Darek Krol’s first and last climbing guidebook for Rifle Mountain Park hit store shelves last year, a few months after he was killed in an avalanche while skiing near Berthoud Pass in December 2020. I finally got around to buying it last week. The book has opened up a bouquet of unexpected emotions. Maybe that's why I hesitated to get it.

As I write this, I’m recovering from my second heart surgery. My first heart surgery was in 2014. Back then, a week after coming home from the hospital, Dave Pegg—the father of Wolverine Publishing and godfather of Rifle Mountain Park—died by suicide after suffering from insomnia for far too long. So many dead friends are associated with this book. To name a few: Hayden Kennedy and his life partner Inge Perkins died in 2017; Darek’s close friend Ben Walburn died of cancer in 2019; and Eddie Marovich died in a car accident just shy of his 30th birthday in 2021, only months after we lost Darek. I’m not trying to bring people down, here. I’m merely exploring why this book has landed on my heart like a feather with a heavy THUD. And I’m grateful to have it in my hands.

Darek was 57 years old and burned with energy and enthusiasm rarely found in 20-year-olds on spring break. A Polish immigrant who was hardly able to speak a word of English when he came to the USA with his family in 1997, according to people who spoke at his memorials, he was fluent in about five languages by he time he died. Which is to say that his broad, short life is supremely difficult to capture in words. His existence might be better expressed as the central character of a novel like Zorba the Greek. His obituary has been written many times over, including a few tributes in the recent guidebook. What caught me off guard, however, is just how strongly his spirit emanates from every page. Not because of what was written about him, but because of how the entire book was put together.

A note from the publisher on the last page reads:

Even though there was a very serviceable previous edition done by an acknowledged guidebook master, Dave Pegg, Darek (typically) wanted to start from scratch, photograph the cliffs anew, and incorporate design ideas he liked from European guidebooks. He was headstrong to work with…. Beyond climbing, Darek was a wonderful human being to be around. He made everyone feel known and important…. A thinker as well as a doer, Darek was a kind of renaissance man who possessed great love for linguistics, astronomy and history…. According to family, Darek always dreamed of writing a historical fiction novel. Perhaps this book is close….

I love that last line! I’d already drafted most of this writing before I discovered it, which tells me my feelings are not off base.

Darek’s nuanced descriptions seem to carry the essence of his heart as well as the canyon. In the writing he never shies away from humbly expressing strong opinions, just as I knew him to do in person—and there was plenty on which we respectfully disagreed. Again and again, his word choice is consistently unique to the person I knew. He describes the Bauhaus wall as “two sides of a brain…” Two route names and descriptions for two of his climbs in the canyon read, “Kenose Eskapa (5.13b): Handsome, with good flow….”; and “The Rave Over Truth and Beauty (5.12a): …A less perfect finish reminds of the old truth: nothing and nobody is perfect.”

One of the themes throughout Darek's book is how "Imperfection Makes Rifle Perfect." His introduction and an essay by George Squibb elaborate as to how this pertains in a variety of ways. This theme, for me, really gets to the core of what makes Darek's final masterpiece tick. The book is imperfect, full of inevitable flaws in spite of the author's efforts to carefully document every possible detail, and this contributes to the book’s vibrant character. Darek's voice is preserved so fully in these pages that I feel as though he were sitting next to me, reading aloud.

A photo of Darek and his daughter Nina when she was a child appears in the final pages of the book.

Leading up to publication, to be more sensitive to growing concerns of diversity, equity and inclusion, Darek made a big deal about changing the route name, “The Gayness,” an extension of an older route named after a book by Nietzsche, The Gay Science. It was my understanding that he had most everyone’s blessing, including the first ascensionist’s. The plan, last I heard, was to change “The Gayness” to another Nietzsche book title. It seemed Darek’s mind was made up. Yet in the new guidebook, for whatever reason, he never implemented the change. I can imagine that he was already too caught up in other details by the time he returned to his computer and simply forgot to make the edit he’d spent so much time belaboring. Or maybe he merely had a second-second thought. His brain constantly buzzed with ideas while his body vibrated with action, inevitably leaving room for some details to slip through the cracks, as happens to all of us. No one is perfect, of course.

A particular error in the book that I wish to correct is that one of my speed records on Pump-o-rama was inaccurately recorded. On page 98, the text reads, “Franz has climbed Pump-o-rama in under 3 minutes while chugging a whole beer along the way, with a dangling watermelon attached to his harness.” This is all true except my time for that stunt was 4:51. (I had no idea I was being timed or I might’ve tried to chug the Avery White Rascal a little faster! The beer-chug from the double-kneebar took longer than the rest of the route, and I nearly barfed.) My overall speed record for leading the route in 2:04 is correct. I remember Darek asking me to confirm those times more than once, in between coming and going, while we were belaying next to each other, etc. If he’d just emailed saying he wanted the information for the book, I would’ve looked up the records in my personal journals, as I did just now. But…so it goes. I suspect he wanted to surprise me. He did.

The page covering the aforementioned Pump-o-rama speed records.

Pointing out these errors is not to complain!

Quite the opposite. I find myself in an apt stage of life to receive Darek’s message regarding “perfection.” As I’ve written elsewhere in this blog, I’ve been struggling to feel good enough at anything I do. That isn’t true, of course. I must be good at some things, even if my achievements are far from the very best, or I wouldn’t be where I am today. The cliché description is that I’m in “a mid-life crisis,” though such a simplistic label diminishes a person’s unique lived experience.

Here I am, recovering not only from my second heart surgery before the age of 40, but also a double hernia operation that took place two weeks ago. So much time in hospitals has been a haunting reminder that, on the timeline of a lifespan, my mortal condition is ebbing closer to decay, while birth and youth are becoming foggy mirages in the rearview mirror.

At this point, I won’t be able to return to strenuous exercise (read: climb hard at Rifle) for at least another month. It’s nigh certain that my old “warmups” will spit me off like an oiled bowling ball. And there’s never a guarantee that I will be able to climb as hard as I once did. The main priority will be avoiding injury, as if that wasn’t already the case, haha.

Like Darek, a part of my heart will always reside in Rifle Mountain Park, regardless of physical ability.

There is another reason why this book means so much to me.

This is the first time my name and face have appeared in the Rifle guide, which is now on its sixth edition. I own four of them and know most of the canyon and its history by heart, so it’s not like I need the book for important information. I get the books because each edition feels like a yearbook with photos of friends and memories, a flavor of the time. I’ve never had a direct presence on those pages until now, however.

Darek’s photo of me on Lost and Found (5.12b).

Shortly before the book was due, Darek said he wanted to include a photo of me. I understand the publishing business well enough to know that nothing is guaranteed until the pages come off the press. Honored as I was that he went out of his way to set a date to photograph me on some warmups, I wasn’t holding my breath to see my name in the book, much less a photo.

So my heart fluttered last week when I discovered not only a full-page photo, but the paragraph about the Pump-o-rama speed records, with my name in the same paragraph as Hermann Gollner and Alex Honnold!!

It’s worth revisiting some history surrounding Hermann. The US Ski & Snowboard Hall of Fame website describes Hermann as “a revered, almost mythical figure…[who] pioneered freestyle aerials, became an iconic coach and invented a ground-breaking race gate.”

A photo of Hermann Gollner appears in the book.

Hermann was also influential at Rifle. He envisioned the “Chain Gang” linkup in the Arsenal cave: sending seven routes from 5.12d to 5.13c in a day, including Pump-o-rama (5.13a). When I first opened my eyes to Rifle, returning to the canyon after college in 2005, I was just breaking into 5.12 while 5.13 seemed impossible. Until then, I’d never seen anyone trying 5.13, much less sending. Then there was Hermann, executing moves like a machine, lapping these wildly overhanging routes. Eventually I learned about his original speed records on Pump-o-rama and even got to ask him about it. If I recall correctly, Hermann’s fastest time for leading the route was 2:24 but he also had timed himself on a toprope record of sub-2 minutes. Seeing Hermann and a few others perform so consistently on those routes inspired me to see if I might one day be able to do the same.

The Pump-o-rama speed record is not something I set out to accomplish. I merely enjoyed lapping the route at the end of each day for years, just to see if I could swing through the moves with failing muscles after a full day of try-hard climbing.

Sending Pump-o-rama for my very first time in 2007. It was the second 5.13 I ever sent. [Photo] Roy White

Climbing a route in the Lower Ice Caves sector—I think it was Bumble Bee, rated 5.9 at the time, now officially 5.10a. It was my first or second day ever climbing at Rifle, ca. mid-1990s, and I had never been to a sport climbing area before outside the gym. Most of my climbing had been in Rocky Mountain National Park and Eldo. I showed up with a “full” trad rack of one set of nuts and about four cams. My guide for the day, John “JD” Dunn, chuckled and shook his head. I was both discouraged and fascinated with Rifle climbing, returning periodically to flail on the steep, polished stone, but the obsession with the place didn’t set in until 2005 when I returned home from college.

When the annual Rifle Rendezspew party came around in 2016, Darek organized speed contests on Pump-o-rama and Rehabilitator (5.11d). The only practice I had was one week before, when I skipped the kneebar rest on Pump-o-rama for the first time to see what it felt like. That took about five minutes. I knew I could go a little faster. At the contest, I surprised myself, clocking 2:25 on my first try. Friends persuaded me to try again even though I already felt tired from a long day of events. I surprised myself and climbed even faster, setting the new lead-climbing record, clipping every bolt except the last one below the anchor. (If I’d skipped a few more clips, perhaps I would’ve finished in less than 2 minutes?)

Darek said I had to take a victory lap with a small watermelon tied to the back of my harness as a tribute to the Rifle antics of yore (see photo of the text). It was an honor to carry on the history I’d read about in the original Hassan Saab guidebook at age 13. For a long time I’d also been curious what it would be like to shotgun a beer from the kneebar rest. So I stashed the only beer I could find in my chalk bag—Avery White Rascal is not a good beer to chug—and started up, not realizing that this lap would also be timed. Silly me. With two or three stopwatches in the audience, of course it would be timed!

Belaying my friend Callie for the photoshoot. Darek wanted to get a picture of her on Monster Magnet, a diminutive, bouldery route that Callie was never remotely interested in trying, preferring tall, proud endurance routes instead, but Darek was persistent as usual.

Thanks to Darek, Hermann and so many people who continue to make this canyon special—I could start listing names of men and women but then I’d be writing a book—Rifle has helped me discover my personal character and abilities for close to 20 years. More importantly, some of my best friendships have been forged through our shared experiences in this little canyon.

On a closing note, concerning the matter of ego and grades of difficulty…

The older I get, and the more guidebooks, climbs and areas I become acquainted with, the grades hold less meaning. Sure, I’ll puff up my chest a little if I get to tick a box with a high number, but that ego boost can be taken away just as easily. I’ve seen the way grades fluctuate, from guidebook to guidebook, author to author and place to place, especially from 20 years ago compared to now. One previous best is replaced with another. So far, it always seems to even out. What really stays with me, what no one can take away, is the experience I had.

I’m lucky to have had so many memorable experiences.

It’s now springtime and the flowers are blooming in mountain meadows. Many of my friends have been back on the rock flexing their muscles and dialing in beta on their latest hard projects. Meanwhile, here I am, stuck on my ass for a while longer, and I feel like a punished kid forced to sit in time-out during recess. Yet another reason why I hesitated to get the new guidebook. Turns out I picked it up at just the right time to appreciate its deeper significance.

The book is a reminder that a zeal for life begins with an active choice to engage with the people around us and the challenges at hand; to see life through a lens of possibility. Darek was a shining example in that regard. I’m a better person for knowing him and many others who are associated with the park.

Love to Darek and his family. Love to the canyon. Love to you all. Love to life and all its inevitable imperfections.

If you find yourself frustrated on a project, take a breath and remember how lucky you are to be there at all. Plenty of us wish we could be in that position. I for one, am looking forward to being frustrated on hard routes once again.

To learn more about the canyon and how you can become more involved with the community, visit the Rifle Climbers Coalition website at RifleClimbers.org.

"Rifle: A Climber's Guide" is a route to the heart of Darek Krol and so much More