"HE'S GONE!" I YELLED. "Valeri just fell! He pitched!"
Fifty feet from the summit of Stolby Two, as strong, wet wind buffeted us, Valeri had slipped on an ultra-polished slab. No scream, no flailing limbs... he just free-fell out of view down the sheer, 300-foot western face. Brittany, Burcham, Mikhail and Oleg were just below me, perched on one of the route's many narrow, exposed ledges.

I cried out again, "He's gone!" No one moved or said anything.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck!" I yelled into the wind, pounding my hand against the wall. I climbed back to the others and sat down. My mind swirled with anguish. Next to me Brittany was crying and mumbling, "No, no, no, no…"

Oleg climbed up to the slab and looked down the west face for his father's body.
"Valeri, he is OK", Oleg chuckled nervously. "He has stuck himself in the crack."

I left Brittany's side and scrambled up alongside Oleg to lean over the edge. Thirty feet below, Valeri was jammed perpendicular in the wide chimney, facing upward coffin style. He moaned as he freed himself and chimneyed back up. The shin of his right pant leg was blotched with blood. Valeri kindly brushed Brittany off, motioning that he was fine. He wasn't. Valeri might be a battle-toughened Stolbist, but he was also a sixty-five-year-old man fazed and wobbly from a thirty-foot fall.

Dark clouds stormed across the taiga and the ancient trees swayed in the gusty wind. I looked down to figure out our descent: an easy ramp and ledge system.
Valeri gestured for us to climb the slab and continue to the summit.
It was simple, just a basic foot rock-over move and then a cruiser finish. Yeah, it was exposed, and, yeah, Valeri did just pitch off it, but we could do it. I looked to Brittany. She wasn't budging. Neither was Burcham; he had a wife and young daughter back in Arizona.

"This is enough," Brittany fired at me. "This isn't worth it! If you fall and die, I'm going to be so fucking pissed! Don't be stupid!"
"I'm not being stupid, OK?" I snapped back. "Just quit with all the negativity! It's like a 5-fucking-7 move!"
Neither of us had ever soloed in such a concentrated binge. After four days on slabs of unknown grades, Brittany began bemoaning the dangers of every climb we considered. I'd been arguing back that her complaints were undermining the confidence we needed to be safe and, just as important, smothering the impulsive joys of climbing. But I knew she was getting more and more emotional because she was worrying about me.

Valeri, Oleg and Mikhail watched with amused silence. Oleg climbed up here often with his wife, Katia, pointing out holds and ushering her along. Neither seemed stressed. In fact, no one we saw climbing, alone or with a loved one, seemed stressed.

In the end, Brittany and I calmed down, and she agreed that the move was easy enough for us. Burcham watched us go first, measuring the difficulty, and then, satisfied that the short slab to the summit wasn't too hard, followed us up, wearing his bulky camera pack. Even Valeri climbed the slab, though this time Oleg employed the Stolby "hand-ledge" technique on his father's foot at the crux to ensure he didn't slip again.

On die summit, Valeri told us that had been "only the second time" he'd ever fallen in his half-century of free soloing at Stolby.
Oleg said with an amused grin, "I do not think he should try for a third".

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