Adventure  

Rattlesnakes, Tacos, and Tetracycline

by Robert H. Miller

Rocks, docs, and Mexican cops, with an arm swollen like a salami: surviving a rattlesnake bite in Mexico is very different from surviving one in the U.S.

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"Ouch!"

I'd stuck my finger (or so I figured) into a little cactus hidden in the overhead crack. I instinctively retracted it, took a good look at it — only two dots of blood but no visible thorns — stuck the digit into my mouth, and sucked on it. The reaction, an involuntary evolutionary adaptation to disinfect wounds (saliva has anti-bacterial properties), this time had a conscious component. Unable to see the spines, I ran the tip of my tongue over the pulsating flesh to feel for the tiny offenders. I felt nothing, so I looked at it again and pulled up on a handhold to get a look at the culprit.

There was no cactus. Instead, not one foot from my nose, a cringing and diminutive, foot-long, gray rattlesnake — cute actually — hissed and rattled, warning me not to encroach again. My first thought was to snuff it, but I was in no position to do so. I was leading a difficult rock climb, 1,000 feet up a sheer, vertical limestone wall. At the time the snake struck, I was hanging on with one good handhold and two toeholds the size of the edge on a Susan B. Anthony coin. Instead, with a clarity I'd experienced only once before, when my life had also been threatened, I considered the situation. First, the snake. The intensity of a rattlesnake bite varies with age, species, and size of load (a function of how recently the snake had shot its wad into its previous victim). Such a little snake implied a youngster. Whew! Then I counted the rattles. Each rattle represents one year of age. This little bugger had six. I made a mental note that perhaps things were a bit worse than they seemed. Next, I formulated a plan to evacuate and get help.

Not an easy task. First aid for rattlesnake bites specifies full body immobilization until help arrives, time being of the essence. But I still had 20 feet up to go — climbing over and past the snake — before reaching a secure anchor at the summit. My wife and climbing partner, Tina, was carefully belaying me 100 feet below. To get help I first had to finish the climb. Only then could we even begin to think of "evacuation."

This wasn't Yosemite National Park with its fully staffed, government-funded, first-rate rescue team. We were climbing at El Potrero Chico, a giant limestone massif outside the little town of Hidalgo — and the headquarters of Cemex, Mexico's cement multinational, of which El Potrero is their mother lode source — about two hours from Monterrey, the capital of the state of Nuevo Leon, Mexico. No helicopters or expertly trained mountain rescue team here. Getting down and out was up to us.

We'd gotten a pre-dawn start to tackle the climb. El Potrero Chico is like no other mountain or crag anywhere. It looks like a giant, Antonio Gaudi (or Tolkienesque, depending on your cultural perspective) cathedral peppered with agaves and palm trees sprouting out of vertical surfaces. The spires and buttresses resemble a random grouping of Brobdingnagian stalactites. The limestone, gray and hard, lacks cracks but is replete with little solution pockets. The name means "the small corral," a reference to the little oval canyon that a stream has carved right through the middle of the formation. The base of the massif was dark and the air was damp, chilled by the Gulf of Mexico fog typical of the Sierra Maestra Oriental in February. If the fog cleared, the day would turn dripping hot. The climb had been dubbed, by the first ascensionists — for some unknown reason — Black Cat Bone. It was 9 pitches long (a "pitch" is a handy rope length, somewhere between 75 and 165 feet — the length of a conventional climbing rope) and 5.10d^* in difficulty. Tina and I tied in and sized each other up for the first lead.

The mechanics of climbing actually render the sport reasonably safe. First, the rope is unwound from its coil and stacked loosely on the ground so that it'll feed out without any snags: a "spaghetti" coil. Then, each climber ties in — via a harness (like a parachute harness) — to opposite ends of the rope: a "lead" end (also known as the "hot end") and a "belay" end. The belayer then also ties in to an anchor — any handy tree, rock, or object that will hold him secure come what may. The belayer then grabs a piece of the rope close to the leader and winds it around a belay device — his waist, a tree, or a specially designed piece of gear that can produce enough friction when pulled tight to hold a leader's fall. At this point, there is very little loose rope between the two climbers, and so the leader heads up, with the belayer feeding out rope as the leader progresses. Every few feet the leader inserts a piton (like a big nail with a clip-in ring), bolt, or mechanical device that jams into a crack or other natural feature of the rock and is thereby pretty secure. To each of these he clips a carabiner: an oval shaped metal ring with a pivoting snap gate that he clips the rope through. The carabiner allows the rope to run through unimpeded. If the leader falls from five feet above his last piece of protection, he'll fall a total of ten feet: the five feet above plus the same five feet of rope as it pendulums down (if his belayer is paying attention and catches him). A ten-foot fall caught by a rope with no give can cause serious injury. But climbing ropes are designed to stretch and thereby ease the fall — no big deal.

When the leader reaches a likely belay spot, he stops climbing, anchors in, and belays the second climber up to the top of the first pitch. Well rehearsed, military-type signals ease the process of communication even in the worst of conditions. However, the system is prone to misunderstanding. (At one point I heard Tina yell, "You dumb mule!" She'd actually said, "Don't pull!") Once the second climber arrives at the subsequent belay, roles are reversed and the process is repeated until the top of the climb is reached.

It fell to Tina to lead the sixth and hardest pitch (the hardest pitch determines a climb's rating). The heart of the matter was a shallow, featureless "open book" — two walls intersecting at 90 degrees — followed by a "blind roof," actually a protruding 15-foot horizontal ceiling. Looking like a water strider, she shimmied up the open book using the opposing pressure of her hands and feet against the two angled walls. At the roof she became a spider. Upside down, grasping the rough edges of solution pockets with her hands and either hooking her toes against their lips or pressing the balls of her feet against their back surfaces, she scurried to the roof's lip as fast as she could. She then stopped cold. Craning her neck over the edge, she searched blindly for a "thank god" hand hold with one arm while holding on with the other. When she found one, she matched hands on it, released her feet and swung out over perdition. Quickly, she executed a pull-up and, when her chin passed her hands, brought a toe up to the same hold her hands were on, found purchase and stood up. Tina took no falls. When I seconded up to her, I took all the tension on the 9 mm rope she could exert. And so the climb progressed until my encounter with the little snake.

Via shouts — akin to communicating over a lousy radio with lots of static (the wind was blowing) — I told Tina what had happened. She took the news in stride. I finished climbing the last pitch and belayed her up to the summit. It was noon.

Getting down is straightforward, if there's a walk-down descent nearby. Not so straightforward if the mountain or crag is vertical all around: rappelling then becomes the only option. For a rappel, the climbers loop the rope around a secure anchor so the cord dangles from its center. They then descend the doubled rope by attaching themselves to it through any friction-inducing device — around their bodies or a rappel mechanism — and feeding the rope through in a controlled manner. When they reach the end of the doubled rope, one of the climbers pulls one of the ends down. As the rope feeds through the anchor point, the other end goes up. After the ascending end clears the anchor point, the rope free-falls down, vulnerable to snagging and catching on any protrusion. Once the line is safely retrieved, a subsequent rappel is threaded and the procedure is repeated until walkable ground is reached. Black Cat Bone had no walk-off descent, so we began the complex and time consuming nine rappels that would get us to the ground.

Contrary to popular depictions, rappelling is neither fun nor fast. Suspended from one anchor point, the rappeller slowly walks down backwards — so as not to shock load the anchor — and exercises faith to swallow his fear. And it takes two hands: one on the rope below to control the rate of descent; one above for balance. I had Tina rig my rappel and kept the poisoned limb above my head. By the third rappel my left arm was fat and hard as a salami, unbendable at the elbow. I was unaware of any pain. By the fifth rappel, the salami turned green and purple and a strange sensation had reached my armpit. At the sixth rappel the rope snagged when we pulled it down. Improvising a belay with what extra rope we had, Tina climbed up and freed the line. With only three rappels left, I started thinking about what to do when we reached the ground. I was befuddled. Either the prospect was overwhelming or the poison had begun to affect my mind.

No one climbs "because it's there." We climb because we're never more alive than when we face death. Mind you, climbing is pretty safe and we are seldom anywhere near death. But it sure feels like it. Climbing integrates all the faculties: intellectual, physical, and emotional. The exact sequence (the harder the grade, the more complex the sequence) of upward moves, like a life-sized chess game, must be plotted and then executed gymnastically — with the dread of falling and splattering on the rocks below ever present. Success turns the fear into exhilaration, which in turn generates lust — the antithesis of death, as George Santayana so eloquently realized when he wrote, "Her lust was so intense; it was like she was trying to beat back death."

The nine rappels ate up two hours — about as good as it gets. At the base (before Tina was even down) I flagged down the first vehicle that came by. I was lucky. Sue, a climbing guide from the Shawangunk Ridge (a conglomerate formation in New York State where William Shockley, inventor of the transistor, pioneered many routes), stopped. Sue winters at the Potrero to hone her skills in the offseason. I told her what had happened. She motioned me to jump in, turned the car around, and headed for Hidalgo. She reassured me that rattlesnake bites are seldom fatal except to the very young or the over-50. Her attitude was so positive I forgot I was 53 (I look 40). When I told her, she raised an eyebrow, barely skipped a beat, and stepped on the accelerator.

My mind was a maelstrom of questions. Was there a doctor in town? A hospital? (Hidalgo seemed too small for one.) Sue explained that Mexico is covered by government-run free clinics that cater to all needs, and that they are responsible and well-staffed. We headed for the Hidalgo Free Clinic. I was reassured but very skeptical. The real adventure was about to begin. . .

Robert Miller's Mexican adventure is continued in the pages of Liberty, on your local newsstand April 1st!

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*

Rock climbing is one (out of many) techniques employed in the sport of mountaineering to make headway over vertical ground. It has evolved into a sport of its own. The nature and difficulty of the terrain is indicated by what started out as a fairly simple rating system. A rating of Class 1 is flat, improved trail. Two is ground that varies in gradient and can require bush bashing. Three is steep and very rough. For Class 4, add lots of vertical exposure and the occasional use of hands for balance and progress (the prudent will resort to a rope). Class 5 is vertical terrain that requires the constant use of arms, a rope for safety, and specialized gymnastic techniques for upward mobility. Class 5 is further subdivided by decimals to indicate the degree of difficulty. A rating of 5.0 is like climbing a 150-foot ladder at a normal angle. Tilt the ladder 45 degrees towards you, so that you're climbing more or less upside down, and the rating shoots up to 5.7. A 5.8 or 5.9 rating is akin to climbing on common interior door trim. When the system was devised — prone to lots of subjectivity — no one envisioned harder climbing. But by the 1970s, climbs much more difficult than 5.9 were being undertaken, and so the unmathematical 5.10 was born: territory akin to steep, textured drywall or requiring Terminator strength or a devious combination of the two. Still, climbing standards progressed. Thinking that the 5.10 grade just had to be the limit, when even harder climbs were crafted, mountaineers resorted to the Rube Goldbergian expediency of adding a letter rating — a, b, c, and d — to the existing numbers. Well, that didn't last. Today we have 5.11a, 5.11b, 5.11c, 5.11d; 5.12a through d; 5.13a through d; and 5.14a through d. And, as of this writing, we're at the threshold of 5.15 — akin to vertical, untextured sheetrock. My own limits — on a good day, properly psyched, beatific, and transcendent, and with the cosmos aligned just so — tops at 5.11a.

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