"OLEG, LET GO OF MY FOOT!" Brittany shrieked.
No one likes being touched by people he or she barely knows — especially 250 feet off the deck, free soloing 5.8 friction. In the midst of our first Stolby solo, Brittany had paused for a mere second to suss out a tricky foot-smear sequence. Oleg, who'd free soloed this route for years, calmly but quickly climbed up lichen-covered rock beside her and gently tried to move her left foot onto a small edge with his free hand. Meanwhile another Stolbist, Alexi, was also trying to move her foot onto a different foothold, a glassy micro-nub.
"No, no. OK, OK, OK. Foot, foot. OK," Alexi said.
"I got it. I got it! I don't need any help!" Brittany hollered. She'd never fall on such a moderate climb, but she's only 5'3", and with those guys tugging at her, she could easily lose her balance and pitch off.
There was nothing I could do; I was stuck below, sandwiched in by five other Stolbists. One of them, Mikhail, shouldered a massive, expedition-sized pack filled with camera gear. If a single person blew it, everyone was going to get pinballed off and die.
At last Brittany scampered free of them, climbed up the remaining fifty feet of fourth-class slab and sat down far from the rounded edge, where the Russians poked fun at her for getting spooked. I'd rarely felt so relieved to be on a summit. With horizontal ground beneath my feet, everything felt sane again. The taiga rolled across the hills to town in an uninterrupted green blanket, so thick it hid all the houses, as if we were at the beginning of the world and nothing but wilderness existed.
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