Honed. Rich Slater
man approached me, eyes wide open and a look of wonder on his face.
“That’s Rob Slater’s swami belt?” he asked. I nodded and he said, “You knew him?” And when I nodded again, he immediately recited all the unforgettable stories he remembered about Rob – and I knew that from that day forward, he would add to his Rob Slater repertoire the day he saw and touched with his own hands one of the very climbing harnesses Rob wore during several of his El Cap and desert exploits.
I still have that swami belt, despite Randy Leavitt’s efforts to talk me out of it, and several of Rob’s El Cap etriers too. I keep them as tokens of one of the most unforgettable people I’ve known, and because I still use them, the swami belt for climbing and the etriers for various projects where some bulletproof tubular nylon is needed.
That gear remained my closest connection to Rob until one day in late 2009 when Randy called to say that Rich Slater was writing a book about his twin brother and that, given my knowledge of Rob and his life, and my professional skillset as a writer and editor, it might be good for Rich and me to hook up.
As I mentioned earlier, I met Rich about the same time I met Rob, during a couple of Rob’s BASE jumping adventures. We didn’t spend much time together, but he came across as a solid guy in the commando-style environment of illegal BASE jumping – and, of course, Rob always spoke highly of his twin.
Soon after we started working on Honed together, however, I discovered that Rich had picked up the unforgettable mantle his brother first wore and ran with it – literally. Let me bottom-line it for you this way: Just as 8,000-meter climbers are the most elite of the world’s mountaineers, “ultra runners” are the most elite of the world’s long-distance runners.
Ultra runners don’t just run marathons; they run marathons to train for their “real” races, which range in distance from about 31 miles (five miles longer than a marathon) to 100 miles. Ultra runners don’t just get blisters and shin splints; they get hallucinations and their kidneys shut down.
Rich isn’t into organized racing much; he prefers to just go out alone in the mountains and run as far as he can. At first he did it to escape the rage and despair he felt over his twin’s death; now he does it to embrace his brother’s memory – and because Rich Slater now wills himself on to ever greater extremes along his own wild path in precisely the same way Rob Slater did on his.
So as Honed takes you on an journey to meet two unforgettable people whose lives will take your breath away, you may find that they inspire you to get honed and do something breathtaking yourself.
– Robin “Black Death” Heid
Crawford, Colorado, December 2011
Preface
Honed: adj. impressive, attractive, praiseworthy, worthy of emulation. –The Rob Slater Dictionary
Before there was Tony Hawk skateboarding in empty swimming pools there was Robbie Slater screaming down the Cheyenne Frontier Days arena ramps and launching himself on his old green Schwinn. Before there was Fear Factor contestants climbing scaffolding with safety lines and eating worms there was Robbie Slater topping out on the hardest routes in Yosemite having subsisted for five days on Sara Lee coffee cakes and Mint Milanos, three days on water alone and the last two days on nothing. Before there was the X Games and its generation of pop culture daredevils there was Robbie Slater diving off antennae, bridges, skyscrapers, mountain cliffs and canyon walls with a parachute, mostly at night. Before climbers wore Lycra there was Robbie Slater wielding the Lovetron on previously inconceivable, death-defying aid moves on El Capitan. Long before “crazy” became cool and popular on TV there was Robbie Slater.
If there had been X Games, Fear Factor, skateboard parks and the like, Robbie might have found all the danger he needed to satisfy his drive to do what no one else would even dare. Maybe he could have done without skydiving and BASE jumping. Maybe he wouldn’t have been so hell-bent on risking everything time after time putting up the toughest new routes on sheer granite walls. Most of all, he might have been able to do without K2, the world’s deadliest mountain that became his obsession and drew him far too soon to his demise.
But I doubt it. I know about Robbie because I am his identical twin brother. I called him Robbie and he called me Richie. As we got older, we were called Rob and Rich by others, but between us it was always Robbie and Richie. We were in many ways as similar as two human beings could be. We looked alike, talked alike and even liked the same kind of Pop Tarts.But when it came to living life, Robbie went much further out on that razor’s edge, staring down The Reaper and thumbing his nose at disaster than I ever had the courage for. I have never been afraid of dying, but my twin brother had a much greater need for adrenaline and danger than I’ve ever felt. Quoting the infamous Charles Manson, Robbie used to joke he “was crazy back when being crazy meant something.” But it was much more than that.
Looking back, I wonder how, as twins, we could be so different.By tellinghis tale and sharing with you his accomplishments and personality, I hope to understand him better. I know what he loved, but I am also compelled to seek out what motivated him and what he feared. I want to be with my brother again, but not just in spirit. Perhaps if I can understand him – and therefore, myself – better through this memoir, we’ll grow closer. Perhaps I’ll discover we weren’t so different after all.
Prologue
Rob grinning down on El Cap
“…nothing but dogshit here, Mikey” –Rob Slater “You’re under arrest. Stop.” –Unknown ranger
El Capitan is horrendous. It’s hideous and heinous. It’s a horrifically terrifying cliff. Unsurprisingly, it’s also a rock climbing Mecca. Towering more than 3,000 feet from the valley floor in Yosemite National Park in central California, you can hike to its base, look up and barely be able to see the top. It’s a huge overhang, steeper than vertical. If you look really hard, you may be able to discern tiny spots clinging high above to the smooth granite walls. They’re aid climbers, fearless souls who use ropes and an array of small gadgetry to ascend the huge, glassy face that’s impossible to climb otherwise.
One summer day in June, 1982, Mike O’Donnell of Boulder, Colorado, looked up from his spot on a tiny ledge on an upper portion of Sea of Dreams, one of “El Cap’s” toughest routes. Mike could barely see his friend and climbing partner Rob Slater on the immense rock overhang above – though he could easily hear Rob’s nonstop monologue about Danny Thomas, Phil Donahue, Tony Curtis, pop culture and junior high girls on swim teams. However, when Rob occasionally looked down, Mike could clearly see a speck of white which he recognized as Rob’s maniacal grin.
Later on, on a particularly dicey section, Mike became uncharacteristically concerned because the rock – and the risk – was way beyond heinous. It was “weinous” as Rob would say – and way past any reasonable definition of “the edge.” But then Mike remembered that Rob’s “edge” was way further out than pretty much everyone.
“Throughout, Slater displayed astonishing cockiness in the face of death. He’d belooking down at a pinnacle 100 feet below that he’d impale himself on, and yell down, ‘This is nothing but dogshit here, Mikey,’” O’Donnell recalled, shaking his head at Rob’s uncanny ability to remain incredibly focused on the climb and maintain a razor-thin balance to stay on the rock.
The weinous route slowed them down more than they had planned and for the last three days, they had no food. On the final day, to lighten their load, they jettisoned all nonessential gear, including sleeping bags and coats. At the end, Rob was so weak he could manage only one swing of his hammer at each pin as he cleaned the hardware from the last pitch. They finally reached the top, triumphant because they were alive, successful and they were still friends. Pounded by a wind-driven rain, they huddled under their