AND THEN, AS IF ON CUE, the Stolbys appeared through the forest.
They were broad and squat, and there were dozens of them. The forest's shadows and darkness gave way to rocks bulging through the canopy, their far-off summits bright with sunlight. Stolby One, the biggest of the lot, was a 400-foot loaf of stone. Steep trails leading to the base of the rocks were packed hard as cement from a century and a half of foot traffic.

Ahead lay an amazing carnival of human¬ity: adults in every conceivable outfit from tank tops and sneakers to khaki dress pants and rubber galoshes to camo pants and army boots, kids scampering around, screeching with happiness, old people in Cold War-era clothing made from heavy wools, trudging around boulders with sacks of picnic food, teenagers hanging out in groups, wearing school backpacks. A crew sat on a rock tak¬ing turns playing a guitar, while a mother leaned nearby, coddling her baby. Everyone from town, it seemed, had hiked in to gawk at the free soloing.

As we reached the base of Stolby One, though, I saw that these people were not just here to watch — they were here to climb. A mother pushed her six-year-old up a slab by his butt. School kids clogged together on a ledge at the base of a corner, yelling at their friends to come join them, as others pooled around to their sides, smearing up slabs. A team of young boys formed a five-person body ladder over a difficult section of steep, blank face while their girlfriends climbed over them. A couple in their sixties patiently wiggled up a chimney. The rock was damp with morning dew. No one was wearing rock shoes, let alone using a rope. Everyone was headed for the summit, 400 feet above the deck. There was no walkoff. Clusters of people were down soloing through the trains of people going up, passing each other as casually as if they were on a sidewalk in downtown Krasnoyarsk.

Valeris blue eyes glowed with pride as they searched ours for a reaction.
"What the...?"
"This is…"
"Are all these people...?"

None of us could finish a sentence. Free soloing, by my traditional Western definition, is a solitary affair: just you and the rock. On the moderate climbs here, though, it looked to be you and the rock — and a half-dozen friends, family and various random dudes climbing on top of one another in stuttering stops and starts that left people stalled out on greasy smears or tenuous stances while the traffic jam above sorted itself out.
I expected people to start falling at any moment.

"There are many tourists today," Oleg said. He explained that the title "Stolbist" is reserved for only the most seasoned practitioners. "The accidents are most common with the tourists. Not many with Stolbists."
Although some Stolbists use rock shoes and chalk and can be comfortably considered "rock climbers" by Western definition, most of the estimated 200,000 people who climb at Stolby each year have no equipment or training at all. Ropes are rarely, if ever, used.

At a deliberate, purposeful pace, Valeri continued touring us through the main Stolby area, pointing to and naming the features: Stolby Two, Stolby Three, Mitre, Grandfather, Mittens… Every finger or bump of rock had a name.

We came over a rise and Valeri gestured to a 100-foot, multi-fin formation split by deep chimneys. "Feathers," he said.
"Isn't this...?" Brittany asked me, a hint of apprehension rising in her voice.
I didn't respond. I looked up me wide chimney; it was steeper and smoother than it looked on the Internet, no holds or cracks at all.
At the base of Feathers a bronze plaque commemorated Teplyh's death.

Back in the States I'd looked at the photo sequence of Teplyh falling countless times and even shown it to friends, without any shame or respect, almost with a perverse excitement.
He died right where I was standing. His wife and three children sat right there and watched him die.
Teplyh's fall had just become real.

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