The rock at Fisher Towers has been described as "hanging curtains of mud." The Finger of Fate route, done by Kor and Co. in the 60's, is even one Roper and Steck's 50 classics.

Hiking out to the Titan past all the other weird and sculpted towers gets you psyched for the climb, if not down right intimidated. The Cottontail, King Fisher, Ancient Arts, Echo Tower; all are paraded by as we hiked out to the Titan, the big dude of all the Fishers.

Roper/Steck's book called the Finger of Fate route “grade four and easily done in a day by experienced sandstone climbers. Hey - “experienced sandstone climbers,”that’s us…no problem.

After hiking in, we fixed a pitch to make things even easier on ourselves, and settled in to a relaxed, beautiful, and quiet desert bivy. We need a good night’s rest.

Dave drives 17 hours at V.W. Bus warp speed (approx. 50 mph) and arrives at my mud Hogan in the evening, giving us a few hours to shoot the bull before our drive to Moab. Thirsty from the long drive, Dave downs a couple of sixers of beer and a few shots of tequila, and melts into the passenger seat of my truck as we head north to Moab.

From my Hogan in Lukachukai, the road north is straight and narrow as a laser beam, and goes through some very uninhibited country. At night, you only see the road, dark silhouettes of sandstone bluffs, cliffs, mesas, and maybe the headlights of an oncoming vehicle every half hour or so. This is Dave’s first southwest climbing trip, so we pick the Titan for his introduction to the world of sandstone.

Pulling into Moab at 2:00 am, we grease down at the local all night diner, and bounce into the barren Fisher Tower parking at an undetermined, but definitely post-Letterman, hour. Lorie arrives shortly after, and the team is now complete.

The first 50 feet of the climb is sort of beat out pin scars from 50 classic seekers who often bail out after a taste of hammering pitons into muddy pin scars. The initial three pitches all end at hanging belays, which gives the climb a sort of “big wall” feel. After the first pitch, Lorie gets the jumaring down (she had the jumars switched on the wrong hands!), and is cruising beautifully considering she’s done less than 20 climbs ever.

We fix a rope across the traverse just as Roper suggests, facilitating our return on the descent, and things are running very smoothly. The pin rack says to bring three 2-inch bongs, but with cams nowadays, I figured we could get by without those giant, heavy, archaic pieces of metal on out rack. Not bringing the bongs was a big mistake, for after the traverse, there is a vertical section with three consecutive shallow (you guessed it) 2 inch bong placements.

Instead of solid tied off bongs, I end up shoving handfuls of angles in each hole, tightening them all up by wedging knifeblades around them, and tying the whole mess off with webbing; three consecutive times. This I found very time consuming, irritating, and fairly terrifying, too. Why can’t I follow the suggested piton list?

After traversing around a formation so justly named “The Duck”, and more crack climbing, we arrive at a small bivy ledge. “Hey, Kor slept here,” we babble, recognizing the ledge from pictures we have seen. Then we notice that the sun is going down fast; Kor might not be the only one who had to sleep here.

“We’re experienced sandstone climbers. We’re supposed to easily do this in a day! Damn Roper and Steck!” Fixing one more pitch, we rap down to Kor’s bivy, eyeball our rations, and psyche for an unplanned bivy. Let’s see…we got about 6 oz of water, one apple, and one granola bar; plenty for three people (this is grim).

The sun goes down, a cold November wind picks up, and I am in thin sweatpants with no BVDs, a baseball cap, a t-shirt, and a thin, ratty, jacket with a non-functioning zipper. Dave and Lorie have similar bivy gear and we declare our situation inappropriate. Dave whips out a wool balaclava that he snuck in the pack, which Lorie and I gawk at like a hungry lion looks at a piece of raw meat. We know that it’s not cold enough to kill us (probably not), but we’re in for some big-time varsity suffering.

I curl up in the fetal position, and after many hours of violent teeth chattering. I’m convinced that I’ve cracked my teeth. Dave and Lorie are wedged in a groove, trying to stay out of the icy wind, and their silent, restless, shuffling tells me they’re not sleeping either. The nighttime conversation consisted of various grumblings, accented with outbursts of profanity and different estimations of what hour we thought it was. In a moment of hope and inspiration, Dave declares that upon seeing this certain star, which he then points out in the sky, that the sun will be up in an hour. We naively believe him and our frozen carcasses stare at the star another three hours before the first light actually appears on the horizon; so much for Dave’s predictions.

Sun now up, I’m soon on the Kor bolt ladder to the summit. I’m 6’1, and I could barely clip the bolts from my top step. Kor is amazing; seems impossible for anyone under 12 feet to have drilled those bolts so far apart.

Summit, then many airy rappels to the deck. During all the rappels, we are yelling to see if Dave’s dog had survived his lonesome, unplanned, canine bivy at the base. Once on the ground, there was Washoe, one happy pup to greet us, as we inhaled bits of food and drink we had left at basecamp.