Mason Stansfield Memorial Route M6 250m
First Ascent on the north face of Round Mountain
May 3rd 2021… I’m in the kitchen chatting with my friend, Brian. He gets the message first, an In-Reach SOS from Alaska has been sent out. It’s from our friends, Mason Stansfield and his girlfriend, Tessa. They’re skiing in between Mason’s guiding assignments. My stomach turns; something’s wrong, major or not. Over the next few minutes the messages keep rolling in, phone calls are made, and we get the news; Mason had died in a crevasse fall on the Eldridge Glacier, Denali National Park, Alaska. The following hours, days, and weeks morph into a blur of tears, anger, depression, and the start of the busy tourist season in Ouray, Colorado. Mason was one of the most beloved members of the community and one of my closest friends. He was family. But as tragedies such as these go, once the services are held and reality bores its wretched hole into your psyche, you slowly settle back into regular life again. The hole of a loved-one lost never fills, but the living keep on living.
Fast forward to Ouray Ice Fest 2022, and I hear that Mason is going to be inducted into the Ice Park Memorial on January 23rd during the closing ceremony. The 24th is my birthday, so I make plans with my friend, Steven Van Sickle, to scout for new routes in the neighboring Silverton, CO area. We’ll scout in the morning and then scoot back to make the memorial. On the 24th, we’ll try a new route. Steven picks me up in the morning and we make the hour trek over to Silverton, parking at the Arrastra Basin trailhead. After two hours of skinning and bootpacking, the 2000’ of elevation gain leaves us standing beneath the north face of Round Mountain, and the giddiness sets in.
It’s 1:30pm, and there’s 4 ½ hours of daylight left. If we want to make the memorial induction for Mason, it’s time to ski back and head home, scouting mission accomplished. But Steven and I are staring at an obvious line, and we share the same knowing glance: we’re not making the memorial. Mason’s spirit is in the air, and we both know this is an adventure he would’ve wanted to be on. A late start; no real plan; just going for it. We rack up and start soloing the steep snow gully guarding our line.
The route has an obvious start: a narrow slot choked with a couple chockstones, but the face to the right looked like a good time, too, and led back into the main system after a pitch or so. Steven starts up the first chockstone overlap, and I begin questing up the face. Halfway up our respective solos, Steven is grunting, and I’m navigating a vertical crux, scratching on small edges and frozen mud.
I shout over, “How ya doing?!”
Steven replies with a grunt and, “Little harder than I thought! How about you?”
I let out a whoop, “Same!”
Torqueing my tool into a crack, I take a video of the terrain, and soon after we’ve met up at the base of what is to become the crux pitch.
Steven starts up the crux, a large chocktone overlap with a shark fin-like feature sticking out the front. He puts one tool away, makes a hard lockoff for the fin, cuts feet, and powers through the mantle on top; exciting! I take cover in the cave formed by the chockstone, and over the next hour Steven ticks his way up the system, raining rocks and snow down the fresh terrain. I follow, and the pitch is good. Almost 60 meters of engaging stemming and bulges. I hit the anchor, take the rack, and run through a 40 meter pitch of easier mixed and snow terrain. We have three choices from here: face systems to our left and two mixed snow gullies above. We choose the right-most gulley and start postholing, headlamps at the ready. As light fades into dark, we solo up the last mixed section to the top of the face. With the stars and Mason looking down on us, we hug, laugh, and get choked up. The Mason Stansfield Memorial Route is complete. As we descend into the night off the western flank, I gaze up at the sky. Mason may be gone, but his spirit remains in the mountains, stoked as ever to accompany his friends on adventures still to come.
