Layton Kor reaches for a chilled cerveza and Ed Webster drinks tea after a day’s climbing in the Arizona desert, 2009. Photograph © Stewart M. Green
I talked to Layton a couple nights ago. He just had a rough day at the dialysis clinic. One of the nurses poked him a bunch of times in the arm before hitting a nerve. “She just left the needle in there against the nerve,” he said. “It was so painful that I could hardly keep from screaming.” He said his arm was so sore afterwards that he had to cut the session short by an hour and go home. That night, 12 hours later, Layton said his arm still throbbed.
The good news last week was that a plastic tube that went from his shoulder into a vein was removed. “I’ve been taking long showers every day,” Layton told me. “It feels good to have that water running down ya. You just don’t feel clean taking a sponge bath. We’re going up to Vegas soon. There’s a spa place there with a bunch of pools. I’m looking forward to laying in them for a couple days.”
“So you went out to the Garden today?” Layton asked me. I had told him that I was at the Garden of the Gods that morning with Jimmie Dunn and we had put a new anchor bolt on the summit of Red Twin Spire, a 65-foot-high spire in the Gateway. “I always liked to go down and climb at that place. Good climbing there. I went to the Garden with Wayne Goss a few times, and other Boulder climbers. Would climb in the Garden and go out for pizza after. Then drive back to Boulder. Oh, I only did one climb with Harvey Carter out there. Some little thing he called The Pizza. Crappy little climb. Some little blob. Usually I would climb Montezuma and the South Ridge of White and some other routes.”
“The best climb I did down there at the Springs,” he continued, “was Grand Specimen. Very worthwhile 600-foot climb. I did that with Harvey. Maybe the second ascent. We did the first ascent of this diagonal bottomless chimney for the first pitch. Does anybody do that now?”
“Some do,” I said. “The best way is a hand crack up a dihedral. That chimney is pretty wild climbing.”
“That was a big climb. It’s about the biggest one down by Pikes Peak,” said Layton. “We had bird problems at the top. Falcons. They dive-bombed me when I was leading. Exciting end of the climb. Do many people climb that these days? How many ascents do you think it’s had?”
“It’s been climbed quite a few times,” I replied. “I’ve done it three times. I think Jim Dunn has done it seven or eight. But really, it doesn’t get climbed too much now. It’s a long hike up the hill to get to it.”
“Really?” said Layton. “That’s the best climb I did down there. Nobody wants to go up that hill. It is a long ways. The modern climber. Interesting character. Likes areas to drive to, all bolted and everything.”
Can’t take things for granted… kidneys, showers, bolted routes. What will be my biggest challenge today? Layton makes me want to try harder, reach higher, on the rock and in life.