read about it in the climbing magazines
that they pored over each month. It in-
volved drilling bolts into routes, so that
climbers could clip in for protection
against falls. There was resistance to the
practice in the U.S., at least at first. Tra-
ditionally, you protected yourself from
falls by “placing gear”—finding cracks
in which to cram one device or another
and clipping to it. The last climber in
a party removed the gear on the way
up. Fixed bolts were considered a fail-
ure to deal with nature on its own terms,
but they were more reliable, and they
gave climbers confidence to try increas-
ingly difficult routes. Mike and Tommy
began making their way to some of the
few places in the American West with
bolted routes. When Mike got a guid-
ing gig in the Alps, on Mont Blanc,
Tommy went along, and they detoured
to overhanging limestone crags where
French climbers were killing it with
light ropes and futuristic technique. It
was the first time Tommy saw his fa-
ther physically overmatched.
The advent of sport climbing led to
the first modern climbing competi-
tions, in Europe and then in the U.S.
In 1995, while climbing in Utah, Mike
and Tommy headed to a major com-
petition at the Snowbird ski resort, in
Little Cottonwood Canyon. A hun-
dred-foot wall had been built with an
overhanging upper section. Mike per-
suaded Tommy to enter an amateurs
event, and when Tommy won that he
was automatically registered to com-
pete against the pros. He was sixteen,
still shy and small, and he would be
climbing against the supermen he read
about in the magazines. Tommy topped
every route and won. Mike was apo-
plectic with joy. Tommy was mortified
by the fuss. “Tommy has never been a
seeker of notoriety,” Mike Caldwell
told me, at his house in Estes. “It just
sort of found him.”
T
ommy and Becca Caldwell have
spent much of their marriage on
the road, usually camping in a buffed-
out Sprinter van. Becca, a photographer
and a registered nurse, radiates cheer-
ful command. When she and Tommy
met, she didn’t know who he was, which
he found refreshing. She was “way out
of my league,” he remembers thinking,
but she was interested in learning to
climb. They met up at a local crag. It
turned out that he had brought two
left climbing shoes. She thought he
was a flake, and didn’t approve of his
plan to wear one climbing shoe, one
tennis shoe. Then he ran a rope up the
cliff in his mismatched shoes. “I had
to admit he looked like he knew what
he was doing,” she told me.
Their house, on a hill southwest of
Estes Park, among ponderosa pines, is
a work in progress. The roof is on, and
the plumbing and electricity are in-
stalled, but the outer walls are still green
sheathing and bare plywood. There’s a
big deck with a solid carved railing ex-
cept where it devolves into a half-built
jumble of two-by-fours. From the deck,
one takes in dozens of high peaks to
the south, the west, the east. Ladders
and piles of lumber flank the driveway
and fill the yard, alongside a swing set,
a horse trailer, a basketball hoop nailed
to a tree, and a tiny homemade climb-
ing wall. The Caldwells have two kids—
Fitz, who is eight, and Ingrid Wilde,
five. This is the fourth house that
Tommy has built or gut-renovated. He
does most of the work himself, includ-
ing the plumbing. He likes to have a
big project going. “My favorite part is
actually the mindless stuff,” he told me.
“The roofing, the flooring.”
On a cool evening, we sat on thedeck. Mountains stood against the still-
bright sky. I asked Caldwell about hismost
frightening experience while climbing.
He had to think. O.K., he decided, itwas
probably a close call that occurred on
El Cap, just after he summited a route
called the Salathé Wall. He was stag-
gering toward a tree thirty feet back
from the cliff, doing a little victory dance
in his head. He was about to tie off a
haul bag. Haul bags, full of gear, food,
and water, are typically about eighty
pounds. Caldwell had left this one sit-
ting on a small ledge just under the lip
of the cliff, connected by a rope to his
harness. Before he reached the tree, he
ran out of rope and was jolted to a stop.
The jolt dislodged the bag from the
ledge. It was a pretty clean fall from
there, no significant obstacles for per-
haps three thousand feet. Caldwell was
yanked off his feet and dragged over the
rough ground toward the edge. He
clawed at bushes and rocks and the earth,
sliding backward on his belly, until fi-
nally, using every bit of his strength, he
managed to stop his progress, his fin-
gers dug into stone. He was alone, and
still had to figure out how to secure the
bag and not follow it into space. “So
that was pretty legit,” he said. He didn’t
laugh even faintly. He just watched me,
both present and far away.
“I know that any day I go into the“I had a bad dream. The plot was a mess and
the characters were hardly believable.”