This story recounts a scene from my travels with Hugh Herr in the summer of 1986 that took us to Boulder, Colorado, was included in the original manuscript for Hangdog Days: Conflict, Change, and the Race for 5.14 (Mountaineers Books, April 2019), but was cut during the developmental editing process. Why? I don't remember. I guess the book turned out okay without it, but thinking about cold-calling Jim Erickson and showing up at Pat Ament's door that night looking for a place to stay still makes me laugh. The story was published in Common Climber and revised after Ament contacted me and swore that, although we were at the place, we arrived at the wrong time, as he'd moved prior to our visit. If that's the case, the story is even funnier, since some poor guy answered the door and really had no clue why we were asking to camp out in his driveway. You can read the original version below, or the revised version here: https://www.commonclimber.com/calling-pat-ament.html. Either way, enjoy!
In the late afternoon, after a stop to scope out Sphinx Crack, Hugh Herr and I left Pine, Colorado, hoping to make it to Boulder in time to find Christian Griffith's house. The way Hugh described it, it was a sure thing that we could crash on Christian's couch for the night or maybe even for the duration of our visit. I didn't know Christian personally, but was not one to reject his kind offer of a couch to sleep on during a climbing road trip. It would certainly beat sleeping in dirt and gravel on the side of the road, especially this night, with the forecast calling for wind and rain.
As we turned east onto Highway 285 and started down the winding road towards Denver, it began to rain. With each mile the sky grew darker and the rain pounded harder. A big storm had blown in off the plains and we were driving right into the maw of it. Lightning flashed nearby and thunder roared, again and again, insistently as if delivering some sort of message. Go back, foolish humans! Do not dare to enter the Valley of the Gods! I drove silently toward Boulder, loathing my fate. God was punishing me, probably for the bad thoughts I had been having about Hugh, for wanting to abandon him by the side of the road and head back home. Driving through a thunderstorm was not where I wanted to be. Driving Hugh to Boulder was not what I wanted to be doing. What I wanted to be doing, I didn't know exactly; I only knew it was not this.
As usual, Hugh said nothing; he had fallen asleep.
I followed the main highway into Denver and stopped at a 7-Eleven store on the outskirts so Hugh could use the pay phone to call ahead to let Christian know we would be dropping in. As our luck would have it, he was not home, and his housemate did not know where he was or when he would be back.
“What should we do?” Hugh asked.
I shrugged my shoulders. I didn’t know, and really didn’t care.
“Let’s drive to Boulder,” Hugh finally suggested. “He’ll probably be home by the time we get there.”
Lacking a better plan, I drove to Boulder and promptly got lost trying to find Christian's house, but eventually found our my there. It was easily identifiable; it was the only house on the block with a Bachar ladder hanging in the front yard. Christian was still not home, so we waited uncomfortably on the couch while being eyed suspiciously by his housemates. After a while, we decided to leave to get something to eat and find a pay phone to call George Bracksieck, the editor of Rock & Ice magazine, who was expecting us in town and might know of a place where we could stay the night or at least hang out until Christian came home. We found a pay phone next to a Laundromat and I looked up George's number and called, but got a recorded message.
“What now?” Hugh asked.
“Beats me,” I said. “Call and see if Christian is back?”
Hugh tried calling Christian again, but he was still not back, and his housemate now seemed annoyed that we were pestering him. I called George again, but still no answer. There was a listing for another Bracksieck in the phone directory, though, and thinking it wouldn't hurt to try it, I called that number, hopeful that it would be a relative who would know where George was and how I could reach him.
“Hello?” a man’s voice answered.
“Yes, hello,” I said. “I’m trying to get a hold of George Bracksieck. Is he a relative of yours?”
“Yes, yes. I’m his father. Who is this?”
“It’s Jeff Smoot,” I said, giving Hugh a thumbs up. “I’m a contributor to his magazine. George is expecting me in town but I’m a couple of days early. I was trying to get a hold of him but he’s out somewhere. You wouldn’t happen to know where he is, would you?”
“I do. He’s at a benefit dinner tonight. He’ll be out late, I think. You should call him tomorrow.”
“Okay, I will,” I said, giving Hugh a thumbs down. “Let him know I called, would you?”
“I certainly will. What was your name again?”
Hugh tried Christian's house one more time, and this time no one answered. It was threatening to rain in Boulder now, and the wind was picking up, so we had to either find a place to spend the night or get out of there before the storm hit us again. We talked about finding an out of the way place and bivouacking in the car, but had been warned already that the Boulder police would not take kindly to that. One might get away with sleeping in the boulders behind Camp 4, but not in Boulder. Jail would be a warm, dry place, I imagined, but it was not my first choice of places to crash.
“Who else can we call?” I wondered aloud.
“How about Layton Kor?” Hugh said in jest, and I had to laugh. Kor was a legend, one of the icons of Colorado climbing. The idea of cold calling Layton Kor to ask if we could crash at his place was outrageous. It would be like arriving in Los Angeles one afternoon and ringing up Clint Eastwood to see about setting up a tent on his lawn.
“Yeah, sure,” I countered. “How about Jim Erickson.” Erickson was another Colorado climbing legend that Hugh and I had never met or even talked to.
“Hey, Jim,” Hugh followed, “this is Hugh Herr. You don’t know me, but could I sleep on your sofa?”
Although we were both laughing hysterically because it was so absurd, really, this was not such an outrageously funny idea that we didn’t actually try to look up Layton Kor and Jim Erickson in the phone book. We were desperate to find a place to stay, and who knew? Maybe it would work out. We didn’t find Kor’s number in the directory, but Erickson was listed.
“I dare you to call him,” Hugh said.
“Sure,” I said. “What do we have to lose?”
I dialed Erickson’s number. Thankfully, no one answered.
“Maybe we should call Pat Ament,” I suggested.
“Why not?” Hugh said. “He knows Christian. Maybe he'll let us sleep in the car in his driveway at least. All we need is a place to park the car and sleep without getting busted.”
Sure enough, Pat Ament was listed in the phone book. Hugh looked at me quizzically, and I looked back. And we busted out laughing again.
Since I'd called Erickson, it was Hugh's turn. He tried to phone Ament but no one answered. His address was right there in the white pages, though, and not far away according to the map in the phone book, so we decided to drive over and at least ask Ament if we could hang out with him until George or Christian got in, or perhaps crash in his driveway for just one night until we could sort out our lodging arrangements the next day.
I am not sure what made us think we could just call up a complete stranger and be welcomed to crash at his place, let alone show up at his front door grinning stupidly, intruding on his quiet evening of doing whatever Pat Ament might do on a quiet evening. Generally, the climbing community is inclusive and if you are a friend-of-a-friend in town who needs a place to crash, climbers are usually quite accommodating.
Pat Ament, it turned out, was not.
We soon arrived at Ament’s home, the downstairs unit of a two-story wood-framed house. We knocked politely on the screen door a few times. When that didn't get a response, we began knocking a little less politely on the wooden door frame. The house remained dark. No one answered after several tries.
“Oh, well,” Hugh said after a few minutes. “We tried.”
We turned to leave and were walking away when we heard a shuffling inside the house. A light went on, the latch clicked and the door opened an inch or two. A man in his pajamas stood there, looking out at us quizzically as if wondering what we were selling or which religion we wanted him to convert to.
“Can I help you?” he asked, groggily.
“Hi,” Hugh said. “Are you Pat Ament?”
“Yes, I am. Who are you?”
“I’m Hugh, and this is Jeff," Hugh continued. "We’re climbers from out of town. We were supposed to stay at Christian Griffith’s house tonight, but we can’t find him. So we were looking for a place to stay for a little while until he gets home.”
There was a long pause as Pat Ament stared blankly at us through the crack in the door.
“I’m sorry,” he finally said. “I don’t know you. You can’t stay here.”
“Can we maybe just park in your driveway and sleep in the car?” Hugh asked.
“No.”
“Okay. Do you know anywhere we could stay?”
“No. I’m sorry.”
“Well,” Hugh said. “Thanks anyway.”
Ament closed the door, latched the latch, turned off the light, and shuffled back into his dark abode, leaving us to fend for ourselves.
Out of options, we decided to drive back to Pine and sleep in the car along the forest service road. At least there, assuming the forest rangers were not overly zealous or we didn’t get shot by some gun nut, we could sleep in the car by the side of the road and get an earlier start on Sphinx Crack the next day.
Miraculously, the rain stopped as we turned up the road to Sphinx Rock and pulled into the same turnout we had left hours earlier.
“That was stupid,” I said as I threw my sleeping bag out on the still-wet gravel, my expression not nearly concealing my anger. “We should have stayed here.”
“Yeah,” Hugh said, grinning. “But it sure was nice to meet Pat Ament.”
