’re the climbs that we do with our daughters and our sons. They’re the climbs that elevate our own lives and inspire our own friends and families.”
John Meyer: 303-954-1616 or jmeyer@
